DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

When the group is ready, Dolsten nods and leads the way across, using his walking stick to help with his balance...

So much for the soft, prancing foot of the elves… Anora thinks, once the immediate danger to Ty has passed.

"Pelagia’s servants?" Anora asks to Aldric, upon seeing the writhing nastiness on Ty’s body!

Aldric approaches Ty, pushing his way forward, guiding his progress with his oar. He meets him on the far bank. Putting his shield down, he checks the elf's skin for more leeches.

Aldric responds to Anora the Blue, "We are all Pelagia's servants, but not all yet know it. If you don't believe me, trying going without water for a few days."

Ty sputters his way up to the bank. It is an effort of will to feign a blind man's ignorance of the repulsive parasites that Dolsten and Aldric are pulling off of him.

"These things? What things?" he queries, with just the right note of unease. "Masters, when you force a poor sightless soul like myself to find his own way across a bog, you must expect a spill or two..."

Once he's on solid ground, Tyravasiel un-slings his pack. He feels along the the flap's edge-- and checks it through his blindfold-- to make sure that the satchel hasn't come open during his plunge.

BOOOOOO

Once the burrowing, loathsome, sucker-faced parasites are picked off the elf, he discovers that his pack did not spill its contents into the mire... but that a handful of the human, crudely-minted coins he'd been collecting fell from his purse and were lost to those dank waters.

---

AT THE TOMB OF THE ULFHEONAR (ALL)

Soon enough the troupe is ready to resume their trek, and with the waning sunlight a concern, Dolsten doubles his pace. Through the scrubby, boggy woods they go, past stunted pines and sickly-looking shrubs... until they finally come upon what must certainly be their destination. The forest breaks at the edge of a steep slope, revealing a narrow vale below. Set in the center of the valley is a large earthen mound topped with tall grasses and shaped like a long serpent.

At the edge of that clearing, Lloré waxes on about the place.

"The warlords of yore were buried in such places! See the head, there... that is surely the tomb! No one knows if the northern savage kings built these mounds, or merely found and used them, but..."

"Sensible people avoid this place and others like it," Dolsten interjects dourly.

"Many think they are haunted by hostile spirits, or twixt and mixt with the King of Elfland's eerie homelands."

Running along either side of the mound are a pair of slender, silvery streams; they meet in a sunlit, glittering pool near the serpent's head. And across that pool, set into the earthen mound there is a large, circular stone. It is difficult to tell from this distance, but it seems to be decorated with serpentine spirals worn by time.

Anora rolls her eyes at Aldric’s superstitions. Should the man go a few days without shitting, would he then bow and scrape before Pandantilus, God of the Privy?…

The woman had a self satisfied smirk on her face until they are once again greeted by water, and an opportunity for Aldric to give a sermon. She was thankful only for the fact that none of the Hirotian villagers were here to be swayed by the man.

"Are we not the most sensible people in Hirot?" Anora asks, including the rest in her own estimations of herself.

Ty stands at the top of the slope, contemplating the scene below.

If he could, the elf would shoot young Skald Lloré a healthy dose of side-eye. Is the human seriously suggesting that his ancestral kings simply chanced upon a mound shaped like a snake? Are earthworks in the forms of animals a common natural feature in this part of the country?

More puzzling is the spiral-carved stone that serves the tomb for a door. A door that seems to be closed. What became of the pillagers whom Dolsten sent this way to gather rare gifts for his love? They wouldn't have been so fastidious as to shut the door behind them.

"Is the tomb disturbed?" the beggar demands of those who can see. Hoping that his comrades will see the point of his question.

"We are too far to tell, but there is one sure way find out."

Aldric recognizes the time is of the essence, and descends into the valley. He moves efficiently, free of Pelagia's invisible currents, and he charts a path that takes him directly to the pool. Once there, he'll gaze into the pond as its waters reflect the dying sun. If it seems safe, he will place his feet in its waters, as well as his oar, and begin to navigate it - the cleric of the water goddess seems like the obvious choice for this task. He uses his holy oar inscribed with Pelagia's thrice-rolling wave to press at the mud, checking for ground that is too soft to support his weight.

"Follow me, carefully!" he urges the others, as he whispers prayers to Pelagia for safe passage through these waters (Aldric ever the showman - he knows Pelagia doesn't likely care).

Once he gets to the door, he does not leave the pond until everyone has passed safely.

Aldric had repeatedly shown that he was touched by the madness of the brilliant. At least, Dufgal was convinced. He followed very closely, ready to grasp him should anything leap out to him.

THE TOMB OF THE ULFHEONAR (ALL)

Aldric at least descends, and Dufgal with him. At the top of that slope they climb down from, Dolsten and Lloré do not look terribly interested in going down into the valley, let alone into the tomb of some long dead savage king.

"We'll wait here," Dolsten says quietly to Anora and the blind beggar.

"I've not the heart to brave such places anymore. Once, perhaps. But not now."

"And I'll stay with him, to keep him company," Lloré said lightly.

The man had a poem, nay, a ballad to write about a certain barmaid, and it would do well to craft and sing it where no one else was listening. Well, save for Dolston, but he hardly counted.

---

Down the hill, Aldric is first to the edge of the water, the pool formed by the two converging rivulets. The water glitters like silver in the early evening sun, brightened by white sand deposited by the streams, and by what must be a high mica content suspended in the water.

Testing those waters, Aldric found them only a foot deep, sparkling and cool. Dufgal joined him, and as the two men made their sloshing way towards the entrance, some ten paces away, they noted two things.

First, the door ahead of them looked heavy, and like it was the sort to be rolled out of the way -- it is circular, and there is no set of hinges or even a proper door frame. It does not look to have been disturbed recently. Second, they both spot something in the water. A bundle or sack, bound up with leather, then another... and another. Four in all they can see, waterlogged parcels of some kind.

"Careful you don’t make yourselves easy targets for the hound." Anora warns the two men, before descending down the slope towards the sturdy tomb. That door would at least allow Anora enough time to chant a final spell, should Dufgal and Aldric get it closed against the hound.

A final spell, and then…

"These look to be nicer waters." Anora admits, as she joins the two below! She casts a wary eye over the strange packages.

"Dufgal, can you reach those… offerings!" the last word is as much a question as anything else!

A quiet peace settles over Aldric as the sparkling water cools his feet. Though he despises and fears his bond to Pelagia, being reborn of the waves had reshaped him. Now, the water felt like home, lending him a soft sense of height and hidden power. This pond, somehow linked to the vast ocean, breathes strength into him with each gentle ripple. Unusual for Aldric, he decides to lean into this power rather than recoil from it, expecting the tomb before them to present formidable challenges.

Still standing in the water, he raises his oar and shield, both inscribed with the thrice-rolling wave, Pelagia's holy symbol. He chants words of power to bring forth the gift of supernatural senses.

Dutiful Dufgal, hearing the prompt from the Lady to whom he had been contracted, reaches his free hand to grasp the nearest drowned satchel.

Aldric is just too far from the ocean, too far from the cold breast of his goddess to call upon her foamy, frothy powers. Or... is it more than that?

---

But back at the crossing, near where Aldric made the offering... precisely where Ty had fallen in... Pelagia's watery agents find an additional offering. More than was required of the peculiar priest... who was, after all, hunting a moon-spawned devil-wolf. Gold and silver, and copper too tumbles and flashes along, born by that covetous current. But the ocean gives as well as takes, the tides draw out... and come back in, bringing with them an ichthyic bounty...

---

Dufgal reaches into the water, almost elbow deep, to retrieve one of the bundles. When he draws it out of the water, the rotten thing starts to come apart in his hands. Scraps of old hide, black and disintegrating, fall into the water from the man's grasping hands. He finds himself holding the contents of what must have once been a bag or pack: an ancient-looking, pitted and nicked sword of bronze... a handful of crude coins of tin and bronze... and a skull. The latter is waterlogged and heavy, soft and spongy and pungent. The bone is split on top, perhaps the injury that killed the man, woman, or whatever this was.

The thief has no issue handling the dead. His sense of the way of the world is grounded and simple. Whatever bones are left behind are transformed by time and no longer the same as when they were inside holding up a human. Whoever left them here is long gone. At least that’s what he believes. He unceremoniously tosses the damp booty to the shore and rifles through the other three satchels.

Standing sideways, feeling ahead with his cane, Tyravasiel eases his way down the slope after the others. At Anora's mention of waters, he blurts, "Another fen? May Pelagia protect her benighted servant!"

This bit of theater is for the benefit of the Hirotians lingering on the level ground above. Once they are out of earshot, the elf shifts his attention to Dufgal and the sodden, rotten packs before the tomb's entrance.

"Might these be the remains of Dolsten's would-be tomb robbers?" he inquires softly of the others. "If so, we must be wary of that door stone."