DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

Dufgal, upon hearing the priest speak of the weapon’s power, and combining that knowledge with his general disdain for the hypocrisy of the religious, loses his usual sense to keep out of the spotlight. He bursts forth with alacrity and finds himself hoisting the relic in emphasis,
"D’you’se mean this?! This holy relicks that might could kill dat hound?! And you’se keepin it from these folk?!" He pauses to let the truth sink in. "it seems the people of Hirot needs savin FROM you, not BY you!"

Ah, they found the missing hammer. Aldric wonders for a moment how the potato stew turned out.

Without skipping a beat, Aldric roars with his preacher voice, reinforcing Dufgal's words, and making sure they carry to the back of the crowd.

"You mean to say, Father Beacom, that you've been participating in this lottery, this sacrifice of your congregation to the Hound's belly, when you had the means to destroy the Hound all this time?"

"What an injustice! Why, I wouldn't be surprised if Justica herself relocated the hammer from your sinful presence to a true and worthy man! And I'm not surprised she chose Dufgal, a man who hails from local origins, to right this wrong. A man of action and bravery!"

Never to early to plant the seeds of Dufgal's ascension to power, if he wanted it!

The fool from Garion’s Folly cringed in one part of him and gleamed in the other part. As much as he would not know how to handle the status upgrade, he craved it. From the shit throne to the gilt throne. "Quit daydreaming, you fool of a tool!" his father would shout. Thankfully, Dufgal needed to snap out of it. His posture and expression must match the story. He straightened up and tried to look proud and worthy, whatever that meant.

Anora nods her head to the Father in response to his own gesture. Seeing then that the tide was turning against him, she steps back into the crowd. The anger that might have been spent on the Jarl was now being spent on his third in command, if Anora suspected correctly.

She had little more use for the man, and less still for him when her spell faded. She smuggles herself among the townsfolk, and watches the events as they transpire.

The crowd, already whipped up to take on the Jarl, and then having had that thirst denied, screams for blood as Dufgal raises the beautifully crafted warhammer head, and as Aldric piles on with his inflammatory vitriol.

"Yes, the hammer!" Beacom bellows, but he is all but drowned out by the rising rage of his fellow villagers. They close in as he screeches denial.

"No! I could not wield the Righteous Fury! No one can, only the goddess herself! But it's presence -- ah! It's presence -- oooogh!"

Punches are now being thrown, claw-like hands are pulling at the man's robes. There's bedlam, with the priest at the center of it, but he never gives up his refrain. "It -- it kept the church safe! And I told you all to repent! I told you all!"

"Oyd fucking Tallson died on your steps with his son!" came a call.

"Moeroj the Tanner, too! He screamed to be let in, you prick! You killed him! You killed a lot of people!"

The scene becomes very ugly very quickly, but everyone falls dead quiet when the priest is roughly shoved off the bluff. The Jarl's great house and the sky biers beside are almost a hundred feet above the rest of the village, so Beacom screams a long time before he hits -- and falls brutally silent himself.

It's hard to know who exactly last pushed the man, and whether it was Tocs or Catkins who facilitated the wailing plummet by stooping down behind his legs. Regardless, all will remember that it is weathered Orioc who comes forward to look over the stone ridge first, and who spits and then smiles.

"He's had that comin' for years," the old Thegn says just before a slightly half-hearted roaring cheer goes back up, and then he adds to Dufgal, shouting, "Now let's get a haft on that gods-damned hammer!"

Two down…

Anora’s list of rivals shrank with each passing moment. Only the Jarl and the moon dog remained. The witch, too, if she would set her will against Anora’s once the spell’s effects wore off.

The Jarl and the Hound. Both tests of physical strength, Anora knew. The Jarl’s mind had diminished and his spirit was a crumpled ruin. Ru and the Father had been contests of personality, and only Anora remained of the trio.

She steps back to the fore of the crowd and nods her assent at Orioc’s cry!

Dufgal felt something more when Beacom plunged to his death. It was more than a human body; it was the years of oppression that were tossed over that cliff. The smug, self-aggrandizement of those in power had always seemed unstoppable. And yet, here it was happening.

Then it dawned on him. If they continue to remove those in power, then there will be nowhere to hide from the blame should the hound prove unkillable. The pressure mounts.

He agreed with Orioc by nodding and moving towards him. Now that the secret was out, no riffraff was likely to try and steal the warhammer head. Gave protection to the church? Dufgal wondered if he was holding something magical. Something from a folk tale.

Ty isn't surprised when Dufgal hoists the stolen hammer. However, the large man's defiance does give him pause. And when the common folk of Hirot -- stirred up to vengeance by Dufgal and Aldric the Pelagian-- jettison Beacom from the raised causeway, Ty purses his lips in mild disapproval.

It's quite possible that the late Father Beacom was faithful to his goddess, after his fashion: preserving her relics; demanding penitence from the wayward (or those he imagined to be the wayward); defending only the devout from harm. Yet his tenure as Justicia's representative on earth could not save him from an aggressive bout of rabble-rousing.

It occurs to the elf that humans are as fickle in their choice of prelates as they are imaginative in their creation of false gods. Still, Beacom's literal fall leaves a spiritual void in the flyspeck village that another priest might fill-- perhaps the priest of the equally fanciful Bitch of the Sea.

And so, all to the good.

Ty puts on a smile and squares his shoulders for the task ahead. Ambling up to Orioc, he suggests, "As Justicia's church appears no longer to be occupied-- except, perhaps, by the godhead herself-- perhaps the good people of Hirot should pass the night's danger behind those sturdy walls, rather than huddled in the corners and cellars of their various hovels?"

"Better there than within the Jarls walls!" Anora adds, turning from her earlier plan to have the people stay within the keep. She hadn’t expected the Jarl to be surrounded by quite so many armed men. And with vengeance on the man’s mind, the church walls would keep both man and beast without…

Aldric laughs as the priest is tossed off the bluff like a sack of potatoes. He has a private moment with his goddess as this happens.

Pelagia, I have ripped out a weed in the sands of this beach, which is but a shore on your majestic realm. The weed's roots have left a hole, and that hole will soon fill with your waters.

But of course, he can't help but notice the irony - a priest, who once had the confidence of the town to such a degree that they sacrificed their kin rather than challenge him, was just deposed in the most unceremonious manner. Might this be his fate one day? He walked a dangerous path...

"We have little time to waste! The sun wanes, and we have a ways to travel!" she warns, wondering if their march towards the beast’s lair would at least keep the beast from the village for the night.

THE WOLF-SPEAR (ANORA)

The urgency in Anora's voice lends movement to everyone present, and after a quick discussion on what needs doing urgently, the three men go about their businesses while the Blue Wizardess falls back to the stout roadhouse where she'd left the worn folio of items that Dufgal had stolen from Ymae's cottage. The big thief was off with Orioc and some crafters, trying to affix a haft to the warhammer, while Aldric was to return to the witch's hut for... payment. Ty, the not-blind beggar? He went to the Church, the woman supposed, perhaps under the auspices of getting it ready to be secured for the night.

Now, laid out in front of the woman on a wide and long table are many pieces of worn and faded parchment -- including the map of the area that she, Dolsten and Dufgal had pieced together earlier.But even more interesting than that old map are the weathered, torn, and faded pieces of parchment that Anora had tucked into her own grimoire earlier. It would take time to study and decipher those muniments fully, but she could now see that these were treasures beyond belief.

Now having more time to pour over them, the spellweaver sees that there must be a half-dozen magical spells -- of the known 716 -- that are interleaved with treatises on contacting beings from higher planes... and a multi-page essay written by an Ensqualmer named Calindonadrius regarding the correct way to harness the Transcendental Phlogiston that surrounded and connected all things.

YMAE'S HUT (ALDRIC)

Aldric treads down to the witch's hovel with the intention of seeing whether the crone had prepared that which she had promised: shackles or manacles made from the magical golden thread they had seen her spinning by the fire. It could bind the Hound, Ymae had said, and what else? Ah yes -- that it would be ready by dusk.

Sunset is a few hours off still as Aldric stands at the witch's door. No sounds come from inside, and no candle or lamp-light seems to light the place from within. Sounds still resonate all through the town, but here, right now -- all is eerily quiet.

AT THE WOODSMITH'S (DUFGAL)

"Look, I didn't have nothing to do with Jenks wanting to rob you," Ebbe had said up on top of the bluff, near the Jarl's hold when Orioc called for a new haft for the hammer. Something in the girl's voice made Dufgal at least partly believe her, so now they (Dufgal and her, Orioc the Thegn and a few other gawkers) had come back down to the village proper to see about completing the weapon. She'd introduced herself properly on the way down.

"I can either fix something to it quick, pin it and hope it holds for at least few hits, or I can spend a few hours at it to shave and fit the haft and do it right," the apprentice says to Orioc and Dufgal as she picks axe handles from the wall of the workshop.

"The Hound will be here after dark," the old warrior says evenly. "Can you finish it before then?"

Ebbe shrugs, unsure of how to answer. She simply doesn't know.

AT THE CHURCH OF JUSTICIA (TY)

The two silent brothers retrieved Beacom's smashed body from where it laid crumpled, hurrying to get to it in case certain Hirotians decided to visit further violence upon the dead priest. They wrapped him in a beautifully embroidered death shroud and bore him to the sky biers, where he would be burned ritually when the time was right.

Ty takes up occupancy of the church during all this, and watches as villagers begin to slowly come in, carrying weapons, bedding and other possessions that make it clear they are intending to stay a spell.

Aldric had sacrificed much this day, and perhaps greatest of all was his sacrifice to lie with the Crone. He intended not to let that sacrifice be for naught. He does decide to bring only one of his followers, and he chose the one with the most potential - the psycho girl, Catkins. The girl needed to learn how to conduct business.

He approaches her hovel, with Catkins in tow, and bangs on the door with his oar. While they wait, he gives her some final instructions.

"Now, keep those teeth to yourself. Don't be trying to bite off anything of hers, because you'll end up as a slug or some such foul transmutation! We are only here for an important weapon against the Hound that I paid dearly for."

He shudders at the memory of it all.

Relfarious be damned. Anora had before her several of the seven hundred and sixteen. She’d had quite enough of extra-dimensional deities and demon dogs for one season, and so put the work on planar beings to one side for now.

No. The arcane words would serve Anora more readily in her next test. If only she could decipher which of the seven hundred and sixteen lay before her!

Tyravasiel-Llir meanders about Justicia's church. Some might say he's casing it.

Under the guise of preparing-- fecklessly, since he cannot see-- for the villagers' arrival, he is weaving from pew, to sideboard, to altar, feeling his way around each with his fingers. As he goes, the elf sends up the occasional scrap of guidance or advice to no one in particular. "Come in now, down to the front! Make room for all!" Or, "Let us have some sturdy fellows near the doors." Or, "Tell your friends and relations that the church offers refuge! The night comes on fast."

In truth, Ty is looking for anything in the flyspeck temple that may be rare or valuable. With Beacom having shuffled off, and his acolytes busy with his reverend corpse up at the sky biers, now seems as good a time as any to loot anything Dufgal may have left behind.