Having found some loot among the stones, the group continue toward the tower. As you get closer, you notice the animal heads on the ground are fresh, some have markings in the horns that you recognise from the Colymar tribe.
A slope leads up to the tower and the sounds of cattle are close. The central chamber of the broken tower is a round room with sloping walls, deep alcoves set into them. Only one door leads to and from the room: the one you are at. The tower’s roof collapsed long ago, and piles of rubble were pushed to the sides of the central chamber, or have been shoved outside by the door. Light shines directly down on the low stone altar in the center of the room, illuminating a flensed and bloody horned bull skull sitting in its midst, with an array of reddened bones arranged in a strange pattern beneath it and a bloody cow-hide draped over one side. Rain drips down, making all shine with wetness.
Behind the altar is three-meter high ochre-stained stone statue of a giant naked woman, her female characteristics exaggerated to a grotesque degree. The altar is already stained with blood and gore, the copper scent of blood permeating everywhere. . On the ground next to this altar are ragged chunks of meat, crudely butchered.
Nearby, sprawled and slumped against one wall are three of the Greydogs. The Greydogs’ throats were cut, their chests drenched with blood, and their garments showing signs of a struggle. It is obvious that they were sacrificed here.
A strangely curving array of rivulets leading from the altar are full of blood, draining into holes set in the floor at various places in the room. Arrayed throughout the room at the edges of the floor are stone bowls of all shapes and sizes, high and low. Some of them have shriveled and unidentifiable bits of material in them, others are empty, while others are full of bloody flesh and cow-hide, cut from the skull on the altar. Skulls of animals litter the floor.
Behind the altar and the dead bull looms the statue, the true form of the Stone Woman, though without her enfolding cloak and robe. The statue’s arms are folded at its sides and the oversize head is featureless but for the knobbed bands that run entirely around it. The legs end in toes that splay like roots, and the stony surface is entirely stained in ochre.
You no strangers to animal sacrifice, as it is commonly practised, but the sort of ritual offerings you have always witnessed and taken part in are generally more ceremonial in nature. There is the sense that this was something more primitive, more primal, and the chamber itself is disquieting beyond your experience.
OOC:
Can everyone give me a Listen or Scan roll, whichever you are best at.
