- Other questions for The Oracle Q: Can she tell us anything about the quill we found in the tower? A: She can’t tell us anything
Q: What about Krambler’s hammer?
A: Still nothing.
(Cricket raided Mannix’s flute back when he had died.)
Q: What’s going to happen if we choose any one of these choices?
A: “Each of these paths will bring you joy and woe, they will bring you gifts and pain, and each of them for you to tread in your own way with what strength you have. Your best choice is always to be true to your nature. Each of you reaches into the deeps and into the sky in your own way, and that brings power and peril, and it is your choice to decide how far you reach.”
- Campfire ceremonies We go back to the boat and ask him to take us back to the shore. He’s been hanging out with Arthen, giving him scritches. He casts off, and asks us which way we’ve chosen. We tell him our plan, we have yet to decide and will discuss on the shore.
He looks over and glares at Storr and says “I think you should be thoughtful with your violence.” To the party: ”
Will you be of need of me this evening?”
No thank you, we say. Please don’t kill us.
He ties up his boat and methodically buttons it up, walks back and looks at us, and enters his hut. Cricket sens Koweth off to scout the city and try and find the fallen boulder by the Mons’ temple.
We settle in for the night. Cricket and Silas play chess. Storr and B spar. We let the badger be (we don’t see or know where he is.)
Cricket fucks around with Mannix’s flute, as he somberly reflects on his lost brother. He rediscovers a melody. Just a few notes, but the memory of it is flooding back. Reminds me of my mother putting me to sleep.
Cricket asks K to tinker with..his dagger?
We’re high up in the mountains, thrusting into the sky, and the night is sharp and cold. The stars are pinpoint, almost like you could reach out and touch them. Silas feels as though he has gained some wisdom, but it’s difficult to describe exactly what. They are the same stars as he’s seen in the past, but never so bright and close and colorful as he sees tonight.
- Chat with The Boatman In the morning, a cloud crawls over the ridge, imbued with pinks. We hear what sounds like a fiddle playing, perhaps the lark ascending. Imagine The OH cabin, but at Madison looking out.
Storr goes up to the boatman’s hut. She knocks.
“Can I help you young one?”
“Id like to ask you some questions.
By all means
She enters the cottage. It’s about 20 ft by 15ft. A lg central fireplace splits the space into two. Front space has a table and a small area that is a kitchen and prep. A copper kettle is over the fire. In the back is a private sleeping area. There is a sleeping area above. He closes the door and indicates a table with two seats. He takes a seat.
He gets his water up above the hut at a spring.
How di you know what our choices were?
There are certain patterns that present themselves when you see people go to the oracle again and again.
So you’ve seen these patterns before?
My child, you are rash. If there is something I can help you with, please ask. But this isn’t a sparring match that you will win.
What cost is there for us if we go with you/
The nature of such a choice is that you do not know the cost, but you can rest assured that with the right outlook, all gifts are worthy of the sacrifice necessary.
What do you know of the other options?
Weyland the smith? What makes you think you’re going to see a figure out of mythology?
What do you know about the evil lurking in the mountain?
In terms of the evil in the mountain, you’ll have to be more specific.
Where would you bring us?
Who says I’m bringing you anywhere?
If we get in the boat…
I only paddle between the shore and the island. I have no intention of traveling you anywhere.
Have you ever entered The Black Water?
No. That is a path I have never chosen to travel.
Have others?
No. Though I do think there are someone on the other side.
Are you aware of what happens when something is soaked in the black water.
I would find it very disappointing if that happened.
Mychon come to me (He is curled up at the foot of the bed, not making eye contact)
Did you send Mochyn?
No. There are no festivals for me
Have you been to Car Osgog.
I have, long ago. Long ago, people left their homes and followed one of the sons of Mons in his labors to try to contain that which some fear live beneath this lake. And they created a city in the name of the son who has long ago disappeared. (The boatman sips his tea and looks out the window where several faces look in the window. He waves and sips the tea.) I’m sorry, what is that you were saying?
C: What’s under the lake?
All human beings contain a measure of goodness. Below the lake is trapped the symbol of evil created by men, because men created it to move it away from themselves. And so the lake was made to keep that evil out of the world, yet it still exists and it would be better if it stayed there and does not escape.
S: The lake was cerated as a barrier?
Yes. By those whose names are forgotten.
Mine is a boat you do not want to sink.
What’s beneath the lake?
I don’t know what it would appear as.
What would happen if it emerged?
It’s happened once before.
C: Was that osgog that let the thing out from out under the lake?
It is often convenient to blame him?
C: Who else could have done it?
There was a man who delved deep beneath the earth and thought long and hard and succeeded in placing many names, and focused too deeply ont he thing beneath the lake, and it escaped, and it escaped into him, and that happened log, log ago. Words can bring you too near to a thing and it can be dangerous. (“If you stare long enough into the abyss….)
Many lakes have springs.
K looses his patience and tries to hit the boatman, but the rest of the party blocks, but we get the point
(We are welcome to sidebar with the Nathaniel as the boatman)
- Heading back to the city Koweth returns outside the cottage. He did not find a boulder. The city is still festivaling. Tehre was a temple, but nothing large with a boulder. To the north,m he saw a stone circle in the woods. A couple of castles, and forticfications on some of the smaller islands, and saw in the quiet quarter where the black water entered was quiet, there was reveling and a festival elsewhere but not in that space.
We go outside and tell the Boatman our choice: to continue on our path. It would seem that your path leads back to the city, to the stone circle that your friend described. And you my friend (to Cricket) have been shown the path and can divine the way.
Cricket goes in for a hug, and it is the burliest and most comforting hug. Ravens feathers in his hair. “Go with luck my son”
Krambler goes for a fist bump and turkeys him at the last second.
Silas Robert Redford nods at him as a sign of respect. He says, “Little Bear.”
Storr says goodbye as well.
The path downward goes more quickly as the path in. We make it back down in two days. We go down the strem, other streams join and the river becomes wider, as we get close to the small enclosed area with the city walls, the river goes around the wall, but the black water goes throuhg the gateway around dusk.
From outside the city, we dont see fireworks. From inside, we do see fireworks. They’re still festivaling.
We go west. The black water enters a culvert and travels beneath the pathway. We see a statue and a staircase going down into the groun. The statue looks like the central statue in the tower.\
K hits the statue with his hammer, and despite being made of stone, we hear a deep tolling of a bell emanating from the statue. K doubles down and tries again. He rolls fantastically with help, but somehow he misses and hurts himself.
The rest fo us have this weird feeling that the statue deflected K’s attack even though it looks the same.
The status seem sto remind C of The Abbott.
K examines the statue, it’s done in a gray and green ___, this is workmanship of exceptional quality. Unbelievably lifelike. This is another level from what he’s seen before. Can almost imagine the statue stepping down off the plinth and interacting with us.
We follow the stairs.