We recall how the carving on the edge of the bowl reminds us of the writing we’ve seen before… It’s not the same alphabet as the messages we’ve seen, no one has a memory of it, but it does seem to be a spell of some kind.
Storr takes a drink. It reminds her of the Abbott’s water.
We ask Carantok about the script. We came long ago, this is an ancient relic of long ago. He doesn’t necessarily understand how it works. He knows they congregate here and they perform some sort of ritual that he’s not a part of. He’s hesitant to enter here, and because they group and Silas got the blessing, he was willing. He’s not sure if it was here before or after they came. It’s a focus of the followers of the bear.
Storr posits that perhaps we consider returning to the village and talking more to the elders about the well.
Silas recalls the words of the elders, that they don’t actually know how to use it. Whatever knowledge there was around it has been lost.
Krambler puts his bronze spear in the water. The blade seems to make the water bubble and boil, but the boiling does not rise to the surface. Hammer does not have the same effect. Gale goes in. The image around the blade is not water, but rushing wind and storm, black ragged rushes of air. Silas dips the beechstaff in, the uncharred end. The ground of the forest spreads out from the staff and goes down into the ground. Rather than being a dead piece of beechwood, it becomes a healthy young tree under the surface. The charr on the other end appears as coal popping up off the surface of it and flame seems to reignite.
We don’t notice the three women while we experiment with our weapons, except when Krambler reveals the hammer, the crone seems interested.
We record the runes in B’s notebook.
Silas takes an obsidian dagger and dips it in. We see it the blade disappears and in its place we see pure black, like an emptiness, and couple points of light appear. Moving the dagger around we get the sense that we’re looking into the night sky.
Krambler puts on the Helm of the Mountain Goat, and dips his head in the water. Is seems like he’s putting his head up into a small patch of land, looking up at the stars, an open clearing about 100 feet across; standing in front of you is a woman dressed in black rags, similar to the night wind pattern drifting around Gale, and K hears a voice, a female voice echoing through, with no discernable origin, “no, he has come back to me already.” K attempts to ask the voice, “who has come back?” - it doesn’t seem that K is able to speak, but he hears the voice say something along the lines of, “you are not my champion, you have chosen another…for now…” she turns, and walks, and very quickly takes the black rags/wind and spins into a mass of ravens that fly off into the sky.
Carantok keeps his distance from our proceedings, he’s not sure we want him involved. He’s a little in awe, and finds it marvelous and miraculous, but the things we’re saying don’t mean a lot to him. He would be anxious around the metal weapons.
Silas didn’t get the sense that the elders from the village were being cagey about information around the well. May have been withholding something about shapeshifterss, but about the well, we feel like we’ve seen more than the elders at this point. Perhaps they could decode some of it for us.
Outstanding questions:
- Show the runes to the Logan
- Ask Logan about what we saw. Had other rituals revealed similar visions?
We go find Logan and sit with him in a tree swing. Storr asks what the trees tell him. He says it’s all musical and you need to be very still to hear it.
Logan says they’re all trying to find the bear, but none of them know how it works. He goes down and stares into the well and feels its collection to the earth. Can you feel the flow of nature and the world around us, and the way that all things come into being in their right time and place. It’s when humans get arrogant and try to say, control and dictate rather than letting the bear do his work is when things go wrong.
Not a big Mons fan?
Oh god, that upstart?? What a fool. All those people somehow vying that they are greater than the bear.
We show him the runes. “Puh. I’ve seen them enough. They’re elegant.”
K got after it, went on a little hunt and found a male moose - borrowed some ranged weaponry, took that sucker down! Moose steaks all around, fellas! Krambler finds some nice seasoning possibilities, some wild ginger and such. This is gonna be a delicious dinner - everyone’s quite pleased.
Silas would like to take Arthen with him into the Western woods, and while they’re out and about he’s gonna attempt to “wild shape” and see what happens…do do doooo…Ok.
Storr is gonna talk to Corantok about more bear riding lessons… (roll a couple of D20’s? For 33 don’t mind that!).
Storr and K spar.
Silas and Arhten hunt and track (Silas shifts)
At night, Silas and Arhten find as big a patch of clear night as they can find. During the night, we fear growling and fighting and general unplesaentness, but we’re safe.
In the morning, Carantock says he’ll come with us to the tower, but he won’t approach it with us. It’s our choice to go there.
We approach the tower area. Silas sneak into some cover and throws his cave stone at the tower with the intention of making noise. He throws the stone, a good 60 feet, and it CLATTERS against the tower, but nothing moves.
We sneak up to the boundary and all three of us trip. Carantock is like “Who are these people? I mean, in the name of the bear.”
We regroup and remember what the elders told Silas about the tower. We enter: Storr, Silas, Arthen, Krambler. There are two fireplaces on either side. It is dark in here but our eyes adjust. There’s a spiral staircase going up in the middle. Five statues are arranged against the other end.
Three male statues and two female statues.
THE STATUES
Left is a woman holding a big cup with a rounded bottom with flat sides that flare outwards in one hand and a staff in the other. Like that →
To that statues’ left is a male statue (brother) holding a dagger in one hand and a big piece of cloth draped over his other arm.
The center statue he is holding a staff and has a bunch of pouches arrayed around his belt. (Healer?)
To the right of that, is a stout statue, he has an ax over one hand and a covering over one eye and has a blacksmith’s hammer on his belt. (Weyland???!!!!)
To our left, the last status, is a woman holding a longsword in one hand and carrying what looks like a horse’s bridle and about her neck is a necklace that has an astrolabe, a compass, a navigation device (K would recognize) for navigating a ship on the ocean.
K harnesses the elements to light a fire in the leftmost fireplace. K gets a closer look at the stout fellow with the hammer. The hammer it has is a nice one, and is well worn.
The cup being held by this status seems to be carved out of the same stone.
Not much on the floor to examine. The door has been knocked off. The hinges are rusted. Bird droppings and other creature detritus.
The center’s staff is also made of the same material of the statue. Looks like the base of a tree. All made of stone, but the staff is made to represent wood. The head of the staff is branching out like it was torn out of the ground. The pouches are small, any one is not bigger than a fist, carrying varying items. 10 or 12 of them. A bunch of stuff tied off.
We advance up the stairs: Silas, Arthen, Krambler, Storr.
We see a fireplace to the north. Four bookshelves around the chamber. The books look old, so old that we would be fearful of destroying them if handled. Braziers are scattered around the room against the walls.
Silas goes to a bookshelf, though as a druid of oral tradition, probably not the best candidate to examine books. Nonetheless, the bindings are all blank.
Storr looks out the window. Sweeping view out the window to the south. Could see another mound that could have been the bear village a distance off. Can see the river veering off to the east. Can see some mountains off the the left.
Krambler would like to light the fire next time. Storr has a mind to camp up here for the night.