Amendment: After the funeral pyre went out and Branwen speaks to us, the pyre is collapsing in on itself and the coals and fire are falling into something. We see rough hewn steps underneath the pyre going deep into the earth. The Boatman tells us this is the direction to go, and we do.
We descend into darkness. It’s very dark. At first we can hear everyone, and we feel confident about moving forward. As time goes we hear less and less and less. We think that perhaps we’ve been separated. We’re in this timeless night underneath the earth. Eventually, we lay down because we’re tired, and sleep deeply. When we wake up, it’s just Silas Storr, Krambler and Arthen.
We wake up by this very shallow water. It feels like we’re up in hills. The stars are very bright above us. Patches of mist float around us in this moor. It’s wet, but we;re in a dry spot. We could probably wade into the water. At the edge, there are fir trees. When we left, it was fall. It seems that this is a crisp fall night, sometime in October.
We feel that something is strange, but not ominous. There’s no sense of where Bal and Branwen would be. This doesn’t feel familiar but Krambler maybe has seen similar places around Tawesek, high bogs in mountains in hill country. Silas isn’t sure where this would be. Definitely northern latitude. About 1000 feet above sea level.
This area feels strange, but also real. The colors seem super saturated. Feels magical, but we’re definitely present, and here.
Silas wades out into the water with Arthen up to his knees. Mineral soil in the surface of organic matter. Bottom is mucky. The dots out in the water are the points of stones, gray rock, somewhat jagged, covered in lichen and maybe moss. Water is cold, very clear. Silas sends ripples out, but they die out rather quickly. The surface calms, and the stars and the sky reflect very clearly.
The area is weirdly silent. No animal sounds.
Silas dips his head under. He sees some movement off toward the rock nearby, but hard to see through the darkness. The rock is about 8 ft away.
A tone sounds.
Silas steps closer to the rock, carefully with Arthen following.
The rock itself is a statue of a robed woman.
Silas feels eerie. Not what he expected. Almost convinced it was a rock before, and as he approached may have changed into this statue. Two tones sound.
Krambler and Storr join. Krambler, the stone expert, examines the statue. He’s convinced it’s not manmade. Looking for marks of making. There aren’t any. Has not been crafted of tools he knows of. Strangly like the earth has thrusted up this structure.
Silas communes with nature, targeting the statue, trying… His awareness pushes outwards. Very nearby, he feels a number of glowing spots. Most of them a purple. Three are close by to the south east that are other colors. Hard to identify what the colors are, dark and old. Awareness pushes out again. He feels the hill we’re in. Higher points, one to the north, one to the south east. Out. Rolling downs, very wild. Off to the north, off to the north,. People travel on a line running southwest to northeast.
Krambler flashes back to the moment he was in The Abbot’s cottage when the woman approached him and said, “How did you get one of the great hammers.”
More tones, coming in on the wind. Not sure where the source is.
Silas continues into the water, getting waste deep. The back of the statue could be stone, it could be cloth.
Storr touches the stone and all the tones crash. We hear a hissing from the south east. We may have seen the eyelids flicker.
Silas travels out to an island in the water, without a problem. The island is a collection of statues similar to the one we came from. Three are closest to me with their backs to me. Silas skirts around to look at their faces.
Krambler and Storr remain by the first solitary statue, and Krambler takes out his hammer. This first statue’s eyes flash open, and he feels her powerful desire for the hammer.
Krambler and Storr make their way over to where Silas stands by the three statues together.
Storr sees his own face as an ancient woman. Silas has been conversing with another that appears to him as his sister. Krambler sees the Abbott’s daughter. These are the child, the crone and the woman.
Seren tells Silas that they are in a dungeon. She says you have wandered here, perhaps as a warning. They are not trapped here, they are the jailers. We do have the choice to leave this place. She’s not sure why we are here, other than that this is the path we chose.
Whose side are you on?
She doesn’t really respond, seeming not to understand.
Tones sound. They’re all from the pentatonic scale.
Stor asks the crone about the sounds. She doesn’t recognize sounds not familiar to her.
The tones are like 5 voices singing at once. We can’t pinpoint where they might be coming from.
Silas steps onto the stone and wild shapes into a bear. More tones.
The tones seem to have some mathematically pattern, much like some sequence named after an Italian mathematician. We recall the poem written on the wall of the tower that ended in “The Foundling”, where we met the man enshrouded in shadow. He was “the watcher under the tower”
Silas: Does Seren know the watcher under the towers?
Child: “They should have left him under our charge, but humans are arrogant and self absorbed.”
Storr: What did this watcher do to be put in a dungeon?
Crone: His crime was to forget those who came before.
Storr: Was the watcher a human when he was in prison?
Crone: We have no interest in the watcher, only in the one that escaped.
Perhaps there were three present in that episode: Silas, the man, but thirdly, the shadow itself.
Silas: Can you tell us more about this one who escaped? We saw him only as a shadow.
Child: The sun husband turned to black.
Husband. Fire and smoke. There are elements of these in the Red Blade story in the Illuminated Manuscript