We rehash, and discuss our next steps. We agree that we’re in relatively rough shape (Bran and Kram are at 9 hit points. K and Bran heal up a bit. We discuss what to do: short rest? Sing a song? Try not walk out of this place? The group lands on walking. We decide to follow the stream. But wait, no we don’t. We struggle to find a direction. We look at the map. The area where we are looks the same ecologically as the rest of the island. Koweth never saw the cave, and only went high enough to see that were surrounded by hills.
We land on short resting, here on a ledge and setting a watch. Because the Constellations are strange and there’s no moon, there’s not anything we can judge what time of night is is. We set up camp with K’s explore role (14). We set up camp and everyone can find a comfortable spot. Silas, then alz then Storr, set up watches.
We’re able to sleep, we go through three watches. The sky does not get lighter. Everyone wakes up rested. We can either slink in the darkness or play a song.
We slink in the darkness. We all roll stealth and perception. We travel up the stream and find ourselves back at the same spot after what we gues is about a mile of walking, 20/30 mins. Silas admittedly has been blundering around making noise in the underbrush, but probably because he’s been a little distracted by the nature around him. Claims to have seen some things that kind of strike him as odd like looking sort of like trails, hes not sure what it is, not exactly human, animal or druid, but some things that pique his fancy in terms of his woodcraft (the joys of druidicy and spending a lot of time in the woods.)
It doesn’t feel personal (old lore, 12), you could imagine it as being a druidic language that is not related to one i know, but it could also be leaves blown in tthe wind. Could have been a deer track, or something that was supposed to look like a deer track to someone not initiated.
We decide to find the spot again by continuing up the path. Storr rolls a dirty 20 nature and Silas rolls a 10 perception. Storr notices a LOT of stuff. But Silas is able to locate the trail again. It’s a game trail, clear that its not just one animal that uses it. Storr sees some markings that she’s not able to identify. Silas is unsure what they are.
We decide to follow the trail. As we travel, we have a strange sensation. We’re walking through the woods, we’re following the trail, but as we go, the forest around us looms higher and higher and higher and we can’t quite tell if things around us are getting larger or we are getting smaller. And we find ourselves here (it’s still night).
It is an old huge tree, but we also have a sensation that we’ve grown very small. Storr’s stranger danger is particularly high, but it’s more wtf is going on rn, not that there’s a presence. The stones have markings on them, curved.
Branwen touches the tree. Branwen feels a barrier trying to raech into it and isn’t successful. K touches a stone. This is a stone that was shaped with intention and almost inconceivable how long ago that happened. When K compares it to anything he’s worked with, it doesn’t make sense.
Storr puts a hand on Kelghein to see how she feels. The sword is looking around and feels pretty comfortable, not paying attention to Storr, but to whats happening here, like looking for a kindred spirit
Silas steps up to the center stone, and tries to commune with the intention of determining a link between this place and the bear and how to leverage that connection. He goes to do it, hands on the stone, concentrating on the markings.
The group sees him doing this. To them, his consciousness disappears. He goes limp and it’s a little freaky, kind of back when K touched the tree, but less fraught and violent. Silas’ body is calm but there’s an extended period of time where he;s not there.
Is Silas in distress or placid?
He seems placid. After a little while, Silas comes back. He does think that he found his way to the bear . He saw the bear sleeping, pretty sure it’s beneath the tree but somehow he traveled down below the ground. All grayscale, this night land, where he sees this massive bear, and he can see this sliver crescent moon, and its strange because no matter where he stands, the moon is behind the bear’s head, two points behind the bear’s head. For some reason he can’t get lose to it. He thinks he can hear the voices singing like before. Convinced that the bear is under this tree, but also confident that the bear is under everything, everywhere, ever.
This is reminiscent of the bird island where we played music. Music seems to be a way to communicate with the bear as we’ve seen. What if we play some music here to connect to the bear?
Storr goes up top center stone. She traces the symbol on the stone. It makes a tone. Silas does the same to the stone in the center.
Storr played a B. Silas played a Bm triad together. Silas plays the one to the left, A. To the right: C#.
We play Silas’ song on the stones successfully (performance 19, -1 let’s go), we all spread out on the stones and play. As it happens, some clouds come in and obscure the stars and it gets a little misty, a gentle rain starts falling, but it’s pleasant. We’re all naturally inclines to look up into the sky and we pull our cloaks over ourselves. As we hum the tune to ourselves, we make our way to a clutter of stones beneath the tree. We find a protected spot from the rainfall, and the night loses some of its frautness. The anxiety of the evil bear and other dangers pass away. We fall asleep amidst the roots and grass and stones. ‘