ROOSE & KIRUS 1: The Child

 Mythic Bastionland, by the book. In the home-brew Mystriver, the Realm Abandoned. Boo: Roose. Asher: Kirus.

Seek the Myths. Honor the Seers. Protect the Realm.

Late Winter. FIRST DAY.

Mystriver, the Realm Abandoned

Mystriver, the Realm Abandoned. Hard, frosted ground. Grass crunching underneath your feet. Trees and flowers frozen still. A heavy mist fills the air, fog clouding your distant vision. Dark shapes through the white, the earth and sky melting into one pale canvas. Knights-Errant; Kirus the Moat Knight, a smelly old man with too much honesty and a beautiful untrained horse; Roose the Tankard Knight, a talkative young fellow on a powerful charger.

3PM. The Company seeks the Myths. Kirus digs a hole into the packed ground and it fills with warm swampy water. 

4PM. After traveling on their horses there are dark silhouettes in the fog. Singing, worshipping. Closer, six peasants chant and dance in a circle. They all hold brown bottles of hard liquor. The ground ever-so-slightly glows beneath them, the tinkling of chimes muffled by layers of dirt. "Worshipping, worshipping, worshipping the Child..." slurs the leader, a bearded drunk named Lumpke Farmer. "Would you like to worship with us?" The Company accepts, and follows the rhythms of the group. 

5PM. The peasants grow tired. They sit down on the frozen grass and warm their hands, passing their bottles. The Knights' Company joins them, drinking the liquor and becoming quite inebriated.

6PM. Roose asks Lumpke about this 'Child.' Lumpke slurs how the child was birthed from the Burning Mother, when the Child was witnessed they rejoiced, when the water met the flame, there would be salvation. This glow and chiming is the First Sign. Lumpke and one of the other peasants want to borrow the knights' horses. Roose wants the horses returned if they borrow them. The peasants want to find the Child. "I want to steal your horses," says Lumpke. Kirus and Roose book it, mounting their steeds and traveling further west as the drunks clamber towards them slowly, arms outreached. 

7PM. Adventuring party in the fog. Three Seeker Knights, a Redmaw Wolf, and the Torn Seer. The Seeker Knights have eyes on their helms; Gornig the Glaring, Wat the Squinting, and Feliz the Staring. Torn, a seven-foot-tall bisected man clutching either half of his body with his arms, explains they are from another Realm seeking the Child. Roose and Kirus describe their encounter with the drunken peasant worshippers. Torn and his Seekers believe the Child is the key to unlocking the path to the City. One side of Torn says there is a village north, and further north there is a lake. That is where they need to travel. Then Torn clutches his other side, and suddenly doesn't know anything about a village. His sides are constantly contradicting, often correct but unreliable. The adventuring party joins the Company northeast.

8PM. A ruined jousting arena. Wooden alleys, paint chipping. Weapon's racks covered in rust and hard frost. Torches break the encroaching darkness and illuminate rotting bleachers surrounding the arena. A metallic clank! Crabbe Cook emerges, a peasant chef shakily holding an iron pan. He explains he saw a frightening sign. "The glow in the ground?" asks Roose. "No," says Crabbe. He ran north to avoid whatever ill fortune a plain unmarked wooden sign pointed towards. The Company asks if he would care to join their group, being a cook. He accepts. Roose and Kirus bed down in the same tent and lend their extra camping gear to Crabbe. Torn and his Seekers sleep inside a large domed tent, the Redmaw Wolf sleepily guarding the entrance. 

10PM. Roose has the first watch. They pick up a boozy scent in the air. Strangely, a flock of birds flap overhead in the darkness, unseen past the looming dark clouds.

12PM. Roose wakes Kirus. Kirus has the second watch. He's cold, distracted. He digs a shallow moat to warm himself up. Unbeknownst to him Crabbe flees, taking the extra camping gear and disappearing into the misty night.

SECOND DAY.

Lake Pelvin

2AM. Kirus wakes up Goring the Glaring. Glaring has the third watch.

3AM. Glaring jostles Roose and Kirus awake. Glaring hears voices approaching, chanting. Roose theorizes it must be the drunken worshippers. They tell Glaring to wake the other Seekers and deal with the drunken worshippers. The Company needs their rest.

4AM. A massacre. Roose and Kirus awaken in the early gray morning to a scene of bloodshed. Glaring is dead, seemingly choked to death. Beside him is Lumpke, stabbed, having bled out. Kirus' beautiful horse is dead on the crystalline ground, its body penetrated with six broken glass bottles. Further away, five other peasants sliced open. The bodies are already creeping with frost. The Company wakes the remaining two Seekers and Torn. Torn says that this is an ill omen, and the bodies must be assembled into a pile to be burned. Roose finds a ring of nature charms in Glaring's armor. They ask Feliz the Staring if they should put the charms on Glaring's grave marker; a stack of his discarded armor. Feliz says Glaring would want someone to continue to carry them for him. One of the charms is a coin cut into the shape of a hare. The other charms have inscriptions in a language the Company does not understand. Kirus asks Torn for a prophecy. One side predicts there will be a shack. Kirus will enter. And he will make it out alive. The Company assist the Seekers with building the pile.

5AM. Dark dawn. The bonfire of bodies fills the cold with barbecue smoke and melts away frost and fog. The Company, the Seekers, and Torn depart further northward.

7AM. The expansive Lake Pelvin, its edges disappearing into the encroaching fog. The sun begins to shine through the clouds and vapor. A knight wanders northeast in the lake. It appears the lake is only one foot deep, as the knight wades, waving a torch to cut through the fog and wildly swinging a morningstar. The Company notices his armor: a Seeker's helm, but with the eye blindly shut. "I want nothing to do with you lot!" shouts the knight. Roose and Kirus, both atop Roose' charger, shout back that they aren't Seekers. "Oh, come and join me, then!" Roose and Kris wade into the lake. The knight introduces himself as Shut-Eye Tayley. He distrusts Torn and the Seekers. Tayley insists the Child must be killed and fed to an awful creature to quench its endless hunger. The creature is wolflike, bloodied, vague. "Join me!" Tayley trudges deeper into the lake, muttering under his breath the violence he is willing to commit to put an end to the Child and this awful creature. The Company follow him, leaving Torn and the Seekers in the fog.

9AM. A greige shack stands on stilts. Tayley stands watch outside. Roose and Kirus enter. Covered in ice and dust. Inside is a cradle and a Snake Fang Rattle. It is long undisturbed. A horrific, pained screeching emanates from outside the shack. It repeats. It sounds like it could be all around them. Wailing, wailing. Roose takes the Snake Fang Rattle, and the Company exit the shack. Tayley wants to get out of here, to escape this lake. The screeching continues behind them, southward, as they trot east.

11AM. Lake Pelvin ends. Low mountains, like lumpen mounds of rocks. Tight together, only two small winding paths between them. One north, one east. Torn and Feliz arrive not much later. "Wat the Squinting saw Her," says Torn, "Do not look upon Her." The Company mentions they found the shack, and the cradle. "We must traverse back into the lake!" exclaims Torn. "The cradle will mark the second and final sign." Tayley, fearing the screeching to be the awful creature, continues to travel through the mountains. The Company decides to wade back into the lake with Torn and Feliz. 

1PM. No screeching. The shack fades into view. Roose checks to see if anyone else has left tracks in the shack. Nothing. Roose and Kirus use their ropes to set traps on the steps of the shack. Torn and Feliz hide at the back of the shack. Roose and Kirus check out the window. A lavender scent. Pink mist wafts into the shack. Roose and Feliz start to feel drowsy, but Kirus soaks some cloth in his own filth and hands it to the other knights. The stench overpowers the sleeping mist. "This is... the second sign," says Torn. Outside the shack a cradle of fog forms above the lake. The sleeping mist emits from its center. There are voices from the south. Two parties, arguing. The Company waits patiently.

1:30PM. Four Shut-Eye Knights, behind them a ten-foot-tall woman, thin onyx skin marbled with purple veins. She wears a golden blindfold. The Blind One. "She wants to be the only one with prophecy," says Torn. The Shut-Eyes argue with two Seeker Knights, Berwenna and Notta. The groups draw nearer to the fog cradle. Rising up out of the lake, through the cradle, is a child. He has pale skin, almost icy blue. He looks around confusedly. "Kill the child," commands the Blind One. She palms the head of one of her Shut-Eyes and pushes them forward.

The Child

Combat! Roose convinces the Child to go inside the shack. Feliz emerges with his armor-piercing lance. Notta uses her longbow against the Shut-Eyes, but eventually they smash her bow to pieces with their morningstars. Berwenna fights valiantly, is scalped with the blunt blades of the morningstars, but survives.  The Blind One is slain. Some of the Shut-Eyes begin to flee. Roose is concussed. Kirus is knocked down, over and over, but keeps fighting. He digs a hole for protection, sitting in his moat, and eventually seeks shelter in the shack once more. The Child shudders and the frost melts away. The Shut-Eyes are all dead or retreating. A warm glow in the chest of the Child. The same emits from the earth. Gravestones shake and rise from cracks. They burn red-hot. A fissure swallows the fog cradle, a gash in the ground searing away mist and opening into a system of caves. A staircase sinks into the ground. "The first step towards the city," says Torn. "You're welcome to journey with us." Roose and Kirus join Feliz, Berwenna, Notta, and Torn, the Company marching down the stairs into the dark, steaming fissure. The Child is nowhere to be seen, a puff of mist in his place. Blinking, it, too, disappears...