TenThousandBrokenDreams/Session05

Mother Cypress speaks:\\

"Ah, children. Back for more of my stories. Such beautiful children… So, children, what tale do you wish tonight? Would you hear the tale of how the Dawn-Light general, Katsuro the Righteous, stood against ten thousand men in the ruins of the First City; how he slew nineteen champions of the Dragon in single combat; of how he fell, and as he fell, how he bound his soul to his daiklave, Burning Tiger, that his sword might seek revenge even after his own death? Would you hear of those mortals who took up that blade over the years, of the empires they raised, and of the bloody vengeance they wreaked against the children of the Dragon? Or would you hear more of other heroes: of the children of the Sun, and of their sojourn into the East?

"Then come closer, my children, and spread ears like elephants, and I shall tell you the tale of the Sun’s shining children, of how they raised bright blades against the darkness that lurked in the heart of the River Province."

Come the morning, the barge reached Red Rye Town. As the funerist and the sailors took the bodies of Amaya and her poor nameless maid to the town for burial, Zera confided to Captain Marac that he could not determine the identity of the murderer. Marac, too, left the barge to make arrangements with the townsfolk for burial, leaving the passengers in his wife’s care. Zera and Aekino bickered for a time; Aekino bridled at Zera’s persistence and disrespect.

Time passed, and eventually Li and Thorwald reached the barge, having poled their skiff against the current through the night. Thorwald insisted gruffly that he will not lie nor conceal the truth about the monk’s death; he offered to pay weregild, a custom the others observe is not often practiced in the Scavenger Lands, and expressed willingness to go before the king of Tul Tuin, Amaya’s cousin Ledaal Vir, and present themselves before him in order to give what information they could about Amaya’s untimely demise.

Eventually they convened in the main cabin, where they discover that the monk, Joyous Songbird, was not quite dead; he had been tended in the night, presumably by Yumi the funerist, and showed signs of life. After determining that the monk’s skull had been shattered by Thorwald’s blow and that he was unlikely to recover, they ignored him and continued their discussion of where to go and what to do. Zera maintained that they should leave the barge so as not to further endanger the livelihood and lives of Marac, his wife and their crew, as their presence seemed liable to draw further danger upon them. Aekino, for his part, felt that they should remain on the barge to travel swiftly to Tul Tuin so that they might put their case before Ledaal Vir. Li and Thorwald sided with Zera, and eventually Aekino caved… and Zera noticed that once again, the old scholar Shalán Firamari had feigned sleep and had overheard some part of their conversation. This time, she may have heard too much, as our heroes had alluded to their nature as Anathema.

As the others left the cabin, Zera remained behind to confront Firamari, demanding information about the murder; he observed that she had rarely traveled above decks, and so was most likely to have observed the killer. She dissembled, feigning both innocence and ignorance until Zera threatened her with calm, cold insinuations of bodily harm. Eventually, she told him that she didn’t know who had killed Amaya, and he left unfulfilled.

When the captain returned in a rush, realizing that he needed to fetch Amaya’s treasures as grave goods, Thorwald attempted to give him the assassination orb. Marac rejected the device and insisted that he wouldn’t have it on his boat, as such things brought peril with them. The heroes of the Sun continued their discussion as Marac stormed off to reclaim Amaya’s stolen jewels from the merchant Darien Tal. In the end, they decided to leave the barge behind, and gathered their few possessions. Zera remained behind again with the intent of killing Firamari... but as he stood over the old woman, he could not bring himself to kill her in cold blood, and left her alone.

The Circle stopped briefly in Red Rye Town to attend Amaya’s funeral. They listened as Marac prayed to what gods he knew, and watched as he laid down her jewels and as the funerist covered the bodies with a yellow shroud. As the townsfolk shoveled earth over the corpses, the heroes told Marac of their plans to follow the road to Tul Tuin and give their testimony there concerning Amaya’s death. Receiving his blessing, they made their way onto the road.

The road joined a great north-south highway, a stony route from the First Age that had fallen into disrepair. Its spirit, a stone dog covered in lichen, appeared before the travelers and demanded tribute. Thorwald shouted defiance and demanded that the spirit do battle; it barked with laughter and vanished into the brush. They made camp shortly thereafter as night fell. Soon, an enraged bear lumbered into their camp, sent by the road spirit, but Thorwald killed it with his bare hands. As they traveled northward the next day after a breakfast of cooked bear, other beasts assaulted them en route; and when night fell, they found themselves before the partially scavenged corpse of a bear.

As they made camp, Zera brought forth the papers he had stolen and showed them to the others. Aekino and Li discerned that they contained astrological charts for the horoscopes of the heroes, including horoscopes for the moments of their Exaltations. He also brought forth the scroll case, whose seal Aekino recognized as the official sigil of House Ledaal. It also bore a magical ward, he saw, one that would consume the message in flame if opened improperly. He did not know the pattern for opening a Ledaal missive, and packed it away in frustration.

The next day’s travel was much the same; they ended the day at the bear corpse, and could clearly see from the distant hills that they had made no progress. Thorwald’s fellows chivvied him mercilessly for his disrespect to the road spirit. Eventually he roared in fury and ran off into the north. His companions camped and ate, and as they rested, Thorwald roared out of the darkness from the south, making the road’s deceptive character far too clear. From the woods beyond the road, the road spirit barked its laughter.

In the end, fury drove Thorwald to pound on the very stones of the road beneath him. Gold fire blazed from his fists and cascaded over his body as his Solar might cracked and smashed the paving beneath him. The road spirit yelped with pain and gave in, allowing the travelers to pass onward.

As they passed into the first foothills, the trees parted, revealing a small village spreading to their right. A black carriage in the village drew their notice, and Zera moved stealthily through the fields to see what he might learn there. From a knot of villagers, he learned that some menace required the sacrifice of a child, but that there was still some small hope that travelers might arrive to avert this. Zera returned with this news, and our heroes decided that this might be a place where they could do some good.

Entering the village the next morning, the four approached the leader of the village, a woman named Hoof Cloud, to learn what ill fate had befallen the village. She told them how a spirit named Thirsty Root ruled the life of the earth in their village, and that the crops would fail unless they gave it tribute each summer in the form of an adolescent from the village; in this case, her own child. Our heroes promised to go to its manse, a house of stone upon the hill, and settle the matter. Zera, for his part, brought Cloud’s son Rabbit aside to promise him safety, and gave him a necklace from his erstwhile girlfriend Mara as a token of his sincerity.

The four approached the manse named Ascending Trellis that very day. Zera used a Charm to take on the aspect of an adolescent boy, and the spirit granted him entry to the manse. In his youthful guise, Zera asked what would happen to him and why. Thirsty Root replied that the land was dying; that he himself would die without the sacrifice of human heart’s blood; and that if he died, the land would die with him. Zera revealed his true nature confronted the spirit and demanded that it stop its depredations. Thirsty Root recognized Zera then for a Prince of the Earth, a chosen of the Sun, who had once passed through these lands in another life as Kuro the Raven. Acknowledging his accuser’s power, he nonetheless insisted that his words were true, that the life of the land depended upon his own; that the people of the village were not innocent souls, for they often sacrificed passers-by to him; and that if he and the land died, that the land would pass into death and become a shadowland, like the ancient city of Kaihan near at hand, or like the city of Thorns.

Zera saw only truth in the spirit. Shaken, he departed the manse, and told his comrades of what had transpired. They agreed that the spirit’s tithe, for all its cruelty, was worse than the alternative, and that they could do nothing for the people of the village. Zera could not bring himself to go before them, however, and so Li went forth to address the townspeople. She told them in bald terms that they would suffer far worse if the tithe were to end, and that they were on their own. Helpless, they could offer no reply.

Turning their backs on the village and its manse, the children of the Sun returned to the road, and made their way north, through the hills of Stonegarden, to the lands around the kingdom of Tul Tuin.

(Each player received 3 XP for this session. XP totals to date: Aekino 31, Li 36, Thorwald 33, Zera 29.)