Session 4: Voices in the Mist

After crossing the Cheyth, mule teams were hitched and the drivers took their places on the three wagons: The swaggering Thorinta in the front, the enigmatic twins Klorpeim and Karalin in the middle, and the surely Verekan driving the wagon at the rear. Just before they began the journey northward, Tanurendal pulled the rest of his new companions aside (sans the drivers, whom, despite having known them about the same amount of time, he trusts less than his fellow guards). Tanurendal voiced his concerns about the four drivers, attributing variously shifty motivations to them--fears which were shared by other members of the party. He wasn't particularly subtle about it, however, for when (evidently devising some plan by which they could keep an eye on the drivers) he asked which one of his companions was "good at sneaking up on people," Karalin tapped him on the shoulder. "I'm good at sneaking up on people," she said. She had apparently stolen up quietly and heard the entire conversation, and although she did not seem particularly insulted, she was at least put off enough by the party's distrust in her to decline Tengelbur's invitation to join him in the vanguard, where he and Hasanyah planned to scout out the road ahead of the rest of the party.

The sky above you is gray and bleak as the wheels of your wagons creak under their heavy loads, sinking deep into the muddy ruts of the road--really it is more of a track--beside the river. To you right, just a few hundred yards away, is the Serth Hatama--the Withered Wood. You can see it fairly distinctly now--a series of huge petrified trees rising up like stone pillars from the earth. Petrified trunks send out legions of twisting branches which seem to curl away from the sun and brood threateningly over the forest floor below. The strange thing about all of it--and it shifts from strange to simply disturbing the more you think about it--is how, despite the fact that the trees of the Serth Hatama are completely leafless, the shadow of the forest is no less, and you imagine it must be almost completely dark beneath those trees. Between the forest and yourself there is a low border of thorny scrubland, of shallow creeks and rivulets that carry strange black waters out of the forest and down to the river. On your left is the relentless, comfortless chilly flood of the Cheyth, and beyond that, almost blue in the distance, the high and lonely moor. 

At camp that night, Tengelbur tried get a bit of information out of Verekan. "Your companion," he said, "has been rather vocal about his bravery. But why have you chosen to risk the peril of this journey a second time? Why not stay in Cheykor? One assumes you'd be much safer sitting at home."

"I'm guessing you haven't been long in the North," Verekan said, glowering at Tengelbur with the irritation of a man who would rather be left alone. "Cheykor won't be much safer than anywhere else. Not for much longer. Besides," and here he grinned, "men who sit comfortably at home don't get rich. they get gutted in their sleep."

Sitting nearby, Tanurendal shifted uncomfortably and a shadow passed across his face, as though this last remark had somehow hit home for him.

Just before bed that night, Karalin stood and snatched up her spear and began walking off into the darkness. Her brother followed her, laying a hand on her arm.

"Where are you going, Karalin?"

"Where do you think?" she asked, trying to pull away from him.

"You promised you wouldn't, this time. We have a job to do now."

"Leave me alone."

"If you go, I will have to follow you. You know that." 

Karalin frowned. "Fine," she said, and sat back down.

The next day the party observed that there were several times where Karalin seemed uneasy or impatient with the caravan's pace. At these times, she would grab her spear and swing down out of the wagon, walking ahead of it or off to one side, always straying nearer to the verge of the Serth Hatama. Although he said nothing, Klorpeim always followed her with his eyes. During one of these occasions, Hasanyah swung up into the cart next to Klorpeim and asked him about his sister.

"Your sister has seemed rather... depressed the last couple of days."

"Depressed? Oh... Do you just mean the way she is?"

"Is she always... like this, then?"

"My sister is prone to... strange and dark moods," Klorpeim said, frowning as he watched Karalin in the distance. "Every now and then she goes off on her own. Sometimes, like last night, I can restrain her. Other times the best thing I can do is to try to follow her and see that no harm comes to her." The hunter paused and turned and looked at Hasanyah, perhaps trying to gauge how much he could trust her. "When we were children, Karalin went away into the Cheyth Wood. It was not the first time--she was a strange child, even then--but it was the longest she had ever been gone. We all went searching for her. I found her on the third day of the search, sitting quietly by herself in a glade. She was covered in blood. Not her blood. Someone, or something else's. She would not tell me then what it was, and now, to speak to her of it, it is as if she has no memory of what happened. But when the fell mood comes upon her in force, then she forgets that she is not a wild beast, and neither love of force can stay her from wandering. At those times, the best that I can do is to try to follow her and keep her  from harm. Twice now she has gone into the Serth Hatama. When we took this job, I had hoped it would be enough to satisfy her... her madness. But now I am afraid I have only made it worse."

That morning, a heavy mist had lain on the Cheyth. Now an east wind was blowing the mist up from the river towards the Serth Hatama, and a heavy fog obscured the vision of the companions. Teithbor, the watchful Weixranbori, thought he heard voices coming out of the eerie twilight, a faint chanting distorted by the cold wind. Moving in the direction of the chanting, he soon found himself enveloped completely in fog, and when he reached out his hand in front of him, he felt a pillar of cold stone. He realized, after a moment, that it was a tree, and that he had somehow wandered to the verge of the Withered Wood. He glanced back over his shoulder, intending to tell the rest of the party that they were off course--but that was when he realized that he was alone.

The rest of the party had little time to notice that Teithbor was missing. Throughout the day, the steady increase in wind had been accompanied by the harsh croaks of some carrion bird hidden within the shadow of the Wood. Now, a series of croaks and calls echoed through the gray and twilit river valley as two dozen figures wrapped in tattered scarlet robes appeared in the mist, surrounding the caravan and attacking on all sides. Each of the figures concealed his face beneath a mask of solid bronze, and as they came on they set to chanting some fell hymn in a language the companions could not understand.

Tanurendal and Tengelbur managed to fell two of the figures with arrows from their longbows as Orsuen wounded a third in the thigh before the battle was joined. Spread thin between the three carts and attacked from all sides, the heroes fought valiantly. Tengelbur took a javelin to his chest, which pierced his armor, while several of the party soon became weary from the work of fighting off multiple opponents. Hasanyah slew one of the masked figures while Orusen managed to cut down the one he had wounded earlier. But Verekan, Thorinta, Karalin and Klorpeim were overcome as the robed men swarmed up onto the wagons, overpowering the drivers and driving the wagons eastward towards the Serth Hatama, vanishing into the fog. The party loosed arrows at the vanishing wagons, though Tanurendal's alone seemed to hit. Who it hit, however, remains to be seen.

Tengelbur alone remained fighting, dueling with the cultist who had put a spear in Tengelbur's chest, and who had not managed to flee with his companions. Hasanyah and Tanurendal overpowered him, and as Orusen tried -- and failed -- to staunch the bleeding of Tengelbur's wound, the rest of the party began to question him. Teithbor eventually managed to stabilize Tengelbur's injury thanks to some rudimentary battlefield medicine.

The captive was unmasked, revealing... a fairly ordinary looking man that none of the party recognized. "Tauran-Tauror, the Red Vulture, will come for all of you. I will see you hanging..." The man broke off in a cackle and began to count the companions. "It would be better if there were nine of you... but under the circumstances it will have to do."

Tengelbur audibly wished that Varanjala, the party's herbalist, was there, since she might have (or at least know of) some herb which might make the cultist a little more amenable to their questioning. From his travels, Orusen recalled the honey which the bees of the moorland make from the blooms of the purple heather. In great quantities, such honey could make men mad. In smaller quantities, it could act as a relaxant or even a mild sedative. But in the right proportions, when mingled with wine, it might loosen the lips of someone otherwise reticent to speak. Although they were not actually on the Moor (and in fact, as far as Orusen knew, on the wrong side of the river), Orusen, Teithbor, and Reiana went in search of hives while the rest of the party stayed back to question the cultist.

Orusen did not find a hive, although he did manage to find and make a cutting of Ruby Wort, a strange, red, flat-leafed plant growing on the surface of a stagnant pool. From experience, Orusen knew this herb would make a useful plaster for treating wounds and preventing infections.

Teithbor wandered into the scrubland bordering on the Serth Hatama, where the thorny plants seemed to be undergoing the process of petrification, almost as though whatever had turned the great forest to stone long ago was slowly spreading. There he found a cutting of Purple Sorrel, useful as a diuretic and for treating fevers. Both men kept the herbs they had found, but they saw no sign of any beehives. Hasanyah and Tanurendal, meanwhile, had absolutely no luck interrogating their prisoners, and Hasanyah eventually become so frustrated that she slapped the man in the face and walked away.

As night approached, the party searched the bodies of the cultists, revealing tattered robes, weapons, and blood-stained vulture amulets carved from a variety of materials. With most of the party weary and Tengelbur still recovering from his wound, they had to decide what to do:

• Reiana was in favor of pursuing the caravan into the Serth Hatama at first light. They might have gone sooner, but she deemed the party too weary to be effective under the present circumstances.
• Tanurendal was in favor of continuing on to Hural Yalir (the beleaguered fort to which they had been delivering supplies), hopefully raising a larger force there, and then marching in to the Serth Hatama.

Ultimately the party chose to follow Reiana's lead, making camp there on the road between the Withered Wood and the River Cheyth.