First Session: Eagle's Flight Sixth Post: Run, Ouenikones, Run!
The next morning, we travel northwards to Voluntiae, the fort where the Legion was attacked. Here, Llyr realizes that the fortifications were
weakened at a crucial point from inside. He is aided by Wena, who determines the past history of several scattered weapons by studying them with her mind [GM Note: philosophers in Alea Iacta are psionicists of various sorts]. Furthermore, there is no way that this weakness would have been visible from the outside. The group begins to suspect the Tribune Minucius and darker plots behind the downfall of the Legion. I think about pointing out that a monkey would have been ideal to deliver communications between any traitorous Legionaries and the tribesmen outside, but decide that no one will listen to me anyway.
As they are riding east along a hunting trail towards Ituna (the roads having stopped at the wall), the party is surprised to see a young tribeswoman, carrying a spear, dart across their path and back into the dense trees, apparently oblivious to them. Their confusion increases when she is followed by a young spearman, also running at a full speed, and then by another spearman, and another young spearwoman, until 25 youths and maidens have crossed the path. The party decides to halt their ponies and wait until all have crossed. Wena then sets off running after them, running fairly quickly for a woman who is clearly no warrior. She is unable to catch up, but does follow their trail, eventually ascertaining that they seem to be running in a giant circle.
The rest of the party continues along the main path, while Cornelia ponders the mystical significance in Celtic lore of the number 25. After thinking about it, she is unable to come up with any relevance for 25, although she remembers that 24 is an important and central ritual number. Alexandros relates this to the 24 legions, and now 1 extra Eagle, and becomes terrified. He suggests that they ambush some of the stragglers and preemptively stop whatever ritual this might be. The others eventually veto this suggestion.
About half an hour later, the running tribesmen cross the party's
path again (the party is slow-moving due to their mule train.) Again, they
are traveling from north to south, which leads the party to conclude that
they are running in some sort of giant spiral. Wena follows them, about a
minute later, and runs blithely past the party, to much confusion. This time, Meloch takes after her on Kaspar, along with me. At last, we can escape this crazy bunch of Romans and have fun playing in the forest, I think. But no, we have to chase some Caledonii who clearly have better things to do than pay attention to us. Kaspar manages to catch up to the
last of the runners, but Meloch is resolutely ignored by the focused
tribeswoman. Later we find out that the others were somewhat confused but decided to keep walking to Ituna without us.
Eventually, the Legionaries, Heilyn, and Cornelia reach the village, where an older woman, Cadwyrna, greets Cornelia, assuming that she is the leader, as the Ouenikones tribe are somewhat matriarchal. She welcomes them to the village and to the upcoming Festival of the New Spears, at which the young women and men of the Ouenikones will achieve adulthood and become full warriors of their tribes. The festival is a time of general hospitality and much trading, and many people seem interested in the party's trinkets. Cornelia immediately sells 5 shiny but harmless trinkets for a live suckling piglet, and other bargains seem in the offering.
Meanwhile, the villagers and their many guests prepare for an upcoming procession at dusk to the holy place, north of the village. At this point, Heilyn and Alexandros sneak briefly off into the forest, to find a place where there are slightly less active tree spirits, and
Alexandros puts on the Eagle brooch. When he does so, he can feel a slight
pull, northwards. Heilyn is somewhat unnerved by the sheer quantity of
nature spirits in the region, and also notes that the crops around the
village are abnormally tall and healthy.
Meanwhile, Wena, Meloch, Kaspar, and I keep following the trail of the runners, growing more and more exhausted. Rather than continuing in
one giant spiral, they are surprised to discover that it loops into a smaller spiral, in an area that Wena estimates is to the south of Ituna, and a similar small spiral to the east of Ituna, before swinging back into the great circle and heading to the north of Ituna, where it spirals again, for a total of three linked spirals.
Finally, they emerge out of the forest to see a tall green hill, almost unnaturally round at the bottom and sharply slanted towards the top, with no vegetation except grass growing around it. A wide spiral path is cut into the hill, circling upwards, and Wena and Melech can see the runners circling around this until they turn around the eastern corner of the hill, about 2/3ds of the way up, and disappear. Upon investigation, there seems to be some sort of dark cave opening on that side of the hill.
Wena and Meloch can see a torchlit procession slowly coming from the south towards them, but Meloch orders me to go and investigate anyway, despite my fervent protests that I don’t like caves, that the runners really didn’t seem in the mood to be interrupted, and that we should clearly go find our allies with big swords rather than doing anything this silly. Furthermore, he tells me to take this glowing crystal thing that Wena has along with me. Apparently, Wena thinks she has a talking rock. Maybe she isn’t so intelligent, although the crystal rather unnerves me. Finally, I climb up after Meloch promises me treats, and see three huge stones of some kind, in front of the opening to a dark tunneled cave. I refuse completely to go inside; it’s pitch black, and there’s chanting inside, and furthermore, I can smell something that reminds me of Heilyn’s bratty wolfhound, but much, much bigger. So I sit there and keep myself safe and hidden.
Meloch scrambles up the hill himself to investigate, despite my common sense arguments, and is nearly discovered peering into the cave. He is unable to see anything in the darkness of the cave, although he does hear chanting. He and Wena and I join the rest of the group as they file in the slow, torchlit procession up and around the hill, eventually seating themselves in a round carved-out area in front of the cave. The cave is marked by three huge stones, one, about six feet tall and three feet wide, which stands about a foot in front of the opening, and two horizontal stones of the same dimensions to the left and right of the vertical stone. All three stones seem to have some runes carved into them, but it is impossible to read them in the dim light. As the
procession ends, all the torches are thrown together into a giant bonfire,
in front of the vertical stone, and the drumming begins.