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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old Fezziwig" data-source="post: 9559611" data-attributes="member: 59">The camp is set up around the base of the tree.  It's a raised peat bed and cozy, made cozier by the fire pit the Stonehoppers have built.  The tree itself is roughly five feet in diameter and was felled cleanly, then burned out.  As Yorath and Vahid rest, the dogs keep watch.*Vahid is woken up by one of the dogs whining.  He's heard this whine before — they whine like this when there's a spirit around.  He tries his theory out: "Well, tree spirit, why don't you show yourself?"  And is rewarded with the vision of a 15-foot tall apparition.  She looks like a combination of a treant and a dryad with long arms and twig/leaf hair.  She's completely incorporeal and doesn't look particularly friendly.  Her expression is contemptuous. In an alien tongue, she says, "Stonetoppers have not come to the Fen in an age.  You, Vahid, are new to their settlement.  I wonder what your devotion is to the Stonetop people.  You left your home; you left your people.  It seems like your allegiance is shifting.  I wonder if you would bring the civilized world to heel or to ruin.  There are those nearby who need much the same.  If you would bring them to ruin as they have to me, I would reward you."  It's a family of Marshedgers that became fen-walkers.  She scrunches her nose and pantomimes sniffing.  "I sense fen blight in your companion.  They have ways to ward it off or deal with it.  I have ways to cure it permanently."This is when Yorath wakes up. "Thank you, Helior!"She says, "The earthmother bore myself and my sisters.  We are daughters of seed, tall ladies, slow sisters.  Kin to Danu herself.  We do not accept your invocation.  If I heal you, it’d be at the altar of Danu." Yorath is decidedly unimpressed.Vahid says, "He’s devoted to Helior.  I'll pay your cost — I'll bring them to heel or kill them."**The spirit declines, "It's his burden to take on. Bring their corpses to me, pledge yourself to Danu over their bodies." Yorath says, "Hey, look, I'm fine with honoring Danu.  But Helior is my patron.  He’s already saved me from death many times.  He may well save me again.  I don't want a conflict between any servants of any gods.""If you will not pledge yourself to the earth, then you will not be cured of your blight.  And Stonetop will be brought to ruin."  The earth begins to shake.  A seismic wave sets the camp alight.Yorath wraps himself in his blanket, and tries to get away, but he fails and catches fire.  Vahid throws some sausage links off into the fog for the dogs to find and tries to get off the island. He also fails and catches fire.***  The spirit throws her head back and cries out like an animal.  It's authoritative, similar to the mating call of the local mountain lions, and Yorath realizes she's calling the animals of the Great Wood to her.Yorath tries desperately to get the fire out, calling out, "Helior, hear my prayer!"†  Helior does not indicate he's heard.  Meanwhile, Vahid is studying the quartz circle, and he realizes that it's a binding circle that was drawn to suppress her power, but it's significantly deteriorated.  He also recognizes that this stump is the Elder Tree that birthed the twisted spear.  Running out of options, he grits his teeth, opens his wrist with the spear's blade, and waters the ground to restore the circle.  And the spirit discorporates, the yawing earth flattens entirely, and the fire goes out.†† The two men, however, continue to burn.  Yorath takes care of himself then assists Vahid, saying "Helior's pretty tough."††† They stand there, singed and wearing burnt cloaks, but alive.  The bendis root tincture is still intact, but the campsite is ruined.  While Yorath drinks the tincture, Vahid fills him in on the local fen-walkers, who have some chance of cutting the fen blight out of Yorath.  He posits that these fen-walkers may have wronged the spirit somehow.  The two of them gather the dogs and head off into the fog towards the smoke.---A decently-sized hill rises some nine feet or so above the fog, with a little homestead atop it.  There's a goat pen, a water catchment system, and a house with skin-lined windows.  Some sort of herding dog is hanging about on the property, and Cushie and Culann's ears flatten.Yorath recognizes it as the home of the Gejo family, more specifically Jamya Gejo.  "They can help us, but you can't exactly, you know, trust them.  The family is dangerous.  It's the father, the son, and two daughters.  They're witch hunters, Danu-worshipping witch hunters.  Real schismatic, lunatic fringe Danu worshippers.  There's an ossuary in the back of the property, and they worship some insane primordial spirit they insist is Danu."‡They arrive on the property as Yorath finishes filling in Vahid.  At which time a young woman comes rushing out of the house to embrace Yorath, pulling up right before she can hug him.  This is Jamya.Yorath says, "It's okay, I've been taking an antidote.  I need someone that might be able to cure this.""What luck. You've come to the right place!  I need to speak to my father, but he speaks directly to Danu, and she will heal you completely." Yorath offers that he and Vahid reinforced the circle and put the spirit down as a sweetener, but says it in a way that sees off further questioning.‡‡ Jamya goes back to the house and tells her father about the Marshedger that she guided through the fens years ago.  “He’s returned! And they fought the tree spirit!  And they sacrificed to Danu!  And his friend is from Lygo and has the Twisted Spear!”‡‡‡  And her father, Ludwig Gejo, comes out.  He's old with long grey hair and a tidy beard.  He's also half-dressed.§  He only has eyes for Vahid."You bring this afflicted one to me, Vahid of Lygos!"Jamya tries to reorient Ludwig to Yorath.  And Vahid tries to keep Ludwig oriented to him.  "Ludwig Gejo, my father spoke of you.  We couldn't think of bringing him to anyone else."§§ Ludwig notices the twisted spear.  "Can you feel the butt of the weapon touches Danu's strength?"  He slides his hand over Vahid's on the staff and grips it.  "We will cleanse Yorath, Vahid.  Take him beyond her to the sacrificial pit and cleanse him.  Take him back there.  Cut from him the flesh."  And to Yorath.  "You will bear a scar.  It will hurt.  You will be one of Danu's children forevermore."Yorath prays to Helior under his breath.  He'd prefer not to be anointed into the embrace of this demon.  He notices that the younger sister, who'd wandered out during the excitement, keeps looking back at the house. There's a shadowy figure that can only be the brother stalking back and forth.  She's nervous and excited, and her brother's pacing is getting more agitated.  And then he sees the brother start to transform.  There's a howl, and the family bays in response, their skin bristling.  There's more howling from deep within the wild, too.  As Ludwig starts to change, he says to Vahid, through gritted teeth, "Leave! Quickly! There's not much time."§§§Vahid yells to Yorath that they should get back to the tree.^  They run, getting back to the tree smoothly, navigating over the peat bog flawlessly.  It buys them some time.Vahid looks at the runic circle, which he now recognizes was written in an ancient tongue from the time of the Makers, powered by the Things Below.  It could be destroyed with holy water.  He pulls out his waterskin.  "Hey, Yorath, bless this."^^"Oh mighty Helior, whose light illuminates the world, purify this water with your holy light."^^^  The waterskin glows.  Vahid spreads the water across the lines, and the glyphs sizzle and burn away entirely.  The rot in the soil below burns away, and the spirit manifests physically.  She's contemptuous.  Vahid says, “You want to kill some witches?”She does not.║The spirit reaches into the earth and the earth begins to yaw and rumble once again.  Yorath and Vahid fall to their knees.  She demands a sacrifice.Yorath throws himself on the mercy of the court.  "Help us kill these witches and do with us what you please afterwards."Vahid growls and throws the twisted spear into the ground at the base of the tree, returning it whence it came.  It dissolves, and, as it does, the tree reforms and the fog lifts. The spirit says, "RUN!"[SPOILER="Footnotes"]* You've done things you're not proud of, too.  Dogs, Seek Insight, +2, 9.** Persuade, -CHA, 5.  Vahid's CHA is his lowest stat, such that he has no business convincing anyone of anything.  He doesn't know it's his lowest stat, however, and likes to break out Persuade when the stakes are high.  Also, this is where our luck turns for a bit.*** Yorath, Defy Danger, +CON, 4, 3 damage.  Vahid, Defy Danger, +DEX, 4, 1 damage.  It might seem like we're trying to push these tests to our strongest attributes here, but we're not.  If I recall correctly, Yorath was weakened from the fen blight, and Vahid was definitely miserable from his inoculation. We're just trying to avoid rolling with disadvantage.† Defy Danger, +WIS, spend Piety, 4.  As Yorath has become more dedicated to Helior, he has picked up some moves from the Lightbringer playbook.  If he prays for an hour, he gets 1 Piety to hold and spend for +1 on a roll "just made in pursuit of a righteous cause."  We seem to have missed a trick here in retrospect, as the Piety can be spent after the fact (like burning brightly), but my notes suggest it was spent at the time of the roll.  That said, I don't know if this is something that's changed across different iterations of the game text.†† This is two moves — Countermeasures, How can this be countered or interrupted?, followed by Work with What You've Got, +INT, 9, burn brightly, 10.  Vahid takes another 1 damage from fire.††† Struggle as One, Defy Danger, +CON, Yorath 11, Vahid 3.  Vahid had disadvantage on this roll from miserable.  We played with Struggle as One somewhat differently than RAW.  As written, "on a 6-, you find yourself in a spot, the GM will describe it or ask you to; on a 7-9, you pull your weight; on a 10+, you do well enough to get someone else out of a spot, if you can tell us how." It's still different than the typical structure of moves, but the issue is the opposite of Forage, where strong hits can feel like weak hits.  Here, weak hits are essentially strong hits.  Instead of this, we played with 7-9 as a weak hit and generally got what we were trying for with a cost.‡ The Prodigal Returned, +CHA, 8.  This might be the first example in-game of my transcribing what I call the Forrest Gump joke.  That is:"You can't exactly, you know, trust them" is verbatim the option in the game text that was selected because of the 7-9 result.‡‡ Silvertongued, +CHA, [7-9], 1 nerve.‡‡‡ Two comments — (1) Yorath misspent some of his youth in Marshedge. (2) During the course of this sequence, there was a Heroic Reputation roll, which is a Steading move that we earned.  It allows for us to roll upon first meeting someone from outside of Stonetop and figure out what they know about us.  The roll was Heroic Reputation, +2, advantage, 11.  And the decision was that they had heard that the witch hunter bearing the twisted spear had made it to Stonetop.  And also that the Vahid's uncle had stolen the spear from Vahid's father, Vahid stole it back after his father's death, and that the spear was given to Vahid's father by the Gejos (I'm a little iffy on this last bit; my notes are somewhat incomplete).§ [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] punctuated his description with "a real Wim Hof mf'er." §§ Vahid is doing his best to be polite and truthful here.  It's a real narrow path he's chosen.  Persuade, -CHA, advantage & disadvantage, 7. §§§ There are two moves here: Yorath, Seek Insight, +WIS, 4 at "He notices the younger sister..." and Vahid, Seek Insight, +WIS, 4 at "As Ludwig starts..." ^  This was the end result of a Countermeasures move.  Our other option was coating our weapons with a crucible of molten silver or possibly invoking actual Danu.  We ended up using Make a Plan, with the following requirements: get back to the tree / break the circle / make a sacrifice.  And we could take advantage on any one of these three from Countermeasures.  The following run was Struggle as One, Defy Danger, +DEX, 10 (Vahid, advantage from Countermeasures), 11 (Yorath).^^ Everything Burns, +INT, 8.^^^ Silvertongued, advantage from Countermeasures, +CHA, 10.║ Vahid was visited by three ghosts that night, and the Ghost of Persuade Checks Yet-to-Come was by far the most terrible.  Vahid, Defy Danger, -CHA, disadvantage from miserable, (roll 2, 1, 1), 1.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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