Session 11: Meeting with a skyseer
Session summary
[sblock]While their companions paused to ponder what had just happened, Tok and Wilheim sprinted down the switchback to the crushed carriage. The changeling clambered into the wreckage and began lifting shattered timber from the pile, soon uncovering the body of the carriage’s unfortunate occupant. Tok pulled the woman from the clutter and laid her one the ground, practised fingers moving to her neck and finding a weak pulse.
Tok immediately commenced CPR, but had little success. When Wilheim arrived, the deva surveyed the scene for a second. Then he reached past Tok and jabbed the woman’s chest with two rigid fingers. She inhaled sharply and jerked upright with a scream. Her eyes were momentarily wild as she looked around, then calmed as she saw the woodsman rushing toward her. Wilheim smiled at Tok. “Pressure point”, the monk said.
Once he was sure that his love Morena was safe, the woodsman Renard turned his fury on the captured pistoleer. He explained to the constables that Lorcan Kell’s criminal gang had been pressing into the Cloudwood. When Renard and “the men who valued his opinion” refused to pay off the thieves, Kell had sent cronies to kidnap Morena. RT3 had wandered straight into the situation.
Renard urged RT3 to set Kell’s pistoleer free, and to allow him just one shot at her. RT3 refused, but Erik convinced Renard and Morena to make statements about what had happened. Although he knew that neither would appear in court to give evidence, the statements allowed him to take the pistoleer into custody, which defused the situation. Renard happily guided RT3 the rest of the way to Nevard’s henge, dispatching Morena and his wounded compatriots into the Cloudwood as they travelled.
The skyseer camp was located in a small clearing high in the hills surrounding Flint. A large marquee tent dominated the clearing, and it was into that tent that RT3 was shown. Nevard Sechim, once one of the most prescient and respected of skyseers, was now feeble and bent. His eyes were cloudy with cataracts and the smell of age was deep on him, yet when he talked the wind itself seemed to quiet in respect.
Nevard confirmed that Gale had come to him several times asking for guidance. She hadn’t listened to his urging to eschew violence, but the last time she had visited she had said that she had followed his advice, finding a mutual threat that even the people of Flint would take seriously. Nevard agreed to arrange a meeting between Gale and RT3, but first he asked a favour. He wanted RT3 to arrange passage to - and an overnight stay at - the peak of Cauldron Hill so that he could seek one last good look at the stars before he died.
Once the den of a coven of witches that terrified the Flint area, Cauldron Hill was still steeped in dark magic and the supernatural even though the witches were destroyed long before. Access to the hill was restricted, and RT3 wondered whether it would be better to seek permission or to secretly climb the hill. They agreed to Nevard’s request, and the skyseer made plans for his departure. Erik offered Nevard a bed under his roof that night, and the skyseer and his retainers happily accepted.
RT3 returned to Flint in the mid-afternoon, leaving Nevard and his retainers to follow at a more leisurely pace. Once back in the city, Erik , Tok and Wilheim asked around town for ways to gain access to Cauldron Hill. All replies were the same; only the mayor of the Nettles, Reed Macbannin, had the authority to grant access. Aware that the sun was soon to set and that they wanted to climb Cauldron Hill the next day, RT3 hurried to Macbannin’s manor.
As they climbed the lower slopes of Cauldron Hill, they realised that the only serviceable road on the hill led straight to the Mayor’s manor. It would be difficult – if not impossible – to climb the hill without being discovered. They were received by Mr Creed, mayor Macbannin’s butler, who went to announce their arrival. While they waited, a courier named Doro joined them, musing aloud about the chaos of life in Flint and how it could be assuaged. After Doro left, Thornt commented aloud how much his thoughts matched those of Rutger Smith, captain of the RNS Impossible.
Mayor Macbannin was at first reluctant to grant RT3 access to Cauldron Hill, warning them that it was still a place of darkness and danger, but Tok swayed him by referring to the possible boon to the city that Nevard’s vision that could be. Realising that being associated with such a boon would bring him glory, Macbannin agreed to grant RT3 passage. He insisted on two conditions; that RT3 pass though his manor on the way up the hill so that he could ward them against the dangers on the hill, and that they pass through the manor on the return trip so he could check them for possession. RT3 agreed, and after Macbannin and Tok exchanged subtle innuendo about political life, took their leave for the night.
RT3 quickly made their way down Cauldron Hill in deepening darkness, splitting up once they reached the Nettles proper. They agreed to meet at Erik’s house in East Bank first thing in the morning.
Wilheim returned to RHC headquarters, where he surreptitiously filed a report outlining the deal made between Renard, Tok, Erik and Thornt.
All others except Erik went directly home. The sergeant passed by RHC headquarters on his journey, and discovered a note from Heward Sechim waiting for him.
I had another visit last night; two different men this time. I stalled, saying I needed time to arrange something, then had them followed. They went to a seedy part of Parity Lake, nearer to the Nettles, but that’s as far as they could be tracked.
Erik folded the note and kept it in his pocket, then headed home to find Sara busily entertaining Nevard and his retainers. During the evening, Erik took the sksyeer aside and detailed Sara’s recent behaviour. He asked Nevard to do a reading on his wife. The aged man replied that he was not a clairvoyant; he could not read people, but he agreed to watch the stars that night and see what he could discover about the Pride family’s future.
In the morning, while the Pride family entertained Nevard, his retainers and the rest of the RT3 team, Erik again took Nevard aside. The skyseer confirmed that he had had a vision; of Erik and Sara standing with a baby in a circle of light. A musical voice asked something the skyseer could not hear, and Erik shook his head. Then shapes moved in the darkness and – as Nevard’s vision ended - Sara screamed.
Across town, Wilheim was woken in the middle of the night by a rapping at his door. He cautiously went to open it, and found a note and a parcel waiting for him. Opening the note, he read it.
The Unseen Court is watching. Take this gift, and deliver it to Gale.
The deva unwrapped the brown paper, discovering inside a bizarre mirror made of gnarled wood. Instead of glass, the frame was filled with a sheet of running water that stayed put no matter how Wilheim tilted it. The Deva surveyed the road outside his residence a final time, then returned to bed.
After breakfast, Sara left RT3 and their guests in privacy to prepare for their day’s activities. Nevard and one of his retainers, an orc shaman named Pazamu, asked RT3’s assistance in a ritual that would make the journey easier for the aged skyseer. As Pazamu laid a scroll and ritual components out on the table, Tok recognised the Bond of Forced Faith. The bard’s extensive education meant he knew full well the horrors of how the ritual scroll had been created, and that it would link Nevard’s health to their own, effectively fortifying the skyseer with his charges’ own vitality.
Wilheim noticed Tok’s pause, and Erik demanded an explanation. The bard complied, and Nevard confessed that he knew of the horrific creation of the scroll. “Better that it be put to good than wasted,” he said and RT3 eventually agreed. They bound their health to Nevards, and then set off for Cauldron Hill.
As agreed, they passed through Macbannin’s manor on their ascent. The mayor and a blue-robed acolyte cast rituals of warding over the journeyers, and provided them with rusted iron amulets that would protect them against possession. Then he gave them four kegs of goats blood and directed them to paint a ring around their campsite as a misdirection of the terrors that might approach.
RT3 made their way to the peak of the hill and settled in for the night. They built a small fire among a ring of fallen hengestones, circled their camp with the goats’ blood, built a small hide and then used tent canvas to screen the area from prying eyes. As a supernatural cold descended on the area, Nevard turned his eyes to the stars and they settled down to wait.
It wasn’t long before the terrors of Cauldron Hill arose. Mad screams and laughter rode the wind, drilling into the constables’ sanity. Spooks swept across the sky, and creatures made of madness – a legless skull-faced human that dragged itself around on its hands, a serpent-maned lion and a bent and misshapen hag – emerged from the darkness and began to circle the ring of blood. RT3 crouched within their prepared position, hoping to avoid the notice of the creatures beyond.
Then a velvet curtain manifested in the middle of their camp, and Nilasa Hume stepped from it. She placed a finger to her lips, then pointed into the darkness. “The man who killed me. He is coming. His face is scarred, so he hides behind many faces.” Then she raised a featureless black mask to her face and vanished as the air filled with the stench of burnt engine grease.
Then RT3 saw the stars overhead streak into lines, and then to the north, down by Parity Lake, a building caught fire with dreamlike swiftness. Suddenly they found themselves standing between two factories, and two tongues of flame leap from one to the next, like burning dragons. Screams erupted from the people trapped inside. The flames consumed the factories, and the charred buildings collapsed to reveal the sunrise. A blackened sign sat in the ash, “Sechim’s Alkahest & Etchings.”
The vision ended with a snap, and RT3 was back in the bitter cold at the peak of Cauldron Hill. Nevard looked skyward, and pointed out that Jiese, the plane of fire was brighter than usual. Then he noted how the light reflected off Parity Lake. He turned to the constables and asked “You saw it didn’t you?”
The night stretched on interminably, with RT3 crouching behind the stones as gibbering horrors cavorted just beyond. Then, just after midnight, Thornt’s keen ears picked out the crack of a sunrod. The nearby peak was suddenly awash with light. RT3 and the horrors of Cauldron Hill turned to look. A humanoid figure held the sunrod, its body inhumanly angular, its skin featureless and black like a silhouette. It sprinted to the near edge of the other rise and then hurled the sunrod. The glowing beacon arced toward the center of RT3’s camp, and Cauldron Hill’s denizens watched its passage with inhuman eyes.[/sblock]
Comments
Another great session, and I sowed some seeds of distrust by taking Erik and Wilheim aside (ie. into another Ventrillo channel) to handle their personal activities.
Everyone loved the tension buildup on Cauldron Hill and is looking forward to the fight to come.
Oh, and as for Morena, guess I still have along way to go before I become a true Rat-bastard.
