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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ralts Bloodthorne" data-source="post: 4019918" data-attributes="member: 6390">The Testaments, the Ghost Ship, and the Missing OakThe next morning the Nun, Ambrosia, was teaching class when she saw the Bishop leave to the Lord Governor's house, and excusing herself from the children, she went to his office and looked around quickly. In a drawer she found several thick books, all identical, with those ancient symbols of Pelor on the cover in gold.Wondering if she was doing the wrong thing, she stuck the book in her blouse and hustled back to the children.One of the children, a small black haired thing with a pinched face and wide blue eyes, had a bad habit of drawing during class, not paying attention to her lessons. She'd been reprimanded several times by Ambrosia and the Nun Constance.As Ambrosia walked by, she saw that the little girl was drawing a great flaming eye, staring down on large, blocky figures. She wasn't drawing it line by line, but rather back and forth, her charcoal pencil making tapping noises on the paper as her hand went back and forth across the paper.Ambrosia stood silently as the picture slowly was completed.Hoggle went out into the woods, his sword in his hand, and wishing that the Legion had trained him in forestry, rather than large scale manuevering. He located the massive statue, and discovered that something had pushed the dirt back over it, and a bush had been neatly transplanted, it's branches wrapped around the rotting marble.A cold breeze snaked down the back of his chainmail, and he walked back to the house.In the front room, Verdoon was stripped to the waist, her eyes covered with cheesecloth, a brazier burning local herbs, and she was fondling chicken guts, the chicken that had provided the guts boiling in a stew pot.Hoggle poured himself a cup of tea, sat down at the stool he'd made that morning, and waited."Dead man the decks, the Intrepid returns to its last port of sin, the book, seek the book, the nun hides it beneath her breasts, and the warped priest is unaware! The midnight rising sun shall run in advance of its brothers setting in the West. Ware, ware, ware and doom!" Verdoon wailed, and tore free the blindfold."That doesn't bode well." Hoggle said, sipping off his cup of tea."Bah, I should know better than try to contact the spirits of this land. They fell.... maddened." Verdoon shivered and pulled her top back on."I don't know, that was stranglely concise." Hoggle answered, going over to the stewpot and looking inside."It's chicken and dumplings." Verdoon told him. "Shouldn't you be cutting trees?""Too much rain, and Kalife is in town trying to get us more supplies, so I don't have someone to help operate the cross cut saw." Hoggle walked back over and sat down. "When's dinner going to be ready?"Kalife was walking back from the town when he saw Sister Ambrosia leading the mule and smacking it with a stick, cursing its stubborness. Kalife helped Ambrosia get the mule back to the farmhouse, and Ambrosia rushed into the house."Look what I found!" She pulled the book out from under her blouse, where it was wrapped with the child's drawing."You found a child's picture and an ugly book." Hoggle said, eating a roll."You shut up." She opened the book and pointed at the illuminated picture in the front. "Look!"She pulled a Pelorian bible out of her side satchel, opened it, and pointed at the initial image.With the exception of Pelor's face, and the two figures looking up at the face of Pelor, the image was functionally the same.Except the ones looking up had large tusks, wide flat noses, heavy foreheads, were heavily muscled, and taller than humans by at least a foot."By Pelor's firey beard, it's a Bible!" Kalife said. "Can you read the words?""No. But I noticed something. While the Book of Pelor has six testaments, this one only has the first two. And some of the pictures are, well, graphic, in nature." Ambrosia answered, flipping open the book.The picture got Hoggle's attention immediately. Verdoon giggled, Kalife turned red.Instead of Pelor rising from the darkness when the All God Mankar created light, it was a picture of a large, one eyed creature having fairly explicit sex with an elven woman, who was holding his missing eye in her hand. The facing page showed her holding up the strange version of Pelor to the one eyes spear weilding creature with a smile.And she had a black eye and her golden crown was missing."I think, that these people were not barbarians." Kalife said, touching the fine flowing script written in golden ink."I'm going to pray to Mighty Pelor to reveal the words to us at dawn, I've already told the Bishop I'm feeling poorly." Ambrosia told everyone."Sounds good." Hoggle said, looking at the pictures in the strange book. It depicted living sacrifice, those tusked creatures, and other strange things.The next morning, Ambrosia found not only the strange bible changed, but one of her copies changed. She gathered up her companions, made tea, and sat down with the two changed bibles and a "standard" bible.The changed ones spoke of living sacrifice, of building pyramids to Pelor, of selecting volunteers to have their hearts ripped out and sacrificed to the sun God. The end of the new book, and the end of the second testament of the changed book, spoke of another Prophet arrising and leading a new day of Pelorian glory.They also found the names of important things.Their overgod was called:(You called it) GruumshPelor was called KapelorAnd his half-brother was called "Hades"The name the featured race was:Uruk-Hia (Thanks for the name, Papa Tolkien!!!)The race being crapped out by Gruumsh after he ate poisoned meat was called:Guruk-DiaThe companion race of the Uruk-Hia were called Mogu-Kia.The elven woman was called Hecate, and apparently was wooed by Gruumsh away from her husband Correllian, or something like that. Apparently she got the black eye when her husband found out of her affair with Gruumsh and cast her out after striking her. In revenge she brought magic and writing to the Uruk-Hia.Sacrifices were by volunteer, and only during Holy Days.Winter came about when Hecate and Gruumsh argued, and Hecate laid him out with the frying pan. Spring came when he woke up on the floor of the kitchen.The stories and names were different, but the religious rites were the same. The saints were the same, just with different names, the holy days matched.But the "standard" bible made no mention of these rites, practices, and other things.Pelorian religion was apparently quite bloody in the first two books, and someone had edited those bloody rites out. Was it out of embarrassment? Was it the Second Pelorian Reformation about 1200 years ago? What had done it?The group sat all day, looking over the books, and feeling a sense of dread fill them.One of the things that bothered Verdoon was a picture of an elven warrior with a golden halo around him, spearing mountains, piercings thier hearts, and causing the mountians blood to flow."Has anyone noticed anything about our wonderful Bishop?" Verdoon asked, tapping her finger on an Uruk-Hia clad in gold robes."That he seems to be changing into one of the Uruk-Hia? No, hadn't noticed." Kalife answered."That he seems to have lost the grace of Pelor and can't even light a candle or heal a splinter? No, I haven 't noticed." Ambrosia replied."Who?" Hoggle asked, looking up from the picture of Gruumsh and Hecate.Acorn came toddling up on the table, unsteady on his ectoplasmic legs. Hoggle slammed a mug down."GOT THE SPIDER!" He yelled."It's not a spider!" Kalife shouted back, grabbing the mug off of his psicrystal."I hate you so much." The psicrystal hissed at Hoggle."What is it? A spider?" Hoggle asked, squinting at the crysal with 8 ghostly legs."It's a psicrystal, a companion." Kalife answered."Heeey, those are illegal." Hoggle told him. "It's a sin.""Hoggle, check out the breasts on this woman." Verdoon said, pushing forward the Uruk-Hia bible."Wow..." Hoggle said, forgetting about Acorn, who scurried up Verdoon's sleeve and hid in her hair."Hey, how come our bible doesn't have pictures like these? Our bible is boring!" Hoggle complained."I'm not sure. The passages those pictures refer to have been edited pretty heavily. For example, this woman, Keelistan, was changed to the male Paeulestes in our Bible, but in the Pelor modified one, she's Paeules." Ambrosia answered. "My head's starting to hurt."The more the group compared the books, the more they became convinced that the Pelorian bible they had all grown up with had been heavily edited multiple times.That evening, Verdoon climbed up on the roof and watched for Ambrosia to shine a lantern when the chains began to tremble. First, a flicker of red off to the east, then a steady red glow. Hoggle checked his watch when the lantern lit in the bell tower."Three minutes, fourty-nine seconds." He told Verdoon. "What's it mean?""I don't know." Verdoon answered, writing down the time that the glow started, when the chains began to sway. The lantern flashed, meaning that the chains were jangling."Six minutes, nineteen seconds." Hoggle said. "Oh, crap.""What?" Verdoon asked, looking up sharply.Off to the West, a glow had started, a slow pulsing."I was afraid of this." Verdoon said, watching over Hoggle's shoulder at the time and marking it down.It took two hours for the ocean glow to subside, and three hours twenty minutes for the Western glow to subside."I think I know what killed off the Uruk-Hia." Verdoon told Hoggle as they walked down the attic stairs.The next night, another glow appeared, this one far north, but still off in the west. The night after than, another glow far to the south."We have to do something!" Ambrosia said. "The lives of my flock are in jeapordy! The chains are swaying worse, and last night the bells actually moved.""And that Bishop is looking more and more bestial. I have some serious suspicions." Hoggle added.The group read through the books, and made a decision.The Bishop had to die.They looked up the old ways of sacrificing those who were descending into evil or possessed, and decided his throat had to be cut and the blood sprayed across the altar.The group snuck into the church, ambushed the Bishop, who used hellfire against them, drug him to the altar bound, and when the light to the east began to glow, they split his throat, spraying his blood on the altar.With a wail, red mist poured from his mouth, and the body shivered into ash.Verdoon slaughtered a chicken, and sprayed its blood against the cornerstone of the church, and Kalife read aloud the sancification prayer and the prayer for mercy from both the Uruk-Hia bible and the old-style Pelorian bible, then threw both bibles into a small fire prepared just for that.However, the group's victory turned to ash when the fifth glow to the west appeared that night, and the chains jangled, and the bells tolled.With a crash, the warehouse down by the dock collapsed as the ground shook. Panicked colonists ran around, and a house burned down when the lantern fell from the wall and broke."I told you not to mess with old magic. Old magic is powerful, and unrestrained." Verdoon told the group.-----------------The next day, the little girl, Lemee, was drawing again, and Ambrosia stood behind her, watching as she drew a ship, with the dead laying on the decks, and when Charlotte's Port appeared at the bottom, she collected the girl's "spelling quiz" and hid it away.The group decided that a ghost ship, possibly a plague ship, was going to crash into Charlotte's Port. However, storms were making the seas heavy, and wind and rain was lashing at the colony of Charlotte's Port."I can get us there, but your flock won't like it." Verdoon told Ambrosia."Witchcraft?" Ambrosia wrinkled her nose."Witchcraft." Verdoon answered.Two nights later, the chicken-guts and the sticks proclaimed the ship was coming. A night of the full moon.Verdoon took along a basked of chickens, and slit their throats onto the water, calming the ocean around them so they could board the ship. They dropped the sea anchors, anchoring it about a mile from the port.The sailors were all dead at their posts, the soldiers were all dead below decks, and the stench of sulfur filled the inside of the huge ship."Devilry." Hoggle murmured."Horse hockey. Volcano." Verdoon answered. "The wizard group I hid with after I was accused of witchcraft was near a volcano, and sometimes it would belch fire and ash and a flock of sheep would die the same way. Volcanoes throw out ash, fire, and poison gas.""From Hell." Hoggle mumbled, but moved away.On board the ship, in the cargo area, the party found something that scared them.Mummies, marble, gems, gold, what looked like a mausoleum, along with holy books.Over the course of the next several days, the party deduced that somewhere out there, the Legion found a shrine to one of the Uruk-Hia saints, and had looted it and disassembled it. The markings of the Old Kingdom Archeology Society showed that it had been taken apart with the intent of rebuilding it.The group rebuilt it behind the Church, interring the mummy of the Uruk-Hia, his wives, and his servants, placing the precious items back, and carefully arranging the organ jars.It didn't rise and smite the colony, and the three children who'd fallen with sickness suddenly got better.It was the notes and log books of the Captain, the Militant Cardinal, and the other people on the ship. Four Militant Bishops, a Militant Cardinal, four Militant Governors, all travelling on the ship. However, the maps were burnt up, while the cases they were in were unscorched.Apparently they were going to arrest Hoggle on trumped up murder charges, as he was aboard ship on the way to Charlotte's Port when the murders occurred. The charge of Heresy against Ambrosia was a little more realistic, and the charge of Witchcraft against Verdoon was plenty realistic.They pulled the supplies from the ship and had them loaded into the warehouse that was left, then scuttled the ship.Something bad was happening in the Old Kingdom.----------------------------Kalife and Hoggle were out clearing more trees, and left behind the crosscut saw while theywent in for lunch several days after they scuttled the Reliant. When they returned, the crosscut saw was crushed up into a ball.When they ran back and told Verdoon, she went out with them to where the saw was crumpled up, the two axes were missing, and the steel crowbar was bent into a small ball."What do you think happened?" Hoggle asked, looking nervous."We must leave the forest. It will no longer suffer our murder of these old sleeping giants." Verdoon said, backing away.When they returned, they noticed something.The old oak tree by the house was missing. Not cut down, but missing.Completely.That evening, from the rooftop, Verdoon stared out in the forest, and wondered whether or not the oak tree awakening and walking off was good, or bad.(Next: The Earthquake, The Rooster, and the Tsunami)</blockquote>

Verification