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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 1003775" data-attributes="member: 726">Not quite!  We just played again tonight.  The following post will take us up to the start of today's session.  Updates will still be slow, though, since my free time is more limited than ever these days.  I'll write as fast as I'm able.Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 194“It is not merely that Time has stopped,” says Tog, settling in for his tale and talking slowly.  “Green Valley has been cut off from the rest of the Kingdom of Cressella.“We have been in Green Valley for seventy-five years.  That’s when we fled.  We would not abide by the Lawgiver’s decree, so we were exiled. We came here and established our village.  It was peaceful.  We were not accosted or attacked.  Twice a year a peddler would come, bringing pots and pans, spices, exotic foods.  “Eleven years ago he stopped coming.  Around that time, we stopped aging.  It took some months to realize what happened.  One of the women of the village has a five-month-old child, who has been of that size and apparent age all of these past eleven years.  No one has aged, not the children, not the adults.  When a year had gone by I took a chance and left the valley.   It is death for us to go back to Cressella;  The Lawgiver’s men would kill us.  We are a danger to them.  They do not revere the Antlered God.   In their hearts they fear him, as they should.  That is why they sent us away.“I went on a walkabout into the woods.  For many days I traveled.  At the edge… I don’t know what else to call it…. about fifty miles from here, I reached a place where I could walk no further.  The forest  was still there, it stretched out before me, but my mind could not make my feet walk another step.  It was as if there was a wall, for my head.  (He taps his head meaningfully.)  “I took a few steps to the side, and tried again.  I could not.  It was as if there was a wall stretching through the forest, invisible.  I tracked its extent, knowing I might be displeasing the Antlered God.    Clearly this was some design of his.  I had come to the conclusion some weeks before that the Stillness was a test for us.  He wanted to see how we would endure such a state.   But I had to know, in case there was danger, which is why I left the village.  I examined the extent of this boundary.  The forest looks no different on the other side, Aravis, but I could not reach it.  There was one… anomaly.  I followed the boundary for almost three weeks and it was then I found a shimmering square of blue light in the trees, hanging like a windowpane.   Beneath it there was a skeleton of some small creature,  like one of your smaller friends.  Not the size of a grown adult.  The skeleton had been stripped bare by insects, gnawed by wolves.   I was drawn to the blue window.  I don’t think the Antlered God wanted me to go through, but I had to be sure.   I stepped into its light.  It was cold, and there was blackness, and I emerged in a cave that was dark, echoing, smelling of stale death and something worse, something horrid and living.   There were old bones and dark stains beneath my feet.  Some fungus on the walls gave off a faint glow. “Then there was a growling from back in the cave, I saw lights like eyes but they were too high, twenty feet off the ground.  And something massive was moving.  I dove back through the curtain.  I feared some beast of the Antlered God’s making was there to protect something I was not meant to see.  I jumped back.  There was a crackling sound as if a thunderstorm were following me.  Pain like lightning seared my legs as I fell through the curtain back into the forest.   I was badly burned, but I lived.  I knew healing herbs which I found in the forest, and I tended to myself.”“Did you see what kind of creature it was?” asks Aravis.“I only saw a great shape, but I could not tell its size or type as it moved in the darkness.“You must not tell my people that the curtain is there.  Some of them would do anything to escape the Stillness.  They don’t understand that soon the Antlered God will end our test and restore us, perhaps with might and vigor enough to return to the lands of the Lawgiver and retake our place.   It has been much to endure.   Eleven years of the Stillness.  There are some who would risk that cave.  They would not survive.  I would not have them go to their deaths.”“We came through a similar curtain,” says Aravis.“But there was no beast?” asks  Tog.“No,” answers Aravis.  “The curtain we came through was green, and it brought us here.  When we looked back upon it it was blue.  As we watched it, it shifted off to the side and disappeared.”“That is strange,” says Tog.  “I have returned to that curtain that I saw, three times in the ten years since I first found it.  It has been there, in the same place, hanging every time.”“I fear that curtain is where we must go,” says Aravis.  “I fear that cave is something we must brave.”Tog looks into Aravis’s star-filled eyes, considering his words.  He licks his lips.“I would urge against it,” he says at last.  “There is death in that cave.”Aravis sighs.  “Our lives are meaningless against that of the world which we are trying to save,” he says wearily.Tog glances around again at the armaments and equipment of the Company.“If you were to slay the beast of the cave,” he says, “perhaps our salvation is there.  But again, we should not speak of this to the others.  I will think of some safe falsehood to tell my people, though it galls me to do that.”At Dranko’s urging Aravis asks about the Lawgivers.“Hrmmmm.”  Tog makes a noise of disapproval.  “They worship a false god of justice.  Of punishment.  They are strict and controlling, and have made worship of the Antlered God a crime!”“What is their symbol?” asks Aravis, fearing to learn it’s a black circle.“Three vertical bars across a sword.  Symbols for retribution and imprisonment.”“Not our boys,” says Dranko.  “Tell Tog I’d like to cast a spell on him.”With permission, Dranko casts know age on Tog.  He’s the same eighty years old that he claims to be.“That suggests to me the Black Circle is continuously bringing people in, as they build their tower.  If we can free them back to their own reality, we should.  And… ooh, you know what I think it is?  I think they’re trying to find ways of living forever.  And this might be their world of guinea pigs, as they work out ways to stop themselves from aging.”Aravis decides not to share that speculation with Tog..“Do you believe this is a test because the Antlered God has told you?” Aravis asks.  “Or is it your interpretation of events?”“The Antlered God does not speak to me,” says Tog.  “I feel his power in the forest, in the earth, the trees, the air.”  “Our gods speak to us,” says Dranko, smirking.  With the interview nearly at an end, Morningstar suggests explaining to Tog about sending spells and possibly dream contact.   Then Ernie offers to give some of his own spices to the people of Green Valley, since they are no longer visited by their peddler.“Ask him if he has any souvenirs,” says Dranko.  “I want something to take home with me.  I’m serious!  We got those little carvings from the Yuja.  I want something from these guys!”Aravis works out a trade, where Ernie will give Tog some spices in return for a single one of their coins, “as a remembrance of where we’ve been.”“If there is anything else you want in trade, of fair value, I’m sure we can work out an arrangement,” says Tog.“I suspect the only thing we’ll desire from you is directions to the curtain,” says Aravis.“It is many days’ journey.  When would you like to depart?”…to be continued…</blockquote>

Verification