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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 6235112" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 97b - Casing the Cloudwood‏Asrabey, Leon, Matunaaga, Uru and Rumdoom took a carriage as far as they could into the Cloudwood. Asrabey seemed uncomfortable in the vehicle and at length demanded that the driver stop so he could make his way on foot. Matunaaga joined him and they kept pace with the carriage over rough terrain.  At length, they reached the environs of the mayoral manse.  Groups of people sat about weeping, or drifted along the road disconsolately.  In the grounds they found many corpses, laid out in rows and covered over by rough blankets.  The police had returned, having abandoned the mansion to the mob, and had begun rounding up the ringleaders.Leon spoke to Sergeant Langlois, a boistrous Danoran ex-pat, who defended his men.  They had no choice but to flee or fire upon their friends and neighbours.  (Fact was, they had fired on their friends and neighbours, killing several, and had fled only in the face of overwhelming numbers. Many police were among the dead - their eyes clawed out, hair ripped out in chunks, beaten to death with sticks and run through with farming implements.) Interviewed in their cells, the mob leaders were vague as to their purpose, and faintly regretful.  If they thought hard they remembered that Idylls was said to be a witch and a child-murderer. They were no longer so certain. He had been accused by a young girl named Circe, who was among the first to be shot. Why a 'child murderer'? Langlois reminded the unit that a young boy had been found dead in the forest - strangled, mutilated and daubed in strange sigils. Unit B had heard about this, but never found time to investigate.  So Unit A went to look at the body and found that the sigils were part of an ancient fey curse that would cause discord and hatred among the child's family. But nobody recognised the boy. He had been hung from a rope, not strangled, that much they could ascertain, and his fingers had been chewed by wild cats. They went to examine where his body was found discarded in a brook as it trickled  through the jungle. In the dark it took a while to find it, and even with Asrabey's help Uru could not pick up a trail. They went from door to door asking questions.  People were vacant, pale-faced - clearly in shock. Some had torn clothes or were spattered with blood. They spoke of strange events of late. They feared the local fey had turned against them, since the mayor had tried to ban old traditions and focus the community on the city and its needs (the need for lumber and food from farming) rather than their time-honoured, self-sufficient ways.  Lately, folk had tried to appease the fey with offerings of milk and other treats, which had been gathered silently and hungrily at night.  But no tracks could be found, and no such activity was evident now. It was nearing midnight when a group of foresters arrived and found the unit.  They told them that the dead boy had come from Gallo's School for Boys - an old orphanage run by a druidic order, which the local community had all but forgotten about.  Poor, abandoned children were found by the staff and raised there, in the Old Faith.  It was a beautiful place, but recently the woodsmen had been afraid to approach it. The fey were at large in the woods and had grown jealous and spiteful. Quick inquiries established that the orphanage was funded by a small stipend from the mayor's office.  As a ward of the state, that meant the boy's 'family' was the whole community in the Cloudwood. The death of the mayor had clearly ended the curse.  But what was going on at the orphanage?  They set off at once to find out.</blockquote>

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