1629, Dark Season, Stasis Week, Windsday. Storm Bull’s Holy Day.
Context
The group is a little bit stuck in a Heroquest, but has finally found each other. Session Prax 6.15.
Events
The sky is utterly clear, and cold, and a silver-grey in colour. It could be clouds, it could be that the sky-dome has been painted. Berra and Xenofos step off the vessel of Diros the boatman, and Berra breathes a shudder of relief. It is like breathing a sigh, but has more action in it. Over her features, strongly, Humakt is overlaid as if this is just an ordinary Heroquest. The big, muscular god has black tattoos on his blue skin, or else blue tattoos on his black skin. Her sharp teeth, just too short to be tusks, get her attention. She runs her tongue over them.1Maalira notices Berra, but not that Berra is wounded.
“Berra! Where have you been?” Maalira asks.
Berra looks to the river, and then says, “The underworld, and … Xenofos … I was going there anyhow, but he went there too.” She steps away from the riverside a little. “I don’t think anyone meant us to be here. Except Destiny. That’s a word for Fate, I think.”
“What happened?”
Berra takes a deep breath, and suddenly looks more like herself, although the eye in the middle of her forehead, which was a circular black tattoo, flickers to silver.2Maalira spots the eye had a momentary red sheen, like a Lune was passing through.
Maalira takes a tiny step back, blinking rapidly. “Berra, that eye tattoo on your forehead just changed colour.”
Berra puts her hand up there. The fingers have blood on. “Probably?” The eye blinks, vertically. “It’s hard to keep concentrating on looking, with people here I know. But I can see spirits. I see the White Lady’s hand on you, and the river, and… it’s all pretty bright.”
Maalira sighs and looks across the river. “Do you know what we need to do next?”
“Yeah. I think we need to keep a crocodile alive. But I can’t see one. So maybe not? But she wants to die so she can live again. I think.” Berra looks around. “She’s not here. And the sky’s alive, White Lady.”
“The crocodile came when the harp music did,” Maalira observes. “We definitely don’t want her getting her way. What do you mean, the sky is alive?”
Berra looks up, and rapidly looks down again, blinking the middle eye as if to clear it. “I can see a lot of big spirits.”
Maalira looks up.3Maalira fails at Celestial Lore, and does not understand why the sky is silver – the Lesser Darkness is above, and Yelm is gone but Yelmalio is doing his duty.
The sky glimmers, silver…
It should not be silver, of course. It should be gold, the correct colour of the sky… Or blue, but only a tiny part of her mind thinks a sky could be blue.
Maalira frowns, rubs her eyes, peers at the sky, and frowns some more. “The sky is silver, like your tattoo,” she says. “Is that the spirits?”
Berra considers. “It’s a god, up there. Yelm’s gone. He left a part of himself, but that’s why it’s so cold?” She might be guessing.
Maalira looks worried. “Which god?”4She might be thinking about that flash of red.
“The Cold Sun.” Berra is talking about Yelmalio, the loyal god who kept light in the skies.
“Okay, that’s okay then.” Maalira shakes herself a little. “Let’s go and find the crocodile then?”
Berra looks at the others, and back at Maalira. “Before we do, if you touch me right now, do you think you’ll heal me?”
“I can try,” Maalira says, stepping forward immediately with an outstretched hand. She is clearly not opposed to touching Berra.
At the mention of Yelmalio Xenofos looks up.
Berra takes a step back. “I… we better not hold hands. If you might.”
Maalira blinks, starts to speak, stops, frowns, squints, and purses her lips. “Berra, what’s in you that shouldn’t be?”
Berra holds up her left hand. The blood on her other fingers must have come from there. The ring finger is gone, at the knuckle.
Above Xenofos, above Lhankor Mhy, the sky arches5Xenofos fails Cult Lore (Lhankor Mhy) and also does not understand about the silver sky.. It is silver, beautiful in its own way, and entirely lacking in warmth.
Maalira gives a horrified squawk.
“Why don’t you want me to heal that?”
“I’d like it to stop bleeding. But I gave it away.” Berra shrugs. “And I’m pretty sure that if you give it back to me, that’ll be bad.”
“Okay. We’ll figure that out later. Do you want something to bandage it up with? That’s not healing really.”
“Yeah, please.” Berra looks suitably grateful, if tired and still slightly Humaktish. “I tried to call on someone but they didn’t want to help me, and it gets pretty complucated to be honest.”
Maalira pulls a clean, rolled strip of cloth out of her scrip and gestures for Berra to come closer so she can wind it.
“I’ll be careful not to touch your skin.”
Berra does that. “Maybe I should put it on?” She holds her hand out nevertheless.
Now that Berra is closer, Maalira looks her in the eyes and lowers her voice so the others can’t hear her. “Berra, I said before that your tattoo went silver, but just before that I thought it went red, just for a tiny moment. Like, Lunar red.”
She holds out the bandage and steps back. “You’re probably right. You put it on, just in case.”
Berra winces. She mutters to Maalira, “I… great. Thanks.” Then she takes the bandage and starts to wind it onto her finger. If it were not provided by Chalana Arroy, her clumsy strong hands with their broad clawed fingers would probably not be able to do that.
Maalira watches with professional interest. Her fingers twitch, possibly because she wants to help.
Humakt’s hand is not healed, but at least the bleeding stops.6Xenofos passes Scan: The white on the god’s hand looks a lot like a spider’s web. Those are used sometimes to stop bleeding.
Lhankor Mhy nods. Xenofos inhales sharply.
It is Humakt standing there now, his hair dark with ashes. He looks around, as if this place is a battlefield he is trying to understand. Wounded or not, he is thinking about tactics, strategy, lines of sight.
- 1Maalira notices Berra, but not that Berra is wounded.
- 2Maalira spots the eye had a momentary red sheen, like a Lune was passing through.
- 3Maalira fails at Celestial Lore, and does not understand why the sky is silver – the Lesser Darkness is above, and Yelm is gone but Yelmalio is doing his duty.
- 4She might be thinking about that flash of red.
- 5Xenofos fails Cult Lore (Lhankor Mhy) and also does not understand about the silver sky.
- 6Xenofos passes Scan: The white on the god’s hand looks a lot like a spider’s web. Those are used sometimes to stop bleeding.
