Pierre is Out of Time

Pierre entered the turtle ship. It was fascinating how someone made a ship into the shape of an animal. What sort of culture did this? Is the turtle a sacred animal? Questions rebounded inside his brain as he entered the ship and found an empty cargo bay, some living quarters, and a room with a chair bolted to the floor...

In front of the chair was what appeared to be a game board. Pierre was familiar with Chess and Cripple Mister Onion, but he'd never seen anything like the yellow board covered in black and white stones before.

He could see out the two tiny portholes on either side of the room. It was getting dark, and through the twilight he noticed Lamont traipsing around the woods. He looked back down at the chair and suddenly felt overwhelmed. What was he doing here? What was the point of all of this? It was bad enough that they were on a wild goose chase across Mainland to what, kill a king? Is that what they were doing? He was confused. He needed to sit down for a bit and clear his head.

He sat in the chair and tried to relax, tried to clear his mind by staring at the stones, trying to discern a pattern in them. He'd heard of other cultures using such stones for divination - perhaps he could just relax, look at the stones, and see if some sort of pattern might emerge...

The Island of the Turtle

How do you know when the very fabric of reality itself is breaking down? How can you possibly begin to detect it?

Lamont circled the turtle ship with a vague sense of unease. How did this thing get here, and why is it being shown to us? He watched as Elizabeth and Pierre followed the strange lizardman priest up the mound of earth that cradled the front half of the ship. As they clambered up it with enthusiasm, Lamont kept his distance, and instead chose to explore the area around the ship. There were the torches, of course, set up at regular intervals in order to illuminate the ship at night. He wondered if Theophile lit them every night, and for how long he'd been doing it. He said he'd been at it for the last 40 years, but could the lizardman be trusted?

For that matter, why hasn't anyone made more of an issue of meeting a lizardman?

Lamont shook his head and pinched his nose with his fingers. This whole thing was giving him a headache. He continued circumnavigating the mound, stepping over fallen logs and ducking under moss-covered creepers that hung between trees like spiderwebs. This whole island gave him the heebie-jeebies, and he hoped they wouldn't be here long. There were rather large mosquitoes.

"Why did you bring us here?" Pierre was climbing onto the ship behind Elizabeth. Theophile was following behind.

"It has been foretold! The line of the priests and priestesses who came before me is long! Your coming has been the subject of much hope and speculation!"

"Hope for what?" said Elizabeth, standing awkwardly on the ship's listing deck.

"Hope to save the world," Theophile hissed conspiratorially.

Time is the Fire in Which We Burn

Chris pulled the pizza out of the oven and set it on the counter to cool. He checked the mushrooms to make sure none of them had migrated across the equator. He wasn't sure of everyone's feelings towards the fungi - and after last session, he didn't want any incidents. He wondered if it was wise to be serving mushrooms today - in fact, he wondered why he chose tonight to try the Price Chopper pizza for the first time - and why mushroom? In hindsight it was odd behavior, in the very least. Had he some foresight, however, he would've ditched the pizza entirely and ran screaming out of the room... 

Everyone was still in a somber mood when Brother Flaedgate arrived. He softly begged pardon for interrupting Themuseleh's friends, but he wanted to know if anyone had dined on the mushrooms earlier in the day.

"I did," declared Old Crow. His stomach reflexively rumbled. "Why do you ask?"

Brother Flaedgate bustled up to him and looked him up and down. "Have you had any symptoms? Feel funny?" He put the back of a hand to Old Crow's cheek, his forehead. "See anything unusual?" Brother Flaedgate's rheumy eyes stared straight into eyes. "Anyone unusual?"

Old Crow paled. "Yes. A man. A mushroom man." Brother Flaedgate's hand dropped back to his side. He explained that some of the mushrooms he had been growing of late had become rather mischievous and were moving around in their garden beds in order to cause trouble. Old Crow started to laugh at just how ridiculous this sounded, before realizing that Brother Flaedgate had pretty much already known he'd seen a mushroom man without being told about it. He decided he just better listen.

"Come with me. We need to find which one you took in order to find the antidote."
"Antidote? Have I been poisoned?" There was only the slightest hint of concern in Old Crow's voice.
"Not exactly," said the monk. "Let's just say you're susceptible..."

By the time Alex had arrived, Bernie and Julia were already there and in high spirits. Puffing on her vape pen, Julia was in higher spirits than most. Chris poured Alex a beer. 

"So I may have another date with this girl I've been chatting with," Alex announced with a previously unheard-of calm. A whoop went up in the kitchen. Glasses were raised; toasts were made.

"Another girl? So soon after the last one?" Chris turned to Kaity. "Looks like our boy is growing up!" Alex blushed imperceptibly before going on with his story. He'd been Facebook chatting a girl he'd known since grade school. Things were going well. Looks like he'd be going out with the second girl in as many months. Not bad for a kid who had dropped out of the last D&D game when the game his life had gotten too chaotic.

Brother Flaedgate led Old Crow and the others down to his hut, which sat by the water on the other side of the village. He pointed to a large man-made jetty that jutted out into the lake. It was covered with plants, shrubs and mushrooms. It was also a labyrinth. The path that wove between the flora, and Old Crow took a tentative step into it. He was sure the plants reacted to his presence. He could hear a low, shrill whine. "The mushroom you ingested has an energy. It's flowing through your veins, through your body. When you reach the right group of fungi, they will respond."

Old Crow wasn't entirely sure he like the sound of that, but he turned his eyes back to the winding path ahead of him and resumed his slow, deliberate walk. As he wound his way through the first quadrant of the labyrinth, he heard things, felt things, but nothing happened.

Brother Flaedgate urged him on to the next quadrant. Things continued to be eerie, but nothing dramatic happened. Old Crow was starting to feel a low thrumming vibration through his moccasins when he stepped into the third quadrant...

The thing about DMing a game like this is that it's not the DMs job to determine events: its his job to interpret them. The dice are the medium through which this happens. The dice react to the play, and the play, in turn, reacts to the dice. Chris contemplated this as he picked up three twenties and rolled them.

11. 
1. 
11. 

Somewhere in here out there, the multiverse trembled.

Suddenly, at the center of the labyrinth, strange yellow mushrooms started to bubble and grow as if in some sort of time-lapse film. Brother Flaedgate stepped back in awe. "I don't believe this sort of thing has ever happened before," he quipped. Old Crow froze as the mass grew up, up, up out of the center and started to form a giant, sallow mushroom. By the time it stopped, the 'shroom was almost ten feet tall. A fissure opened up in the face of it. Acid-green light poured out. As the fissure widened, Old Crow cold see inside it, into a space that looked remarkably like the mushroom cave back in the catacombs. He looked back at the stunned monk, then turned and headed inside.

"OK, everybody roll a 20..." This is how Chris started every game. It used to be, back in the olden days right after college, that he would have players roll a number of 20s ahead of time so the players wouldn't know exactly what number was applied to what action. It was an attempt to keep the play flowing in a more natural way. But gamers are gamers, and they all want to feel the weight of each roll, to use their force of will to influence the die, especially at a crucial moment.

But after the last universe broke down campaign, these preliminary rolls came to be more of a weathervane - a way to open up the oracle and determine which way the wind was blowing. Chris learned that it was helpful to know beforehand if things were going to get... dicey.

Julia: "Four!"
David: "Eleven!"
Alex: "Seventeen!"
Chris, to himself: "Shit." 

A half-hour later, every last jug of maple syrup had been recovered from the cave mouth of the catacombs. Lamont and Pierre slapped each other on the back, extremely please at this fortuitous turn of events. Old Crow turned to Themuseleh and said that now was a good time to talk about the next phase of their journey. Jack Tripper was still on the loose, Lady Eris was captures and perhaps dead, and the way to Augustinian had yet to be planned. Themuseleh motioned the party to follow him back to his hut.

Once there, Old Crow, Elizabeth, Pierre and Lamont now sat around a table. The old wizard was circling the table as the group pored over the map that was unfurled upon it. Blue lines painted on parchment told of the quickest route to Augustinian.

"Water?" Old Crow was skeptical it could be so easy.

"The routes from the capital to here are well-known and well-mapped. Trade and commerce have a way of taming the wilderness in record time." He took a puff off his pipe. "You can be there in a matter of days."

"But how?" chimed in Lamont. "It's upstream the whole way. Even with statistically unlikely tailwinds, that trip takes a week at least."

Themuseleh smiled, and gave him a look.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Lamont..." He motioned everyone to follow him out of the hut. He moved quickly for a man of his age, and was soon leading an impromptu parade down a path towards the lake. Elizabeth was the first to see a flat-bottomed boat with a rectangular sail lashed to a dock. A couple young men were moving things off of it. Themuseleh had a word with them, before inviting everyone on board.

"This is it?" said Lamont incredulously. "It doesn't look like it can make its way across the lake, let alone three days upstream..."

Themuseleh shook his head and chuckled softly. "Looks can be deceiving, my friend. And in this case, I assure you its every bit intentional." He led them to the cabin that sat at the back end of the boat. Inside it were a few crates, boxes, a small desk... and a chair.

"What you see here is the latest in watercraft navigation. I call it the Spellpeller. Someone with spellcasting abilities sits in the chair, and they become the ship, in a sense. They use their magical abilities to move the ship across the water. It allows the ship to move at an impressive rate and, with multiple spellcasters, you can move this ship at such speeds for days at a time." Elizabeth smiled. This was the sort of thing that could get you places. Pierre stared at the chair with an inexplicable sense of dread. Old Crow was silent. Lamont stepped forward immediately.

"I'll drive."

By the time Chris returned with a beer and sat down, the party had pretty much decided on a course of action. Lamont (because DTA wasn't there) would sit at the Spellpeller (just in case something went horribly wrong). The rest of the party would take on the guise of humble traders, moving ever so slightly faster than average upstream. They had a full complement of arms and armor (courtesy Holden's secret armory) and all three passwords for the Warp Marble (courtesy Themuseleh), and were looking forward to the journey.

"Alright, everyone roll a 20." Chris picked up three twenties himself. Here was the moment of truth. Things had been leading up to this point for months - cracks in reality had started to develop, whether any of the players had noticed it or not. Now it was time to test the cracks and see if they could be opened any wider. 
  
Julia: "Eighteen!"
David: "Sixteen!"
Alex: "Fourteen!"

The party congratulated themselves on what was surely a propitious omen. They had weapons, a ship, the Warp Marble and a purpose. What could possibly go wrong?

Chris rolled the three twenties.


 

All smiles disappeared. The game was up. Things were about to get weird.

Elizabeth was the first to spot the man in a long cowl standing on the shore of an island in the middle of the river. They had been traveling upstream for a couple hours without incident, and she was beginning to get bored. But the sight of a man beckoning to them perked her up a bit. She pointed him out to Old Crow. They decided to check him out.

"Welcome, travelers!" the man called out. "I have been waiting for you for quite some time!" As Lamont steered the boat to shore, they could see a long, gray-green snout sticking out from the cowl. It looked.... reptilian. Still, the creature's manner exuded calm. He greeted them one by one and seemed to be familiar with each one of them. He was carrying a carven staff, and he leaned on it with every step as he led them into the woods that covered the island.

"Yes, many years, MANY years!" Pierre had asked how long he'd been waiting for them. "I was trained by my mother, the last Watcher-on-the-Isle. She described you to me for the first time thirty years ago, on this very night." The party looked at each other with increasing skepticism. It would seem they'd found a loon.

He led them down a path towards some lights that were coming from a clearing up ahead. A ring of torches circled a giant mound of some sort. They could see a pile of earth, looming up over their heads, and in the middle of it...

A ship.

A turtle ship.

Half buried in the clearing.

"Oh my! What a cool ship! I wonder how it got here? Want to explore it? Guys? GUYS?"

Pierre, Old Crow and Lamont stood very still. They stared at the ship in existential awe. None of them had any idea why they were rooted to the spot, frozen for a moment, frozen out of time. But the moment soon passed, and the sound of Elizabeth's trailed off as she turned to them. She looked from one pair of eyes to another, concern clouding her face.

"Are you three alright? You all look as if you'd seen a ghost!"

The three of them turned to one another, and recognizing their own looks on the others' faces, looked back silently towards the ship.

"Perhaps we have," said Old Crow.

Somewhere in the Universe...

Balance is the ruling force of the Universe.

Until it isn't.

Then it is nothing more than a hope, a dream for those looking, wandering, seeking, searching for meaning in the darkest of times.

[Odin:] On a hot summer night, 

would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?

[Girl:] Will he offer me his mouth?

[Odin:] Yes.

[Girl:] Will he offer me his teeth?

[Odin:] Yes.

[Girl:] Will he offer me his jaws?

[Odin:] Yes.

[Girl:] Will he offer me his hunger?

[Odin:] Yes.

[Girl:] Again, will he offer me his hunger?

[Odin:] Yes!

[Girl:] And will he starve without me?

[Odin:] Yes!

[Girl:] And does he love me?

[Odin:] I would not go that far.

[Girl:] Oh.

[Odin:] On a hot summer night, 

would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?

[Girl:] Yes.

[Odin:] I bet you say that to all the gods!

On Holden Pond

Themuseleh pulled some chairs and a couple stools out of his blue hut and motioned to the party. "Sit! You must be tired. I'm having a fire built and some food brought round. Chicken, fish, or vegetables?" Lamont plopped down in the lowest, widest chair on offer, pulled his cap down over his eyes and almost immediately started to snore.

"I'll have the fish," smiled Elizabeth, as she eagerly watched the villagers bring tables, food and drink. She noted that while some were Chinan and some were, like her, British, most of the younger people looked... mixed. She wondered how long this sort of thing has been going on.

"I'll have the chicken," said Pierre. A cute redhead handed him a plate and a tankard of ale. She smiled not-so-demurely. He was made to think that he'd spent the entire summer chasing beaver through the lower reaches of Norgallia, and now just might have a chance at catching one.

"I'll have the mushrooms," said Old Crow. A Chinan woman handed him a plate, and he dug into them with gusto. They must have one heck of a garden, he noted as he nibbled on the fungi array. He had just swallowed one of the more tasty specimens of Cantharellus cibarius he'd ever had when something caught his eye. Tho kids were chasing a puppy down the wide dirt path that led to Themuseleh's hut. They were giggling and scampering after the mutt, and as it ducked between two huts, the kids squealed and followed. That's when Old Crow saw him.

At first he thought it was a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat, but after a second he saw that it was a Mushroom Man.

The Mushroom Man stood partly camouflaged against the weathered wood of the hut, and a pair of doleful eyes stared out from under his cap, and right at Old Crow. He stopped chewing reflexively, at first wondering if he was committing some sort of crime. He looked down at his plate, instinctively looking to see if any of the species matched the man. Spotting none, he looked back up to see the man was now standing in the middle of the path, a mere ten feet away. His eyes were yellowed and rheumy, and Old Crow suddenly heard a voice in his head, a voice damp and whispering, like a musty old log...

"I am the seven and the nine. I am the ace in the hole. Look for me tomorrow night."

Old Crow blinked, and the Mushroom Man was gone. He looked down at his plate, and setting it down on a wood stump, took a seat and tried to wash away the memory of him with a sip of ale. It didn't work.

Themuseleh made his way over to where he, Pierre and Lamont were sitting. He had a concerned look on his face. He crouched down and whispered to them in a low voice.

"I've just gotten word that three soldiers have entered town," he said, obviously worried. "They're from the local garrison in Elsinore and are asking questions." He gestured them all to get up and draw back between the two huts. "They're looking for their missing captain and are doing a hut-to-hut search."

"Is this in and of itself a bad thing?" asked Old Crow.

"Potentially," he replied. "We have a couple ventures going on in and around Holden. We're currently breeding horses by magical means. We've discovered a way to get a mare to foal twice in one year. We now have almost 4,000 head tucked away here and there across the valley." Old Crow raised an eyebrow. "We also have an armory hidden within the village. We're a local hub for the Maineland resistance. We can't let them find out what we have going on here."

"SO WE STRING THEM UP THEN?" Lamont being Lamont.

"If three soldiers disappear, thirty will turn up looking for them," Themuseleh scolded. He looked past Lamont's ear to see Elizabeth, who appeared to be having difficulty with her fish. Her hands were clutching at her throat. Her face was a peculiar shade of mauve. As she started to slump to the ground, Old Crow caught her and not-so-gently slapped her on the back. A piece of fish dislodged itself from her throat and she coughed and hacked herself back to life.

"The log," she mumbled wetly. "I jumped the log. Mostly."

Old Crow helped her back up to her chair, and as he did, he looked up. Three soldiers on horseback were making their way down the path, door by door.

"Where is the armory?" asked Pierre.

"Its in one of the middle huts. I'm having Foxtail take them the long way round, until we can come up with a plan."

"I have one." Elizabeth was standing up now, backing up between the two huts. She was chanting in a low whisper, and while everybody watched, her features blurred for a second, then morphed into those of a mostly naked man. Pierre was the first to recognize him. It was the captain from the sacrificial table on Spooky Mountain.

"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIIIIIIVE!" he screamed as he leapt forth to where the soldiers could see him. One of them froze mid-knock at the door of a hut. "Captain!" With glee he started towards the transformed Elizabeth, but she chose that moment to dart madly down the path that led towards the lake. "Wait! Captain! We're here for you!" The three soldiers immediately leapt upon their horses and followed the path as it headed towards the lake and out of town. Themuseleh looked after the soldiers in awe.

"I hope she's thought of what she's going to do next."

"I'll go see if I can find out." Pierre headed down the path after them. He had just disappeared around the bend when there was a scream.

Everything was as if in a dream. Old Crow looked around the cabin. There were signs of a struggle. A lantern tipped over. Books on the floor. A black cat cowering in the corner. Tarot cards lay everywhere around a small, overturned table. They were all face down - all except one. One card lay face up in the pale, lifeless hand of a woman - presumably the resident of this particular hut. Old Crow knew she wouldn't be making any more readings in here, however. From what he could tell, she'd been ripped open from hips to neck. Her heart had been removed. Old Crow kneeled down to look at the card. As he reached out and touched it, everything shimmered and he was suddenly somewhere else, far, far away. An old man wearing a golden circlet was leaning over a bed, struggling with something or someone. A foot kicked out and hit the old man's arm, and a cry rang out from his victim. The old man pounced back down onto the bed, choking out the cry. Old Crow tried to move, tried to cry out himself in order to help. He barely managed a croak, but it was enough to make the man turn and face him. A wrinkled, papery face plastered with rage stared right at him. His hands were around the throat of a young, blonde girl. Spittle escaped her bluing lips. 

And then he was back. Standing there amidst the chaos in the hut, people were chattering wildly, some people were crying. Old Crow heard Lamont swear under his breath, heard the word "Jack." He noticed something in his hand. He looked down and saw he'd somehow managed to stand up with the card from the poor woman's hand. He flipped it over, and when he saw the painstakingly hand-painted artwork on the face, he couldn't help but shudder at not only what was lost, but at what was still yet to come.

With Mars as its ruling planet, the Tower is a card about war, a war between the structures of lies and the lightning flash of truth. This is a card about anything we believe to be true, but later learn is false. This realization usually comes as a shock, hence, the violent image.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                

You Gotta Know When to Holden

The Thing swung its arm in a huge arc, swatting the two tiny figures off the rock and to their deaths. There was no emotion to the act, no regret. The Thing was not technically alive. Instead, you could say it was *made of life*, thousands of tiny, armored insects, bound together by the most ancient of magics. They moved as one, thought as one, killed as one. 

And Eris was controlling them all.

Her eyes were glazed over in a thousand yard stare as she directed The Thing this way then that, stomping, swatting, killing. It wasn't before long that the last of the Abenaki Boys lay broken and bleeding of the rocks of Spooky Hill. And when that moment arrived, Eris raised her bony hand out in front of her, made a fist, and then threw her hand, fingers out, at the Thing where it stood. 

It collapsed in a cascade of blood and chitin.

Old Crow crept quietly back to the stone room where Pierre was snoring and Elizabeth had just dosed herself with a sleep spell. He made sure they were both quiet, then hunkered down in the doorway to close his eyes and think. The thing that Eris had conjured didn't surprise him much - he'd seen some things - but it worried him something fierce. How did she do that? he found himself asking. He remembered her reaching into the earth to pull up the strange tree roots... And what was it that Jack had said about this hilltop being hidden?

Bone charm.

That's what he'd said. A magical ward keeping this hilltop hidden from prying eyes... And Eris had undone it in a snap with her... bony... hand. Old Crow jumped up with a start, checked on his two sleeping patients, then headed out into the pre-dawn gloom. He had a couple questions. He was hoping Eris had some answers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lamont sat on top of a blood-soaked rock, Jacques curled up in his lap. He held the warp marble in his hand and concentrated on it, trying to get an inkling of what the password was.

"Arquebus!" Nothing.
"Aquamarine!" Silence.
"Antiquarian!" The marble remained inert. Lamont went on like this for some time, much to Jacques' annoyance. It had been a busy night, what with the maiming and killing and helping Lamont decorate the hilltop with the heads and bodies of his enemies. Jacques had more than done his part and now, as the rosy fingers of dawn crept through the trees, he really just wanted to sleep.

"Aubergine!" Lamont took this last failure as a personal affront, and gave up. He looked up for what felt like the first time in hours. He too noticed the shy lightening, and slowly moving Jacque to his bedroll, stood up and stretched.

He made his way off the rock and onto the ground, and immediately began scanning the ground all around the hilltop. He moved through the patches of burnt forest, plunged into the woods for a few minutes, and emerged halfway around the hill. He was getting more and more animated in his movements, until he distractedly ran headlong into Old Crow.

"Ah, good morning, Crow. Sleep well?"
"Not at all. I've been talking to Eris and-"
"Do you remember that Jack guy? The one who escaped?"
"Well, uh, yes. Yes I do..."
"Well, have you seen any trace of him? I'm buggered if I can find so much as a bent blade of grass."
"Really? That's strange, but as I was saying, I was just-"
"I mean, I've been tracking my way around these parts for nearly thirty years, and I've never met a man I couldn't track."

Old Crow looked Lamont in the eye. Yes, he had the look of someone who had spent the best years of their life outdoors and in the company of sheep.

"Interesting," said Old Crow. "Let me help you look around. Maybe together we can find som-"

(SCREAMS)

Elizabeth sat straight up, covered in sweat. Her throat was raw from that scream, but quite frankly she was just glad it was intact. She'd just had her still-beating heart ripped from her body by Jack, and was still recovering from the jumbled mass of sensations and emotions. She remembered the sensation of the knife piercing her skin. She could feel the pop. pop, pop of the blade slicing through her ribs. And she could still feel the cold, rough fingers encircling her heart. 

What came next would never, ever be forgotten.

Old Crow and Lamont burst into the room, the looks on their faces revealing that they'd feared the worst. Pierre rolled over, opened his eyes slowly and said "Bonjour, Elizabeth." Elizabeth barely restrained the urge to kick his teeth in. She took a deep breath. She was now fully awake.

"What happened?" Old Crow asked empathetically.
"I dreamt that Jack ripped me open with a knife," replied Elizabeth breathlessly.
"Well, at least he seems to have escaped without a trace!" Lamont added not helpfully.

All heads turned to Lamont. "Yeah, it's kind of weird. No idea which way he went. But I have an idea..."

Everyone but Eris followed Lamont out of the room and into a clearing. Eris was already there, staring halfheartedly at the ground. Elizabeth went up to her. "Sweetie, you ok?" Eris looked down at her skeletal hand. "Naw, girl. I'm pretty fuckin' far from ok." She made a fist and orange light showed through her fingers. Elizabeth took one step back, and gulped.

"So I'm going to cast a spell. It should help me find one of the last thoughts Jack had on this hilltop. Maybe from there we can find out where he's gone to." Lamont stood back and closed his eyes. He muttered some words underneath his breath and started to rub his palms together. He stood silently, eyes closed for a minute.

Suddenly, his eyes shot open. "LOOK!" He pointed off to his left, and the party turned to see a little black roiling cloud of blackness, about the size of a fist, bobbing in the still air where the path entered the woods. Lamont hastened towards it, and as it did, it accelerated down the path and into the shadow of the trees. With a whoop, Lamont took off at a full run, and disappeared into the woods.

Old Crow looked at the others. "I guess we better follow him. No telling what he could get himself into." They all nodded in agreement and took off after him.

They had just entered the woods when Pierre noticed movement on the path. He drew his bow and aimed it at a large, dark mass that was undulating in the middle of the path.

"It... looks like a giant spider," Pierre whispered. The thing was about four feet wide, covered in black hair, and had at least four awkward legs jutting off at weird angles. The thing gibbered. The thing hooted. Jacques shimmied up a tree and out onto a branch above the malevolent horror. Pierre tensed as Jacque jumped on top of it. It screamed. It screamed "JACQUES GODS DAMN IT GET OFF!!!!"

Puzzled (and a little disappointed), Jacques hopped of and turned in awe to see Lamont's head sticking out of the damp, furry mass. Everyone gasped and backed up a step. Lamont struggled a bit inside the thing, but with a wet rip managed to loosen what was recognized as the dead llama skin and extract himself. He was covered in gore.

"What. The. Hell?" asked Pierre.

"Well, I found one of Jack's last thoughts. And it wasn't a good one. He's very angry and very bent on getting back at us."

"What makes you say that?" asked Elizabeth.

"I'll kill them! I'll kill them all! I SHALL HAVE MY REVENGE!" Everyone started at Lamont's very convincing impersonation of a maniacal killer. Mouths dropped open and people stood aghast.

"We better get going. If he's heading to the town of Holden, the less head start he has the better."

So the party packed up their things and headed down the other side of the mountain to the town of Holden. It was a quaint, hutty place of about five hundred people. Maplefellers and Chinans were equally represented. And eventually the party found Themuseleh, the town's kindly wizard. He invited them into his blue hut and sat them down for refreshment and council.

The Battle of Spooky Mountain

Eris found it hard to concentrate on the toad, what with it being fake and all. And the rustling,
rustling,,,

Rustling.

They were on the march.

Thousands of them, all marching as one, thinking as one, creeping and crawling across the ground as one...

Eating as one. 



They were hungry.



Something had changed in her since she plunged her hand, her bony hand, into the soil of Spooky Mountain. She had reached into it and found...

Bones.

Things were different now... distant now... fading away into the night like the screams.


Elizabeth screamed as the arrow pierced her chest. She'd relied on her decolletage for most of her adult life, and it had served her well. It just wasn't arrow-proof. She fell backwards onto the ground in between the massive stones of Spooky Mountain. Silhouetted against the sky she saw the outlines of two Abenaki Boys. They whooped in triumph. But even as Old Crow showed up to drag her to safety, Elizabeth had a flash of insight: those two bastards would soon be dead.

Curious, she thought as Old Crow propped her up against a wall. It's like I can see the sand running out of their lives. Screams and cursing rang out in the night air. The battle was on.

Lamont was a man of strange quirks. Sure, he could make perfect rice every time - but did you also know he also slept with a fake gold doubloon in his right boot? That he silently prayed to the earthworm god? That he didn't believe in the moon?

But by far, Lamont Cranston's biggest quirk was the ability to pull himself together in battle. The road from Port Harbor to the Nine Hundred Islands was littered with the bodies of both men and sheep who had taken his soft, addled demeanor for something other than hardened battle-rage. And now that the Abenaki Boys had offered a statement of intent, he became focused like an axe blade slicing through the air on its way to a mad king's neck.

Lamont heard the screams and flipped into Beast Mode. Looking up at two of them, he used his whip to topple one with an axe on the other. Scrambling to the top of the rock, he and Jacques then used their position to advantage, and rained death and a grade 2 meniscus tear down upon two others. Stab, stab. Slice, slice. He whistled to Jacques who was busy degristling one of the Boy's throats when he heard the buzzing. The dark night got a bit darker. The air grew still.

Pierre would not look back on Spooky Mountain as one of his finer moments. He'd accidentally killed a llama named Zubeneschamali. He'd been freaked out by what turned out to be a fake giant toad. And now he had about a dozen angry Chinans surrounding his position on a strange, dark hilltop. If he made it out of this alive, 
he swore, he was going to overhaul this group's tactical planning. 

Pierre looked up just in time to see the arrow fly. He had been circling around between two of the hill's larger rock formations when he came upon two of the Abenaki boys, expertly placed on the top of a rock wall. One had taken aim and fired, and only by the dint of him being really jumpy to begin with did Pierre manage to duck before being killed.

Close shaves always irritated Pierre.

Without a thought - be it selfless or mindless - Pierre charged down the space between the rocks at the two assailants. Before the second one could fire, he unloaded a full complement of throwing knives at them. In his mind's eye, he saw all four knives hitting home, maiming, dislodging and perhaps even killing the Boys in a hail of tempered steel and spite.

Come to find out, his mind's eye had a severe astigmatism.

Gnawbones was relatively new to the Abenaki Boys. Being the fifth son of his father meant his place in his native tribe was one of marginal humiliation. I life spent scraping hides and tending the elderly didn't suit him - he wanted the thrill of battle and the excitement of being part of something. The Boys, when they came through his region, offered just that. Rape, pillage, and more rape - all in the service of chasing the white man off of the lands of his ancestors. The fact that the Boys were led by an Englishman didn't phase him. Jack T. Ripper hated the English as much as he did, or so he said. Gnawbones was just happy to experience the thrill of battle for a valid cause. 

They were in such a battle now. The Boys had captured the captain of the local garrison, and something had gone wrong with his interrogation. Interlopers had shown up, and now they were being dealt with. The boys had them outnumbered and outpositioned, and Gnawbones was assigned to support Hawkclaw and Ravages Goats in the assault. 

He looked up to where they were now, standing atop a jut of rock, firing arrows down at the enemy. He had two bows and about thirty arrows at the ready, and was poised to run them up the slope of rock the second they needed him. He heard screams ring out from the other side of the rock, and smiled knowing the arrows were finding their mark.

Suddenly, a CLANG! rang out as a metal object fell from the sky onto the rock slope right in front of him. As it BLINGed and KRANGed its way down towards him, another, and then a third object came out of nowhere to clatter and twang their way towards him. 

Less concerned about what they were and more concerned about wether there were more of them, Gnawbones looked up into the night sky and there, tumbling towards him against the glittering firmament was a fourth object. It glittered and gleamed with occasional reflected light. As it got closer, he found himself transfixed by its weird beauty. Silvery, seductive, the thing whirred as it neared, heading straight for his face.

"Oh, it's a KNIF-"

Preview to the Battle of Spooky Mountain

A man emerged from the gaping hole in the side of the giant toad. He was cursing under and over his breath with a Cockney accent. As he freed himself from the creature, his bowler hat fell from his head. Old Crow moved to pick it up for him, but the man snatched it up quickly before he could touch it.
"Who in the bloody 'ell are you?" he asked, accusatorially. In the moonlight Old Crow could make out a man of below-average height, round features, and a mustache perched perilously on his upper lip. "And what the bloody 'ell are ye doon up 'ere in the middle o' the night?"

Old Crow looked calmly back at the man chained to the rock table, then back at Mr. Bowler.

"We could ask the same of you."

Pierre and Lamont stepped up behind Old Crow in a show of, if not force, vague moral solidarity. Pierre rested his hand on the hilt of his short sword. Lamont picked his teeth with his trident and said "ITS NOT GIANT TOAD SEASON YET WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO FOOL WITH THIS CONTRAPTION?" The man in the bowler winced, and the man on the table woke up and started to moan piteously. Mr. Bowler looked past Lamont at the man and scowled.

"Ow would ye look at that? Now ye've gone an' ruined th' 'ole thing! We'll never get 'im t'talk now." By now two more men had emerged from the toad, carrying the lamps that had lit the creature's eyes. Elizabeth noted that they were both Chinans. She turned to Eris and tried to catch her eye, but Eris looked distant, like she was listening to a faraway tune.

"We're up 'ere on official business! This 'ere scunner's a British officer! We're tryna get a lit'le information out of 'em." As one, the entire party looked from the now deflated toad carcass, to the moaning man chained to the sacrificial table, and then back to the man in the bowler hat.

"Maybe you should start from the beginning," said Old Crow.

"Well," said the man, now distractedly looking about the treeline, "my name is Jack. Jack Tripper. I'm an..." he turned his face up to look at Old Crow, "an entrepreneur."

"Parlez vous Français?" said Pierre. His heart fluttered a bit to hear his native tongue.

"Nein," replied Jack. Pierre's crest fell.

"AN ENTREPRENEUR? SO WHAT ENTERPRISE DO WE HAVE HERE, MAY I ASK?" Lamont was growing skeptical. He was still annoyed by the lack of seasonal verisimilitude with the whole toad thing.

"Well, you see," continued Jack, "me and my men b'long to a cap't'list ventcha round here wot takes a vested innerest in local politics." He took off his bowler and clutched it protectively to his chest. "You see, we get involved when it suits us, as you'd say, economically. And this scunner 'ere," he pointed his hat to the man on the table, "has vital inf'mation on the whereabouts of a cert'n shipment of a cert'n cargo, contained inside a cert'n wagon. And we are desirous of ascertaining its whereabouts."

Lamont looked at Old Crow, who looked at Pierre, who looked at Elizabeth. Triple play.

"WAGON, YOU SAY?"

Jack started at Lamont's voice, winced a little, and continued. "This 'ere bastard is the cap'n of the local garrison over in Elsinore. We were tryin' t'get tit out of 'im when you lot interrupted."

Pierre leaned in over the little man. He bristled a bit to make his presence feel a little more... present.
"And just how were you planning to use the giant frog?" Jack didn't look at all intimidated. In fact, Elizabeth, who had always considered herself a good judge of character, thought this little man had probably never been intimidated in his life.

"Well," Jack started with some hesitance, "we employ... methods." Jack looked over his shoulder conspiratorially before turning back to the party. Elizabeth thought he was scanning the woods. "You see, we give the bastard some of what the locals call Bonker's Tea. Then we start fillin' 'im up with how, if he don't tell us where this wagon is, we're gonna feed him t' the Wampsville Toad." Pierre shuddered at the mention of the tea. He had a feeling he'd had a cup of the very same pot. "Now, what with him bein' British, 'e don' exactly know the stories, the legends of th' thing. But oh boy do we tell 'im. By the time he's heard the one about the "Helpless Triplets", 'e's just near to wiggin' out! That's when we strap him down an' inform 'im of 'is fate."

"That seems unnecessarily cruel," Old Crow said, rubbing his chin. "You assault his body and his mind. Why not pick just one?" Jack popped the bowler back onto his greasy head. "Just in case one of 'em don't work."

Pierre looked back to the Elizabeth and caught her eye. She read his thoughts, then turned her mind to that of Rick. She waited for Pierre to distract him with a question before trying to jump into his mind and find out what he was really about.

"So was if I was to say we knew about this wagon?" Pierre offered. Jack's head snapped around to face him. His mouth turned into a sneer.

"What you mean? You know what about what?" Jack turned to Pierre with eyes wide. His face visibly darkened. Elizabeth probed, trying to get past that hat and into what passed for his psyche.

"Oh, we've seen a wagon..." Pierre trailed off, trying to draw him in so he wouldn't notice Elizabeth sneaking in the back door. "About 15 feet long? Covered? Full of crates?" Jack started to crumple the hat as he held it, his knuckles whitening with mounting fury.

"WHERE IZZIT? WHER'D YOU SEE THIS WAGON? YOU KNOW WHERE IT IS? TELL ME!"

It was at that moment his mind popped open to Elizabeth like a ripe fruit. she slid in slowly, tenderly so as not to arouse suspicion. but what she saw there made her forget all fear of being discovered. The blood. Splattered everywhere, in patterns that would make Rorshach weep. There were bodies, girls mostly, laid open like blooming roses...

Elizabeth snapped back to reality. Jack was up in Pierre's face, threatening him with in a way that showed he always backed up his threats. She waved her hands to catch Pierre's attention, before slipping into his mind to deliver four short words: "Take him down, NOW!"

Pierre acted at once, and hauled off and punched Jack right through the hat he was holding. The blow landed in his throat, and buckled him to the ground. Pierre drew his short sword and quickly knocked him out with the pommel. Elizabeth heard cries come from the dark woods surrounding them. One, two, three Chinans stepped out of the trees and made their way to the scene, bows and swords drawn, until at least a dozen of them drew closer and started to surround them.

"Eris?" Elizabeth whispered. She turned, but Eris was gone. "Damn!"  It was too dark to handle what was looking to escalate into a terrible situation. She thought a second, collected herself, then held up her sheep's head on a stick.

"IGNIS OVIUM!"

Suddenly, the sheep's head ignited with an octarine fire. It's dead, mad eyes lolled at disturbing angles as it lit up the surrounding area. The Chinans froze, looks of horror on their painted faces. A few dropped their weapons and turned tail and ran. The cooler, more level-headed ones held onto their weapons as they fled. While the Abenaki Boys maintained a certain level of loyalty to Jack, that loyalty obviously came to an end as soon as sheep magic got involved.

Lamont looked around at the scene. Flaming sheep, scattered enemies, and Pierre looting an unconscious body...

All great omens for what was about to happen next.

On Top of Spooky Mountain

Pierre hit hard enough it brought both stars and tears to his eyes. He felt like he'd hit rock, fur, then rock again, all in the space of about three seconds. When he rolled to his right, hit yet more rock, then stopped, he felt grateful for about two seconds before he realized he'd probably just killed one of Elizabeth's llamas. He got up as quickly as he could under the circumstances, and tried to assess the situation. He was in a rectangular hole in the ground - deep enough to look like the cellar of a long-gone hut or cabin. In this cellalular depression was the recently-expired remains of a llama. Pierre could hear the trickle of blood from where it was bleeding out, most likely from a poorly-timed blow to its throat from above, most likely a falling body.

This was not going well.

Luckily for him, another scream pierced the night air.

Standing alone, in a dark pit with the corpse of a llama he'd just, through extreme bad luck and a dash of negligence, killed, Pierre let the sound of the scream wash over him and through him and away down the hill. He'd had an inkling of a doubt that it had been a good idea to come up this way alone. Now he knew it for a fact.

Yet, somehow, his only solution was to pick himself up and out of the pit and make his way, slowly but surly. towards the spot where the screams had come from.

"Sacre vert," he muttered to himself, and trudged on up the hill to his doom.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Old Crow went through all the local insects he'd come across in his travels throughout the Pumpkin King's lands. There'd been flies and mosquitoes, gnats and nymphs, the occasional bee, wasp and hornet, yes. Fleas, flies, moths. Centipedes, millipedes, and that once, in the caves under Ziggurath, a billipede. He shuddered at the memory.

Then he remembered what he'd just seen on the path. He shuddered some more.

What were a million dung beetles doing on the march? Where were they going? Why? Old Crow didn't like the fact that he had to ask these questions. He was pretty sure he wasn't going to like the answers, either.

The party found the other fork in the path and took it. It did indeed head straight up the hill. They were oddly silent as they made their way through the occasional patches of moonlight that filtered down through the trees. The droning sound of a million dung beetles on the march was a sound that unnerved and unsettled even the heartiest adventurer. The occasional scream piercing the night air only added to the tension.

Old Crow stopped suddenly and held up his hand, signalling the others to do likewise. Up ahead, a low, dark shape blocked the path ahead. It looked roughly llama-sized, and it lay at the edge of the last copse of trees before what appeared to be the hill's summit. The shape moved, undulated in silence. Had the llama found something? Or had something found it? The group tiptoed in tense unison to find out.

Pierre pulled himself out of the ancient basement with a groan. He had a fat lip, a sprained wrist, and very possibly a couple cracked ribs. He'd felt better, but now he found himself glad it hadn't turned out worse. He felt bad for the llama, of course, but as he turned to look down at the poor creature's corpse, he had no qualms whatsoever about being the one to emerge from the dark pit alive. When it came to 'him or me' situations, Pierre was firmly in the 'me' camp. He looked around. The hilltop was visible in the moonlight. All around it, scattered like a dropped bag of dice, large rocks, boulders and slabs of granite lay; as he began to make his way higher up the hill he could see some of the stones had been arranged, placed there with some (he assumed, naturally) infernal purpose. He picked his way carefully around and sometimes over them. Making certain not to fall in any more pits. As he picked his way between to particularly large slabs of rock, another scream pierced the gray nightscape. It sounded only a few yards away. Pierre froze in terror, and tried his hardest to wet himself as silently as possible.

Old Crow approached the dark figure cautiously. It did indeed appear to be a llama, but if it was, it was a horizontal llama - not the vertical kind he'd expected to find up here. He could see its fur moving with a kind of rhythmic undulation, a peristaltic motion heretofore unseen in the species. But as he drew closer, he heard the low, chittering sound of a horde of insects on the move. He motioned for another match, and as Lamont lit it, Lady Eris gave out a shriek of disgust. A black, flowing river of dung beetles was flowing up and out of the underbrush and into the open mouth of the dead llama. Its body quivered and moved unnaturally as the creatures wriggled their way inside the poor thing, moving about in an unnatural mass before exiting the carcass through the servant's entrance in the rear. The river of chitinous fiends then continued uphill, quieter, contented, until they disappeared in a fissure that split a large rock formation in two.

"Nope," whispered Eris.
"Nope, nope," uttered Elizabeth.
"AH, THE LIVELY ECOSYSTEM OF THIS HILL. HOW QUAINT," intoned Lamont.
Old Crow remained silent. There just didn't seem to be much to be said. The four of them moved carefully past the dead llama and broke out of the last of the trees to the top of the hill. Another scream rang out in the night. It sounded about fifty feet away, just over there past the figure crouched behind a rock.

"Pierre?"
(muffled scream)
"Is that you, Crow?"
"Yes! You made it up here unharmed!"
"Well, I wouldn't say that, exactly..."

There was another scream, and then some whimpering. Weapons drawn, the five of them rounded the last boulder between them and the sound. They were rather surprised to find the pale figure of man, stripped to the waist, chained to a large slab of rock that looked like a sacrificial table.

The man on it had obviously been gnawing on his own limbs, trying to escape. There was blood everywhere, and he looked barely alive. Only the slight heaving of his chest gave any clue that he wasn't a corpse. As everyone looked on in horror, the man sat bolt upright, and gestured madly towards the woods off to their right.

"IT COMES!" he screamed, pointing a manacled hand. A great croaking sound came from the dark wood; there was a sound like the cracking of branches, the rustling of leaves... Two trees parted, and emerging from the woods, to everyone's surprise...

A giant toad.

The man on the table screamed in terror before passing out cold. Old Crow eyed the toad with a great deal of suspicion.


It was not giant toad season in these parts.

The Ascent of Spooky Mountain

Somewhere in the valley west of Spooky Mountain, a simple alpaca farmer named Milo was bedding down his herd. He'd spent years saving up coppers working as a dung wrangler, mucking up other people's stalls and hauling away the dung for profit. It was barely profitable, but he was a hard worker, and his tenacity with dung had, in the long run, paid off. He'd managed to scrape together enough to buy five fairly healthy llamas, and was getting them ready for the coming winter. He'd fattened them up on the plentiful apples that grew in the valley, and he'd taken care to ensure their long coats were clean(ish) and relatively free from snags and mats. He'd named them all after stars in the sky, with Ayleth (the fat one) being named after a red supergiant, was the matriarch of the little troupe. Veyza, named after the white dwarf in the constellation Crabwalk Major, had a disposition to match. Little Vega, ironically named after the yellow supergiant of the same name, would often be found staring for hours at a fencepost, seemingly lost in thought. It was only after observing her do this a coiuple times that Milo soon came to realize she'd just forgotten where she was going. Finally the twins, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali (binary stars) were the runts of the litter and served as a reminder to Milo that giving llamas very long and cutesy names was probably not a good idea.

A scream slid down the mountain like an apocalyptic toboggan. It hit anxious ears and jangled nerves and froze the party in its tracks.

"What the hell was that?" asked Pierre.
"What should we do?" asked Elizabeth.
"Is there any other way around this hill?" asked Lady Eris.
"WOULD ANYONE LIKE SOME RICE?" asked Lamont.

Old Crow looked up the hill with the typical air of Chinan calm, mixed with the barely-contained panic of his whiter ancestors. "Let's think about this," he offered. "Surely we can come up with a plan to investigate cautiously while still making headway towards the valley on the other side.

"I'm going to summon some monsters!" squeaked Elizabeth. She started muttering under her breath and making the hand gestures the old gypsy woman had taught her. Everyone else took two steps back.

Milo made his way out to the barn under the light of the full moon. Something had been disturbing his little flock, as strained braaas and braaaps had been coming from there for the past ten minutes. The sharp smell of ozone cut through his nostrils, which was a rare treat - years of working in the dung business had pretty much killed off his sense of smell. Turns out it had been a blessing, as llamas were one of the gods' more pungent creations. Still, he wondered where the strange smell  was coming from as he approached the barn door. 

He opened it, and immediately had to shield his eyes from the dazzling rainbow hues that were emanating from the twins' stall. Effervescent blues, sparkling pinks, and ebullient yellows bounced off the roof beams and glistened. Milo stood mutely admiring the impressive display. Then, as soon as it had started, the rainbow display stopped, and Milo stood for a dozen heartbeats with his eyes clamped shut, waiting for his night vision to return. 

When it did, Milo crept forward cautiously and peered over the stall wall and into the space where the twins should have been. But they were gone, and only the now-familiar smell of ozone and fresh dung told him that they were ever there to begin with.

"Not again," he sighed.

Elizabeth stood back and tried to admire her handiwork, She'd never cast Monster Summoning I before, and wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but she was pretty sure three llamas were on the 'disappointing' end of the spectrum.

"INTERESTING," chimed Lamont. "I'M SURE WHATEVER LIES AT THE TOP OF YON HILL WILL NOT EXPECT LLAMAS." Elizabeth tried not to seethe at the comment, but she seethed a little anyway. She became determined to make it work.

"Llamas!" she hissed as loud as she dared. They turned to face her. The two on the right did so with an air of amiable stupidity. The one on the left, however, the black one, assessed her with the cold, hard stare of a llama that had done some serious time.

"I want you three to head up that hill and check things out. Get the llay of the lland," the others chuckled. She continued on, unperturbed. "Go up there and have a llook around." Snickers. "If you see anything dangerous, I want you to attack. Understand?" Two of the llamas snuffled and turned, and started to make their way slowly up the hill. The black one, however, kept its gaze fixed on Elizabeth. She started to open her mouth to berate the unmoving llama. "Llisten here, you..."

"I aM nOt LlIkE tHe OtHeRs. I aM tHe DeAtH oF lLaMaS. i Am HeRe To TaKe ThEm HoMe AfTeR tHeY pErIsH. nOw Is ThEiR TiMe."

Elizabeth regarded the black llama for some time, willing her mind to not only make sense of the exchange, but to come up with a witty response as well.

"You're welcome," was her two word reply.

The Death of Llamas turned and started slowly, silently up the hill. Everyone turned mutely towards Elizabeth in expectation of an explanation. None was forthcoming.

"So, Old Crow," she spoke with an air of considerable distraction. "You were saying there was a reasonable path forward?"

"Well, I don't know about reasonable," this old half-breed stroked his chin with a gleam in his eye. "But I do no we got to get a move on while the moon is high." The others agreed reluctantly, the memory of that mysterious scream still at the forefront of their minds.

"I don mind going up after ze llamas," said Pierre in his French-Northgallian accent. "If you vant to take ze others around ze long way, I'll meet you on ze other side." Old Crow nodded, bade him good luck, and led the others on a path around the hill to the north.

Pierre made his way up the hill. It was a good hill, containing occasional cover, a decent incline, and a growing number of rocky outcroppings to make things interesting. He was noting how unusually good the footing was (considering he was climbing uphill in the dark) when he heard another scream. Not the same as the previous scream - shorter, higher-pitched and shrill. But the fact that it seemed to be a completely different scream only served to unnerve him. What ze hell is going on up here? he wondered to himself. And why in ze hell am I up here all alone? He stopped to contemplate this. He's allowed a party of four to take the safe way around the hill, while foolishly coming straight up the side of the hill on his own. Was he mad? What had he been thinking? He had half a mind to turn around and head back down towards where he had last seen the others. But before he could seriously consider that action, he took another one.

He fell into pit.

Old Crow thanked his luck. He and Lamont had made out a little path that seemed to circumnavigate the hill and the four of them were now making good time. In single file they crept, ignoring the occasional scream or shriek from the darkness above them. They moved silently (relatively) and quickly (for this lot) until they came to a fork in the path. From what Lamont could tell, the left turn headed up the hill, while the right hand path seemed to continue more or less around the way they had originally been heading. Old Crow took a poll to see which path everyone preferred to take.'

"The right one," came three replies in unison.

Old Crow took only a couple dozen steps on the right hand path before a strange crunching noise cropped up after each one of his careful footfalls. He called a quick halt, and had Lamont move up from rearguard to strike a match. When he did so, he held the match high to illuminate the path ahead. He almost immediately blew it back out again and whispered with a quiet tenderness that none of the party had ever heard before.

"I think we should backtrack and take. That. Left."

Spooky Mountain

Old Crow turned over the hill in his mind. He'd never been up it, but he'd been around it a hundred times. There just never seemed to be a reason to make the climb with the village of Stoat a mile to the south and the hamlet of Elsinore another three to the north. But in all his time wandering these parts, it just occurred to him, now of all times, that he had no idea what lay at the top of the hill he and his new friends were climbing.

And that made him worry.

Making their way through the dark the company was quiet, if not a little buoyant. Old Crow didn't know if it was their recent brush with death that gave them a spring to their step, of if it was the lingering effects of the mushroom tea, but he didn't want to spoil the mood with his own apprehensions. It was, after all, probably nothing.

After five minutes of stumbling though the moonlit woods to the west of the road, the ground started to rise in earnest. A full moon was breaking through the trees here and there, keeping the way at least partially lit. A few minutes more and the trees started to thin out as well, until the company could at last make out the hilltop silhouetted against the starry sky. The occasional tree and outcropping of rock gave the hill an irregular, sinister look.

"WHILE GEOMETRY DICTATES THAT THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS IS A LINE WITH THE LEAST AMOUNT OF CURVATURE," Lamont intoned loudly over a chorus of hushes and whispers, "we might want to consider taking a longcut."  Pierre and Eris looked at Lamont with a mixture of awe and suspicion. They'd never, in their short association with Cranston, known him to take the conservative view on any issue. This made them all the more nervous.

Elizabeth was having none of it.

"Oh, come on now. This is nothing more than a natural place, lit by the full moon. It's supposed to look magical and mystical. It's nothing to be afraid offfaaarrrggghhh!!!!-" Elizabeth dropped to her knees, a wave of sadness washing over her like, well, a wave. A deep, resonant despair flowed down from the tree-cloaked top of the hill. This was a Bad Place, and Elizabeth now felt it in her marrow.

Pierre, Eris and Old Crow gathered around her on the ground and asked what it was she was feeling.
"There's something terrible up there. Something wrong." Pierre shifted nervously on the hard ground, while Old Crow whispered a quiet prayer. Lamont fingered the tips of his pitchfork in anticipation.

Eris sat down on the ground, apart from the others. She closed her two eyes and opened her third, peering up the hill through the darkness. She leaned forward and splayed her fingers out on the dirt, trying to take the pulse of the land, trying to feel what it was that Elizabeth had felt. She dug into the earth with her fingers...

The others noticed her silence and turned to watch her, straining intently on hearing, feeling what was up there. They saw her hand, her skeletal hand that shone white in the moonlight, dig into the soft earth. One, two, three knuckles disappeared. Then suddenly, her whole hand tensed, and grabbed...

Eris felt her hand touch bone - bone like that of a human arm or leg. In her astonishment she pulled, trying to wrest the bone from the ground, only to find that the bone wasn't alone. It was attached, end to end, to another bone, and another and another and another - a seemingly endless chain of bones that ran up the hill, just under the earth's surface, in a long, macabre chain. Eris' eyes snapped open as she pulled hard to uproot the vile thing to show the rest of the party and looked down...

at a normal, everyday tree root.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Eris whispered.

Somewhere in the valley west of Spooky Mountain, a simple alpaca farmer named Milo was bedding down his herd. He'd spent years saving up coppers working as a dung wrangler, mucking up other people's stalls and hauling away the dung for coppers. It was barely profitable, but he was a hard worker, and his tenacity with dung had, in the long run, paid off. He'd managed to scrape together enough to buy five fairly healthy llamas, and was getting them ready for the coming winter. He'd fattened them up on the plentiful apples that grew in the valley, and he'd taken care to ensure their long coats were clean(ish) and relatively free from snags and mats. He'd named them all after stars in the sky, with Ayleth (the fat one) being named after a red supergiant, was the matriarch of the little troupe. Veyza, named after the white dwarf in the constellation Crabwalk Major, had a disposition to match. Little Vega, ironically named after the yellow supergiant of the same name, would often be found staring for hours at a fencepost, seemingly lost in thought. It was only after observing her do this a coiuple times that Milo soon came to realize she'd just forgotten where she was going. Finally the twins, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali (binary stars) were the runts of the litter and served as a reminder to Milo that giving llamas very long and cutesy names was probably not a good idea.

A scream slid down the mountain like an apocalyptic toboggan. It hit nervous ears and jangled nerves, and froze the party in its tracks.

"What the hell was that?" asked Pierre.
"What should we do?" asked Elizabeth.
"Is there any other way around this hill?" asked Lady Eris.
"WOULD ANYONE LIKE SOME RICE?" asked Lamont.

Old Crow looked up the hill with the typical air of Chinan calm, mixed with the barely-contained panic of his whiter ancestors. "Let's think about this," he offered. "Surely we can come up with a plan to investigate cautiously while still making headway towards the valley on the other side.

"I'm going to summon some monsters!" squeaked Elizabeth. She started muttering under her breath and making the hand gestures the old gypsy woman had taught her. Everyone else took two steps back.

Milo made his way out to the barn, the full moon his way. Something had been disturbing his little flock, as strained braaas and braaaps had been coming from there for the past ten minutes. The sharp smell of ozone cut through his nostrils, which was a rare treat - years of working in the dung business had pretty much killed off his sense of smell. Turns out it had been a blessing, as llamas were one of the Gods' more pungent creations. Still, he wondered where the sharp tang of ozone was coming from as he approached the barn door. 

He opened it, and immediately had to shield his eyes from the dazzling rainbow hues that were emanating from the twins' stall. Effervescent blues, sparkling pinks, and ebullient yellows bounced off the roof beams and glistened. Milo stood mutely admiring the impressive display. Then, as soon as it had started, the rainbow display stopped, and Milo stood for a dozen heartbeats with his eyes clamped shut, waiting for his night vision to return. 

When it did, Milo crept forward cautiously and peered over the stall wall and into the space where the twins should have been. But they were gone, and only the biting smell of ozone and fresh dung told him that they were ever there to begin with.

"Not again," he sighed.

Elizabeth stood back and tried to admire her handiwork, She'd never cast Monster Summoning I before, and wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but she was pretty sure three llamas were on the 'disappointing' end of the spectrum.

"INTERESTING," chimed Lamont. "I'M SURE WHATEVER LIES AT THE TOP OF YOU HILL WILL NOT EXPECT LLAMAS." Elizabeth tried not to seethe at the comment, but she seethed a little anyway. She became determined to make it work.

"Llamas!" she hissed as loud as she dared. They turned to face her. The two on the right did so with an air of amiable stupidity. The one on the left, however, the black one, assessed her with the colld, hard stare of a llama that had done some serious time.

"I want you three to head up that hill and check things out. Get the llay of the lland," the others chuckled. She continued on, unperturbed. "Go up there and have a llook around." Snickers. "If you see anything dangerous, I want you to attack. Understand?" Two of the llamas snuffled and turned, and started to make their way slowly up the hill. The black one, however, kept its gaze fixed on Elizabeth. She started to open her mouth to berate the unmoving llama. "Llisten here, you..."

"I aM nOt LlIkE tHe OtHeRs. I aM tHe DeAtH oF lLaMaS. i Am HeRe To TaKe ThEm HoMe AfTeR tHeY pErIsH. nOw Is ThEiR TiMe."

Elizabeth regarded the black llama for some time, willing her mind to not only make sense of the exchange, but to come up with a witty response as well.

"You're welcome," was her two word reply.

A Prelude to Spooky Mountain

Old Crow looked at the carnage. Eight bodies littered both sides of the cave mouth. The cave itself reeked of vomit.

"I'm not cleaning this up," he muttered to no one in particular. Pierre stood up and wiped his chin. He looked around apologetically before kicking some dirt over the rum-soaked puddle. Lamont stepped forward.

"I'M WILLING TO BET THESE MEN-AT-ARMS WILL BE MISSED." Eris covered the ear nearest him and winced in pain. Pretty much everyone else did likewise. "PERHAPS WE SHOULD NOT STICK AROUND TO FACE ANY INQUIRIES FROM INTERESTED PARTIES." Old Crow nodded in agreement. He looked up into the night sky. The full moon was rising. There would be just enough light for a night march.

"Yes," he said in a voice that radiated a serene wisdom. "We need to get the fuck out of Dodge." He picked up an old satchel that lay near the cave mouth. He encouraged the others to take up their belongings. "Just west of here is valley that is none to well traveled. It should offer us a safe place to spend the night, now that the ways north and south will no doubt be watched. We can make it there in a little over an hour, with luck."

Elizabeth chortled. "Luck? Better start casting every bless spell we got. Did you see what happened down in that burial mound?" Everyone nodded in mute agreement. They shouldered their packs and loaded the horses.

"Old Crow," Pierre sidled up to the wise old Chinan as they headed down the winding path from the burial cave. "You've spent a lot of time in these parts... What lies between here and the valley you mentioned? Will it be an easy journey?"

Old Crow stopped and looked west, his eyes getting that faraway look they got whenever he had to search his memories for the threads to tie together for a tale.

"Ah, it's bullshit. A piece of cake. We'll be safe in our bedrolls before the moon sets." Pierre gave a sigh of relief, and stepped up his pace to catch up with the others. Old Crow smiled and reversed the ancient Chinan hand signal his grandfather had taught him by uncrossing his fingers and bringing them out from behind his back.

A Dream Within A Dream

Pierre's eyes opened slowly - but not slowly enough. As the eerie green light of the mushroom cave seeped past his lids, trickled through his pupils and splashed onto his retina, a long-dormant trigger was switched, and the migraine that ensued was nature's way of telling him that not only would was he in a dangerous situation, but he'd have to navigate it while suffering debilitating and disorienting pain.

This happened to him rather a lot.

He tried rolling onto his side, but the motion only served to make him dizzy and start to hallucinate - or he hoped he was hallucinating, for as he looked across the floor of the mushroom cave, he saw that the mushrooms that covered the floor of the cave were alive. Alive and staring at him in horror.

Pierre tried to get himself up into a sitting position, but as he moved, he hears tiny high-pitched screams coming from the mushrooms he'd inadvertently squashed. The mushrooms nearest him recoiled in terror, apparently clutching at one another in order to lean out of his way and save themselves from the blundering giant.

He managed to sit up at last, and looking around the cave he saw Elizabeth lying on her back a couple feet away from his feet, a sweet, blissful smile on her sleeping face. Her smile and his disorientation reminded him of the tea he'd taken just a few minutes (hours?) <DaY$> ago...

"This is unlike anything you've had before," Old Crow had told them. "Except you, I imagine." He gave Lamont a heavy-lidded look of resignation. "WHICH IS PRECISELY WHY I WILL TAKE A HARD PASS ON THE CUPPA, OLD BOY!' in that booming voice of his that told you he was deaf, insane or both. Old Crow turned to the others. "The mushroom is wary of letting white folk in on its secrets. But if you can handle it, the mushroom will show you much..."

It showed him Lady Eris next. She was leaning on the wall of the entrance, smoking a cigarette and staring at a spot on the floor about fifteen feet in front of her. She had that fifty-yard-stare that told Pierre that she too was feeling the effects of the tea.

Elizabeth suddenly stirred, smiling and giggling to herself, and as she did she began rolling from side to side. Pierre looked on in horror as row after row of mushroom folk met their demise under her rolling body. The tiny screams mounted and coalesced in his ears and mind, bringing him to the edge of madness. Eris didn't seem to notice however, and as she took a drag on her cigarette, the bright orange cherry at the tip became dislodged and fell slowly to the floor.

Her orange eyes and the orange glowing tip of the cig make a triangle that points down, down, down now its falling and the triangle gets longer and sharper and the screaming make it terrifying to watch and impossible to turn away down down down like a wedge driving into the floor onto the mushroom daddy protecting his sons

*Ploosssssssss*

The hot ash hit the mushroom and burned its way straight through the stem. The screams of the surrounding mushrooms wailed and ululated in Pierre's ears. The mushroom that was hit began to glow, brighter and brighter, as some molecular chain reaction was ignited by the heat from the falling ash. Pierre watched, frozen, as the 'shroom went white in a flash, and exploded.

The explosions sent sparks in all directions, at a radius of about two feet. Everywhere they landed, mushrooms screamed in pain and started to smoke. As the smoke turned to flames, the mushrooms heated up and headed towards critical. Eris looked down in disbelief. She'd ashed more cigarettes in shadier circumstances than anyone (who could forget that wild Samhain, with all the dried kindling and leaves and wine and wind?) but as she scanned the floor of the mushroom cave, a quick calculation told her this place was a ticking time bomb...

Elizabeth opened her eyes. Something had brought her out of the beautiful floating dream she was having. The sound of strings and horns and heavenly choral voices had been replaced by screams and swearing. She turned to see Pierre, ears covered and muttering French curses, sitting next to a smoldering fire on the mushroom floor. As quickly as she could manage it, she rolled towards the fire, intent on putting it out with her leather-covered body. She had correctly calculated that she, protected by her leather outfit, could easily quash the flames before they spread. The thing she *hadn't* counted on, however, was the manner in which mushrooms stick to rolling leather.

Lamont stirred. He hadn't entered the mushroom cave at the bottom of the barrow - he'd refused to take the mushroom tea after all, and once he saw that the cave's eerie green light was the same shade as the eerie green glow of the ones who had, he put two and two together and got the hell out. He was currently huddled a few feet away from the cave, watching with a mild ennui. He saw the cascading mushroom fire starting to get out of control. He saw Elizabeth rolling towards it while accreting a thick layer of flammable mushroom paste. He saw Pierre covering his ears, trapped in his own existential horror. And he saw Eris look down at her skeletal hand. Her lips were moving and the hand crackled with a faint amber energy. Lamont decided to wait this one out.

Her hand felt odd... now that it was completely skeletal, she could swear she felt the flesh on it tingling. It felt hot, too, like it was swollen with energy, hot and ready to use, yearning to release some of the magical energy it undoubtedly contained. She stared at it fixedly, flexing the bony digits, concentrating on the things it told her it could do. You want to fly, kid? it whispered. I can make you fly... She considered it for a moment. Then, noticing Elizabeth was rolling towards the growing circle of flames, she sprung into action.

Pierre noticed the movement first - a weird blur of greenlit blackness that was Eris started to move towards him. The flickering light of a dozen mushroom clouds lit her feet as they lifted off from the
ground and hovered tentatively in his direction. Before he knew it, she was over him, reaching down with her bony hand to grab him by the collar...

...and the screaming stopped. Silently, gently, Eris lifted him up off the floor, and as he was taken, floating over to where Elizabeth was about to roll into the fire. But just before she reached it, Eris dipped down deftly and scooper her up too by the back of her neck. Then, slowly but steadily, Eris levitated the two out of the cave and towards the surface.

Lamont was impressed. He vaguely wondered what it would take for her to let HIM have the Hand. Could come in handy, especially if the Ovine Brotherhood decided to come calling in the dark of the night. Wouldn't they be shocked to see him descend on them from above, wielding the Trident in one bony hand crackling with nectarine fire. His eyes teared up at the thought... then he realized it was just the smoke from the now-raging 5-alarm mushroom fire in the cave behind him. He shuffled up the slope after Eris. The Hand would have to wait.

Old Crow looked down at the twitching body of the soldier. In a way, he felt pity for the poor boy, probably miles from home, living of some horrible gruel for months at a time hundreds of miles from home. He'd no doubt enlisted in the ranks of the Pumpkin Prince with the promise of nonconsensual sex and financial appropriation. And here he was, dead eyes staring up at the darkening sky. a sucking chest wound slowly congealing in the twilit air. Old Crow dropped the heart on the ground and wiped his hand on his homespun robe. He'd picked subtle hues of brown and red for a reason.

He looked up at the scene of devastation. Keyard lay by the side of his lover - Flaya's lifeless arm draped over him in a last gesture of love. They'd had a short romance, but they died side by side doing what they loved. It had taken five men-at-arms to take them down. It was going to take a hacksaw to get them apart.

Dieter, on the other hand, was going to need to be gathered in a bucket. He'd fought valiantly enough, but there were still four soldiers left for him to face. He took out three. But the fourth, a grizzled sergeant with a flattened nose and a wicked left hook had pierced his lungs from behind before taking off his head. Then, in a fit of pique, he'd hacked off his arms and legs in retaliation for the death of his three men. But his singlemindedness proved to be his downfall when Old Crow slid silently up behind him and snapped his neck. Crow said a quiet prayer, though not one of the good ones. 

By the time Eris got to the cave mouth, the battle was over. Dead bodies littered the cave mouth and the area outside. She set the two down and surveyed the devastation. Pierre scrabbled around the floor for one of the hidden jugs of syrup. He found one and, unearthing it, discovered it was one of the ones marked Grade B. He popped the cork and, mixing it with some of his rum, poured some for Eris and then himself. They raised a toast and downed them. Elizabeth closed her eyes and tried to remember which variety was the one that exploded reality. She... couldn't quite remember. But by the time she gave up thinking about it, Pierre was retching in the corner of the cave. Eris looked mildly buzzed. Then suddenly, at the mouth of the cave, a crow landed and cawed loudly. As Elizabeth watched, it transmogrified into the shape of a man - of old Crow himself.

"Neat," she said to herself.