Hi all,
I think we're on tomorrow night. Last time:
In preparation for the coming night's heroquest, Maugis met with a growing queue of locals to calm them down about the whole thing, with some success. Fraud Shaven meditated at the well and managed to scare the spider there away with his lute-playing, but he emerged from the meditations with new-found curiosity about the spiders…
The quest's time arrived: you came to a specially prepared ground in the swamps on the edge of Aria's Well, after ensuring (by the Uz's insistence) that your people did not leave town that night, as the community's presence was important for the quest even though they would not be there watching the ritual. With tattoos and totems and drumming and jiggly Uz dancing, the seven Gorakiki sang open the ritual in croaking-wheedling Uz style. Boamund joined in when the timing was right and he did well enough.
The next step of the quest was ready: you learned that your participants, Fraud, Maugis and Miguel, had to strip naked and be coated in a black clay substance that the Uz had prepared. They then had to go find the Never-Grow-Ups in the community; Fraud and Miguel succeded (Fraud grabbed his; Miguel built a snare to catch his grub) but Maugis experienced some trouble once he found his grub. He grabbed it the wrong way and was fiercely bitten on the hand, twice, and with blood streaming down his arm he relented and decided to use sorcery despite its risks. A simple Palsy spell rendered the grub ineffectual. And so you brought them all back to the singers, and the ritual seemed to proceed fine, with the song conjuring cocoons around the grubs.
The next step had come, and a dark chill spread over the ritual ground. The spirit was coming. It manifested in a special central circle: a skull-headed worm thing; a spirit of considerably dangerous power, whose name Riftoyz whispered in translation as “Writhing Bleakness”. Ahappi challenged it, as planned (Maugis had stepped aside, not wanting to try his Banish spell), and found it a good test of his spirit-binding skills. After forcing it backwards with some vigorous gesticulations, he wore it down and avoided suffering any wounds from it- which was good, as it could hurt you both physically and spiritually at the same time!
The singers then called forth the Sage Scarabs, urging the Never-Grow-Ups to mature into the beetles that the chaos spirit's violent fury had been preventing them from doing. And so they did, crawling forth from their cocoons as fist-sized black shiny beetles, but your people had to gift the new scarabs with three secrets. It turned out that you lost memory of those secrets as you whispered them each in turn: no one knows this, but Maugis told “his” scarab about “I seek to lead this community to the alleged heresy of the Whyte Wyzards”, and Ahappi told one about the chaotic presence that he'd called into the world beneath the fumarole after the “wedding”, and Miguel told the last one about his family (father Danilo's) curse of Penjang/Penzharn lycanthropy. Whatever these secrets were, you learned that they were now guarded in the dark wisdom of the Sage Scarabs. And as these beetles grew, they would grow to know the land and could confer that wisdom upon you– perhaps as soon as next season.
You had done it! And the seven Uz would now remain in their gifted lands on your settlement's edges, tending the Sage Scarabs and other fauna. You had promised to guard the Uz, and the Uz the scarabs, and the scarabs the knowledge of the land. Together, if this all worked out, you would all benefit, Riftoyz said Hishoomka had related to him for your knowledge. And you could now relax a bit– although it was clear that you still would not have enough food to last the winter on your own, so you would need to rely on contacts you'd already begun making to get favours from other communities on the island. Meanwhile, the remaining grubs had gone to sleep and would mature into scarabs themselves; the curse was lifted! Riftoyz also related Hishoomka's query about what powerful enemy had invoked this curse: it was no simple act to bring the Never-Grow-Ups into this world from the Underworld and pre-Time. Hmmm…
You now had some time to pass as Fire Season moved on. You felt it was best to remain in your community to defend and strengthen it, except for Maugis who needed to visit Wendel the wizard in Fort Mudlark to complete some mutual sorcery training– and to cement some contacts he'd been making to help Aria's Well via a network of good folks along the coast. Ahappi was back with his men on The Shadow, while Fraud was spending a lot of time at the well and musing about spiders and mumbling about other secret things. Miguel was having quality family time and time with his scout and other Dronari friends. Boamund was feeling better and motivated to be a good Talari to your town. And so it seemed like there might be some quiet coming your way. Cyroosta remained in seclusion, and Riftoyz and Lars remained in the area to study the local flora and fauna and to help the Uz settle in. What the shadowy figure in the Aeropod was up to, no one seemed sure, but it stayed up there and stayed the subject of hushed speculations. Visitors began coming to your village to behold this marvel and maybe to keep an eye on these strange Uz and their giant centipede. Nothing could go wrong now…
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