RPG Campaigns

Giraine Summaries

The sacrament of marriage binds a couple together in the eyes of the Church. The wedding is usually a communal affair, and takes place in the local church or cathedral, almost always officiated over by a wizard. Wearing golden and white robes signifying purity and happiness, the couple exchange vows of fidelity and drink wine from a shared cup to signify their bond. In many cultures, weddings are followed by communal celebrations and feasting, which often last well into the night. Such celebrations become increasingly large and impressive as the status of the bride's father increases. The sanctification of marriage by the liturgist grants the couple divine assistance to face the rigors of marriage, and to fulfill its purpose, as described by the prophets. This purpose is three-fold: bringing into the world children that will perpetuate the faith, the mutual support of the couple for each other, and the fulfillment of natural bodily desires without the need for sin. The blessing cements this bond, and binds the couple together in the eyes of God, making it a sin for others to interfere with the marriage in any way. It also enjoins upon the husband the need to protect and cherish his wife, and for the wife to support her husband, even through times of difficulty. Few of the Malkioni churches recognize divorce, and those that do heavily discourage its use, making it very difficult in practice, especially for those without the wealth and power to influence the leaders of the Church.

You wandered the swamps in search of Vowka the Giranois or someone who knew him/her. In due time you found some Giranois who were typically short on words about them or Vowka (saying you'd never find him/her and Vowka had fled, knowing of your search) but long on words about how bad you/other wallmen were. After some threats or heated words back and forth, bribes, cajoling, oration, frustration, and slogging around in the swamp, you finally found this mysterious Vowka, who was travelling east through the swamps with her family (2 men and 2 children) and a crude wooden half-sledge dragged behind them on poles, carrying a rickety portable hut. Vowka had long stringy hair that hid his/her face, and spoke in a deep grating voice that could be male or female, and indeed the Giranois seemed to switch how they referred to him/her with an odd inconsistency. She wasn't as anger-filled as some Giranois and wearily relented to speak to you.

Vowka growled strange words about her people doing things to your people's corpses (admission they had done something!) but that it was preemptive to avoid them rising as undead. She said some cold thing had been creeping down from the highlands of Giraine and doing this necromancy. Some Giranois had come down from those highlands for the winter as they normally did, but in light of this threat seemed to want to stay here in the lowlands now, which they claimed had always been their lands anyway, since the Shattering. He and the others seemed to blame it in some way on you, or equate all the 'wallmen' (aside- why do the the Giranois call you wallmen, when they build dry stone walls themselves too, simple and unmortared as they are?) and necromancers, or something. She then hinted that you should return to your people as something was up. He certainly was hiding something she knew, but he also seemed intimidated and even desiring to help, to some degree– a strange one, this Vowka.

You returned home to the west and rested, then found out in the morning from the hunter Memkud that Giranois had indeed taken corpses from the graveyard and dragged them west into the swamps to burn them in various spots. Memkud pleaded for his lord to take action; the peasantry was irate. Even a small babe had been taken, and pagan-seeming totems erected at the burning sites. Boamund updated Cyroosta on these events and she was oddly distant, but praised the Baronet's more peaceful approach to the situation and dismissed Vowka as a simple witch. But that morning a frost had come to your lands, as a chill breeze slinked down the slopes into the swamps; unseasonal even for Dark Season in these tropical lands. You committed to track this cold wind down, and set off to the north. Each of you had a somewhat different approximation of which way the wind was blowing from, but north seemed about right and this did not weaken your resolve. Soon, after enduring cold nights, muddy badlands and a fall into a sinkhole for the Baronet, you entered Sottogh lands, and they began trailing you as they always did.

You soon were confronted by the Sottogh- they shouted from cover for you to leave their lands, and you would not turn back after warning shots were fired, so they first tried to festoon the Captain with arrows, then rained more upon you as you charged in. The Baronet unleashed dark magics on them that left them blinded and cowering in fear. Quickly, they bolted from cover and scattered, then regrouped as you expected and tried another ambush. This you again drove off, particularly with the Captain's Dark Foreboding sorcery, and they melted stealthily into the rocky surroundings.

You could see yourselves drawing closer to the cliffs on the island's edge, along which the Sottogh had their main walled settlement. And then you saw a lone figure jogging toward you. It turned out to be a filthy little Gertrude, in ragged Giranois garb, far from her normal pretty self, come to parley on behalf of the people she had been helping/hiding out with for over a season now. She scolded you for bullying the Giranois and trespassing, and warned you that a warband was being gathered to strike you down or even raid your homes. You argued for some time, trying to convince her (like other Giranois, who kept asking for proof) that you were aiming to help both yourselves and the Giranois by hunting down this cold menace, but she said the Sottogh would not let you come further into their lands, and did not house any such frigid evil. She wondered how you had tracked this cold snap so precisely to their lands, when by her reckoning the cold was coming from all along the coasts, off the Fosnoir.

So Gertrude convinced you, even if more than a bit sarcastically, that you were just as well off wandering away from Sottogh lands, such as to the east where she said there were now few Giranois, as you were intruding on their home turf. Some of you even reconsidered your reasoning and motivation behind this hunt and the confrontations that ensued, but others did not. And so off you went!

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