Completed Sudden Arrivals, Creeping Portents

"Thank you. I-I've been meaning to thank Sigrun Flintfeet as well but... well.... I saw you first so......"

He shrugged, keeping that gentle smile, and pushed his cap back up his head before asking.

"Shall we?"

“Uhhhh”
For a moment, Irman’s eyes had gone so wide that even the whites were visible. The dissonance between how he felt and how Ispir was acting was so wide that the the Allirian straight could have probably fit in between, length wise!

The sudden shock though sent Irman out of his stupor and gave him a chance to actually address Ispir. As soon as he collected himself first.

“Ah, well, it’s real sweet to hear your thanks kid. Glad I could give what I gave.”

Irman swerved around the bard to head towards the main hall. Going down the corridor, his movements were stiff and soldier-like.

“Now I would like to exchange pleasantries for longer but this discussion is mighty important and I don’t want to miss any more than I have already.”

Entering the main hall, Irman waved over at Sigrun and noted all the people he recalled from the gate and those who he did not.

“I take it Sigrun mentioned the tomb already. It was an odd thing, but I couldn’t help but feel like the whole forest there was tied to it.”

“The place seemed to get itself damp when the hellboars there were going crazy. And in the tomb itself it was like the tree roots were part of the walls.”


Irman walked up to examine the mummy, its split apart face still in the same gaping expression as when Irman had smashed it.

“Heck, thinking about it now, it was pretty strange how the boars it affected seemed dead set on smashing as many trees as they could first and foremost. Plus that freaky mural, shoulda sketched it when I had the chance honestly.”

There was a silence over the room. For so much that could be inferred or deduced, there was so much that remained unknown.

“Six above what are we even going to do with this thing.” Remarked Hojen, as he scribbled away notes on what was being shared.

“And how come I have to write all these gruesome details down? Shouldn’t that young scribe be lending a hand Gabriel?”

“Andel is lending a hand. He asked to check the archives to see if any tomes or journals could help our questions. Apparently something about this struck him as ‘familiar’, which sounded promising given how much the young man likes those books.”

Ispir Sione
Andel Moon
 
The caramel-blond spent most days at the Keep studying the texts and the behaviors of past Noct Yaegir experiences. The man's blue eyes scanned the few journals he'd been skimming through, and found the passage.

"Beautiful God of Nature." Andel's whisper was followed by a bookmark and the snapping of the diary before sliding the book on top of the pile he'd already compiled for the others. If there was one thing that the young Moon knew, it was how to find documented knowledge and use it for deadly advantage.

"Alright...." He said, his voice faltering a bit as he stared at his choice of investigation in dismay, realizing how heavy and tall it was, but that did not matter, and inconvenience would have to be overcome. So, sighing, the slender man picked up the pile and walked to where the mummified corpse and the rest of the team would be. The visage that greeted the crowd was a tallish man wearing blue, carrying documentation, and trying not to trip before setting the books down and nodding.

"The behaviors didn't make sense to me, so I set about trying to find some journals of a Hunter I'd read a while back. It was obscure but..." His delicate features were revealed as he found the journal and opened it to where his mark had been placed.

He read the passage out loud:

"I shared with him the many beasts I had seen and slain, and he seemed giddy at every detail I gave. In turn, the old man began to speak of monsters that he had known, in a manner as spectacular as I had come to expect from the hermit.

He had many strange and fantastical fiends to speak of, but one still remains in mind even now. A once beautiful god of nature, twisted by hate beyond mortal comprehension. This hate had made the god rotting and corpse-like, unraveled its beautiful eyes into fonts of poison light, and turned its sweet honeyed words into curses that twisted all that heard them into harbingers of the god’s uncontrollable contempt.

The old hermit then assured me that this god had been broken as thoroughly as a god of that kind could be, with its primal words of hate sealed and its memory upon the world erased to an absolute scale…”


"The journal continues, but that's the end of the relevancy." Andel looked up then and shrugged. "I gathered a bit more about the stranger behaviors of hellboars as well as tales of madness in the woods and one about a traveling band of swindlers, but I don't think those will be as helpful after I read this. I have also compiled some general phenomena of the region where the tomb was, in case we need a refresher."

Irman Harefoot
 
#Wordtober

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Ilharess had scampered straight outside immediately after scenting the chaotic waft of mummy-magic, nose wrinkled in patent disgust. She was rather enjoying her fourth life, thank you very much! No need whatsoever to get caught up in that uncomfortably unpredictable kind of precarious kerfuffle until many more details were much better known, and she was more than happy to leave the messy, risky discovery part of gaining that yet-unknown knowledge to all the brave monster hunters within the keep. Andronicus would surely agree that ancient mummy curses and renegade wisps of wild magic weaving around transforming this into that all fell well outside the parameters of her geas! In addition to that perfectly considered, eminently prudent line of self-preserving reasoning, her empty gullet was indignantly reminding her about all those skipped meals today. Agreeing whole-heartedly with her panging, neglect-stabbed tummy, the winged tabby eagerly licked her chops, deciding that the unsavory prospect of potentially facing terrible magical peril positively demanded an equally worthy break for fortification first. Surely something tasty would be letting its guard down in the chilly dusk outside the keep…

With a hearty ‘murr-row,’ she alit on her wings, flapping strainedly for sufficient lift, her cobby girth seemingly in cahoots with the thin, slippery, ice-twinged mountain air. Her bushed-out, fluffy tail-tip grazed a parapet of the wall as she arced upward out of the keep.

Her preferred hunting height attained, Ilharess’s keen golden eyes rolled downward to start scanning the the dark countryside below. Over crag and thicket she soared, as silent and hidden in the dark sky as the moon herself, tonight a subtle silvery glimmer faintly limning the chiaroscuro of wind-whipped cirrus clouds combed by the peaks of the Spine. A meadow of wildflower buds spread out below, and her nose caught the briefest note of the scent of springtime heat. Her eyes popped full open, and she made a tight, whipping wing-over turn in the direction her nose indicated. Sure enough! -a pair of tender, juicy young coneys were sharing a tender, dangerously blissful moment of courtship. She tucked in her wings and dove down upon them with reckless abandon, teeth bared and claws out!

Fortunately for the cause of lagomorphic love, the swooping tabby misjudged the decay of her dive path due to the thinness of the mountain air, and she crashed to ground a mere bound away from the long-eared liaison. The the terrified lovers instantly parted ways, their paths of flight forking into an ever-expanding V, hurriedly hopping at full panic-pace toward the sanctuary of a nearby thicket that lay a few dozen yards or so uphill. Ilharess’s spurned gullet urged her up out of her embarrassing faceplow into a scampering, flapping, gleefully chirruping hot pursuit of the male suitor, whose long, sinuous legs promised an extra couple ounces of delicious, tender backstrap than the scrawnier female suitee could offer-barely a snack! the tabby admonished herself after the briefest of wayward glances. The coney-lad darted this way and that, Ilharess’s eager jaws snapping just behind his toes, just beside his rump, now just missing the nape of his neck. She had him, she had him! She… CRASHED with a snap, crackle, and pop, breakneck speed to a sudden stop, draped awkwardly sideways in midair amidst a poking, prickly mass of thorn-vined, white-flowered blackberry bramble!

Well, scat! -she harrumphed to herself, a grumpy murr issuing from her muzzle. She wriggled this way and that, managing to right her rump-half, but her winged torso was firmly stuck one-third-way twisted round. As the cobwheels slowly began grinding in the winged cat’s mind, a peal of tinkling laughter rang out, followed swiftly by a second.

“What a delicious, nay, scrumptious treat! All the way from the Dawn Court to the Heights of the Spine, can you believe it, my dear Periwinkle? A true celebrity has graced us with her substantial presence!”

“Why, ‘tis truly an unbelievable honor, my darling Honeysuckle! Only… is she supposed to be all twisted up into a furry, feathery pretzel? Why, the pose she has struck reminds me of that newfangled Allirian artwork in the chest that ‘fell’ from that trader’s cart last month.”

The pair of snickering frost pixies flitted just beyond a paw’s stretch of Ilharess’s sidewards, grumpy maw, a thin, tickling coat of ice forming on the tips of her whiskers and ear-tufts as they approached. As best she could manage, she lowered her head in what would have to pass for a courtly bow.

Ah-haha! I salute your fond greeting and your good humor at my much-deserving expense, good sir and madam. I quite flew into this one! Niceties thus exchanged! Ahem! What shall it cost me to convince the vines I have so disturbed to, oh, I don’t know… let me go?

The pixie-warden stroked his smooth blue chin, considering. A grin bordering on malicious curled onto his thin lips, and he exaggeratedly returned a bow.

“Why, we shall ask only your solemn pledge not to go a-hunting in the parlour of the Winter Court! You shall not starve, though, in our lands! By this dweomer I bestow in friendship, for as long as you roam the Heights, you may take sustenance from the nectar of flowers, and by our grace, such fare shall sustain you!”

He waved his arm, and a thin blanket of frost covered vine and trapped tabby alike, before the bruised vines unfurled abruptly rolling and dumping the indignant gray tabbycat past the thicket’s margin and onto the meadow. The tinkling roar of pixie-mirth resumed, the pixie maid slapping her knee before adding a parting shot:

“Though, perhaps, not all of you! Your wings shall surely thank us ere long!”

Ilharess hungrily sniffed the air, but neither fur nor feather nor heat could be smelt; only sneezy puffs of pollen and the heady saccharine of blackberry nectar. The realization of the pixie's curse sunk in, making her already grumpy maw even grumpier. So that is how it is... Well, there is nothing else for it! She tentatively poked her tongue into a blackberry blossom, so starting the opening act of what would prove to be an hours-long comedic dinner theater performance for the pixies, rolling over one another, howling in amusement at their reluctant guest’s expense.
 
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Ispir would beam at Irman's kind words, nodding as he excused himself, and watched Irman depart with the utmost of soldier-like professionalism with obvious admiration. He had just ran himself to exhaustion, for Ispir's sake, and was already back to firm, professional stature and gait, so cool! As Irman entered the main hall Ispir... didn't move. Brief confusion alit on his features as he wondered what to do next, where to go, before he sheepishly realized that perhaps he was supposed to follow Irman inside.

Awkwardly nudging the door open a tiny bit Ispir would sidle inside and, arms laced behind his back, he would try to be as quiet as possible so as not to disturb the professionals. Gabriel, Sigrun, Irman, a Drow lady and a blonde lady seeming to the be the ones leading the conversation. Ispir wasn't sure what on Arethil a "hellboar" was but it sounded awful!

As the blonde lady began speaking, leafing through a tome, quoting a passage, and seeming the scholarly sort altogether Ispir would debate whether or not to speak up. He felt silly even being here. A bard among a crowd of professional, deadly monster hunters and scholars, and he didn't even know how to swing a sword! Suddenly feeling very timid Ispir would look down at the floor, listening to the recited passage, before remembering the cold, unnatural grasp of this mummy thing from the cart. The scream of terror from the kobold before it's apparent demise, the lingering traces of sludge-like, vile magic that he only vaguely remembered being left in the wake of it's appetite.

Suddenly steeling himself he would look up, politely clear his throat, and with a voice trembling with unusual timidity at speaking to a crowd all the detail, all the fear, all the cold darkness and vile interaction he had felt in his injured haze came out as a shy squeak from behind and below Andel Moon as if voiced by a church mouse.

"I-It also ate and pooped a kobold......"

Ispir's face would immediately flush a deep red crimson enough to make a painter want to add it to their palette, a visible cringe rippling through the bard and he would bring a hand to his face out of embarrassment. Mumbling the last remnants of his thoughts that the titanic embarrassment he had just experienced left in it's wake, like a giant's club smashing a cart to pieces, he would finished.

"A-And it grabbed me.... I think....?"

Sigrun Flintfeet
Irman Harefoot
Vel'duith Voiryn
 

Sigrun had opted to sit on her chair, rather than stand on it, straddling it with her legs and leaning her arms against its back, listening to Irman's brisk summary, Vel'duith's staggering analysis and Andel's non-plussed quotation.

While she already knew Irman's account, the drow's assessment of dark magic at play puzzled her. Was this simply a deception from her, a bid to curry favour with the Warden? Or was the artefact truly something that could potentially do, what, anything?

But what found the most purchase in her mind was the anecdotal story of the hermit's tale. Her lips pouted and her eyes squinted with thought. Could gods truly be . . . corrupted? Broken? It sounded impossible already. She had heard of the Dark Ones, certainly. But they were evil mirror images of the celestials. Not something . . . twisted from nature itself.
"I-It also ate and pooped a kobold......"
In amongst all this doom and gloom, Sigrun had to clamp her mouth shut with a hand not to laugh. She transmuted said laugh to a loud and admonishing cough instead, nudging him with her eyes, trying to steer Ispir away from . . . mummies defecating kobolds.
"A-And it grabbed me.... I think....?"
But all this rummaging around froze like winter's breath poured over her, chilling her blood. Had she heard him right?

"Wait. It grabbed you? That thing?" She stared at the husk, unable to fathom that it might have - moved. As if taunting this very notion, the thing sat as still and dead as dead could be. A new, raspy urge entered Sigrun's voice, like wolf claws scratching into bark. "When was this, Ispir?"

Irman Harefoot
Vel'duith Voiryn
Andel Moon
Ispir Sione
 
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Having recomposed herself, Velduith turned back to see what seemed to her like an unusually tall, furry kobold, perhaps...? -with long, furry ears, dressed in bright mercenary garb, and a slight, effeminate-looking young human walk in. She nodded slightly in their direction, before her attention was drawn by the tall, rather nervous beanpole of a human scholar and the trove of tomes, scrolls, quills, and paraphernalia precariously piled in his arms. She harkened keenly to his stammering report, her usual half-smile fading grimly as she pieced together his findings with what she had just herself detected and her somewhat panicked initial analysis thereof.

Abruptly noticing Ilharess's absence, the drow turned just in time to see the tuft of the tabby's tail vanish around the corner of the doorway, a grey down feather twirling in her wake before setting onto the ground. Some guide she is... She closed her eyes a moment, inwardly scolding herself. Goddess forgive me!

Sigrun's cough brought her attention back to her and the young fellow she now seemed to be steering away from the mummy. Her eyes opened wide at his revelation that the mummy itself, or perhaps its wafting plume of magic? -had actually touched him!

Turning toward Gabriel and advancing a few steps, Vel'duith drew in a deep breath, holding it to finish calming herself. With a flourish of open palms and a slight incline of her head, she addressed him and the room at large.

"Ser Warden. I... I wish to join your... qu'ellar, as you put it this morning, of monster hunters. I am no great warrior like your axe-maiden or your swordsman, or all these stout men at arms. But I do have some skill at scouting ahead or sneaking within places under guard, at finding and collecting subtle and obscure clues and following whither they lead, as well as a knowledge of and proficiency in the magical arts. In short, I may be of some use in the very predicament at hand, I think. I sense that you would certainly have wary and trustworthy eyes upon me, should any doubt about my intentions remain." She cast a respectful glance in the dwarf's direction before continuing. "So I ask, Ser Warden: will you have me?"

Irman Harefoot
Andel Moon
Ispir Sione
Sigrun Flintfeet
 
As Ispir surely answered Sigrun’s question, the conversation split into myriad pieces all throughout the hall. Gabriel was taken from one such splinter by Vel’duith and her formal request to join the Noct Yaegir.

“The Noct Yaegir is always in need of great minds just as it is in need of strong hands. Your application is heard miss Voiryn. We shall teach you of our ways and test your medal to join are ranks. I trust you will have what it takes.”

A few more words were exchanged between the two but then Gabriel went to address the room.

“Attention everyone! I believe we have established quite a bit about this strange artifact which found its way to our doorstep. In the coming days we should focus on how to proceed, and contact those who might aid us in understanding and containment.”

Gabriel let out an exaggerated yawn and smirked.
“But for now the day has gone long enough. Let us move this mummy to the Crobhear vaults and give our scribes a chance to compile all of these new findings. Thank you again Sigrun, for transporting this powerful object. And to your traveling companions as well: brave master Sione and…”

The room was notably rabbitless. “Huh, when had Yaegir Harefoot slipped away. I was hoping to ask him which hold he hailed from since we don’t seem to have his name on any of the registries.”

Irman was out on the battlements, smoking his pipe and watching the late day sun glisten against the waters of lake Crobhear. He had left when the talking had grown too loud for him to handle. Better to have just a moment to himself and nature.

It had been a while since he last did. All the way back to when he went to hunt Hellboars, and met Sigrun, and found the mummy. Now here he was, at the end of his charge and no good reason to really stay.

Irman didn’t really want to stick around and see how the “insignia situation” played out. Probably best to head out tomorrow morning, even if it meant nicking a couple essentials from the keep. They probably wouldn’t mind any more than they were going to already. And if they did, Sigrun and Ispir could probably put in a good word.

The thought of leaving those two behind without saying anything felt bad, but so did the thought of talking to them did as well. Leaving quietly was probably for the best. It wasn’t really something he could manage to screw up.

The sun began to set and Irman continued to smoke his pipe. His mind was made but he’d still enjoy the view. Those plans though would not play out as he intended. For as the mummy was moved deep into the Crobhear vault and the entrance sealed. Dark forces gathered both within, and without.

THREAD COMPLETE

Andel Moon
Ispir Sione
Sigrun Flintfeet
Vel'duith Voiryn