Labyrinthine Spiral

Bairglad. An unremarkable hamlet in the Firbag province, a backwater only remarkable for relative inaccessibility caused by beautiful but difficult to traverse terrain. Broken hills and folded lands in the shadow of distant mountains, the high points are covered in fir trees while the low points were filled with peat bogs. The larger rivers allow the products of the province to be shipped downstream to more populous and wealthy locales, but Bairglad is too far from any major trade route for even that.

No, instead the hamlet scratches out a meagre living upon hills ill-suited to farming. The regions where crops will grow are jealously guarded by the wealthier families, such as they are in a place like this, while others scrape by with the products of the forest. Hardy and scrubby sheep and cattle provide enough wool and dairy to mostly meet internal demand, while hunters protect crops and citizens from deer, boars, bears, and wolves. Those with the knowledge fish hunks of rotted brown ore from the bogs, most of which is sold but some of which goes into the forge of the community's one blacksmith. In some seasons various wild berries and herbs can be gathered to add new flavours to meals.

Mostly though, the people of Bairglad cut peat for fuel, either in a dried form or as part of charcoal or charcoal production. Burning peat to sweat tar from pine logs was a popular way to make something that could be sold outside the hamlet in the wider world. On the other hand, as one of the few somewhat profitable industries that could leave the area the baron taxed the trade of tar quite heavily.

Of course this was mostly because neither taxmen nor invaders did well in Firbag, so a noble could neither tax the people's productivity easily nor convince them that it was in their best interests to hand over a share of their crop without much fuss. Every few generations a new baron might decide to push his luck, only to discover that trying to push warriors down roads that were barely better than game trails frequently resulted in said warriors getting "lost" and "drowning" in mires.

Then again, while the isolation protected Bairglad from human threats, the carved wooden and bone charms hanging from the trees told the tale of the dangers spirits far from civilization posed. While most worrisome were the ghosts of those lost to the bogs, there were any number of malicious tricksters and ravenous beasts lurking in the deep shadows to make the tranquility of the land only surface thick.

And while for the most part the hamlet was delineated by the ability of the people within to put out and maintain these wards, there was a core set of buildings around the richest of the flat lands. The house and barn complex of the wealthiest family. The smithy where the tools needed to work the land were made and repaired. A larger than usual hut serves as a "church" for a priest to tend to the religious needs of Bairglad.

A relatively short distance from this "core" area the land breaks, and instead of a moss covered hill in the forest there is instead a sheer cliff of stone that stretches for miles. While much of this break is covered in lichen vicious enough to fight off the moss and creepers, patches have been scrapped away to reveal the bare stone for quarrying, or stairs have been cut into the stone to make travel easier. For one particular patch of stone close to the core the bareness has to do with human activity, but not human hands.

Centered upon a crack that leads deep into the earth, the lichen refuses to grow upon stone and the mosses and trees nearby are stunted and grey, poisoned by the bad spirits of the place. Once upon a time the ancients of Bairglad had interred their dead within the bogs, not having the land for a proper burial, but that had left too many ghosts that were easily riled by peat cutters stumbling upon their bodies generations later. For the past few centuries the honoured dead had been brought here for internment, away from the living but still in a place where they could be properly tended to in their rest.

Through much of the year, the clearing around these catacombs remains mostly the same, with only the occasional remembrance or thanksgiving festival causing flowers and other offerings to appear upon marker cairns. While the winter always sits uneasy in this place, this year something has stirred the snow into muck just before the skies transition to dumping slush instead of white flakes. Snow had been repeatedly stomped into the grey moss beneath, churning it into a muddy slurry that had then frozen over into ugly sculpted waves to misery and loss.

The boots that had disturbed the snow to this extent were now gone, but footsteps still crunched across the ice and frost. A lone figured moved among the various points of interest outside the catacombs in a ritual cycle. A young woman dressed in the simple wools and furs of her people, her clothing is brought up over her head not to keep out the chill but to conceal her face and the way her hair only hung long on one side. Her circuit was also deeply complicated by the thick wads of moss held in place with leather and twine that wrapped her hands, forcing her to frequently return to a sack filled with the bright red berries and clay cups of beer that she left out as offerings at key places, blunt hands unable to hold everything she needed to all at once.

Her grimly executed ritual is interrupted with a start by the sound of snow crashing to the ground nearby. Jerking her head up, she surveys the woods around her and spies the branches of a conifer gently swaying up and down. After a still moment she exhales and decides that the snow must have just fallen off on its own, it is the time of year where that sort of thing starts to happen. However, after a moment she realizes that it the quiet of this macabre places has deepened to an almost absolute stillness.

"Hello?" She calls out with uncertainty, responded to only by further stillness. "Is someone out there? If it is some ghost seeking rest, I do not know how to help you, but I can fetch the priest to aid you on your way."

More silence.

"Macish, if that's you, if you think you are playing some prank, this isn't funny, and all our ancestors are behind me. Don't mess this up or they'll get mad at us both," she announces with some authority this time.

Nothing answers her, and she finds her feet carrying her backward. The catacombs are unsettling, but they have an almost comforting solidity and certainty to them. The wards and charms are strong here, and the ghosts of the ancestors interred within are infinitely more likely to become wrathful at interlopers than at descendents showing proper observance of ritual. If some spirit of the forest is intruding on this place, then she just needs to run and let the ancestors sort this out.

Yes. Yes, this is a bad omen. She needs to run, needs to fetch old Fenrick to come and check the blessings and her actions. First though she will gingerly place her hands together and offer a prayer of apology to the dead for interrupting the ritual. They will understand, and might appreciate having an expert on hand to sort this all out for them.

Just as she has finished bowing her head and closing her eyes in silent prayer something rough and slimy loops itself around her neck, going tight in an instant and hauling her off her feet. While it does not cinch as tight as it could with her hood getting in the way, it still begins to choke her and drag her with speed backward, into what should be solid rock.

Instead, after a short jaunt through a stone tunnel she emerges into a bleak, dead version of the deepest bogs. With grey, withered versions of trees, the sky a deep winter bruise, and the moss an ugly manure tone, it was like something taken from an elder woodsman's nightmares. Abruptly the force dragging her backward changed direction and she found herself being hauled up, off the wet ground to dangle from the limbs of an unnatural tree with bare, dead branches.

If she could get air past the noose she would scream, but instead all she could do was kick her feet and claw at the cord around her throat with moss covered hands. Red and black threads began and creep into the edge of her vision while stars grew ever thicker in front of her. She could hear someone talking, but she couldn't understand the language, although she could understand the rage in the tone.

Something was extremely angry and hanging her for it.

Darkness was closing in. The poor fit of the noose about her neck was giving her just enough air and blood flow to struggle, but this is turn was only really prolonging her suffering. Part of her wanted to just give up. She could join her family then, although there was another part that had a dread suspicion that a proper exorcist would be required to do that first. However, the part of her that had suffered seeking to save her family refused to give up. The pain in her hands from attempting to scrape off the dressings on the cord strangling her was a bright, searing light in her mind that kept her from passing out.

The bindings holding the moss on her hands came apart with her frantic struggles, revealing a raw and bloody hand twisted up by ruined tendons into an eagle's talons. Hands that had reached into flame to grasp at fallen building material, desperate to lift them away from those trapped beneath. Hands sacrificed for family.

In the mortal world not all sacrifices are rewarded. In a place like this with an attacker like this, those hands meant something.

Direct contact with the cord caused her hands to burst forth with sickly blue-green flame that eagerly leapt forth to consume the noose, dropping the young woman from her suspension. Where before the ground beneath had been hard, now she landed in a mirror still pool of black water. Kicking and thrashing as a new threat tried to smother her breath, she found her hands still burning, illuminating the darkness of the pool.

Illuminating the bodies within.

Cast in an eerie glow by the deathly light of her fire, empty shells of people reached out to her with leathery and boneless limbs. She could hear them here too, their words indecipherable but the intent behind them clear enough.

"Join us."

She didn't know how to swim, so base her struggles were largely in vain, and the undead hands reaching out for her were going to make even that impossible. Almost as an afterthought she noticed that among the leathery and almost alive bodies there were snarling skeletal figures also reaching out with hands of sharp bone. There was an almost grim part of her that was amused by the idea that this could somehow be worse.

Her assessment was abruptly corrected when the skeletons started to tear into the bog men with finger bones and teeth, solid hands grabbed her and pushing her upward, out of the water. The moment her head breached the surface and her abused lungs were able to suck in air for the first time in far too long, the grimy water sloshing into her mouth was one of the sweetest and most refreshing things she ever tasted.

She still threw it all up on being able to crawl out of the water with the skeletal hands helping to push her out. Sickly grey moss sizzled away where her burning hands touched it, charring away to dull black stone. Looking up, she found a figure holding the remains of a cord looking down at her. His skin was the almost black green-brown of the sort of leather a peat cutter might stumble upon, but still perfectly preserved as a young man in the prime of health. He wore naught but a simple loincloth and a braided leather noose about his own neck. While the empty pits of his eyes made it hard to discern what he was emoting, the way he stumbled back clarified his expression considerably.

He was afraid.

Afraid of her.

The young woman glared hatefully at him for a moment before the emotion collapsed under the strain of her own exhaustion. The weight of the past several days came slamming down upon her in this instant of utter physical and emotional depletion. She had nothing left to give but her tears, and even as the muck on her face became just that much saltier she just felt numb towards everything.

Pushed to the very edges of her own mind and heart, she found that last tiny scrap of strength that refused to die. The scrap that had run into the burning wreckage of her home again and again to try to save her family. The scrap that had decided to not just lay on the priest's cot and let death claim her. The scrap that refused to walk alone into the woods or jump off the cliff.

Katrin, Daughter of Hugh and Rein, got herself as composed as she could and began to pray her thanks for the ancestors who had been responsible for lifting her from the water. She was too tired to feel anything but gratitude, and soon enough that found the dried kindling of her grief. Some of the bones pushing her up had to have belonged to her mother and father.

A voice that had no identifying features beyond being strangely comforting whispered back to her prayers, "Release him."

Katrin blinked a few times and then looked over at her would be hangman. The ghost had stumbled away from her and was pressing up against the trunk of a tree. Finding some strength in her, Katrin managed to shakily get to her feet and drunkenly stumble over to him. The ghost tried to scramble away from her, but skeletal hands burst forth from the dead soil to cut into his leathery shell and hold him firm.

Katrin stared down at him, stared down at the ancient that had been driven by rage to murder her, and she felt nothing. Considering her own hands and the painless fire that had consumed them down to her now perfectly agile bones, she knew that she could inflict the death of her family on him. Burn him away, perhaps to utter oblivion. He was scared and resigned even as there was still a glimmer of rage in the curl of his lips.

Something came together within her and Katrin reached down and touched him with her burning hands. She touched him only upon the noose around his own neck though, letting it burn away. In that moment she saw flashes of youths running through the bogs in summer, of hanging bound from a noose in a circle of salt, and of seeing the world with two sets of eyes in a mad rage amidst a ferocious battle. What terrible purpose had the ancients got up to once upon a time, what other curses might they had inadvertently laid?

And then it was done and with a sigh of relief the bog ghost began to deflate like an air filled bladder whose tie cord had come undone. A mote of white light sprang forth from within his depths as the empty skin dissolved away, the wisp rising up to settle into Katrin's hands. For a moment it just sat there, warm and pleasant in the heatless blue-green flame rising from her bare bones. After a trio of heartbeats it dissolved away, leaving behind a warmth within Katrin and a sense of the space around her like her sense of her own body.

The bog broke down into black stone unlike any of the region, the sky becoming part of the vaulted cavern ceiling atop this space. It wasn't quite what Katrin had imagined the deeper parts of the catacombs were like, but it had a similar air to what she expected this place had originally been like. Once the transformation halted, the last remnants of the bog were the bare limbed tree she had been hung from, and the black watered pool she had fallen into. Now the tree was made of grey stone, flame like that of her hands perched upon many of the limbs to provide illumination, and the pool was neatly surrounded by regular bricks instead of moss.

Infused with fresh warmth, Katrin went over to the pool and gazed into it. The waters there were perfectly still and reflected back the person she was. The burns to her face had mostly been in the charring of her once long black hair upon the left side of her face, but there were scabs and blisters on that side that would no doubt scar. Deep bags from exhaustion hung beneath her eyes, and her once youthful features had sunk from the stress placed upon her. A bruise the colour of the sky when she had been dragged in here wrapped around her neck and she knew somehow that it would be permanent.

Something rippled beneath the surface and for just a single breath her reflection showed who she had been but a week ago, surrounded by her family. Her parents looked so proud, while her siblings smiled up at her. She reached out for them, but in releasing that breath she banished the illusion. The smiles remained as the reflections turned to grinning skulls that then sank into darkness.

Katrin collapsed to her knees on the hard stone and then keeled over onto the pool, which despite looking exactly like water refused to yield to her. Curling up into a ball on the strange black glass, she resumed the exhausted crying she had started before the spirits had urged her to get up. This time they let her sleep it off.

---

"That's not what the catacombs look like at all, so this has to be a labyrinth," Fenrick, priest of Bairglad stated to the terrified group of notables from the hamlet. Notables that now included Katrin, whose flames had somewhat thankfully gone out once those brave enough to go inside the altered catacomb had found her and retrieved her. It was fortunate because it avoided scaring the crap out of everyone, but unfortunate because it reverted her hands to the burned mess that they had been earlier in the day.

"A labyrinth? God above save us all," Headman Callom breathed.

"It's not as bad as it could be," Fenrick stated cautiously. "Young Katrin has most definitely bonded to it rather than the ghost that had taken up initial residency."

"Can she do anything about it?" Gruff Jellic, the barrel chested village blacksmith, asked in a tone that was both pragmatic and mildly threatening.

Katrin shrank down upon herself more than a little and she offered up a tepid, "I'm not sure?"

"Unlikely, not without practice or training, but I do know from the tales that however bad a labyrinth with an oracle might be, one without is a hundredfold worse. She needs protection and the attention of priests more skilled than I to aid her in a myriad of ways," Fenrick explains, which definitely causes Jellic to settle down from whatever 'direct solution' he might have been thinking about.

"So what next?" Jellic asks the group.

"We need to tell the baron," Callom states with a sigh.

"Do we have to?" Every other leading member of Bairglad but Fenrick choruses all at once. Avoiding the nobility was one of the primary reasons people lived here.

Callom and Fenrick shook their heads simultaneously at that. The headman glanced at the priest to see if the elder man wanted to speak, but with a slight nod he said, "Yeah, no, we couldn't keep it quiet for more than a month before something about this filtered out and he came investigating on his own. Beyond that, we're going to need the men-at-arms he sends right quick. Even a well managed labyrinth will attract monsters from the outside. Even if we kept a tight leash something too dangerous would eventually wander in."

That set off a round of grumbling. Callom sighed and said, "Look, this is bad, let's be clear on that. This is going to get out to the baron, and from there to the king, and if we hide it that will just piss them off. Labyrinths are both dangerous and sources of immense wealth if you know what you are doing, and if the king has to make a road out of dead bodies he will do it without hesitation. The kingdom is coming here, and if you don't like it, leave. Resist and they will kill you without hesitation. My pappy made that quite clear to me when he taught me about being a headman."

"Can't we just-" someone began to speak up, at which point Callom just rolled his eyes and bulled onward.

"We would literally be safer if we discovered that all the bog iron had been magically transformed into gold. The nobles won't care for any claims to our land if we get in their way, and even if we cooperate it will still have them stomping all over us. They're going to push in a road and send in soldiers and they are going to demand taxes for the privilege. About the only thing we can do is do some of those things ourselves, and even then they might take over for us after," Callom states authoritatively.

Having looked thoughtful for a time, Fenrick spoke up at the end and said, "Having travelled more widely in my seminary days, I can say that the churches and monasteries that spring up around labyrinths to tend to the needs of those that delve into them tend to have an excellent relationship with the communities around them. Adventurers tend to be quite generous to the people who help them sleep at night, so if we have a proper church established early we should have more say when warriors start setting up camp."

"You would say that," Jellic notes bitterly. "The blacksmiths guilds are probably going to muscle me out of my own smithy."

"Not necessarily… but it is a worry," Callom says. After a moment's consideration he says cautiously, "While some of us will no doubt stay put, there are many here who are already considering packing up and heading for places that will not have taxmen. If so, we may wish to consider banding some of the tougher men together to retrieve some treasure from the labyrinth first. It would help those who wish to leave make their way in the world."

That set off a round of grumbling and arguing about dangers versus payouts. No one was really happy about the idea of going into the labyrinth and facing its potential dangers, but there was a certain appeal to getting the rewards from the place first, before outsiders took everything away from them. At this Vellic pointed out that if everyone pitched in with tools and other resources and gave him a week he could probably bash together some better equipment for anyone going into the labyrinth, improving their odds.

Other matters were discussed. Certain things would take a while to build but would be pretty important to get going sooner rather than later. If Bairglad made their own road then the baron and/or the king might let them maintain it for a toll rather than just taking it for themselves. If a noble had to make their own road though, they would definitely keep it and likely charge the people of Bairglad to leave their own homes. The whole community would throw together a hut for Katrin in no time at all, but an expanded living space for her and a place for larger groups to gather together before entering the labyrinth would be needed.

Eventually an adventurer's guild would either form or move in, and if anyone local wanted a long term say it would be best to be in charge of that one earlier rather than later. This sort of shaped a lot of things, in that while the nobles were going to come in and impose on whoever stayed, anything built before that arrival was more likely to be left in place out of simple convenience. This lent some weight towards the possibility of holding off on telling the baron about things right away. Maybe not let him find out on his own, but maybe wait a week or two to get things in order before telling him.

Other ideas banded about was to pool together their meager wealth to maybe try to attract specialists in dealing with all of this early, instead of relying completely upon whoever was sent by the baron and eventually the king. Even if they stayed out of the labyrinth itself, they would need to patrol the region to keep an eye out for any monsters attracted to the labyrinth, which would have its own dangers that would require those skilled in combat. This sort of thing would also require more sages and magicians to make more powerful wards and charms. Those were a bit more distant ideas though, since if they wanted to hire outsiders having some wealth from the labyrinth first would be a good idea.

As for the now completely overwhelmed Katrin, she was currently best served by quietly taking some time to understand what the divine had granted her. She had a concrete connection to the spirits, and from them the afterlife and heavens. As a virtuous and pious member of the church, that made her an oracle in the eyes of secular and religious authority. Support would be sent her way, but by Fenrick's reckoning of the old tales and texts, every labyrinth was different and every oracle had to learn some things on their own.
---

Currently Have 1 Community Action and 1 Personal Action for Katrin

Katrin the Oracle
Peasant 1
Oracle 1
Dungeonmaster 1
-Explode Node

Headman Callom @Vocalend
Peasant 1
Village Headman 1
Wrestling 1

Alaric @Admiral Skippy
Adventurer 2
Thief 2
Animal Handler 1
+2 Good Boi

Knight Reinner (Loyal to Baron Horvic)
Knight 3
Retainer 1
Guardian 1
+1 Combat Rolls

Community Stats

Labour 1
Expertise 1
Wealth 0
Prestige 1
Morale 2

Buildings

Hamlet Smithy (+1 Expertise)
Hamlet Church (+1 Morale, 0/1 Holy)
Headman's House
Basic Guildhall Completed (0/1 PC Adventurer, 1/1 NPC Adventurer)

Statuses

Demoralized (-1 Morale Until Start of Week 5)
Wealth Spent (-1 Wealth Until Start of Week 6)
Minor Spirit Siege (-1 Morale for duration, Diplomatic options currently unavailable)

Labyrinth Stats
Total Nodes 5
Level 0: 1 Capped
Level 1: 1 Explored, 6 Unexplored
Random Threat: 7%

Formations
Poor Militia (Militia 2)

Q: Answers to What?

A: Instead of a full on rule set right away, I'm just going to compile the answers to key questions asked in thread, or a few things I anticipate being asked.

Q: So a week is like a single turn here, right?

A: Yes, currently that is the case.

Q: So what format do you want us to vote in?

A: I'm sure the thread will figure out its own notation, but a suggestion I would ask of you would be something like say

[COM] Build Roads (0/16)
-[COM] Commit 1 Labour and 1 Expertise
[PER] Study Skill
-[PER] Oracle 0

Q: Wait, why do some of these characters have poster's names next to them?

A: As part of the experiment, I am working on how to delegate things. Some posters will be assigned a character to control in-game, with certain abilities and purview to perform actions on their own.

Q: Wait, why are some of these characters not having poster's names next to them?

A: Some will have their decisions more directly controlled by the quest, some will be more NPCs under QM control.

Q: So how does one gain control over a character?

A: Two things. First, there has to be an available spot for a significant character, which will require infrastructure. These will come fast at first, and slower later.

Second, you need to contribute to the thread. Writing in-character side stories helps significantly, but providing feedback on mechanics and generally gaining a high profile for yourself helps as well. If you do write IC stuff, don't try to pigeonhole yourself too much before you get a character, as the opportunity to introduce them might not come up, or their backstory might not fit. Rather, try to enrich what you have already seen. You might not get the exact character you introduce, or even one fully related, but if you can make me and the thread remember you in a positive way that increases the odds of getting an invite to take over a character.

Q: How do these stats work with the actions?

A: When you take an action, you will typically assign Labour, Expertise, or a character to a task. The basic equation for Construction type actions is Labour X (Expertise +1) progress per week, which means that Expertise acts as a multiplier for Labour. Manufacturing type actions typically use Expertise. Individual actions may have modifiers to this formula, usually a reduction in Expertise to act as a threshold mechanism. Certain characters can achieve tasks that might overwise take several people to do if they have the right skills.

Q: So these actions have progress. Can I change around how much Labour or Expertise is assigned week to week on a big project?

A: Yes, this is something that can be done.