Labyrinthine Spiral

Looking out over the field, you remembered your training as a child. The Adventurer who had taught you had seemed ancient when you were a youth, though looking back you could not help but wryly chuckle at such thoughts. Still, you remembered the very beginning of his lessons, how he had so harshly scolded you as you brandished your blade, calling you a disgrace to your weapon, a man who's very touch defiled the weapon you had held. You had been oh-so-confident in your supposed talent at the time, certain that you could master any skill he should teach, and as such had merely rolled your eyes at his words.

The subsequent weeks and his near constant cursing at your constant failures had crushed those idle fancies of yours.

Still, looking upon the men gathered before you, you think you could understand his words now. It takes a truly monumental amount of willpower to keep the disgust at the men who drew themselves up proudly before you, their ragtag weapons and armor clenched too tightly in their grubby hands. Eager eyes stare at you, excited at the prospect of learning to fight from a Knight.

You honestly were not quite sure what to make of these people. You had been somewhat impressed with their initiative in arming themselves as they had, even if you could only roll your eyes at the subpar quality of the weapons they had produced. Their building of a church now of all times was, on the other hand, somewhat annoying. A road, a better forge, almost anything would have been a superior choice in your mind.

Still, it was better than the situation you had expected to find here. Coming upon the tiny hamlet, you had expected feaful silence, or perhaps resentment at what they likely knew of what the Kingdom would bring to their doorsteps. Instead, you found the people working themselves hard to prepare as best they could, with little resentment towards you to be found. The village Headman, Callom, had taken charge and kept the people working, while also preventing any chance of panic that might have spawned from such a dangerous location appearing nearby. He was a good man, if one who was clearly out of his depth, and was floundering about in search of anything that might make the situation slightly more palatable.

Then again, you suspected everyone currently involved in this whole mess was out of their depth. You knew you certainly were.

Especially after hearing the burned Oracle's words about the Labyrinth's state. Whatever trouble the Labyrinth might be at this point, you certainly didn't need it digging out even more trouble on it's own!

Turning such musings aside, you finally began barking out orders to the gathered militiamen. While you might not be able to whip these men into anything approaching reasonable fighting shape in the near future, you could at least make it so a handful of monsters from the Labyrinth would not possess the power to wipe out this once sleepy hamlet.

[X][Com] Build Hamlet Church
-[X] Commit 1 Labor and 1 Expertise
[X][Per] Influence Labyrinth
[X][Callom] Organize Labour
Reinner Explores Labyrinth

Katrin sat upon the black pool in quiet contemplation of the labyrinth. To everyone else the waters were only semi-solid, and unliving material stirred it like normal water, but for Katrin it was as solid as black glass. When she sat here, her sense of the labyrinth was at its strongest, and it felt closest to being an extension of her body. In the past two weeks, strange adages Fenrick had taught her in the past suddenly became straightforward and sensible. Things she had once thought of as excessively verbose ways of saying that one should be nice to others turned out to actually be very literal and practical advice. It was just that describing it adequately to anyone else around her proved difficult, as Katrin often fell back on weird turns of phrase to get the feel of something across rather than something more accurate to what was actually going on.

At its most abstract, the labyrinth was simply a filter for the dead. The sins and pains accumulated in life could not be borne eternally in death, and had to be shed back to the world of the living, where they could be purified by beings still capable of thought and change. Unfortunately explaining how any of that happened was an exercise in frustration because the language simply didn't exist, although Katrin supposed that if she spoke with another oracle they would actually be able to converse on the subject.

Take for example the vague sensation of Reinner patrolling about in the deeper labyrinth. Katrin could vaguely detect his presence, but only really by how he swirled things around him. The closest parts of the untamed labyrinth were a subterranean continuation of the bog, the trees reaching impossibly high into the sky. A mortal could not actually climb them, they did something strange with the directions once you got past a certain point, but from Katrin's perspective they all merged together into a singular canopy of stone that was also the ground at the same time. Utterly intangible spirits swirled all around, shedding the the bits of themselves that they could not bring into the next stage of existence. Some bits formed the general current of spirits, eroding away and depositing upon the reality of the labyrinth, crafting new spaces. Some bits sprang forth into life like maggots from manure. Spirits flaked off tiny embers of anger that occasionally sprang forth into curious firefly creatures that flitted about the bog. Where they landed the moisture within the moss and trees boiled away, creating a swirling fog of steam that filled the place. Thus Katrin could feel the way the fog was parted by Reinner's movements and the way he scattered and crushed the fireflies that tried to attack him.

He was really quite good at what he did, Katrin decided after several days of observation in pursuit of making the labyrinth less deadly. Because some of the 'angry embers' had been turning to a sort of 'ash' that had been settling and pooling. Katrin hadn't quite understood it before, but she could feel that the complex, twisted spaces of the labyrinth were focused around a certain number of 'nodes', places where the energy settled in. One node was another great tree like the one she sat under that was the center point of the bog area, but another was a settling point for the wrathful ash. A dead pit of darkness in the bog, it's confusing space was one of narrow, twisted tunnels, darkness, and things of great anger and resentment, and significantly more danger than the rest of the labyrinth.

So while much of the week was just in feeling things out, Katrin tried to use her connection to modify that node, make it something safer for others to explore in. While Reinner was fairly confident in smacking fireflies and oversized amphibians around, the rest of the village was not nearly so adept. For her part Katrin tried to feel out how to close the entrance or something like that. She could to a limited degree close the connection between the central tree and the labyrinth proper, but it took continual effort. Very quickly Katrin realized that any block she tried to put up just had the flow of spirit and essence divert around. She needed to constrict multiple things at once, so she tried to starve the node by blocking the flow instead. Maybe make it nicer? At least try to block out all the resent and bitterness that kept accumulating in that place.

By the end of the week, Katrin realized that she had made something of a mistake. While it wasn't wrong exactly to call the things her senses categorized as embers 'anger' or the ashes 'hate', that wasn't all they were, and her attempts to block resulted in subtle variations of the actual essence getting through. The pit was of ashes that filled with water and then sprouted with rot and decay overnight, only for a fresh spark to come and ignite the materials expressed by that rot. Passions consumed the accidental admixture of cast off feelings and the node exploded. Where once the node had been a deeper channel for stronger passions to be cast off into and allow for the generation of stronger creatures, it burst forth into a trio of new nodes.

A sound like thunder, a kiln hot wind, and then the tumbling and rolling through the snow.

Reinner found her curled up on the pool, her face wet and puffy from tears shed while unconscious. While he had scouted out the initial node, at least part of the labyrinth was now at least a little on fire. While she wasn't certain about what exactly she had wrought, she was certain that there were now four nodes of roughly the same strength. The transformation had traded intensity for massively increased throughput, and she knew that the chances of spawning or attracting something of considerable danger had just jumped considerably.

Apparently though, from what Reinner knew, once someone had located the heart of a node an oracle who was physically present at the site could somehow adjust the flow of energy and make the site considerably less dangerous and the region easier to navigate. Of course, sometimes parts of labyrinths were left in wilder condition because it was generally easier to find interesting things in such places, like the new axe that Reinner had found embedded in a tree near the center of the node he had been exploring. While not exactly visually appealing from a distance, up close one realized that the colour of the weapon was not caused by rust but by it being made of a solid piece some strange red-brown wood stronger than steel. Reinner had claimed it as his own, but was a bit more ambivalent over another find.

A translucent crystal of strange, elongated shape and an almost maddeningly difficult number of faces, even had it been a common material it probably would have been worth quite a bit just for being about the size of a chicken egg. However, it was also clearly magical, as it had a definite blue-white ethereal glow to it, and if one stared long enough into it there was a definite sense of a flame trapped within. Reinner wasn't exactly sure what it was, just that it looked like something one shouldn't leave unattended in a labyrinth. They should probably figure out what it was and what it was worth and then they could work out who should have it and how taxes should be assessed.

That word got the hackles of the town notables up even if no one said anything. While as a knight Reinner could just claim whatever he wanted as spoils, apparently the higher level nobles preferred it if labyrinths were taxed properly as soon as possible so that they could more effectively get their cut, and weren't afraid to crush those that tried to cheat and reward those that set up a system they could like with early. Less work for them. Of course, no one was quite sure how to identify the thing right now. Maybe wait for a proper sage to show up, maybe Katrin could ask the spirits about it? Or they could just sell it as a pretty thing, no doubt someone would pick it up if someone took it to market.

Katrin has developed a Specialty
Influence Labyrinth subskill Divide Node now Explode Node
Reinner found a Magic Weapon (+1 Combat actions)
Reinner found an Unknown Crystal
Built Hamlet Church (+1 Morale, 0/1 Holy characters)


Currently Have 2 Community Actions and 1 Personal Action for Katrin
Knight Reinner wishes to Organize Labour for the Train Militia Action, but will Patrol otherwise this week