Body and Spirit
The Season of Still Stone
Terror runs in your veins like ice. If you had been alone odds are good you would have turned tail and ran at the sight of black spirits beyond the touch of steel or your own meager magics. But you are not alone, nor are you in the company of the people of Zul. You have allies at your back, fair dealing in your common cause of enriching each other. "Cob, bring the poker..."
As you and Mina hold your breath and Gorok blinks slowly, weapon in hand the goblin starts to uncover the hand, the shoulder, then the torso of a headless corpse, the stump of its neck burned black. It does not move, not even a twitch, though given how you had been shown it none of you wants to get much closer.
In the end it is Mina who jumps down the proverbial crevice and starts to search the body while you and Gorok keep watch on the body and Cob sweeps the room for more wall-walking horrors. Even the normally rambunctious goblin knows to take 'spooks' seriously, though somehow you do not think his suggestion of offering a tribute of meat and trail rations would do much good. That mouth did not look like it was meant for
chewing.
The clothes themselves are stained and torn. His, as you discover, death had not been a swift one, or perhaps death had come knocking more than once given the moldfolks' prisoner. Regardless, apart from his boots, which are solid steel tipped leather meant for hard wear, the corpse also boasts a pair of silver rings, none of them magical thank the Dark, a piece of gold wire twined into a ring with a strand of golden hair, a lover's token Mina tells you, and last of all a silver 'watch', like the dwarf contraptions for telling time, though this one breaks up time into only a dozen arcs rather than the common twenty used in the Darklands. The fine numbering and slow ticking movement is fascinating. Such a small thing, so finely crafted. The dead man must have been of some import before he had come here to die...
As Mina flips open the watch she reveals that the design is marked by a trio of serpents, three of them entwined. Hadn't the ghoul said something about the wrath of serpents? It seems like you had found another of his expedition, but what had they found here? You glance around the empty room half-expecting the strange specter to return.
What had they unleashed?
Loot
- 1 pair of solid traveling boots
- 2 silver rings, one with an agate stone
- 1 gold lovers' keepsake
- 1 silver pocket watch marked with the three twined serpents
"That sign, it looks familiar," Mina muses as the four of you head out and back to Warty with your meager prizes. "Like something I've seen, but not in a book. I'm sure it's not the mark of any god or kingdom, at least not one of the major ones... What?" she asks, reading the disbelief on your face.
"I don't know how things are done in the Burnlands, but in Nar Voth every cave has its idol and every tribe its heroes and monsters. "
"The sky is wider than any cave roof," Mina shakes her head, frowning in thought as though she can force her memory to give up the symbol in question.
As you turn to leave the shadows, coin in the far corner, a twisted specter walks forth. In the depths of your mind you hear a voice that is longing for life, for light, for meaning.
"Child of the Blood."
Stunned, you can think to answer nothing but wordless confusion.
"We have failed Her Grace and Her Light was taken from us. Do not make our error, do not follow in our sin..."
"I do not know of what you speak," you manage to get out.
The eyeless specter points unerringly at your pack and the ring within it.
"What should I..." you start
"I think we should go," Mina says with quiet fervor, pulling at your arm.
"We who linger would offer you a gift," the words form in your mind not in any one voice, but shaped from a dozen memories pulled from your past.
"To find that which was scattered, to return the Light of the world. It is a paltry thing... but... all... we... have."
Do you accept the specter's gift?
[] Yes, they named you kin and did you no harm, frightening as they are you do not think they are your foes
[] No, the gifts of the dead are best left in their graves
[] Write in
OOC: Again it would be spoilers to post the rolls. 
