Spells, Banshees, and Necromancy

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This has all been a lot, but we found a spellbook last night, and the others want to copy down some of the spells. Nat’s father gives us enough ink and paper for us each to copy down one spell. Nobody tells him I can’t do magic that way. We spend an entire day discussing who wants what spell, and then hours copying them all done. Klyce has zero interest in the ones we found.

It takes some convincing to get Nat to come out of her room, let alone to take a couple spells. She’s convinced that she has to go south, down to where the fighing is. We tell her that we’ll go, we’ll all go, but we need to learn a few things first. We need a plan. Some want to finish our first year of school. Some want to at least tell their families where they’ll be. We do decide to split up the old Royalist money we found. Most of them will give it to their families. I don’t know what I’m going to do with mine, yet.

We all want to go back to school for a little while at least, but Nat won’t leave without another trip down to Old Town. I guess that’s what we’re calling the cave now. First, though, she goes to have a chat with her mom. Maribeth and I whisper a bit about her odd egg, and the place it takes her. The tower and the books and a fog fish. There’s even a book she wrote there. When Nat gets back, we gather up more OJ and water, and head down into the cave.

There’s some arguement about what exactly we’re doing. Clear them all out? Close the cave? Reverse the ritual? But the discussion is cut short when we get attacked by four grey corpses. It takes a bit to get rid of them, and we move forward a bit more quietly. Searching for other signs of the ritual.

We get back to the Town Hall, and since I had to Levitate Maribeth in the last fight, I send her above us to keep watch while we look around some more. Remy detects magic, but it mostly seems played out. Even back in the building by the symbol. Nat breaks up the floor there anyway. We decide to go gather the bones from the Green Witch – maybe a proper disposal will help? We head to the north to check out more of the town.

There’s a soft singing voice ahead of us. Super creepy, but even more so when we find her sitting, eyeless at a fountain at the edge of the village. Nat goes to sit with her and they have an even creepier little chat about familial responsability and fixing this whole mess.

“Do you know what your family did? … How will you fix this? … By your family’s choice… What does it look like? To what end? …. Peace?!? Do you know what would give me peace?”

And then, of course, she twists and changes into this horrible creature. Her terrible screams are so awful that both Maribeth and Remy age by decades! She even possesses Remy for a time, and we have to knock him out to get her to leave him. I thought I liked this crossbow, but then I shot Remy right through the neck! It was awful! Maribeth finally gets rid of her, and someone found her bones in the water. When we burn them, there’s a sigh on the wind. Not sure if that is good or bad.

This is just too much. We can’t stay down here, or we’re all going to die. We don’t know enough about what is going on here. We convince Nat that this isn’t the way, and head back out. Nothing bothers us on the way out. Once in the fresh air again, we roll the stone back to cover the entrance to the cave, and bury it all with as much dirt as we can msuter.

We need more information. We head down to the fishing village to talk to the Crab Woman, but she doesn’t know how to help. Then we head back up to the main village, but the caravans and Old Baba are gone already. When we get back to the castle, Nat and Remy lose it at Nat’s parents. Kendrick says he might have a way to help Remy or Maribeth, and returns with a potion. Gerhardt gets the notes about how to make the potion, and we convince Remy, who aged far more, to drink it. He drops down about a decade, but is still much older than us.

After a barber visit, some heavy drinking, and some new clothes for our now senior classmates, we rest and head back to school. We all troop up to visit Raltus, just so we can see his face when we show him our most recent troubles. Raltus summons the Necromancy professor, Rictus, who is just as creepy as you might expect. He says there is a mark upon the soul, and there is little to be done. But there might be something. He suggests they dedicate themselves to studying necromancy or alchemy, and in the mean time, gives permission for Maribeth to share her Disguise Self spell with Remy for ease of fitting in at school. Just before we all turn in for the night, Raltus measures Remy for a proper glass eye.

Dead Things and Stephen?

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Nat, after some nudging, tells us that Stephen’s body is supposed to be in the basement, under a spell that should prevent him from being turned into undead. Clearly, it didn’t work. We’ll have to look into that later, but for the moment, we keep heading deeper.

The air gets dryer and colder. The road narrows, the buildings getting closer and closer together. Dalish detects residual mana in the air, but it’s not a lot. There is rustling nearby, and we all stop. Blacked skeletons with coal red eyes, and a bunch of tiny smoke monsters burst out of an alley and attack.

I shoot some of them, this crossbow seems pretty useful and easier today. We do manage to make them dead… again… and Gerhardt once again comes through, patching us up after the fight. I sit with Maribeth while the others begin looking around. Nat finds the right path to get to townsquare.

We head that way, and can hear shuffling all around us. We move our lights away from us to try an get them to chase it. We got to the square, though, before they got to us. There is an old big green wicker witch there, like at the festival. And there’s some crying coming from it. Nat approaches, as the shuffling moves away from us again.

She calls out, and a voice answers. When she tells the voice her name, it becomes an enraged shadowy figure shouting for her to Fix It! She attacks and we’re fighting again. I try my spell again, but it still causes more problems than gains. Or at least that’s what the boys say. I don’t know how to do anything else though.

Dalish finds footprints heading into the townhall, so we all head in. It’s a bit of a maze in there. Crumbled walls and burned out beams. There are two ashey, pale figures with glowing eyes and sharp teeth. They are arguing about bells, paper, and shoes. We quietly argue about what to do, until Remy walks right by them. Shrugging, and happy to not be fighting again, we follow suit. We pass another pair who are also arguing about packing things.

Eventually, we find a set of stairs going down. Exhausted, we take a break to rest. Nat keeps poking around though, and finds a strange symbol in the corner. Remy and Dalish look, too. They all decide it is definitely necromatic, but no one is sure what it does. Rested, we head down the stairs. And down, and down, and down. At the bottom, we start hearing the sound of boiling liquid, fire, and wind blowing from somewhere.

Voices drift up to us. Master, they approach. They come to fast. I know, I can feel them, too.

We head in to a room filled with tables, books, and alchemy equipment. There’s a boiling cauldron with green liquid inside. Stephen is in front of it, with a female strange ashen figure. Nat immediately calls out to her brother, demanding to know what he’s doing. Stephen is not interested in talking, though. Remy shouts out that he’s not going to let us leave and we start attacking.

Chaos erupts. Nat tackles Stephen. Stephen bites Nat. Dalish tries to spill the cauldron on the bad guys. Maribeth closes the doorway with a sheet of metal. I lift him up into the air when he steps away from Nat. He turns to mist and floats away, leaving us to fight his servant. Klyce insists Stephen will be fine and we should just let him go. Dalish tries to stab the girl with a wooden stake he found. Nat tries, too. She bites Klyce pretty deeply, but eventually we manage to put her down and Klyce rips her head off. It’s pretty gruesome, so Maribeth, Nat, and I start looking around for other things.

They found a bunch of scrolls, potions, platinum coins and books. Apparently the book had a ton of spells in it that they can all learn. The scrolls were spells, too, and the potions had a lot of healing in them. Seems like a good haul for our troubles, if we get to keep it.

We decide it’s pointless to try and find Stephen, so we head out. The creepy arguing folk are all gone. Klyce is feeling pretty weak, so we give him all the water, orange juice, and wine that we’re carrying. This, unfortunately, makes him very drunk. Fortunately, all the undead leave us alone as we exit the cave. Klyce is funny when he’s drunk. Eventually, Remy casts silence to stop all our arguing. When we get outside, Klyce wants to go swimming, but he’s way too drunk, so I levitate him to stop him and we pull him back to the castle. Once there, he immediately starts baking all the things. Drunk Klyce makes excellent bread and muffins. But he’s really heavy when he passes out. Dalish makes a magic disc to carry him to bed, and we all take a well deserved sleep.

Secrets, Harvest Close, and Family

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Maribeth shared her secrets with me. When we were back at the Native village, an old witchwoman gave her a gift, and promptly passed away. That’s why there was lightning in the sky before we ran away. Maribeth said it showed her strange spirit things, and there were towers and books and things. It sounds very strange to me.

James told us his secrets, too. He’s been having dreams of the sea, and he’s really scared. We’ll protect him, though, we always do. Remy has secret dreams, too, since he lost his eye. He says they’re someone else’s dreams, or memories maybe. They’re all about war, but not war dreams. More like dreams about someone experiencing war. He says he can feel things, but he’s not seeing a war played out, no battles or anything. Then Remy tells us all about his family are old nobility and he was trained as a Knight of the Realm, even though there aren’t Knights or Kings anymore.

Kendrick tells us that someone else went missing last night, so we all head into town to solve the next problem on our list. Asking around, we find out that Brucey Dickenson was his name, and he left sometime before dawn. Brucey had been telling people that he had strange dreams, too, but he know one knew what about. He was just a baker’s apprentice who walked down to the shore and disappeared into the mist. None of the disappeared people came from the same area of town, and they were all sorts of different people. I ask the folk I talk with to send anyone speaking of strange dreams up to the castle so we can protect them. It seemed like a few of them even listened to me.

We spend the rest of the day discussing plans to protect and/or follow James. Dalish thinks we ought to tie him to the bed and to Dalish himself, to keep him from wandering off. The others think we should just set watch and follow him down to the sea. We can’t solve the problem if we don’t know what is calling these people. Gerhardt even sets an alarm outside Dalish and James’ room. Naturally, us being all prepared, nothing happens that night.

In the morning, it’s Harvest Close Festival. We all get decked out for a Festival Day, some of us more than others, and have a nice breakfast before heading into town. Some of the boys are still frightened of the orange juice, and I really don’t know why. It’s delicious!

The town has a huge Wicker Witch in the square, once green and now turning brown, that farmers are placing offerings in. There are games around and dancing and a stage for some competitons. There will even be a talent competition that evening. It’s so exciting, I can’t wait to see what people do. There are archery, pie-eating, arm-wrestling, and drinking competitions throughout the day.

We all wander around a bit until the Pie Eating competition starts, then head back to the stage. James, Dalish, and Gerhardt decide to enter against three townsfolk. It’s all fun until people start puking everywhere. Why would people do this?! I watch, but just barely, until Dalish finally wins out over everyone, and even that by only a few seconds. That was disgusting! I am Not watching the drinking contest, as I’m told it ends just about the same way.

We wander around a bit more and some of us find a few bites to eat for lunch. Then we head to the Archery contest. Nat and Remy decide to enter, but they are far outmatched by the local hunters. Next up is the Arm Wrestling competition. Nat and Klyce decide to enter, just for the fun of it. Nat actually wins her first round, and unsurprisingly, so does Klyce. Klyce goes up against a local blacksmith next, and through a very intense and exciting bout, actually comes out on top. Nat somehow ends up in the final round against Klyce, and while she loses, she gives a good showing first.

Next we head over to the edge of the festival where a bunch of Traveling caravans are set up. Nat introduces us to her mother’s family, and they welcome us warmly. We exchange stories of our recent adventures, and they tell us of a coming storm. Nat tells them of the plant creatures, but they are unfamiliar. They pass on news of the Royalists heading back to the Old World, afraid of the wizards. We ask them about henges and the old gods, but they say that’s all Old World stuff and invite us to relax and dance with them.

We have a lovely time dancing, and even get James and Dalish to put on swishy skirts to dance like Nat’s aunties. Just before we leave, we ask about getting our fortunes read. They say they won’t read the boys’ fortunes, but they’ll read for Maribeth, Nat, and me. Maribeth comes out with a nice sachet of tea, as does Nat. But then Old Baba invites me into her tent.

She asks what I want to know about, and I tell her about my magic having no apparent source. And about my dreams where the ground has a heartbeat. She asks if I have Native blood, but my parents have never said such a thing. Not that they would, it wouldn’t be Proper. Baba takes my hands, and we sit around her glowing orb. And then… and… well, it all goes horribly wrong.

The wind starts blowing through the tent, and around in circles, blowing everything around. I try to apologize, but I’m not doing it. I try to ask her what’s going on, but she just holds my hands and stares harder at the globe. It starts glowing brighter, and brighter, and brighter! Until it Explodes! Baba falls back and I keep apologizing and yelling for Nat to come in. When she does, Baba yells at me to Get Out!

I ran all the way back to the castle in tears. All the way in and back up to my bedroom, and threw myself into bed. Maribeth and Nat followed me all the way, and sat with me, trying to find out what happened. I tell them about the wind and the glowing and the explosion. It was all my fault. No, I didn’t do it, but my magic doesn’t make any sense. And I shouldn’t have asked her about it. I shouldn’t have exposed her to things that don’t even make sense to me. It was wind and light, and it Must have been me. And she must hate me for breaking her globe!

Nat and Maribeth do their best to calm me down. Nat says Baba was just surprised, she’s not mad, and she has plenty of other globes. It’s okay, it’s not my fault. They wonder if the source of my magic was just trying to communicate with me, and just didn’t know how. Maribeth gets some tea from the kitchen and we all decide to have sleepover in my room.

That night, James goes for a walk. Dalish and the others come and get the three of us, and we all follow him down to the coast. We hear whistling in the distance. There’s a light in the mist, and when it approaches, we see a nicely dressed young man. With glowing red eyes. I levitate James up in the air to keep him from going to this spectre. Nat says it’s his brother Stephen. Said brother recognizes Nat and runs away from us.

The chase is on, but I have to keep James safe, so some of us just walk quickly while others run after him. Eventually, we all get to a cave in the cliffs. Nat and Klyce muscle a big stone out from the entrance so we can get in. While they’re doing that, Nat tells us that Stephen was too young to be a useful zombie, so he’d just been lying in repose in the catacombs below the castle. I can’t carry James anymore, so we wake him up before we head in and down.

We find ourselves surrounded by burned out buildings after awhile. Nat says that some years ago, a Harvest Festival went horribly wrong and burned down the village. Great Grandpa Nathaniel ended up burying the town so that they could forget and rebuild. The people who died in the fire where buried with the town. It seems that they’ve all become shadows, we discover as a handful attack us and have to be put down again.

Washed Out to Sea

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Remy didn’t wake up when Gerhardt poured potion down his throat, but we have to get out of here. Klyce and Maribeth circle the island, looking for another way off. The rest of us stand guard over Remy, until we hear a splash in the water. Then we start hearing crunching sounds. Zombies crawl out of the water and are heading straight for us. I stand over Remy with Nat’s staff as she takes Remy’s daggers to attack the zombies.

When they finally fall dead… re-dead… dead again… There is a louder rumbling, and the sound of rushing water. I grab up Remy and run back towards the rope, several of the others start casting alteration magics as they run. A wall of water rushes at us and sweeps us all away. It all goes black and water covers us. In desperation, clutching to Remy, I start sending Messages with the last of my breath in all sorts of directions until the better swimmers found us.

Getting up to the surface, the water is still rising. Klyce manages to get the water out of Remy’s lungs and he starts breathing again. Nat says those zombies were the ones protecting Nathaniel’s skull, and he’s lost control, so we can’t go back up to the hole. We head over to the edge where the water came from, and the group decides to swim out to the ocean. This seems like a horrible idea to me, but all the good swimmers grab the rest of us and drag us through the darkness.

It feels like hours later, but couldn’t have been more than a couple minutes, lungs burning, when we finally break the surface outside the caves. Nat says we’re at the Mourner’s Cliffs, and leads us down to the fishing village. Remy’s in rough shape, so we ask after a doctor and they send us to the Crab Wife. Nat, Klyce, and I run back to the castle, worried about the rest of the castle if the zombies have taken over.

Nat’s dad say that the mines have closed themselves, or rather, some zombies came up and sealed the entrance. Nat tells him what happened, and that Nathaniel is probably gone. Kendrick, in a panic says we have to go back, we have to find him, we have to get him out of there. We ask for his help and he gives us more weapons and a scrolls of Invisibility to Undead. I have to ask the guys how to use it, I don’t cast spells from paper, and it seems inefficient to me. Nat and Klyce are worried that the seeds have taken control of Nathaniel. Nat tells us that she’s dreamed of the mines, and we encourage her to take control of her dreams and see if she can find out more about what’s going on.

The group, frustrated with me, insist I have to learn to fight. I’ve never fought anything in my life before coming to school. That’s not what I’m supposed to be learning. Magic is supposed to be fun, I never imagined it was so violent! Remy and Dalish take me out to the courtyard and teach me how to use a crossbow that we borrowed from Kendrick.

We gather up again and head down to the mine entrance. There aren’t any zombies guarding it, so we head in. The scrolls are limited, so we wait for a short while before using our scrolls. Fortunately, the zombies we pass don’t see us. Nat leads us down to a huge chamber full of zombies lying down with vines and seedpods all over them. Some of the zombies are twitching, but they don’t seem to be responding to anything.

We creep around the edge until we can see the far end. Nathaniel’s skull is sitting with Brokeback as usual, but there is a creature or someting inside it with a lot of legs sticking out. It skitters all over the zombie.

“I can feel you out there. Shouldn’t have come. Not in control. Not safe. Turn back.” Voice whispers from the skull.

Klyce goes forward to grab Nathaniel, hoping we can get out quick and end this. The others start attacking Brokeback and the other zombies start twitching. The seedpods start popping and some plant things skitter towards us, some skitter out of the chamber. Everything is crazy, and people keep falling down. I go up and keep shooting my crossbow. Once we get the skull free of Brokeback, we all run. Once we’re clear, the other start breaking the pillars and collapse the chamber, or least the part we can see. I have to come down and lift up Dalish who had been knocked out by the plant things.

We hightail it out of the mine, but nothing accosts us on the way out. The zombies aren’t moving and the plant monsters are all keeping away from us. There’s nothing more we can do now, so we close and barricade the doors. Heading up to the castle, Nat goes to speak to Kendrick. When she comes back, she says Nathaniel isn’t completely gone, but it’s going to take a lot of work to get him back. We still have Harvest End ahead of us.

Newsflash:

Any Magic Users with one year of school are now legal adults.

A wartime draft has been instituted, for all legal adults.

Down to the Mines

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Nat wakes up the next morning, confused by being in bed at home. So, we explain all that happened after the attack. Just as we decide it’s time for breakfast, Kendrick comes in and shoos us out to talk to Nat. So, the rest of us head on down and have lots of bacon and orange juice. I don’t know why it creeps out some of the guys so much, it’s delicious.

When Nat finally comes downstairs, it’s to tell us why we were invited in the first place. More problems only child-wizards can solve, apparently. This was not the life I thought I would get by going to the Academie, not at all. I wanted magic and parties and fun, not death and fighting and war. Anyway, Nat says people have been disappearing into the mists, or into the sea down at the coast. Nat also tells us that some of the undead in the mine are disappearing, too. She also finally admits to being a girl to the boys, but her father’s missteps when we arrived made it not all that surprising to them. Then she tells us that there are two newborns in town that are showing magic potential, too, which hardly ever happens around here.

Maribeth wanted to see the undead anyway, and since “disappearing into the mists” seems a bit too vague, we head down to the mines. Nat takes us down to meet her great grandfather, Nathaniel. Turns out, he’s just a skull these days, but apparently, the undead down here don’t mind, and still listen to him. Klyce asks about the missing…workers, and Nathaniel tells us that they haven’t slipped from his control, they just aren’t responding to his commands. Twenty-four of them went down to the deepest section, and while he can still feel them, they aren’t coming back. They’ve even sent living adults to go look for them, but those didn’t come back either. Remy asks a bit about the undead down here, and Nathaniel goes into a complicated lecture about bell curves and terrible things with big tongues. I don’t even want to know.

Nathaniel can’t move on his own, so he has a zombie he calls Brokeback, because well… you get the idea, that carries him around. He leads the way down into the mine, while Maribeth and Dalish ask about how he’s still functioning. Life and death isn’t binary, at least not for this family. Unfortunately, the family hasn’t been producing strong necromancers these last two generations, so he had to imbue his remains with his strength and will to keep the mine in order. He can’t cast new spells anymore, but he does keep his control over the undead, at least, he had, until recently. He’s happy to hear that Nat has learned to animate the dead, and says that will be enough, since he can still control them.

The mines are dark and creepy, and full of undead work teams. They don’t pay us any mind as we pass, though. Not until we get really deep anyway. There is a shuffling in the dark, but Nathaniel can’t feel them. It is zombies, though, and everyone digs in for the fight. Little tiny plant monsters crawl out of the fallen and skitter away into the dark. Once they are all down, Maribeth digs around in the remains and finds a dark black seed that’s pulsing. Pulsing just like the ground in my dreams!

The others are talking. They gather the seeds all up and burn them, filling the tunnel with awful smoke. I gust it out of my face, but I’m not listening. The pulsing didn’t stop until they were all burnt up. We’re walking again, everyone is talking about what we’ve seen, and blood magic and the war. Talking about digging deeper because of the war. But all I can think about is the pulsing.

Dalish shuts everyone up because there is something ahead. We creep forward to see a massive bloated body with writhing beneath the surface, standing right in front of a massive mana vein. I grab Maribeth and remind her that mana is unstable, to be careful of her fire. As it staggers forward, I try to lift it off the ground, but it resists, so I retreat and let everyone else take care of it. Once it gets away from the wall, I give Maribeth the okay to use fire, and a good thing, too. It tries to escape down a hole, but they burn it down before it can.

The path stops here, so we check down the hole and find a whole big cavern beneath us. Everyone is nervous of the water below, so Klyce drops down with a rope and swims it to some ground, making us a repel line that mostly avoids the lake. Turns out it isn’t an edge, but an island where we landed. There are dead vines covering the ground. I don’t like this at All.

In the center is a henge of stone. That’s really strange, we’ve heard of these in the old world, but around here it’s just mounds, usually. And what’s it doing way down here? We head up to look at them, and discover a pictographic story around the outside. Hunters and Gatherers worshiping six large figures in white with black dots for eyes and rays of light coming off their heads. Then there is fighting against jagged, horned humanoids with tails. Less hunters return to the six to receive gifts for their victory. There are symbols, too, and they look really familiar, but I can’t read them. I’m not sure I want to.

Nat steps between the pillars for a better look and disappears. We all follow, because what else were we going to do?

It’s suddenly very bright, we’re outside in the sun, but it’s also hazy. We’re in the henge, but there is a market all around us, inside and out. A large vast plain spreads out around the market. The people look like the Natives. At the far end of the henge are three stone thrones. A man sits in the center one, flanked by women on either side. They seem to be receiving people, judging disputes. Around us are six statues: a man in a toga, chin on his hand, thinking; a boulder shaped like a face; a fertility goddess, all green vines and flowers; an armored figure of white stone with flames for a head; a bowl filled with leaves beaing blown about by the wind; and a broken statue, having only sandals on feet and no body.

Someone lists off names they think they are, but I’m barely listening. Gods, these are old gods. I go over to the bowl, curious. I grab a leaf out of the wind and it crumbles in my hand. That does not bode well, but I keep looking at it, willing it to speak to me.

Maribeth goes to talk to the three. They speak in riddles and drain her of mana. Remy tries, and they ask for his light, even just half his light. He agrees and disappears. The others are poking about. A Native approaches the bowl and places a leaf inside, he looks very sad and speaks of a lost loved one. Not to me, he must be praying. I touch the bowl, but no one answers. I want to look around, but when I stick my head out of the circle, I’m right back in the cavern.

I find Remy on the ground, unconscious, and with one eye missing. I kneel by his side, stunned, until the others appear. The statues are gone, but the thrones remain. Skeletons entwined with vines sit upon them. Gerhardt hands out potions and those with full phials distribute motes to those that lost them. Now we have even more problems to solve.