Session 17.4: Deep Waters (Part 1)

The party sojourns among the Hillfolk.

Last episode, tensions between Padrig and Vahid boiled over — Pad answered Vahid’s arrogance and insinuations with the back of his hand, and a standoff followed. Vahid threatened violence of his own, Pad stood firm, Anwen interceded. The standoff ended on a note of grace — Padrig reached out for his old friend, under the arcane, storm-touched exterior: “You are a good man, Vahid. All those seasons ago, it was your wise counsel that put me on a better path. I will never forget that. You should not either.”

Then, a reckoning with the Sun-Spear. On the outskirts of the camp, Anwen named Maikl oathbreaker and called him to the dueling circle, and the new meistr refused, accusing Anwen of being no different than their sorcerous enemy. So Padrig stepped forward and took up the challenge, forcing Maikl to accept. At dawn, the two old warriors met in the dueling circle, and after a bloody fight Pad’s iron found its mark.

Now the party must reckon with what comes next: Pad’s wounds, the Sun-Spear without their meistr, and the ticking clock of the assassin riding for the Dawn Shield’s camp.

Scene 5: Juba’s tent

The tent smells of mare’s milk, poppy and sweetgrass, fighting with the coppery tang of blood. From his place by the tent’s wall, apart, where the light from the smoke-hole does not reach, Vahid watches his friend. The age lines cut deep across Padrig’s ashen face, and he grips a piece of woven rawhide hard between his teeth while Juba’s wife does her work.

Laurl sits beside him with a bone needle and a length of waxed gut, her silver-streaked head bent close over Padrig’s shield-hand¹. At her side kneel two of Juba’s granddaughters, girls of perhaps ten summers. One holds a horn bowl of steaming water; the other, a woven basket to receive the blood-soaked woolen bandages. Both watch the needle’s every move, without flinching.

“The cut is clean,” Laurl says, not looking up. “The finger is gone, but the wound will heal. You will hold a shield again before the moons are out. Whether you should is a question for wiser heads than mine.” She ties off the gut and bites the end. Where Pad’s ring finger was, there is now only a neat dark seam.

Padrig spits out the rawhide and flexes the hand slowly, testing the pull of the stitches. Anwen stands at his shoulder; she has not gone far from Padrig’s side since the circle. She is downcast as she watches, as though she were the one who struck the blow. Mado stands outside the tent alongside one of Juba’s twice-blooded daughters, holding at bay a crowd of wary onlookers. Vahid pities them, a little. They know we bring war with us. That we will take their kin from them.

When he turns from them to look upon Juba, he sees the old hillman watching him in turn from a low seat of stacked saddle-blankets, his braided mustache moving as he chews something unhurriedly. He is thinner than Vahid remembers. But his eyes are the same, fierce and dark.

Juba chuckles. “Padrig of the Nine Fingers. The sons of Tor tell tales of a nine-fingered stranger², do they not? A wide-wanderer who brings great and terrible trials to the hearths he visits?”

Pad snorts. “I’m no god, Juba. Just an old man who should know better than to step into the circle.”

“But you do bring a great trial.” The levity is gone from the hillman’s voice.

“We do,” Vahid says. “Though it seems you have already faced much. How did Maikl cast you down?”

“Tch. He did not cast me down, I stood aside. When time and chance turn against a band, the blooded oft turn against the meistr, for a time. Maikl’s time would have come.” He nods thanks to Padrig. “And now it has, for good or ill. You call upon our promises of friendship to face the sorcerer.”

“We thought you’d be eager to fight,” Anwen says. “He has killed your people, too. His assassins almost took your wife!”

Laurl glares. “Do not take my daughters and grandsons to war on my account. My wounds are healed.”

“Indeed,” Juba mutters. “And now this hdour, this Cirl-of-the-Storms, has burnt the Delve. Driven off the scratchers-in-the-earth, those thralls of the Things Below, put right a great blasphemy. Is it true you were there?” He looks to Vahid when he asks, his gaze always returning to the Seeker’s shining blue eye.

“It is,” Vahid replies, his voice quiet and even.

“So because he burnt the Delve, you’ll not stand with us?” Anwen says.

“Would you have me lead my band to annihilation? All the storm-folk are for him now! They say he has usurped the power of Stormcatcher and will lead the tu’d back to glory!” Vahid flinches. He has not usurped Stormcatcher. He is becoming her. So may I.

“And you believe this?” Anwen presses.

“The Things Below take you; I do not! But it does not matter what I believe if he has fifty spears to my one!”

“We have news of Katrin,” Vahid replies, and the tent falls silent. Laurl ushers the children out, and a murmur rises from the crowd outside as they see her depart.

“So, that is why you have come. What news?”

“She has placed herself in the sorcerer’s inner circle, and seeks to thwart his plans.”

“So say you. I say she abandoned her family, and she has brought Heoling to his banner. Our people. They have fought against their own kinfolk!” Juba rises now, pacing in the dim light of his tent until he arrives at the post where his wineskin hangs. He drinks deeply of the stuff, fragrant fermented mare’s milk. Katrin’s betrayal wounded him badly.

“No. She is playing him false. His army, his feuds with the Heolings. They are all in the service of a greater design.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“I have seen inside her mind. Walked with her through his camp, in the unseen world.”

“It is said that the sorcerer has protections against far-seeing.”

“Not from ours.”

Juba leans back, his dark eyes retaking Vahid’s measure. The Seeker meets his gaze, blue eye unblinking.

“You have changed, Seeker.”

“I have. Our struggle against the sorcerer has taught me much. And cost much.”

“And you,” he says, pointing to Anwen and the branching white markings climbing her arms. “I have seen scars like that before. Upon our enemies.” Anwen tenses, and in his storm-marked sight, Vahid can see thunder stirring inside her.

“What would you have us do, O wise Juba?” Vahid says quickly, before Anwen can bite back. “He has fifty spears to our one.”

“What would you have me do, O great Seeker? My people are fearful of this war. Few among the Heolings bands have the strength to stand against the sorcerer.”

“What do you know of the Dawn Shield Band?”

“I know them. Their meistr is Jakez, husband to one of my cousins. They are many. And rich. But even they do not have the strength to challenge the hdour.”

“We require an introduction, an escort to their camp,” Vahid says. “Can you aid us in this?”

Juba’s eyes narrow. “Why?”

“Cirl-of-the-Storms has sent an assassin to them, sworn to slay their spirit-talker, Erwann. I saw him give the order, when I watched him from the unseen world.”

The old hillman strokes his mustache, appraising each of them. He comes to Padrig’s side, where the old bandit sits, still looking at his wounded hand. He hands Pad the wineskin. “You believe all this, Padrig-kamrad? These visions from the unseen world?”

The old bandit grimaces, and takes a long drink. Now is not the time for caution, Padrig.

“I am here. I shed my blood, and Maikl’s. Is that belief enough?”

We’ll do the Persuade roll here. Vahid triggers, Pad is aiding.

Vahid triggers Persuade: 5+4+4+1 Charisma = 10, Strong Hit

Juba nods. “Very well. I will help you, if I can. First I must speak to the blooded, and settle the matter of who will be meistr. If they acclaim me, I will send Solnn with you to speak for the Sun-Spear.”

“And what will you do?” Anwen asks.

“I will look to my kin. The Sun-Spear have bled enough. I must lead the band beyond the hdour's reach, and await a better season for war."

Montage: Journey to the Dawn Shield

At sunset, the blooded of the Sun-Spear gather at a great bonfire, and the party watches from a remove, as is proper. Anwen listens to the rise and fall of voices in Steptongue late into the night, and once, a shout that could be anger or acclaim. In the morning, Laurl brings them mare’s milk and flatcakes, and the news: Juba wears the meistr’s mantle again.

They ride out at dawn, seven now, with Solnn leading on her spotted mare, and Ronhl and Merid ranging ahead through the grass. Five days south and west, through rolling hills of green and golden grass.

On the sixth morning, Merid comes galloping back, standing tall in his stirrups, and leads them up a long rise. Below, the land falls away into a great bowl, rimmed with broken rock, as though Tor himself had driven a spear into the earth in the world’s elder days. At the bottom lies the lake, deep and still and dark, a blue so deep it is nearly black at the center. No stream feeds it that Anwen can see, and no stream leaves it to water the meadows.

Anwen pulls her reins short, and her steed dances sideways beneath her. She looks to Padrig, and sees his face grim as hers must be. She can feel the cold of the lake in the air, as though it steals the warmth of the sun. No bird crosses the water’s center. Few Stonefolk would venture within a league of such a place, but the Hillfolk are camped here in the hundreds.

The Dawn Shield’s camp // Source: Midjourney

The camp spreads along the near shore, and it is vast. The Dawn Shield’s tents stand in orderly rings around the great tent of their meistr, but beyond them the order breaks down: wagons drawn up in rough circles, hastily built campsites, cookfires past counting. Anwen marks what banners she can as they descend — the aurochs-hide standards of the Dawn Shield, and there, the familiar banners of the Yellow Cloud Band, whom they bled beside when the hdour’s riders came against the Sun-Spear. Further on, another banner she knows: a running hound worked in white on sun-yellow cloth. The Hounds of Heol, wandering witch-hunters and foes of the storm-folk. But what will they make of me, now? And the Seeker?

Anwen counts the forces gathered here the way Padrig taught her, by the horse-lines and the cookfires, and reckons the fighting strength at better than a hundred. Not enough to meet the hdour’s host in open battle. But enough, perhaps, to trouble him.

At the pale, they dismount and wait while Solnn speaks with the watch. The party wears the white deels the Sun-Spear gave them, scarves wound close despite the heat. Anwen’s storm-marks itch beneath her sleeves. I took on this burden to protect Stonetop, and now I must go hooded like a thief among those who should be my allies. She looks back to Vahid, who rides at the rear, his hood drawn low, covering his lightning-crowned pate and his shining blue eye. If their deception troubles him, it does not show on his face.

On Solnn’s honor, the watch admits them, and they pass through the camp unchallenged. It is louder than the Sun-Spear’s camp, and wilder—the speech of a half-dozen bands, dialects Anwen cannot follow, children and dogs underfoot, the smell of dung-smoke and drying meat. Hillfolk watch them pass from the shade of their wagons, incurious. Strangers are not so strange, here.

And if we walk in this easily, so could Cirl’s assassin. She looks at the faces they pass, the Hillmen sharpening weapons, mending harnesses, the riders tending to their battle-mounts, but none of them seem uneasy or out of place. At her side, Vahid is taking them in, too. The Seeker knows the assassin’s face. Is he here now?

Word has gone ahead. At the ringed tents of the Dawn Shield, a young warrior meets them and bids them leave their horses and their arms. Anwen surrenders her spear with a prickle of unease, and they are led through the orderly rings to the great tent at their center. Merid and Ronhl—forewarned by Padrig to be discreet—excuse themselves and melt into the campsite while the rest of the party goes on to meet the meistr.

Scene 6: The meistr’s tent

The tent is dim and cool after the white glare of the morning, and smells of felt and a sharp, spicy incense. A broad man in a fine bronze vest over a yellow deel sits on a saddle-bench at its center — Jakez, the meistr, grey-bearded and heavyset, built more like a wrestler than a rider. At his right hand stands a fierce-looking warrior with a sunburst brand atop his shorn head, a hound worked in white thread on his breast. And at his left, a face Anwen is relieved to see: Yana of the Yellow Cloud, her long braid still bound in copper rings, as it was when she faced her in the practice circle a year ago this spring.

“These two I will vouch for,” Yana tells Jakez, clasping Anwen’s arm, then Padrig’s. “They fought like Arzhur³ himself when the Stormcrows came to the Sun-Spear. The young one bested me in the circle and then returned my wager—my best mare.”

Jakez nods, but his face is stone. “And who are these?” he says, flicking a horsehair whip at Mado and Vahid. Mado steps forward, and Solnn comes to translate for him, but Jakez waves her off with a gesture. “I speak their tongue well enough to hear their names.”

Mado sketches a smooth bow, and flashes his teeth in an edged smile. “Mado of Stonetop, great meistr, a warrior and wanderer. I believe we have a common enemy.”

Jakez snorts. “There is nothing common about this villain, Cirl-of-the-Storms.”

“Just so, sir.” He slides one of the silver torcs from his forearm — spoils from his time among the Manmarchers — and offers it up in both hands. “Where I come from, it is meet to offer a gift before you beg a favor of a great chieftain.”

Anwen’s eyes widen. That thing might buy ten sacks of rice in Marshedge. Jakez turns the torc in his thick fingers. “A fine gesture. It is good to see the decencies honored on the Storm Hill⁴.” Then the whip jabs at Vahid. “And you? Are you as gracious as your comrade? Come forth, and show your face like an honest man.”

Anwen holds her breath as Vahid steps into the light of the smoke-hole. For a moment, he meets her eyes, and she pleads with them. Please. You are Vahid. One of us. Not some mad king.

He draws back his hood. The branching white scars climb his scalp where the hair no longer grows, and his blue eye shines like a nest of fireflies. Beside the meistr, the branded warrior’s hand falls to the bronze knife at his belt.

“Vahid ebn Sulaim, great meistr, from Lygos, and a friend of the Stonefolk. A Seeker and scholar of many things. It was I who begged my companions to come swiftly to you, to bring you ill and urgent news.”

“Jakez, this man—” the Hound hisses, but the meistr holds up his hand for silence.

“We’ll hear your ill tidings soon enough, Vahid ebn Sulaim. But the hound at my side is snarling. He smells the stink of sorcery. What say you?”

“I have learned to command the magic of the Old Masters, to protect myself and my allies, the Stonefolk. I have sworn an oath to defend them with my life.”

“Stren cannot be trusted with such magic! They will use it to become the masters themselves!” the Hound spits.

“You are not meistr here, Izzak, be silent until I seek your counsel!” He turns back to Vahid. “Why should I trust you, magus? Your kind have led my people to ruin.”

“You are the meistr of an old and storied band. I would not presume to advise you on how best to weigh a man’s honor. I will only speak what I know to be true: I am the only one who has ever clashed, foe to foe, with Cirl-of-the-Storms. You have mustered many spears here, but he could defeat them alone—scatter them like chaff before a storm. The Old Masters’ magic I have learned to wield can frustrate him, rob him of his unnatural power.”

Izzak fumes. Jakez’s dark eyes narrow as he weighs Vahid’s words. “Izzak tells me it is not so, that his lackeys tell tales about his power to frighten us away while he gathers his strength. Why does he muster a great host, otherwise?”

“Not for you, honored meistr. To take Stonetop by force of arms. The great standing stone protects the village from his magic, and so do I. So he must send his warriors.”

Scene Breakdown

The mechanics here are light, but they are here, and we’re about to make a pivotal roll, so let’s break down what’s happened. The party needs to earn the Dawn Shield’s trust, and their plan to do so is thwarting this assassination attempt against Erwann. The first obstacle in doing so is the Dawn Shield’s general distrust of outsiders, and especially of outsiders who seem to wield the Makers’ magic. Rather than a Persuade roll, I decided to make this a Defy Danger w/ Charisma roll — Vahid’s not trying to convince Jakez that he’s an OK guy, he’s relying on his force of personality to make it not matter that Jakez can’t quite trust a magus.

Before Vahid began convincing, though, Mado also made a move — he Aided Vahid’s upcoming attempt with a gift of silver.

We established in Mado’s Session Zero that he had a Manmarcher’s upbringing at the court of Jarl Dane, so he has a bit of that Hillfort-culture drilled into him. We further established that he carries around a bunch of cash in the form of gold and silver armlets that he won through various deeds in the service of his patron, Jarl Dane. This seemed a fun and flavorful way to trigger an Aid roll.

So, Vahid makes the roll with advantage:

Vahid triggers Defy Danger w/ Charisma: 4+5+2+1 Charisma = 10, Strong Hit

And it works. Jakez is at least ready to entertain this, and will, for now, keep Izzak on a tight leash.

Jakez leans back, weighing all this. “What are these urgent tidings you bear?”

“There is an assassin bound for this camp. He may be here already, hidden among the newcomers. He comes for Erwann, your spirit-talker, to silence him.”

Jakez looks to Solnn. “What says your meistr of this? Can we trust it?”

Solnn shifts uncomfortably. “The Seeker, ebn Sulaim, has Juba’s trust.”

“Where is Erwann?” Vahid presses. “I would bear this word to him directly.”

Jakez rises from his saddle bench. “We will make haste to him. He is gone from the camp, these last two days, with a hunting party on… some dire business of our own.”

Izzak rises with him. “Meistr Jakez, do not trust this sorcerer. He is no better than our foe, and…”

The meistr rounds on the Hound of Heol. “Enough, Izzak. We’ll see the worth of this magus’ word soon enough. Until then, you’ll stay your blade from my guests in my camp.”

We’ll close out the first half of the episode here. The party has won some provisional trust from the Dawn Shield, and now must go to Erwann as he deals with this ‘dire business of our own,’ which will no doubt entangle our heroes. I had intended to write more, and have more play notes, but the July 4th weekend got away from me, so I decided to split this into a two-parter. The conclusion will drop a week from today, 7/13. Thanks, as always, for reading!

1. This is a second appearance for Juba’s wife Laurl—she first showed up in Session 7.3 (published 4 years ago!) and in that episode, she was stitching up Juba, a fact that is probably not lost on her or Padrig.

2. In Stonetop’s canonical worldbuilding, the Nine-Fingered Stranger is an avatar of the sky god Tor and is something of an Odenic wanderer. Too fun a detail not to include when characters are losing fingers!

3. A Heoling folk hero whom we’ve attested in past sessions. He’s vaguely envisioned to have been part of the overthrow of the Sorcerer Kings (who seized the power of the Makers and succeeded them after they vanished from the world), and some of whose descendants became the storm-folk.

4. This is the Hillfolk name for Stonetop.