Session 17.7: Feast on Ashes

The hunting party returns home. A burnt offering is made. A war council gathers.

Last episode, our heroes faced down the corrupted bull, hoping to win the friendship of the Dawn Shield band and to purge a great evil from the world. Before the hunt, Anwen spoke to Vahid about her fears—that his use of forbidden magic is transforming him into something dangerous and alien, and that she may have to kill him one day rather than let that come to pass. The Seeker defended himself: All he has done he has done to protect his friends and allies. Then, as is his wont, he brought them back to the matter at hand: The hunt. The Seeker ascended to the sky to summon a storm, and called forth lightning to stampede the herd. With the path cleared, Anwen and Mado struck, and the corrupted bull answered with every horror in its arsenal — many of them contributed by diabolical readers!

Anwen spent every last measure of Fury and Resolve to bring it down, snapping Jakez’s spear with the killing blow. Even in death, the corruption was not purged: it sloughed forth a squamous horror that reached for Mado, before he used a crystal given to him by Erwann to capture the last light of the setting sun and burned the corruption to nothing.

The hunt is won, and with it, the Dawn Shield’s friendship. But our heroes are spent — Anwen battered and twice felled, Vahid weakened by his own storm — and before the party turns for home, the Seeker owes the spirit-talker hard answers about Katrin, and about Stormcatcher and the Thousand-Year Storm.

Scene 11: Returning to camp

They ride for home through the night and the morning, crossing a line of hoofprints at sunrise—the Dawn Shield’s far riders, Padrig tells Mado and Anwen, who circle the grazing grounds at a day’s remove to watch for tracks that cross their circuit; then a glint of a spearpoint from a rise, which Jakez answers with a lifted arm and a wave; and at last the horse-herds themselves, grazing at the far edge of the camp, with young boys among them watching the horses for signs of unease. The upland horses look up from the grass, their ears twitching, and then they scent their fellows, and return to their placid grazing.

“No one comes to the tents of the Dawn Shield unlooked-for,” Padrig says. “The grasslands have eyes for miles around.”

The camp welcomes them with jubilation — after the corrupted bull fell, the Dawn Shield hunters took a dozen more beasts, and their dressed and quartered carcasses are borne on the backs of the strongest steeds. Dozens of Hillfolk appear from the tents to make light the labor, and the hunters are embraced and blessed. Before they can be pulled back into the camp by their grateful kith and kin, Erwann sternly calls them back together, the Dawn Shield hunters and the other Hillfolk who joined them, and the Stonefolk besides. At first, Anwen is uncertain that they should follow, but Erwann puts her doubts to rest with a sharp look and a curt gesture, and the party follows as the spirit-talker leads the hunters up the steep cliffs that loom over the dark lake. At the top, he barks orders, and the elders of the Dawn Shield hunters build a fire of charcoal, aurochs dung¹, and dried gwead grasses.

Erwann stands by the growing fire, his blackfeather drakes perched on his left arm, their beady eyes watching the hunters assemble around him in a loose semicircle. The veteran hunters move through the crush, pushing the newcomers to the fore — the Hillfolk outsiders who joined the hunt, and then Anwen, Padrig, and Mado. They do not dare to approach Vahid, and the Seeker moves to the front of his own volition, though he must lean heavily upon the Azure Hand for every step.

Erwann fixes the assembly with a priest’s uncompromising glare. “Today you have shared in a sacred duty that the forefathers of the Dawn Shield have carried since the time of Arzhur and the doom of the sorcerer-kings. Twice you have been sworn to secrecy by the light of the noon sun, and now you swear again. To speak the name of evil is to beckon it to this world. Swear now, by Heol and on your father’s name, to never speak of this, to the living nor to the dead.” As Erwann speaks, Padrig mutters his words again in the Stonetongue for Anwen and Mado’s ears alone.

He gestures to the company to give their oath. Jakez speaks first: “By Heol and our fathers we swear,” and the Dawn Shield follow him, and the rest of the company in turn. Anwen hears Mado and Padrig’s voices join hers in her own tongue, and Vahid’s a breath later, in one she does not recognize.

Erwann holds his hand out to Jakez, who hands him a horsehide sack, stitched and beaded with scenes of hunters and aurochs, and stained from within by blood. Erwann upends the bag over the fire, and into it spill a dozen lumps of red muscle and sinew — the hearts of the aurochs they hunted, cut while the blood still flowed. The meat sizzles and cooks in the fire, and Erwann stokes it, stirring it with the butt of his spear until the flames climb high and the smell of burning blood rises in the still air.

They wait, watching the flames as the heart-flesh turns brown first, then blackens as it starts to burn. Minutes pass, and a powerful ache blooms in Anwen’s legs — she has not slept since the hunt, and the whole side of her body still hurts from when the bull drove into her and threw her to the ground. It is a wonder she is not dead; belike it was only the storm’s blessing—Stormcatcher’s magic worked into her flesh—that saved her life.

When the aurochs hearts are ashes, Erwann lets the fire die down, and armors his hand in a thick hide glove. He kneels and fills a carved wooden bowl with the ashes and turns towards the lake.

“Ancient, and accursed, we abjure you, as our forebears did. Let the deep waters be your prison until Heol proclaims the end of days. Let no light reach your thousandfold eyes, let no breath speak your hateful name, let no strength gather in your twisted limbs. May you feast only on ashes, until you fade from this world.”

May you feast only on ashes. // Source: Midjourney

With that, he turns and casts the ashes over the cliff and into the lake. They drift on the still air, falling, falling, until they vanish from the midday sun. Erwann passes the bowl to Jakez, who follows him in the ritual. “May you feast on ashes,” he mutters, and the bowl makes its way from hand to hand until the only remnants of the fire are a sooty smear on the rocky cliff.

After each hunter has had their turn, Erwann calls forward the outsiders — Anwen and her fellows among them. He dips a finger into the last of the ashes and marks each of them with a simple, three-stroke sunburst. “Whatever your birth, now you are counted among us. Pitch your tents within our pale, warm your hands by our fires. As long as Heol’s light shines, you will be friends to the Dawn Shield.”

Mado and Padrig go before Anwen, receiving their marks in silence. When her turn comes, she steps forward and bows her head. Erwann smiles sadly, and speaks slowly and carefully in the Stonetongue. “You have a great and terrible strength in you. I hope no one else on the Storm Hill will be forced to take it up.”

When Vahid comes forth to receive the mark, Erwann hesitates. The two of them speak in low tones. Anwen strains to make out the Steptongue — Vahid’s accent is impenetrable to her, and she catches only a few words from Erwann — friend, spirit, storm. Vahid bows low and withdraws, unmarked by the ash, making his way slowly and painfully back down the slope towards the encampment.

“What did they say?” Anwen whispers to Padrig. Mado, at her side, awaits his answer too.

“Erwann told him that he offered friendship to Vahid, but the storm-spirit within him knows nothing of friendship. He asked Vahid if he is man or spirit.”

“And what did our Seeker say?” Mado whispers.

“He said he did not know, and so could not accept.”

“Is it true?” Anwen says. “Do spirits scorn promises of friendship?”

Mado snorts. “We’re no shamans, Marshal. But men are only barely bound by such promises. Why would a spirit be any different?”

She looks to Padrig for some reassurance, but the old bandit’s face is dour. The three of them withdraw from the cliff in silence. Anwen lingers for a moment, looking down into the dark waters. We are coming for you, Cirl-of-the-Storms. You will never have my home. May you feast on ashes.

The only move I triggered here is Return Triumphant, which has mechanical effects on the Dawn Shield encampment — an increase in Fortunes. (+0 to +1). This will matter if later the community has to trigger Pull Together as the party prepares for the fight ahead.

Scene 12: The Feast

Then, they feast. The Dawn Shield have been living the long year on mare’s milk, curds, and twice-dried meat, and their guests, refugees from the hdour’s feuds, leaner than that. Some have never had fresh aurochs, and the Dawn Shield only eat it a handful of days in a year. It is the finest eating in the Flats—hump-fat sizzling on green-wood skewers, ribs longer than a man’s arm, propped whole over the coals, marrow-bones cracked and passed from plate to plate, fat running down fingers and wrists and glistening on beards, with no thought to saving for the uncertain morrow. At Jakez’s word the refugee folk are fed first, and more than a few praise Heol and the Rainmaker for their generosity.

The finest eating in the Flats. // Source: Midjourney

Mado does not speak the Steptongue, but warriors have a shared language, and Mado has lived among warriors all his life. Soon the skins of mead and fermented mare’s milk are passed around, and blades of bone, bronze and stolen iron are brought forth to play at knife-games. Mado joins in, confident in his quick hands, and soon he is face-to-face with Yana, one of the nomad champions with painted yellow hands and a wicked bronze dagger.

The warriors howl and cheer as Mado and the Hillfolk warrior take turns placing their hands upon the board and threading the knife through each spread finger. At seven rounds, they agree to a draw, and they share a horn of mead, while one of the Dawn Shield rises and tells of how Mado struck at the assassin who tried to take the life of the spirit-talker. Mado can’t understand a word of it, but he raises his horn all the same.

Then something drops out of the dark onto his shoulder, hard enough to stagger him: one of Erwann’s blackfeathers, come to claim the leavings of the feast. The hunters roar. The little drake skitters down to the table, snatches a rib bone from Mado’s plate, and alights back on his shoulder to gnaw and worry at the remaining meat. Mado gives the little monster a scratch on its feathered crest, and it gives a satisfied chirrup. The warriors roar their approval, and Mado catches Erwann’s eye, smiling down from the high table with his other drake screeching on his shoulder.

Later, Mado finds Padrig on the outskirts of the feast, cup in hand, firelight on his leathery face. “Ten years I took silver to make war on these people,” the old bandit says, when Mado joins him. “Burned their graze. Ran off their horses. If a man had told me then that I’d sit at a Hillfolk fire and be fed the best of their year, I’d have called him mad, or cruel.” He turns the cup a moment, and lifts it. “To unearned mercies.”

Mado drinks with him, and thinks on his own unearned mercies. In the shadows at the edge of the firelight, he sees Vahid, sitting apart, not eating nor drinking. He has not, since we found him at the Ruined Tower. Izzak, the nomad witchhunter, is also watching the Seeker — Mado spots him at a fire apart from the feast, eating sparingly with a few of his fellow Hounds².

When the fires begin to burn down, Anwen finds them. Her smile from the feast is fading. “It is time. I have asked Jakez for a council of war,” she says. Padrig nods solemnly, and he and Mado follow Anwen towards the center of the camp. When the young warrior searches for Vahid in the shadows, he finds the Seeker has already gone.

Scene Breakdown

This scene has two moves in it — Mado triggered Carouse (a custom move in the Marshedge section of Stonetop’s world almanac). We triggered it way back in the Gordin’s Delve arc when Anwen made friends with Baraz.

Source: Stonetop // Jeremy Strandberg

Mado is a Charisma-forward character and I wanted to give him a moment in the spotlight as the life of the party (even though he can’t speak Steptongue).

Mado triggered Carouse: 2+4+2 Charisma = 8, Weak Hit

Carouse is one of the pick 1/pick 2 moves that creates a player dilemma on a weak hit. If you pick any option other than ‘You avoid getting swindled, tricked, or entangled…’ you are implicitly inviting the GM to introduce a complication, but in exchange, you get one of the other benefits. If you choose the safe option, your character has a good time (canonically!) but doesn’t gain any concrete fictional benefits.

In this case, I chose option 2—I haven’t fully decided on the friend, but Yana, Erwann and the blackfeather are all in play, and we’ll crystalize it as the most interesting choice emerges—but I also entangled him in a hazardous knife-game. From there, I triggered Defy Danger to see how the game went.

Mado triggered Defy Danger w/ Dexterity: 4+1+2 Dexterity = 7, Weak Hit

My plan for this move was to allow Mado to solidify a friendship with Yana, while preserving the hooks with the other possible ‘loyal friend’ results. But with the Weak Hit, I just envisioned a draw and some mutual respect.

Back to the fiction with the council of war.

Scene 13: The Council of War

Jakez’s tent is the largest in the camp, and even so it is a close, warm dark — felt walls breathing with the wind, a single brazier throwing more shadow than light. The meistr’s blooded are dismissed beyond earshot of the walls, and the flap is laced behind the party; whatever is said here tonight will die here. Cups of mare’s milk are poured and set before each place.

Anwen lowers herself to the guest-side of the brazier, her bandaged ribs protesting. Across the fire sits the Dawn Shield. Jakez in the center on a folded saddle-blanket, his white deel robe stained with smoke from the feast fires, turning his cup in his scarred hands. At his right, Erwann, one blackfeather asleep with its head beneath its wing on his shoulder, the spirit-talker’s eyes red-rimmed from days awake. And at his left, Izzak, the Hound of Heol. The fierce-eyed witchhunter did not partake in the feast, and he looks lean and hungry as he stares at the outsiders across the fire. All blades were left in a pile outside the tent’s flap, as custom demands, but Izzak’s long fighting knife is still on his belt. No one seems to think this remarkable, and so Anwen says nothing, but catches Mado’s eye and makes sure he sees as well.

At the hinge of the circle, belonging to neither side of the fire, sits Yana of the Yellow Cloud, her painted hands resting easy on her knees, and two other nomad leaders that Anwen does not know. Yana catches Anwen’s eye across the brazier and gives a nod of respect: you again, spear-breaker. Last time they faced one another, it was in the warrior’s circle, and Anwen won, a near-run thing.

Her own people, ranged beside her. Padrig nearest the Hillfolk, where he can translate for the other meistrs. Mado beyond, flushed from the mead and the knife-game, though he does not seem to have lost a step. And last, Vahid, who crosses the tent slowly and painfully, leaning on the Azure Hand and stands at Anwen’s right shoulder.

“You asked for this council, Marshal of the Storm Hill,” Jakez says in the Stonetongue. “Speak, then.”

Anwen rises. “It is simple enough. Our enemy is the same: Cirl-of-the-Storms. He has mustered a great host and intends to strike at my home. We have prepared as best we can, but cannot hold out against so many. And if he takes Stonetop, he gains control of the arcanum beneath the village, and the power Vahid and I wield. He will be truly unstoppable.”

One of the other meistrs raises his horsehair fan to speak, and Jakez acknowledges him. His voice is raspy from the lotus flower, and Padrig translates. “He is already unstoppable. A host of six hundred riders, the assassin said. And perhaps more now, as his legend grows. Perhaps it is time to seek terms, as others have done.”

“No terms with sorcerers,” Izzak growls. “He will not honor them.”

“And we do not need them,” Anwen says. “I believe he can be defeated. He has traitors among his number who will help us, and if we can gain entrance to his stronghold, we can unmake his power from within.”

The meistrs take this in silently. The lotus-smoker takes a long drag on his pipe, Jakez strokes his mustache thoughtfully. “You have our attention, Anwen of Stonetop. How can this be done?”

Padrig gives her a sturdy nod. A brief, hushed conference between them had laid out the plan. A narrow hope of victory, but no narrower than standing fast on the new walls of Stonetop.

“There are already Heolings joining Cirl’s host, since he burned the Delve. The leader of these turncloaks is Katrin, a spirit-talker known to many in this council.” Katrin. The last time Anwen saw her, it was after her brother’s funeral. The dark-eyed spirit-talker had pressed young Kirs’ bronze dagger into her hand and told her they were sisters in their grief.

“Yes. I have known Katrin since she was a child,” Erwann says, his face grave. “I taught her the tongues of the winds and the grasses. And she repaid me with an assassin’s knife.”

“For good reason, honored Erwann,” Anwen says. “Even now, she plots Cirl’s downfall from within his inner circle, and she must prove her loyalty with blood, even blood so dear to her as yours.”

“Cold comfort for the man facing the blade. I would hear more.”

“In due time,” Vahid says, his voice barely over a whisper. The battle with the bull, the stroke of lightning cast from his hand, the rousing and dismissing of the stormclouds above, all have taken their toll on him. I wonder if he could still take my power from me, weakened as he is now. I wonder if I could… The thought blooms in her mind, and she feels a hot rush of shame for considering it. A glance at Mado’s face, and she fears he thinks it too.

“With Katrin’s help, a warrior’s band, the cleverest and deadliest of your blooded, can join the hdour’s host as friends. We can be among them, dressed in borrowed robes and armed with borrowed weapons. Padrig can speak the Steptongue, and knows your ways well. He can school us in what we must know to pass among the Stormcrows until night comes.”

“And when night comes?” Jakez asks.

“We strike from within — setting blazes, stampeding the herd. For your part, you must bring your forces through Cirl’s patrols, within striking distance when you see the fires. Then you must fall upon them, and fight like devils until we can break his host or cut the head off the snake.”

“That is no small thing. The Stormcrows are skilled raiders; they will not be taken unawares. And it is said the sorcerer can speak with the clouds and the wind, and they bring him word of those who would harm him.”

“Not if I ride with you,” Vahid says. “The staff I bear belonged to Stormcatcher in the elder days. It has dominion over all the powers he would fain command.”

This quiets the company. All eyes are on Vahid, and the Azure Hand.

“If no one else will say it, then it falls to me,” Izzak growls. “I said ‘no terms with sorcerers,’ and here one stands before us offering terms. My brothers in Heol’s light, we sit in war council with an enemy as great as Cirl-of-the-Storms. Greater, perhaps, because you have placed yourselves in his debt.”

“Have I come as a conqueror to your tent?” Vahid says, his voice quiet enough that all must strain to hear him. “Have I made demands of fealty? No. I have risked my own life to aid you, to bring you warning of the assassin who would have taken your life. And other matters of which I will not speak, lest I beckon evil. How came I to be your enemy?”

“When you took up the power of the hated Old Masters,” Izzak counters.

“It was seize that power, or see all my friends perish. Is that what you would’ve had me do, Izzak?”

“Yes. Better to die than to live in corruption.”

“Preach your virtue to the dead then, Izzak. Perhaps it will give them comfort.” Vahid flicks his burnt hand at Izzak, dismissing him and all his zeal. “I will live. What about you, brave meistrs? Lions of Heol? Must we walk alone into the hdour’s camp and unmake his ambitions?”

“Now I would know of these ambitions,” Erwann says. “Now I would hear why Katrin marked me for death.”

Vahid steps into the center of the room, standing by the fire. He draws his hood back, revealing his scarred scalp and pure-blue gaze. “Cirl-of-the-Storms seeks the power of Indrasduthir, the last great sorcerer of the Old Masters. All his will is bent on it. He and I have both walked this path, and the path leads to the Thousand-Year Storm. Katrin knows this, and wishes to prevent it. Nothing else matters.”

The meistrs mutter among themselves. Only Erwann’s face darkens in recognition. “I have heard of this spirit. She passed from the world twenty winters ago, when I was still under old Louen³’s guidance.”

“She did not pass from the world. She was bound, her passing denied.”

“How can you know this?” Jakez asks.

“A vision, granted by the fate-tree. Katrin was my guide, she must have received it as well.”

“The fate-tree,” Erwann breathes, heavy with reverence. “Louen never taught me its secrets.”

Vahid inclines his head. “He entrusted them to Katrin, it seems. Perhaps he guides us from beyond the Last Door, even now.”

Erwann’s eyes narrow. “Yours is a silver tongue, Seeker, playing upon my dead friend’s wisdom. Tell me plainly: What is Cirl’s ambition?”

“He will bind the Thousand-Year Storm to his flesh. They will become one mind, one soul. And in doing so, he will become Stormcatcher reborn. She herself was once bound to the spirit, and her mind and soul live on.”

Erwann leans forward. One of his drakes, slithering through the shadows, climbs onto his shoulder, cocking its head at Vahid to fix one of its black eyes on him. “You are such a creature. Spirit bound to flesh.”

“I am. The Last Door beckoned, and only the spirit’s vis could save me. Now I wield its power for our cause.”

“Blasphemy,” Izzak snarls. “Do you not see how we are led astray?”

“He has aided us, Izzak,” Jakez snaps. “Greatly. Without him, our woes would be still greater. So remember whose guest you bark at.”

“And Anwen and her comrades fought like champions to defend my band and the Sun-Spear,” Yana says. “Their courage is beyond question, to me.”

Izzak seethes as though he will reply, even rise to his feet in anger, but quickly he masters himself, and bows his head in respect to the council’s host.

“If what you say is true,” Erwann continues, “then you too are a fit vessel for the Thousand-Year Storm. Stormcatcher-in-waiting.”

“This is so,” Vahid replies.

“So do you mean to steal it from him? Rob him of his great destiny?” Erwann says, probing.

“We mean to free the Thousand-Year Storm from its prison.” Anwen speaks before Vahid can. “When it is free, it will rage, and it will pass. And then it will be gone for a thousand years.”

Erwann’s eyes remain fixed on Vahid. “Is that the truth, Seeker? You would let this great power pass from the world?”

Vahid inclines his head. “That is Katrin’s design. If we are to rely on her aid as an agent within Cirl’s ranks, that is what we must promise her.”

“See how he does not answer?” Izzak says. “A silver tongue indeed, Erwann. He would have us deliver this power into his hands.”

“I fear I see Izzak’s wisdom in this,” Erwann says. “How can we trust you not to take this power for yourself?”

Vahid hesitates. “I do not wish it.”

Anwen lets out a bare breath of relief. She had not realized she was holding it. He does not wish it. But why will he simply not say he will not take it?

Izzak has the same thought. He turns to Jakez, falling to one knee. “Let him swear an oath to me,” he says. “The Hounds are possessed of old magics to bind against treachery. If you would truck with this sorcerer, let me bind him to us with more than words.”

Anwen sees Vahid smile, just a ghost of it on his lips. “Old magics, Izzak? Passed down by the Masters?”

Izzak’s face twists in anger. “Passed down by the tu’d. If you are truly our ally, you will swear.”

We’re going to pause this episode here, for a poll. Vahid has a choice here: If he swears Izzak’s oath, braving whatever magic or curse comes along with that, the matter will drop and the party will have the Dawn Shield’s aid.

Or he can refuse, drawing on all his rhetorical skills and Defying Danger to see how that refusal is taken. Izzak’s magic might be dangerous, and he clearly wishes Vahid ill. And Vahid perhaps does not want to outright lie, if he does indeed intend to seize Stormcatcher’s power.

One thing to keep in mind as you consider: When the moment comes, Vahid will still be able to choose. Whatever magic Izzak uses on him, it will not outright prevent him from breaking the oath — it will merely add a serious cost to doing so.

Make your choice by clicking the button below. Then, leave a comment talking a little bit about your choice — what do you think Vahid intends in this moment? Does he even really know what he will do? Are his old and new selves at war to control the gestalt? How would you play him at the gaming table?

This is something of an unusual poll, a technique I’m piloting for the final session(s). I intend to close the above poll by Wednesday or Thursday, depending on how quickly people vote. Once I have a result, I’ll quickly⁴ turn around a closer to this episode, completing Session 17.7 and concluding this chapter of PTFO:Stonetop.

Thank you, as ever, for reading, and I’ll see you in your inbox soon!

1. Neil, I didn’t forget your aurochs dung suggestion from the Session 17.5 thread; this seemed a decent place to pay it off. ;-)

2. The Hounds of Heol, a warrior brotherhood dedicated to exterminating hdours and suppressing the storm-folk as punishment for their ancient tyrannies as the sorcerer-kings.

3. Old Louen was mentioned as Katrin’s teacher back in Session 11, and Erwann was also one of his students or perhaps peers.

4. “Quickly” being dependent on a variety of external factors!