Trespassers and Crossroads
11 of High Sun
Ilyad chalked out the symbols and chanted the words of the spell, keen to understand the magical properties of her mysterious silver key. The bandit prince John Shade sought it desperately, so it must be special in some way. The air about Ilyad was illuminated with a soft golden light, describing the the penumbra of magical protection emanating from Enid’s blessed acorn. The key however revealed itself to be utterly mundane, the workings of men, not fey.
Tales were told around the fire, as Lapidarius repaid the party for his rescue by imparting the story of Ol’Jabez and the Ash Tree. When the friends told the bard of what drew them to the crossroads, Lapidarius expressed a keenness to know how their journey would end, suggesting that it might make an excellent addition to his repertoire.
The party divided the night into watches, and slept undisturbed. In the morning, they discovered that Enid’s acorn had sprouted overnight into a sturdy sapling. Unsettlingly, they also noted that one of the bodies of the slain bandits, that had lain outside of the acorn’s aura, had vanished.
Lapidarius travelled with the party, down the road that ran around the top edge of Sawtry Briar. At one point, a great cloud of starlings burst from a nearby field, wheeling and dancing through the sky in a great murmuration. Studying the movement of the birds, Ilyad thought she glimpsed an omen, as the animals briefly described the shape of a ring.
Lapidarius said his farewells and left the party, heading west to Margaux’s Farm, where he suggested the party meet him once they had concluded their business at the crossroads. Before departing, the old bard marked the farm on the group’s map.
Further down the road, signs dotted the length of a wooden fence, warning pedestrians to ‘Keep Out,’ of Patlin’s Farm. In the fields on the other side of fence, lean cattle cropped dry grass and eyed the party suspiciously. From out a small copse in the centre of the field, the party heard a terrible cry of an animal in distress.
Keen to investigate, though wary of trespassing, Featherfew sent Mrs Bunch to fly ahead into the stand of trees. There, she found a slain cow, its belly eviscerated, as small darting shapes moved through the undergrowth.
Throwing caution to the wind, the party leapt the fence and raced to the copse. Investigating the poor creature, they established that it had been injured by a weapon, not another animal, and that its blade was jagged and cruel. Identifying a clear trail, they followed it south, toward Sawtry Briar.
However, as soon as they exited the copse, they ran into an angry farmer, riding a brokeback old donkey, with a battered musket slung over their shoulder. The farmer, who revealed themselves to by Mrs Patlin, was suspicious and irate. The party could do little to persuade her that their trespassing was nobly intentioned, and Illyad’s protestations of innocence were thwarted by the spattering of blood that had chanced upon her clothing. There was nothing for it but to abandon the pursuit and retreat to the other side of the fence, watched all the while by the accusatory glare of Mrs. Patlin. Enid regretted giving the suspicious woman her name, while Illyad voiced her suspicion that Mrs. Patlin’s ill-favoured look was the result of some hex.
Arriving at the Wind Way, the party followed the road south until they came to a derelict old roadside inn. A weathered shingle hung lopsided from a single chain, announcing this place as The Reaper’s Reward. Pebbles boldly strode toward the door, trailed more cautiously by Ilyad and Enid. Meanwhile, Burley, Den, and Featherfew scavenged the surrounds for supplies. Featherfew, alert too the movements of small creatures, proved himself to be a skilled forager, eking out a small handful of rations.
Inside the inn, Pebbles found the place in a state of disrepair, with dust lying thickly on all surfaces. The inn seemed abandoned, though not ruined, as though scavengers and looters had avoided the place. On top of the bar was a cracked wooden bowl, with a handful of silver pieces in it. Pebbles tossed his last silver bit in and shortly after detected the aroma of roast mushrooms and garlic and the sweet smell of warm, freshly baked cornbread. Following his nose, he could find no evidence of habitation, but on returning to the public bar, he discovered a plate of fresh food waiting for him. Despite Enid’s urgings to avoid the surely bewitched meal, the halfling wolfed it all down, before sighing contentedly.
The party continued down the road, passing a fallow field filled with smooth, low, grey stones, which littered the expanse with strange regularity. The birdsong from the nearby wood seemed muted and there was little sign of any animals, save from a wild hare that loped between the stones. Examining the stones from afar, Featherfew deduced that they were likely grave markers, most probably of dwarven origin. The weather had worn them smooth, erasing the names and dates of the deceased.
At last, the friends arrived at the crossroads, a lonely spot in the middle of a wide expanse of low, flat country. Overhanging the crossroads was a great old oak, and perched in its branches was a man, turning the handle of a hurdy gurdy. Illyad and Featherfew recognised him as the same blue-skinned tiefling troubadour they had first encountered all those years since at the Grand Meadowtide. He did not appear to have aged a day, though he sang the same song as he had all that time ago.
‘Hello travellers,’ he said, ‘you seem weary from the road, though that is no surprise, as a road is a yoke, one that pulls the feet and makes the legs follow, carrying away the body and the witless head with it. I much prefer crossroads, don’t you know?’
The party asked the man’s name, to which he responded: ‘I have been known by many names. You may call me Gallowglass, though it is not my true name. I know all your names, of course.’
The strange fellow, clad in flowing, richly adorned robes, stitched all over in pearly buttons, did indeed seem to know everyone’s name. Ilyad asked whether he knew her true name, to which he said, ‘Indeed, I do. Though I will not say it now, for that would be to ruin a surprise.’
The party told Gallowglass what they intended to do with the stolen grave goods, to leave them at the crossroads and have the dead reclaim them, but he suggested another course of action. According to Gallowglass, the wight Xalik cul Zhan and his skeleton legion could not rest because they had sworn an oath to serve the Lord of the Hunt and would do so until the end of time. Although defeated, their bones would reassemble in their tomb, where they would wait until called.
He suggested that if they went inside the tomb, they might be able to free Xalik from his eternal servitude by shattering his ‘troth ring’ - a band which represented his oath to his Fey Lord. In order to do so, they would have to claim the hammer ‘Chain Breaker’ that had once been wielded by the dwarven prince, Daven Ironhand. That prize was a spoil of of war that Xalik had claimed, and it rested in the treasure trove at the heart of the tomb.
‘A ring is a promise, a promise is a bond, a bond is a fetter,’ said Gallowglass. The party debated, but then decided to follow the strange man’s advice. He then directed them to the barrow.
A trudge through this eerie, flat landscape, led the party to a circular, low mound. Den blew the copper whistle he had stolen from the wight, and the land erupted, revealing an entrance to an underground chamber.
In the barrow’s antechamber, the party found a tattered tapestry, depicting the Hobgoblin captain astride a horse, leading a vast legion of troops. They also discovered a scrap of paper on the ground, seeming to have been torn from an old book. Faded script spelt out a curious rhyme:
If, with moistened eye and mournful tread,
You come to name and praise the dead,
Then down the narrow way the gates swing wide
And lead to those who here abide.
But if in your chest a covetous heart doth beat,
Then stay now your wild and witless feet
For the jewels and marvels of the tomb
Will buy you only everlasting doom
The page also bore more recent writing, in a different hand. The letters were unfamiliar to the party, until Pebbles recognised the writing of the Travellers Tongue. It said:
‘Carp, remember that to flatter a Hobgoblin is quite a different matter from flirting with some moll in a dockside bar. Their compliments are bloody and war-like, something like, Sharp Teeth, Iron Heart, Bile Gut, Bloody eye. Mind yourself, to speak carelessly could be deadly where you seek to tread.’
It seemed that the ill-fated grave robber, Carp Barlow, had left something behind…