Episode 2 - Bog and River

An Eastern King / Arcodd

Overview

Camped on the oak-and-ash hill above the spring-fed clean water pool, the company wakes to a lure of light, a voice on the bog, and a score of birds gathered around Siúlóir’s stolen seed. The old highway carries them toward morning, out of the Bog toward the river and Dun Dwym, the Empty Way providing many surprises.

The Story Brief

The song in the wood of oak ash and thorn rose with sadness and near delight, and before long, the samite bag that held the seeds provided by Hwn and delighted by one of the Dragon’s Spine’s golden eagles. The many raptors and birds were all held, still, waiting in that place, until the march of the music pulled them out over the still black water, circle under the boughs of the oak then fold their hunter’s wings and dive into the ash forest, where the sound of the wings goes abruptly still.

When the eagle was faced and the song shifted and the seeds were taken by the birds, at long last, the singer came out through a rippling in the wood - beautiful, but of queer features and bedecked by flowers and vines, she was clearly one of the Bright Ones - those spirits and sprites that live in the bright mists behind the world.

They treated with her and learned of a conspiracy between herself and Gaer, the queen of the heavens, to save the raptors from what was to come in this area. She was taking them to her “summer groves”.

Her offer to take them to their destination via a shortcut beyond the wood was not accepted.

They encountered 3 guarded and polite farmers carrying ravens in wicker cages - that did not seem at all like Ravens.

The traded spare conversation and passed the men quickly, telling them they saw the Morning Singer at the freshwater spring, and nothing more.

From a weeping willow, an old woman they can barely recall now came to treat with them, garbed in layers of loose-spun wool fabrics. She asked them about their road and news, and shared that her grandchildren had gone missing, and she sought them, and would these young heroes find them for her?

They shared that already they were burdened with purpose and with regret they could not.

Dun Dwym and Afon Mwr

Finally, they found the greenway - that earth and stone and tree pushed back and up by the river’s floods each year. As they moved down that track, trodden flat by passing feet of men and asses, the Mist came toward them. Against the current, and away from the ocean it expanded, coming up from an already-concealed Dun Dwym.

They found their way at last through the fog (held together by Padraig’s footsteps swirling faintly with light), locating a massive carved tree that held the great hawser of rope that ran the ferry back and forth across the Great River’s powerful current. Everything was soaked - more than it should be. There was something wrong.

They made their way down to the ferry, loaded their asses quickly before realizing that the massive wet stain in the middle of the boat was the ferryman - drowned, but with no sign of having been in the river.

Then it came for them for the first time, the Mistling. Made of water, with bits of river grass and wood floating in it, it resembled a man, but was made of water. It burbled as it came, making the drowning sounds men make when water takes them. It came for Padraig.

Fearlessly and without apparent second thought, Dinl-Chi put his wet fur body between the thing and the witch boy. He stamped his feet and made movements with his body that were strange: serpentine, perhaps. Then he roared at the approaching thing. His breath was the hot wind venting from the earth; it was the humid exhalation of the fire of the earth. It caught the mistling in its buffeting roar and dismantled it - at first, just flecks of water flung backward, the thing not even having the instinct to protect its almost-face. Then it was stringers of its fluid flung loose, streaming, then gouts of water, then like a bucket dumped out, its entire body came apart on the wet earth and ran into the river.

They made no waste of time unhooking the ferry and pulling madly at the hawser as the ferry jounced and teetered and rolled into the hard current of the great black river sometimes called the Godsflood.

They found the far shore, and the stairs cut into the edge of the great rock circle the Dun stood upon, and guards. They found their voices and told in hushed tones in the mist the tale of the mistling and the ferryman.

They were shown to a small, empty old dun building. The Queen, Aia, came to interrogate them. The King, Glenys came to tell them all was well with every meaningless politeness one might expect not of the fearsom Balwen king, but of a courtier at the Throne of Bone in the High Kingdom. They were feasted, and drunk and toasted to.

Open questions carried in from Episode 1:

  • The Builder Structure waking near the Godswood, and the Night Lodge Gods’ hand in it.
  • Whether the Magebreaker’s warning against the bog road was advice or a lure.

The Company Assembled

Personis Dramatae

Threads

They are across the Godsflood and inside the walls, fed and toasted and housed in an empty building, with Ewen’s token still to hand over and a drowned ferryman behind them on the far bank. The mist has not lifted off the river.

Still pulling:

  • A ferryman drowned on dry boards, and a mist that ran upriver against the current to cover Dun Dwym while it happened. The company told the guards. The guards did not seem surprised enough.
  • One mistling came apart on the bank. Nothing says it was the only one.
  • A queen who interrogates and a king who reassures, in that order.
  • What the Morning Singer is emptying this country of birds ahead of.
  • Ravens that are not ravens, in wicker cages, going somewhere with three polite men.
  • An old woman’s missing grandchildren, refused — and a refusal none of them can quite remember making.
  • Ewen’s token for Lord Balwen, and the ass-load of goods that goes with it, carried all this way and not yet delivered.