Arcodd: A Marriage of Serpents

After the Encounter with the Mist, the heroes retire for a long night, and as if something has awakened, as if Mawr is noticing them, each has their own unique encounter.

Cían spends the night in Aoífe’s bed, and in the morning tells her much more than he meant to about their uncovers that have so very little to do with the task of opening the Proving Grounds for Eigrean Cuval, “The Wolf Pup” of House Cuval and son of the King of Tuhal.

Claybourne rouses from one waking dream into another to find he has had a visitor… or two… during the night, and a very unexpected conversation – for everyone – ensues.

Ceseal and Sissyphus wake in a dream under the earth of a living river and a living cavern it has lain down in – a very, very, very old Suren that has been living still and dreaming beneath Caer Cuval since time out of mind. A place down in the dark where a very ancient light of Builder Stone has been woken by a new light – one of the Dragon’s Fires from below the earth. They commune in this dream as their people have done, and they have a visitor to shake things up….

In Episode 13, the heroes rescued the wanderers lost in the maze, drawn in by the dark knot of Terror. They shared with the Shadow of the Hound that the knot’s web was closing in around him as well.

In this Episode, the heroes talk to Donal O’Lú after they save him from the tunnels – not to mention the people of Clearwater.

The parties powers draw in a very unexpected guest….

In Episode 12, the heroes made their way back together after their travails in the Tuhál of the Morning.

Following the whispers of the Shadow of the Hound, the heroes find some of the people who have been wandering blindly in the tunnels under Tuhál: a man and a bevy of children.

Using the Dreams of the Dead Dragon, Ceseal draws his companions into a world of the minds of the lost.

There, they find them distracted by familiar-seeming golden hummingbirds, trying desperately to get to a hungry (and familiar) knot work to get back what they've lost - even as it hungers to devour them.

Using the breath of the Dragon and the Serpent, the heroes awaken the power of Ternyr, the Spinner, God of Prophecy that lives on in the wind follies that are the hummingbirds, and the birds disintegrate themselves in an explosion of god dust, freeing the lost from the grip of the Knot, and delivering all of them back into the waking world.

In Episode 13:

Cían discovers that the Shadow of the Hound has been bound to the catacombs, and that the binding is shortening its chain steadily - eventually it will bind the shadow completely, and the Hound himself somehow. The Shadow of the Hound takes the treasure of this news gravely.

The heroes must begin to face the darkness lying under Caer Cuval - even as they figure out who they have saved, and what has become of the Fighters from the Proving Grounds that they have perhaps 10 days left to re-open by royal command....

In Episode 11, The heroes were faced by many challenges in the caverns below the O'Lú compound in the ClearWater District.

The Spinner that they had seen before entering, with its child-sized bundle suspiciously bound to its web, first confronted them, then moved between them and the dying blue unlight of the woken Builder stone.

A shadow of Ddurn - one of Those Who Stood Apart - emerged from the Builder Portal that Aía had used to escape into her own Tuhál of the Morning. This pale-robed white figure with a small silver hand sickle, known as The Stranger on the Road, filled the room with its terror as it emerged and surveyed the heroes.

Acting quickly, Clayborne helped the legless Cesseal out of the cavern through the O'Lú's basement.

The Stranger on the Road soared across the room, no body visible but the bony protrusions of a body visible through the underwater-slow flow of its robes, and laid its sickle at Cían's neck. Only to declare he is Not the One, and then demanding several times that he Open the Way, and at last, having been denied, sailed off into the tunnels that led out from that place.

Following that, they had an encounter with a shadow. This was the somewhat independent shadow possessing many of the memories and powers of The Hound, its true form - that was even now imprisoned below the tunnels under Tuhál in a place he referred to as The Maze, drawn into some kind of trap from which he could not escape at the very doorway of the Prison of Terror, set in place by the One Who Stood Apart, Ternir, the Spinner of Prophecy.

The Hound revealed - if his shadow is to be believed - a long past of power and guardianship in Mawr, and a kind of jailor's warden for the humans there.

Eventually, their strange recent events cast in some small light of understanding, the heroes released the child being guarded by the Spinner, emerged into the light (Yay, Sissyphus for opening the way!), saved the O'Lú baby from its dead mother's arms, and won the acclaim of the ClearWater families most particularly in their bullying self-appointed leader with a shillelagh, Darra.

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In this Episode:

The heroes take some days to rest and recover and wander in their own pursuits before whispers from the Shadow of the Hound into Clayborn's ear (that he left behind!) draw them back together, and back down into the dark under Caer Cuval, the capitol city.

The heroes waken back in the caverns below the O'Lú househould in the Clear Water district of Tuhál.

They process their strange journey and its implications, as they realize not only are the dangers they left behind still present - the Spinner guarding its small human in a web - but the dangers of the Tuhál of the Morning that they somehow escaped through The Dry Wood have followed them home. The shadow that warned them, and the pale shade of the God Ddurn in his apparation as The Strange on the Road - a pale, robed figure with a hand sickle - forms in the cavern as the blazing blue unlight of the Builder Stone fails, and Claybourne literally struggles to pull himself back together.

The heroes find their way - with intelligence from a Spinner they saved - to a standing stone in the Teinwood called the Dragon's Rib. 13 times around against the path of the sun is the way in. But even in the wan forest light, they can feel this is the most dangerous thing they have ever faced....

Making their way through the tunnel opened by Queen Aía's magics, the heroes exited Caer Cuvall of the Morning and made their way toward the source of the energy that drives the Yellow Strangers to gather others to their cause, and empowers them to do so: the Yellow King.

The group arrived under the great dark bulk of that northern forest they had glimpsed before: the Teinwood.

Arriving, possibly their magics, possibly something else, sets a spinner falling from the the trees above as wolves howl nearby, and the Spinner - as many of the other animals of this Tuhál of the Morning - calls out for aid in strange speech at first, and then their own Low Speech of the Five Kingdoms as the heroes move to respond....

https://youtu.be/zLb7AEDEhZA

The heroes chat with Queen Aía about the challenges besetting her kingdom, and she welcomes their gifts and their support in light of her 3 Sacrifices, as she faces the 3 Kings, and the kingdom is beset by its 3 Dangers.

The heroes, having passed by the Queen's loyal Ravens as they went out to fight against the servants of the Wolf King, were eager to get information on one of the Kings and dig into what was going on in the kingdom - and perhaps the problem that they were beginning to forget their lives before Tuhal of the Morning.

https://youtu.be/lXVcsZAldGE

in Episode 5:

The heroes followed Deru O'Boinne across the city to the Clearwater District after some misadventure.

There they found the O'Lu household sealed by magic, and within, a loom room in the back, the wool had been spun into webs, and a door in the floor led tantalizingly down into the basement.

This Episode (6):

A conversation with a missing warrior's family goes awry and the heroes need to figure out what's next

Will Deru find his missing friend, or will he return to them and his wife with dark tidings?

https://youtu.be/pvI6ECZFQck

The Heroes talk to the wife of one of the fighters.

The heroes return from their initial investigations at the Proving Grounds.

In the Old Market area of Tuhal, they meet Deru and Tara O'Boine at their little farm. Connecting with the O'Boines, they share their story thus far of missing warriors and the difficulties of the Proving Grounds. Deru, being on a scheduled hiatus from the Proving Grounds understands the shape of their concern, but doesn't know the content of it, and after accepting them in his house, he goes forth to investigate the problems they raise, as they stay and entertain current gossip and reover with his lady wife, Tara.

Exploring the Proving Grounds, Cían and Ceseal discover that their magics of the Serpent and the Dragon rise with power and move in opposition much as the Dragon and the Serpent once did (the Dragon, the Spirit of the Earth, died after the Godsfall war).

The heroes begin to work with the caretakers of the proving grounds - a P'ntri (a cat-man) and Tairge (meaning 'touched' or 'mad') - they begin to learn what seems to have happened to the missing Warriors of the Proving Grounds, and search for larger answers.

The 4 heroes reunite along the Ribbon - an ancient Builder Structure that served Tuhal forever as a safe and indestructible road to the other Kingdoms, but after the Godsfall war become tricky and unreliable, often leading unsuspecting travelers to their doom.

They arrive at the ancient granite-block coliseum structure known as the Proving Grounds, to begin their investigation into reopening them for games at the High King's birthday.

The arwr (heroes) meet in the capitol of Tuhál, called Caer Cuval. Cían, the Draoí Glás (Green Wizard) is summoned to appear before the King at the Crown of Tuhal (the hill at the center of the city).

Cían and Claybourne are drawn away from Seseal and Cissyphus and brought to the protected region at the center of the capitol - to appear not before the King himself, but his son Eigrean Cuval, and a high-ranking Draoí Dearg (magehunter) called Kitamwe, "the silent questioner".

Tasked with a seemingly innocuous charge of re-opening the fighting pits outside of Tuhal, it is evident given the gathering that this is not all that is afoot.