Prologue: Mid-morning. The old North Road.

[Q.Q Elf]

NOTE: This is intro-y stuff, to set up where your characters are at. Torchbearer says to start in the middle of things (in medias res). Therefore, in order to provide more direction to start the game & get you towards putting together a Goal, here's a description. (Next steps for me: nailing down where your character sheets will live.)

Feel free to talk in-character here as we're defining characters. Nothing we do at this point can earn a skill check (since we don't have skills all laid out). Maybe it'll help cap off the character creation process, to imagine them in a scene together.

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Mid-morning. The old North Road.

Mist and fog hang heavy over this end of the valley, hiding the Sun behind a shroud of grey. Here, the North Road winds along the banks of the Goblinwater. The murky stream stinks of rot and decay. Or, the water is what everyone hopes is stinking.

The group has traveled along the North Road since yesterday, camping last night atop a hill overlooking the roadway. Last night in camp, the Elf swore by the Lords of Light that there was a large fire in the distance to the east and north, somewhere along the road. The road that skirts ever closer to the Caves of Chaos.

Maybe it was a big cookfire or bonfire. A large merchant caravan, on its way towards the Keep. Everyone hopes so.

When the stink of rotting meat starts mingling with smells of woodfire and charred swine-flesh, the Elf's keen eyes spy it first. A massacre. Burned-out traders' wagons. Broken spears, arrows snapped in half. Puddles of stinking decaying blood, turning thick and pudding-like due to the passage of time. Hacked-off hands, arms, limbs, entrails. Drag marks, heading off to the West into the treeline beyond the road.

Curiously, there is a total absence of dead bodies here. Just parts of bodies, pools of blood, and bloody drag marks stretching off Westward.

To the West, the treeline, and a big misshapen hill rising up like the crooked hump of flesh on the back of a bull's neck - that unmistakable landscape where the guardsmen at the Keep said to look for the Caves of Chaos.

[GreyWolfVT]

Horris IronBeard

"Well Elf it appears we have located the chaos part. This looks like a bloody massacre was here over night. I bet that fire ya saw was where they burned the dead bodies addin to this infernal stink." the gruff dwarf says while looking around at the scene around.

[Keehnelf]

Erinas Leafsinger

"Somehow I doubt that the missing travelers were subjected to anything so merciful as death and burning, dwarf. Great trouble has been allowed to brew in the foul cauldron known as chaos' caves for far too long, and now the putrid infection of that place has begun to spread. We must be its healers."

[GreyWolfVT]

Horris IronBeard
"Eh I dunno bout that Erinas. But I will do what I can to help. All I got is me dwarven think head, and me strength. I can at the very least try n crush the chaotic enemies we encounter there-in."

[sulldawga]

Marodin will silently take up the task of rekindling a fire. Then he will gather all of the body parts he can find, saying a silent prayer over each of them, and burn them in the flames.

When he is done, he will wash himself in the Goblinwater and then return to his companions.

I seek vengeance. Who is with me?

[Keehnelf]

Erinas will take part in setting up the fire and singing dirges to the elder lords of starlight over the burning body parts while Marodin prays. Once the song has ended, tears in her steely eyes, she will affirm with a stiff nod of the head her desire to see justice done.

[Q.Q Elf]

The sound of Erinas' ancient threne of grief and lamentation echoes strangely across the landscape. For a moment, the grass shudders and the leaves droop in unison with the song of mourning, an Elven tune that recalls the first song of Creation - a song that foreshadowed the world's first death.

Unlike the Elven song, the Paladin's tireless effort in the name of the Lords of Light brings forth no similar minor miracles... nor any such Elven witchery, depending on one's views of the Firstborns' place in the skein of Creation. Whether Marodin thinks one way or the other about the Elves is not easily read through his eyes.

The rekindled bonfire burns away the last of the scattered body parts, giving them up to the cleansing fire, and easing the flesh's return to dust.

[Simon]

Ahmad keeps a steely silence through the burial-by-fire, though he helps build the pyre and pile the bodies with, if not enthusiasm, resolve and decorum. As the fire reaches its greatest height he taps his forehead nine times and looks skyward, as if trying to find a particular constellation through the oily, black smoke blotting the sky above them.

As the fire finally dies and the echoing strands of Erinas' dirge fade, Ahmad turns to Marodin and says, Vengeance will be what the Lords of Fury and the Nine Eye'd Lord will it to be. We are called merely to witness and give testimony. But that which the Lords cannot see, they cannot judge, and so we must cast their Gaze upon these Caves and reveal their corruption. In this way justice will be done. Is this not so, Brother Marodin?

As he finishes his address to Moradin, he turns his eye to Erinas and Horris. Ahmad was taught in his cloister to respect and seek the wisdom of the elder races. That which is known to rock and tree, the Nine Eye'd Lord has made known to his Eldest Children, and Man, in order to complete the Omnipaedia, must seek their council. That said, he's never laid eyes on an honest to goodness Elf or Dwarf before. He's more than a little unnerved by the Elf's alien remove, and the Dwarf seems to him as if he is part of the landscape, a creature born of stone. He hesitates to make overtures to either of them.

[GreyWolfVT]

Horris

Does not reply about the rituals and all the other interactions with the deceased body parts. "Eh vengeance never solved anything. Just like revenge never resolved anything. I am sure the elf here can recall and contest to that." the dwarf says in his deep tone sounds almost like a talking rock or so most would say when they hear Horris speak in his deep dwarven accent.

[sulldawga]

Marodin turns to face the dwarf.

You would let whatever monsters perpetrated this deed to continue their depredations? Crimes must be punished. I am the Man to do it. Follow me if you will, or not, but I shall not shirk from my duty.

The Paladin will then respond to Ahmad by opening his arms wide, indicating the slaughter all around them.

I see enough right here, cleric. It may be for you to witness with your nine eyes but the Lords of Light call upon me for action.

[Keehnelf]

Erinas takes note of Ahmad's reticence and smiles inwardly, then turns abruptly toward the dwarf on her heel, suddenly standing so close to him that he needs to take a half step back in order to look up into her face. "Horris, is it?" the rough-sounding word is like sticky, bitter sap on her tongue and it is plain to see.

"It is the duty of the living to attend to the living and to the dead both, whether they be elf or animal or tree or budding shoot. If that duty requires us to purge a foul cancer from the earth's body, then in we go like a healer's knife. We have no choice about these things, any more than the flower has the choice to bloom in spring or the apple to break loose and fall to earth in the autumn. It simply is--and our preferences have nothing to do with it. In his own rough way, the paladin seems to understand these things, but I am confused as to why you, with your feet and hands and beard fixed to the bones of the earth, stand on the doorstep of darkness and hesitate."

The elf-maid shakes her head in disbelief, and Horris catches a glimmer in her look that reminds him all too eerily of the images of long-ago elves whose grim faces witnessed the very deeds to which Horris had obliquely made reference.

[GreyWolfVT]

Horris

looks at Marodin like he is some foreign creature "I never said that. But if you go around tryin' ta save the world you'll find yer self in an early grave friend."

[Keehnelf]

Erinas

"Friend dwarf, if my grave alone could save the world, I would go with a song in my heart."

[Simon]

To Moradin: I see bodies butchered on the field. I smell rendered fat and burnt hair. I hear 12 crows crying in the forest to the north, deprived of a feast on account of our rites. I feel the earth beneath my feet groan and shift. What does this tell me? It tells me that there is evermore for me to learn and to record, and in in recording to set in order that which has been shifted out of place. Do not believe my blood does not boil, that I do not imagine the face of my father blistering on hot coals. But believe with me that my own ardor will never make right what has been done here. I will go with you. I will cast a light on these dark doings. And I will be a hammer for the Nine Eye'd Lord in the face of opposition. But vengeance I will leave to minds more fit for fury.

[Keehnelf]

Erinas laughs, high and bright, and the sound fills the crisp air of the glade with merriment despite the horror lying at her feet.

"What an unusual and needlessly clever relationship you have with your Lord, friar Ahmad! My eyes, too, see all these things, and I have but two--and my heart, as well, sees the shape of things, the shapes that could have been, the shapes that should have been, and the shapes that may yet be according to the will of wind and vine and moon and wave. Rostiro may walk these paths, but it is not to satisfy his hungers that vengeance must be meted out--it is to allow the branch to regain its health so that it may grow according to the law that governs all things. I feel fury in my spirit at the hand that would do these things, but my fury is not the source of my duty. It is simply the tool that will make my duty easier to bear."

She sighs then, shaking her head, and seems to have exhausted her store of words for the day. After a moment, she wanders away in the direction their quarry must have gone, her casual gait belying her preternaturally quick stride. One hand shields her eyes as she walks, hoping to catch sight of something in the distance with her elf-sight.

[GreyWolfVT]

Horris

grumbles a bit most of which is not made out by the others finally after grumbling and pacing about surveying the area hi breaks down and opens his mouth again. "What I am tryin ta say is we have to keep level heads. Blindly running off to seek vengeance is stupid. How are we to even know if these people were of a lawful or even neutral disposition? You might be off avenging chaotic evil people that lost poorly in a battle with other forces of evil. Think a bit before you go charging off declaring righteousness and vengeance for law." he stops clears his throat a bit "That being said I do not disagree that we must fight evil and chaos and rid this land of it. But that is a lot of work and we must again think before we act."

[sulldawga]

Marodin shrugs.

Perhaps you are right, dwarf. It is every living thing's instinct to run from danger, to stay alive. Those who fight their Nature and run toward trouble are the exception. Unfortunately for you, I am one of those fools who cannot abide the breaking of the Law. I seek out the dark places and cleanse the filth within. I walk where others fear to tread.

Perhaps this adventure will be a good one for you. There will be glory and gold. But if the odds turn against us, I will not run. You do as you must. I will understand. Even if you leave me, I am never alone with the Lords of Light beside me.

[sulldawga]

But vengeance I will leave to minds more fit for fury.

Then we are a match, Ahmad. You can illuminate the dark places and I will burn them.

[sulldawga]

Marodin quickly twists his head, spotting Erinas' movement on the edge of his vision. He quickly gathers his gear and jogs off after her.

[GreyWolfVT]

Horris
lets out a heavy sigh and thinks to himself an adventure this will definitely be. He takes a deep breath then calmly replies "I won't ever leave a man-at-arms even if we are on slightly different terms or perspectives lets call it. I've had ta deal with my share of fellow dwarves that thought differently than myself. So don't worry I will not abandon any of ya on the field of battle. I do have yer back so long as I can protect it."