Odela's Grimoire I
Now I have a real blog and everything, I can post the session notes-poorly-disguised-as-fiction here. Although I have two written already, I'll break them up for archiving's sake.
10th of Late Winter.
Of the all spending sennight in Dorbagh only I have kept washed and clean of contagion. Often fasting or keeping only to oil and water for eat and drink, lacking men to send out of walls for game or trade.
Hence we had brought the beast dens argentum to Lord Donnagh, arbiter of the pagans in this land and mercy, a latina conlatoris. The beast we placed in his hall, abomination become our glory afore him for none had seen or told privy of the horror. For boons we were given 300 pieces of silver to split, to myself 50 pieces. Our bowman Flynn took the renown of Lord Donnagh, and the goticman took courting of his servant girl.
Our sender the faceless man was next, also conlator in letters, and rushed to the hall where Argentum lay to take back his ruined face. The aid of the moslem ibn Qasim in our company was needed, mania gripping both as he sewed flesh to flesh with a needle and gut from the servants. Alas, dead Argentum levied a final curse. The face was alike with dropsy and lay pale and rotten like white sack cloth over the sucking wound. Morose, he bid us take the bounty and leave him.
Of the bounty, there was none of the 1000 silvers left, long since thieved.
By sennight’s end I had taken some instruction from Qasim while we had been kept by the pictdam’s hunting, and at last were summoned by the lord’s court magus Mish, the druidess. She quest us with the cure for the plague, and seeking her favour in mystic arts I pledged to find it. The moslem, instead, pledged to cure it by alchemy alone.
Fishermen had been the first to fall ill, so we all set down the river to find its source which Mish had forecast some ill spirit. All except ibn Qasim who had been struck by rending pain from chemicals.
Down to evendusk we followed the river and seeing bodies of many animals, some hacked apart by weapons and left farrow to spoil in the water. It was as we made camp that our watch the bowman saw a troupe in the dark. They spoke not across the water. Only heaved down and armed near to our camped firelight.
Men, or men perhaps, wracked with metals in the blood. Heads grown fat with angry veins of ore like they had sucked down troughs of iron through their jagged teeth.
I know I now lack the grace of God. He has abandoned me and I my faith in Him. I have no ward against foul magy or horrors like them, and they are too oft as stone against swords. Lacking any strength of pagan spirits, I fled while our company battled in the water.
In the pollen orange light of dusk the pictdam and the goticman did battle most, and the bowman took asword to cleave their heads from their bodies. The oremen seemed no better meat than man, and died swiftly. The goticman vowed that none would cross the river alive. The pictdam did also swear that she would kill more of the oremen than them all — from the trees I watched as they warriors were sliced up by the rough makhairas in the current, although not killing, it was still their blood that mixed with the ichor in the water amidst the mangled dead that mumbled where the grey river could not swallow them up.
Flynn was wounded as was the pictdam - she worse than he. But enough of the horrors were dead that their force of half a dozen was turned. I returned to pull up their bodies to the bank and inspect the cadavers. Iron nails set into their meat like a horsefly. With many wounded we made camp for night and burned the dead - as immune to pain, Flynn feared they would rise again and kill us while we slept. Morning is back to Dorbagh and Mish to see what she makes of such things.