Our travellers discover some unsettling news about their host and are left to find their way through the eerie forest without her.
During the wee hours of the morning, Jokul reveals to Eight that Ray is disturbingly similar to his dead wife. In fact, she is practically a duplicate. He is unable to sleep due to the haunting circumstance the group is currently in. Eight offers a pinky promise to keep Jokul’s secret, and reminds him what the term “friends” really means.
The group waits until mid-morning for their guide to wake, but when she doesn’t, Rialla and Eight decide to explore the cabin. What they find is the most unsettling discovery of all, but perhaps Ray’s final act of kindness will offer them guidance as they set out.
Follow Dax @GM_Dax, Cole @ColeMorreale and Wren @ThornyDryad
Transcript by CJ Kallevig
Upbeat piano intro ends [00:28]
Mysterious music begins [00:31]
Dax: All of you have taken to your resting areas. Arthas sleeps under the stars, Jokul and Rialla are in their tent, Eight sits on a log nearby, listening to the sounds of the night forest. Sounds that you really haven’t heard in all your travels, other than when you came close to this cabin. Eight, as you sit there, you hear rustling in the tent where Jokul and Rialla are. And you see the tall elf exit and walk towards you. The sky above you is clear, and the stars are easily seen in that black velvet sky.
Wren: Seeing Jokul emerge from the tent, I’ve been sitting on this log for the better part of a few hours after we enjoyed a wonderful dinner that was prepared by our gracious host. I lean forward upon seeing him emerge and after he paces out, shutting the flap behind him, I look to him and quietly say, definitely not loudly because the night air is so quiet. I can hear the peeping of, I’m imagining, little frogs and maybe crickets in the background. Definitely a welcome change from the howling gales of the desert, the buffeting of the sand driven by those winds. Right now it’s just pensive and quiet, almost peaceful. As I crane forward, leaning my elbows on my giant knees, towards my companion. I look to him and simply say,
Wren (as Eight): Jokul, you seem to be up earlier than you normally would be. Is everything okay?
James: I kind of wander over to the campfire near Eight and just, assuming there isn’t a, you got the tree stump or whatever, he just kind of finds himself a comfy spot in the grass or wherever nearby.
James (as Jokul): Just couldn’t sleep. Figured I’d sit out here instead of keeping Rialla up with my tossing and turning.
Wren: I cock my head at the declaration that you can’t sleep and raising an eyebrow, I say to you,
Wren (as Eight): Jokul, if I’m not mistaken, when an organic being such as you cannot sleep, it’s an indication of some trouble that clouds your mind? Prevents you from quieting your thoughts and finding peace before you get the sleep that you so desperately need?
James (as Jokul): Yes, you would be correct in that assessment.
Wren (as Eight): It is what I’m afraid of then. What is troubling you? Was it dinner? I thought dinner was splendid, but perhaps my tastes are different than yours.
James (as Jokul): No, dinner was fine. It’s this whole situation.
James: And he kind of waves his hand to the forest, cabin, just all-encompassing around him.
James (as Jokul): My thoughts are troubled just, I’m not sure what’s real anymore to a degree. I don’t know, as I mentioned to Rialla, I’m not sure if I’m dead and you’re all a hallucination, or if we’re past that and something else strange and magical is going on.
Wren (as Eight): Jokul, I assure you, you are not dead. If you were dead, I would be the first one to tell you as such.
James (as Jokul): Thanks. Appreciate that.
Wren (as Eight): But, that begs the more direct question. Why would you feel that this is less than reality?
James (as Jokul): You might have noticed how I distanced myself from Ray because she looked very much like my first wife. Like, an eerie duplicate and the similarities are disturbing. Not to mention, the presence of the child implies other details that I might have wondered over at one point.
Wren: I fold my arms and lean back a little bit.
Wren (as Eight): So, honestly Jokul, you and Rialla don’t speak much about your past and I would not have guessed that you were married, quite frankly. And you’re saying that this woman, Ray, who has offered us food, shelter, and to act as a guide tomorrow, looks strikingly similar to your first wife? Or, you say your first wife. Does this mean you had multiple?
James (as Jokul): Not strikingly similar, she is a duplicate in every sense of the word except her name. Her personality, her appearance, everything that I can remember of her, Ray is a perfect representation of it.
Wren (as Eight): I see. So, this is unsettling to you.
James (as Jokul): Considerably so.
Wren (as Eight): I understand. I suppose I would be incredibly troubled if I were to run into an older woman that reminded me of my mother. Though, I suppose this is where our personalities diverge because I would like to ask questions of this person, if I were to run into someone that reminded me immediately of someone of interest to me.
James (as Jokul): You have no idea how much I’d like to talk to her. But, given the nature of my confusion and the situation at hand, I’d rather not creep her out and get stuck in the forest because she doesn’t want to deal with this.
Wren (as Eight): That could be a problem, if it wound up getting us stranded. I appreciate your restraint, given the situation. Though, I do wish there was a way we could work out some way to figure out a way for you to obtain the information you require. For peace of mind, obviously. This is troubling to you and it pains me to see it. Jokul, is there anything I can do for you?
James (as Jokul): Yeah, you can keep what I told you and not tell Ray. I don’t want it, that information, to be made known to them or the child because as I said, it would be awkward.
Wren (as Eight): Oh! Like a secret.
James (as Jokul): Yes, like a secret.
Wren (as Eight): Jokul, would you, would you pinky promise with me that I will keep it a secret?
[James laughs]
Wren: And I hold up my hand with my enormous third digit extended.
Wren (as Eight): I learned this at dinner time. It is a custom for you organic folk, is it not?
James (as Jokul): Primarily among children, but given the situation, I will go with it and I will pinky promise you don’t share this information.
Wren (as Eight): Excellent. Cross my heart and hope to die. That is what was said at the dinner table earlier. I just learned it today and I am so glad to put it to use.
James (as Jokul): Yeah.
Wren (as Eight): You can count on me, Jokul. And if there is anything I can do for you, even if it’s as simple as giving you water, you can rely on me. That’s what friends are for.
James (as Jokul): I appreciate that.
Dax: The rest of the evening passes without much ado. You hear the rustling of the tent when Rialla awakens, you can hear Arthas’s breathing change when he comes back to the land of the living and the awake. The morning birds are calling now in the trees. [Dax imitates a morning dove cooing] And the sun is starting to shine through the leaves of the canopy. But you don’t hear any rustling in the cabin.
Neil: It might just be very early.
Wren (as Eight): Morning Arthas.
Neil (as Arthas): Hello.
Wren (as Eight): Did you sleep well?
Neil (as Arthas): As well as anyone can on the ground. So, extremely.
Wren (as Eight): I’m glad to hear it. You looked quite comfortable. I watched you most of the night.
Neil (as Arthas): I am unsurprised.
Cole: When I wake up, I instinctively go to Jokul’s side and give him a hug.
James: I return the hug. I’m just kind of, Rialla is probably really good at reading Jokul at this point, so he’s just kind of, he’s kind of in that zombie, ‘oh I just woke up, I didn’t get enough sleep’. But he’s kind of that, ‘yes yes I’m here. Not really awake, but here.’
Cole (as Rialla): Have we heard anything from Ray?
Wren (as Eight): The building appears to be quiet. I suppose if you would like, I can go knock on the door and see if I can rouse anyone, if they are not already awake.
Cole: About how early is it?
Dax: The sunlight’s coming through the canopy, so probably based on the trajectory, you could imagine it’s about 8 o’clock. It’s not super, super early.
Cole: Okay. Because obviously if we woke up at 5AM, I’d be like ‘that’s why we haven’t heard from her’. Okay.
Dax: Yeah, yesterday was yesterday and however long you’ve been traveling this forest has been pretty exhausting. So it was, it was nice to be able to be in a place that sounded normal and you all slept, for those of you that could sleep, pretty soundly.
Wren (as Eight): Should it be a good idea to rouse our hosts and see if they would like to greet the morning?
Neil (as Arthas): I think it’d be prudent.
Cole (as Rialla): Maybe, I don’t know, maybe give them just a little bit more time to wake up? I’d feel bad waking them.
James (as Jokul): I agree. Let them wake on their own.
Wren (as Eight): I see. How long should I wait? 30 seconds, a minute, 5 minutes?
Cole (as Rialla): Maybe half an hour, an hour?
Wren (as Eight): Well, then I will wait for one of you to make the call as to when to rouse the others because [sighs] I suppose from my experience, I am known to be a little… what’s the phrase you tend to use? Jumping the shark?
Cole (as Rialla): Jumping the arrow? Is that what you meant to say?
Wren (as Eight): That also works. Mother told me a shark was just a fish with lots of teeth.
James (as Jokul): Most people don’t go jumping those. Bad idea.
Wren (as Eight): I do not know how one would jump in the middle of the water, where sharks would be found.
Dax: So half an hour? Hour? How long does the group wait?
Cole: I think we’d start with a half an hour, and just see where things are at. And I think in the meantime, Rialla would be like rolling up the tent and cleaning up the campsite and checking everything.
Dax: Getting ready to head out kind of thing?
Cole: Yeah, and if there was anything, like I don’t know what’s outside or if there was anything I could help with? Like, anything I could do. I’d be like…
Dax: So, outside the cabin, like I said there’s a stump relatively close to the front door. You can see that there probably, there are like wood chippings around it. So it’s probably somewhere where, you know, wood would be chopped. If you started walking around the cabin, you would see a lot of overgrowth and brush behind the cabin. Vines and whatnot on the trees, like the morning glory almost that crawls on everything and is so hard to get rid of. But there really isn’t anything outside the house that looks like any, that is related to chores in any way that would need to be done.
Cole: Okay then, clean up the campsite and then wait and see if any movement comes from inside.
Wren: There was a stream right nearby, right?
Dax: Yeah.
Wren: Okay. I will probably traipse down to the brook’s edge and sit and wait. And look at, I don’t know, frogs or water boatman that stride along the top of the water’s edge. I don’t know.
Dax: So you go and you sit by the river’s edge, because it is quite large. It is not something that you would want to ford by yourselves. You sit at it’s edge and you watch the water roll over rocks. You can listen to the sound of it moving quickly downstream. You wait half an hour, nothing. You wait another half an hour, still no sounds coming out of the cabin. It is now roughly 9 in the morning.
Wren: I call from the water’s edge, just looking over my shoulder,
Wren (as Eight): Do we wake them yet? When do we, when do we decide to speak to them about leaving?
James (as Jokul): It’s getting late in the morning, admittingly she offered to be our guide so we shouldn’t put any pressure on her to leave. But…
Cole: I will look at Jokul and see what he thinks.
Cole (as Rialla): We also don’t want to leave too late, depending how long this journey might take us.
James (as Jokul): Agreed.
Cole: I will get up and walk to the door and give a... [four knocks].
Dax: You do so and after waiting what seems an appropriate amount of time, there is no response.
Cole: Why do I have a bad feeling, our illustrious DM? I am kind of going to look back at everyone, before turning the doorknob. Is it locked?
Dax: It is not.
Cole: I’ll open it.
Wren: I shrug very simply when you look back at me, just like ‘I don’t know’.
Dax: As you push open the door, the knob turning, actually it feels a little sticky. You have to give it a little bit of force. But once you do, the door [imitates a creaking sound] opens. Do you enter the cabin?
Cole: I peek in first.
Dax: It’s very dark, and you can see from the large bay window that Arthas had poked his head in the night before, everything is covered in dust and cobwebs. As if the kitchen and the dining area have not been used in a very, very long time.
Cole: I would like to close my eyes and touch the frame of the door and I would like to try to use Detect Magic.
Dax: Okay. Alright. So go ahead and cast Utility, that will be Easy and remember that you’re going to take two Strain for casting a spell.
Cole: Take two Strain?
Dax: Yep.
Cole: Okay. That is three Successes.
Dax: Alright. So you put your hand up to this door frame and, does anything happen when you cast this spell as you search for magical properties?
Cole: I kind of think, as I touch the doorframe, the veins around my face and hands darken and my eyes flare white for a moment. There seems to be this black, it’s almost like a whisp of smoke that curls off my hands and seeps into the doorframe. As if to check the entire house.
Dax: So, as you touch the doorframe and the spell courses through your veins, you get the faintest feeling of magic but it is not in this cabin. It is much farther away from you, and the faintness of that feeling tells you that it is at the edge of the range that you can cast this spell at. There is no magic in this cabin at all.
Cole: Okay. So then, I would walk inside.
Dax: You walk inside, and as I said, everything looks to be as if it’s not been used in years. There is a thick layer of dust, there are cobwebs. The smell of must and mold is very heavy in this room.
Cole: Is everything laid out the same though?
Dax: Mhmm. There’s the wood stove that you saw Ray cooking on the night before, the dining room table, the chairs, the cupboards. You do see some dried herbs hanging from the ceiling as you noticed last night, but they are so coated in dust and they’re obviously brittle. You can see pieces of them that have fallen onto the countertops.
Cole: I want to go up to the bedrooms.
Dax: I was going to say, that one door that you saw the night before is partially ajar. You head there and there is a large double bed. The sheets are rotting, the mattress is sagging, part of the bed has actually crumbled and fallen apart as the wood has rotted. But there is nobody in this cabin.
Cole: Is there any reflective surfaces?
Dax: So, there is a bedside table. It’s one of those that it’s like a slightly larger than a nightstand, it’s got a washbasin, a ceramic washbasin. Again, covered thickly in dust and a very small mirror that is also coated in dust and grime.
Cole: If I take my sleeve and wipe away the dust and then look at the room from the mirror, is it the same?
Dax: It looks the same.
Cole: Just, my hands don’t look wrinkly, right? Like, we didn’t sleep for 800 years?
[Cole laughs]
Dax: Nope!
Cole: No, okay didn’t think so.
Dax: Nope, you look exactly the same.
Cole: Okay, that’s what I’m, I was kind of afraid of that too. Okay. I’m going to rush out to the party and I’m just going to be like,
Cole (as Rialla): There’s nothing in there!
Wren: I stand up, bracing my arms on the bank.
Wren (as Eight): What do you mean there’s nothing in there?
Cole (as Rialla): It looks like it’s been abandoned for years.
Wren (as Eight): Rialla, that’s just silly. We’ve been here for what?
Cole (as Rialla): I know what I saw, you can go look for yourself. There’s no one in there!
Wren (as Eight): I believe you, but…
Cole (as Rialla): There’s something magical about…
Cole: What direction did I feel it in?
Dax: So, when you were casting the spell, you could cast this out in pretty much a nice little aura, about 30ish or so feet out. And you felt it all around you at the very edges of the spell you cast.
Cole: Oh so like, if this is the circle I cast, I felt it all around the circle.
Dax: Yep. And it was extremely faint. Like, if the magic you were sensing was actually even well beyond that, but close enough where it would ping your spell.
Cole: Okay. I want, I’m going to start walking that way. In a direction.
Dax: Which direction specifically?
Cole: I want to keep towards, obviously I don’t want to go back into the forest. I want to keep heading towards the stream and out, so that direction.
Dax: Okay, so the stream is to the left of the house. So you can either go towards the stream or you can go towards the back of the house or, you approach the house from, if you were looking at the house now, behind you is where you originally came from.
Cole: Is the stream right next to the house? Like, I can’t get to that 30 feet?
Dax: It’s about like 15 feet from the house. So if you wanted to reach the 15 feet, you’d either have to head towards the back of the house or you’d have to head to the right of the house, towards the forest.
Cole: I’m just going to pick left. I don’t know, I’m going towards the edge of my circle. I want to see what’s there.
Dax: Okay, so left. So you’re going towards the stream. Okay. So, you head towards the stream until your feet are touching the edge of the water. You are feeling the magic get closer, but it’s still very faint. Considering you are over, next to a pretty much 100 foot river, you know that there’s something out there. But it’s, it doesn’t feel like over the river is where you’re feeling it.
Cole: Can I, being closer, can I start to follow it? Do I feel it a little bit better that I can pinpoint it?
Dax: You going upstream or downstream? Upstream is towards the back of the house, downstream is towards where you came from.
Cole: Not where we came from.
Dax: Okay. So you head upstream, and as you do, you start getting closer to the forest. That feeling starts getting stronger and stronger, until you’re on the edge of the clearing and you can tell that that magic feeling is in the forest itself.
Cole: But there wasn’t magic, like it was wonky magic in the forest.
Dax: Well, your magic was wonky.
Wren: I call to you from the river’s edge,
Wren (as Eight): Rialla, are you following something? You look, you look a little concerned.
Neil (as Arthas): Are you well, Rialla?
Cole (as Rialla): I’m very concerned. Just a moment.
Cole: I want to pull out my mirror and, so I scried and I saw these people. I scried on them. I want to scry on the present state of them, see how it got to that state.
Dax: Right, so you want to try and scry on these people after what you saw last night.
Cole: Mhmm.
Dax: Okay, go ahead and do what you need to do. I’m going to make this a Hard difficulty. There you go, yeah. Two yellow and a green, and then three purple.
Cole: Two Advantages and a Failure.
Dax: Okay. So you go to scry and maybe it’s that you’re in such close proximity to the forest, maybe it’s because you know so little about the people that you interacted with last night. But the mirror flickers a little bit. It replays the final scene that you saw last night where the little girl is saying goodbye to the tall man. And then it fizzles out, and it doesn’t show you much else. What would you like to use your Advantages for?
Cole: I would like to notice something in the scene. Is anything off? Anything, did the scene like, were they ghosts? Was it, I don’t know, was there a moment where she’s translucent or anything off like that?
Dax: So the mirror fizzles and goes dark. You sigh in frustration, and you notice out of the corner of your eye to the right, there’s some sort of structure. You turn and look and you see a gravestone and a smaller one next to it.
Cole: I walk over to it.
Dax: The tall gravestone says ‘Raylene Shelby Geral and underneath it an inscription that reads ‘Here lies Raylene, a kind woman of staggering loyalty. She will be forever remembered by those that she helped in their hour of need, no matter the cost to herself’. The smaller gravestone next to that is entitled “Maeve Abigail Geral, Sleep undisturbed within the peaceful shrine till angels wake thee with a note like thine’. And then you see next to that, at level with the ground is a small stone plaque. All three of these stone structures are weathered with age. They are cracked, their inscriptions are very well worn. This last one in particular is well worn, the words are almost indecipherable. But you are able to make out ‘James Geral, and then the words ‘MIA’ and underneath the name it reads ‘This stone is in memory of James Geral, a soldier of the Great War’.
Cole: I sit down and I put a hand to Maeve’s gravestone, and I whisper to them,
Cole (as Rialla): Was last night a dream?
Cole: And I think I want to use…
Dax: So while Cole looks for their spell, what are the other three of you doing? You saw Rialla go out to the river and then go towards the end of the forest. What are you doing?
James: I’m following at a distance, like still apprehensive. I saw what I saw and I don’t want to be delving deeper if something’s going wrong. So just kind of, if something spooky’s jumping out at Rialla, I’m within dashing distance. But I’m keeping my distance, like well she’s looking at some rocks. ‘Oh, crap. I don’t want to know what those rocks say.’ Yeah, just, yeah that looks like a gravestone. I’m just going to leave them alone.
Dax: Alright, so you do see, you follow enough to see Rialla go towards, what you can, you can tell even at this distance, are gravestones. Eight, Arthas?
Neil: Mostly the same. I am sort of keeping an eye on her, as she doesn’t seem extremely happy. But I also don’t really know what to do. This is kind of out of my skill set.
Cole: Then, I’m going to close my eyes and when I open them again, they are blank white. The veins on my face become dark, dark, dark. And I’m going to use Visions of Death, so I will spend a Story Point and if they do so, a spirit of their choosing is inserted into the scene. They offer assistance or hindrance to the character. I want to see if I can talk to Ray.
Dax: So, you stand there with your hand on the gravestone, Ray’s gravestone. You reach out and it doesn’t come as quickly as it usually does. You feel like you have to wait an unusual amount of time and then the barest wisp of something appears to you. There’s no discernable form, there’s no facial features. Just a little glowing puff of smoke.
Cole (as Rialla): What happened to you?
Dax: You don’t hear a voice, you get emotions. You get happiness, you get that warm feeling that you felt when you first realized that you were in love with Jokul. You get pain, bodily pain then happiness again. And then emotional pain, staggering emotional pain. Sadness. Grief. Mourning. Then calm. And then emotions flash very quickly in succession. Then you feel a tightness in your chest, you start to feel as if you have to cough, and then it’s gone and the spirit is still. Eight, what are you doing? Arthas and Jokul are keeping their distance but they’re peering after Rialla to keep an eye on her. What are you up to?
Wren: Considering the remainder of my companions are keeping a close watch on Rialla, I will probably walk from the river’s edge to Bessie, wherever Bessie is tied up or tethered or whatnot, give a slow stroke on the side of the mechanical donkey’s mechanic face. Followed by a pat on the head, and then I will probably walk inside of the building, just to see whatever is going on in there with my own eyes.
Dax: You see the exact same thing Rialla saw. The only exception is that when you get to the bedroom, you see the mirror has this big streak across the grime and the dust.
Wren: I’ll just kind of stalk around the rooms and the hallways and take time to look out the windows and see what’s going on in the back while I’m kind of in the derelict house. Just keeping an eye on Rialla from inside of the building as well.
Dax: Okay, so you’re watching from the bedroom window. Okay.
Cole: When, you said that at the tail end of the emotional rollercoaster, it was a chest tightness?
Dax: You felt as if there was a tightness in your chest, like you were coughing. Like you had, potentially like pneumonia.
Cole (as Rialla): Did we see you last night? Are you at peace?
Dax: The spirit doesn’t respond.
Cole (as Rialla): Okay.
Dax: You get a flash of warmth.
Cole (as Rialla): I’m sorry to wake you.
Dax: And that feeling of happiness again.
Cole: I’ll wave my hand over and this little, it’s like, it just looks like a little bit of smoke as I hand wave and sort of tell her,
Cole (as Rialla): You can go back to rest.
Cole: Dismissing the spell that I cast.
Dax: So, Jokul and Arthas, you see Rialla summon a spirit and, or at least, you think it’s a spirit. I mean, it is a floating ball of smoke, so you would imagine that that’s what that is. And after a few minutes, it disappears as she waves her hand.
Cole: I’m still sat by the stones and kind of thinking to myself. Have I experienced anything like that before? Like weird illusions or, could I tell if that was a vision?
Dax: With the emotions? You would recognize that this is a spirit that has been gone from this world so long that they no, and they’ve never had a reason to stay. Once they died, they passed on and therefore had no real way to communicate with you other than through emotions and feelings.
Cole: That energy that I got from Ray, supposedly the night before, was it sort of the same? Was there a way to tell if it was the same person?
Dax: I would say, considering how intense the emotions were that you got from this spirit now, compared to the feeling you got last night, you have an inkling that there might be something more to what you saw last night. But it’s, it’s difficult to know for sure.
Cole: Okay. I sit for another moment, before walking back to where we made camp and sitting next to Jokul. Really lost in thought and I don’t say anything right away.
Dax: So as you go back to camp, Jokul follows behind I would imagine, and Arthas turns and does the same. They see you sit down. Eight, you see that your companions are now all grouped back around where camp was. And Rialla is lost in thought to herself.
Cole (as Rialla): Those were their gravestones.
Neil (as Arthas): It seemed as if we will be guiding ourselves through the woods.
Cole (as Rialla): I tried speaking with Ray but it was, it was an old spirit. It’s a spirit that has been gone for a very long time.
Neil (as Arthas): Hmmm.
Cole (as Rialla): And I just, I have no idea what it means.
Wren: I wander out from inside the house and kind of slowly walk towards where everyone is seated and stand at the periphery. I cross my arms again and look to everyone. [sighs]
Wren (as Eight): I do not know what’s transpired here but, it seems to be weighing down on several of us. Perhaps the sooner we depart, the sooner we might find a little bit of peace for ourselves.
James (as Jokul): If everything we experienced last night was an illusion or a figment of our imagination, we ate food. I’m not hungry. Are you hungry? Was it illusionary food? Do..? [chuckles]
James: I look at Arthas, being that he’s the biggest and most likely the hungriest one and be like,
James (as Jokul): Are you hungry yet? How much did you eat?
Neil (as Arthas): I ate a fair amount and I’m not as hungry as I could be.
Dax: Rialla, out of curiosity, do you share the details of the gravestones to your companions?
Cole: Like what they say? Yes.
Dax: Eight, just make a knowledge check for me. Make it Easy difficulty.
Wren: So with an Intellect 3 and one Rank in Knowledge, that gives me two Green and a Yellow and the Easy check is a Purple. I am left with one singular Success.
Dax: Rialla tells you about the gravestones and it is when she mentions the last one, the soldier lost to the Great War, a lightbulb goes off for you in your head. Your memory brings up a textbook of history that you read back in your tower. The Great War was over 400 years ago. It was the largest war that Rejiev has ever seen. It was the war that resulted in the Adar-Kai being banished to the Isle of Gohram.
Wren (as Eight): Did you say the Great War, Rialla? That was well over 400 years ago.
Cole (as Rialla): What?
Wren (as Eight): Yes, assuming the textbooks in Mother’s tower were accurate, the Great War occurred over 400 years ago. It was a battle that was fought between different factions of Elvenkind, with the Adar-Kai being banished to their current realm of existence in Gohram. Jokul, you’ve noticed folks in the different places we’ve visited commenting on your appearance and calling you Adar-Kai, have you not?
James (as Jokul): Oh, yes! Multiple times. I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant but I just kind of accepted it.
Wren: I quirk my eyebrow and look at Jokul as I continue.
Wren (as Eight): Perhaps this James fellow was an Adar-Kai as well.
Cole (as Rialla): He was.
Wren (as Eight): And perhaps his family waited for his return.
Cole (as Rialla): He was definitely an Adar-Kai. I did a spell to see what, basically to check and see if there were any similarities between this Ray and..
Cole: I kind of look down and try to avoid saying it and
Cole (as Rialla): And something else. Yes, James was an Adar-Kai. He left for war and never came back.
Wren (as Eight): Such a shame.
Cole (as Rialla): That doesn’t explain how we saw them last night. Unless these woods are just doing what they do best.
Wren (as Eight): It’s possible. I don’t understand why things have behaved in the way that they do, but in light of this revelation, perhaps. Perhaps I should commune with nature.
Cole (as Rialla): I guess, that beckons the question, is there anything to commune with?
Wren (as Eight): Excellent quandary.
Cole (as Rialla): Things have been very unnatural and very dark.
Dax: Would every single one of you please make a Knowledge check, Easy difficulty? Eight, what did you get? We’ll start with you.
Wren: I have three Success but two Threat.
Dax: Okay. And Jokul?
James: I have two Advantage.
Dax: Alright, so you have two Advantage. Rialla has one Advantage, one Success. What about you, Arthas?
Neil: One Failure.
Dax: Okay. So, Rialla and Eight, as you two are going back and forth, you, you both remember, Ray had mentioned that she had notes in a journal about how to escape the forest that she was going to use to guide you. Arthas, you, nothing happens with you. And Jokul, what would you like to use your Advantages for?
James: Could I perhaps use my Advantages to know locations that Raylene would have previously hidden stuff? Just like, oh yeah, if we had a, we always talked about having a cabin and she liked to hide things in a cookie jar.
Dax: I will say that if Rialla and Eight mention this thought out loud -
James: Oh.
Dax: I can message you a suggestion that you would have remembered, yes.
James: I’m good with that.
Cole: I’m sure I’m going to mention it [laughs]. We want to get the FUCK out of here.
Dax: Hey, sometimes you two don’t [laughs]. You go off and do your own thing, so.
Wren: Yeah, I’d mention it.
Wren (as Eight): Raylene had discussed directions she had written down, did she not?
Cole: I feel like if this were like a show that we’re playing out, I feel like we’re talking about communion with nature and then we both stop mid-sentence and look at each other. And we’re like, the journal.
Wren (as Eight): The journal. Raylene’s journal.
Cole (as Rialla): She did, she mentioned a journal.
Wren (as Eight): She did! Let’s see… if I were a person, where would I hide a journal?
Cole: I feel like I stand up and start walking towards the house.
Wren: I stop and I just slowly turn and look at Jokul.
Wren (as Eight): You know this Raylene better than any of us. Where might she have hidden something of sensitive nature?
James (as Jokul): If this Raylene is similar to mine, as she appeared, it would have been kept over here.
James: And I wander into the house and go into wherever the bedroom was. Uhhh, like my side, her side, over here. And he’d go to a bedside table and pull open a drawer.
Dax: So the drawer opens up, it’s the same bedside stand that Rialla had looked at the mirror. You find, as you pull this drawer out, the knob actually almost breaks off. The wood has become quite warped and brittle in all these years. But inside, is a beautiful wood box and this box has been well maintained. It’s actually quite preserved.
Cole: I’m peeking over Jokul’s, well not over his shoulder, but like around the side of him and looking. I’m not tall enough for that, but I’m on the side, peeking down at it.
Dax: Do you open the box?
James: Yeah, just like admire the craftsmanship of the box and flip it open, see if it’s got the journal that they mentioned.
Dax: So the first thing you see is a lock of silver hair, next to dried flowers. As you scooch those aside, you do see layers of parchment. Old letters, the wax broken but still folded up and kept neatly layered. And at the bottom is a small leatherbound journal.
James: Carefully put aside the other stuff and just be like, not going to dishonor her memory, just put the stuff aside. Borrow the journal.
James (as Jokul): Here you go.
James: Hand it off to Rialla, wherever she’s hiding near, by the shoulder, nope here you are.
Cole: I take the journal and I very carefully open it. Considering how old it is, I don’t wanna..
Dax: It’s actually in pretty good condition. The box that everything was in, and the fact that it was under layers of things has actually kept it pretty well preserved. One thing, Jokul, you would have noticed a silver locket. Rialla, when you open it up, you see that part of it is actually a diary. You can see that there are personal notes starting with the day that James left for war. Do you read or do you flip through?
Cole: I make a mental note of that and I continue to flip through it.
Dax: You flip through until you get to an entry where there are lots of capital letters. It draws your attention. So you stop and read, and Raylene starts to mention something going wrong with the forest, that magic is seeping in and in some areas, daylight doesn’t seem to pass as it normally does. That some areas are almost dead silent, that simple spells like conjuring light no longer work the way they were supposed to. You read on, you flip through and you start to see notes regarding her figuring out a way to get around the forest, so that she could go hunting and survive. James hasn’t returned and the war is still going on. She knows that she has to take care of her and Mae. More and more and further and further, until you get almost to the end. The last third of that journal and the last page you see, ‘I finally figured it out. I’ve finally done it.’
James: And the other page is missing.
Dax: The very last page, you see that there are only two sentences.
Dax (as Ray): The trees know the forest well. Trusting them will lead you out.
Dax: And then she has a drawing of a river and a small bridge and an arrow going from right to left.
James (as Jokul): Do we have parchment or something to copy that or are we just going to take that page out of the book?
Cole (as Rialla): I guess that’s up to you, do you want to keep the journal? Or would you feel better if we left it here?
James (as Jokul): I would like to leave this place undisturbed.
Cole (as Rialla): Okay.
Cole: I’ll reach in, I don’t know. I assume I have like a journal on me usually. Like my spell book or a grimoire. And I’ll flip to a blank page and I’ll write down what she says about that. And then I pass the journal to Jokul.
Dax: Sure.
James: Yeah, I’ll wrap it up and basically put it back how I found it. But while she’s reading the map and copying things, I want to take a look at the locket. Or pendant, or whatever you said it was. Just like he kept separate from everything and it’s just like, ‘what’s this other guy look like? Is it a clone of me? Is it my clone?’ Like, pendant. What you got? Got a picture? Got magic?
Dax: So you open the locket and you see two photographs. And the locket is relatively decent-sized, it’s about an inch and a half in length. So the photos are relatively larger.
James: Also, you’re saying photograph.
Dax: Yeah, not exactly photo.
James: Okay. I’m just double-checking.
Dax: Small miniature paintings.
James: Okay! I’m just like, huh.
Dax: The painting on the left is of an Adar-Kai. So an elf with white hair, very stern look on his face but no, it’s not a duplicate of you. And when you look to the picture on the right, it is of a young woman with reddish hair, but her facial features are not Raylene’s.
James: [hums in thought] Now I’m even more confused. I don’t like being confused.
Dax: Arthas, while they’re inside, what are you doing outside?
Neil: Well, I’m fairly spooked. So I guess I’m just trying to see if anything’s going to try and creep up on us.
Dax: Make a uh, make a Vigilance check.
Neil: You got it!
Dax: Make it, make it Easy.
Neil: I have a Success.
Dax: So you’re standing there. Now, do you have your weapon drawn?
Neil: Oh, absolutely.
Dax: Alright, so you’re standing there with your great sword, with the rock, the boulder at the end of it.
James: I mean, from an outsider’s point of view, it doesn’t look like the weapon’s drawn because it’s clearly stuck in a rock.
Dax: Fair.
Neil: I mean, you’re right.
Dax: So, you’re standing there and you’re pacing around the cabin trying to keep an eye out. You don’t hear anything, you don’t necessarily see anything. But you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up. As if someone or something was watching you. But there’s no physical form, no reason why you would feel that way.
Neil: I am inching towards the house.
Dax: You do so, and as you do, you start to feel that feeling dissipate the closer you get to the cabin. And just as you feel your back touching up against the side of the house, you hear your companions walking towards the front door.
Neil: I’m a little less tense that I know they are coming out. I guess, just turn to greet them.
Wren (as Eight): Oh, Simply Arthas, you’re right next to the building, ready to leave.
Neil (as Arthas): I certainly am. As quickly as possible.
Wren (as Eight): Is everything, is everything okay? You look a little pale.
Neil (as Arthas): This place feels less than safe.
Wren (as Eight): Really?
Cole (as Rialla): I think these woods are very unsafe. And who knows what they’ll show us next. I agree, we need to get out of here.
Wren: Out of curiosity, did you share what was in the journal with moi?
Cole: Yeah, as we were coming out of the room and heading towards the door, I would have showed. Because Jokul saw me drawing it, I assume after they were looking at the pendant, so I would have showed Eight while we were on our way out.
James: I would kind of chase after Rialla, with the locket, like,
James (as Jokul): Hey, um, you were in the house with Raylene and saw what I saw.
Cole (as Rialla): Yeah.
James (as Jokul): Would you look at this pendant and tell me is that the same person we saw last night or am I…?
Cole: I look at the pendant. Is it who I saw last night?
Dax: A woman with red hair but the face is not the face you saw last night.
Cole: I do a double take and take the pendant.
Cole (as Rialla): That is not who we saw last night.
James (as Jokul): Okay, so it’s not just magically me that’s seeing this. This is, the forest is, maybe the forest is projecting her, our memories onto things?
Cole (as Rialla): I think so.
James (as Jokul): But it can’t change what’s already been left behind.
Cole (as Rialla): Maybe.
Wren (as Eight): Arthas, you haven’t seen anything strange, have you? Very tall folk, rocks, whatever else your people are interested in?
Neil (as Arthas): No, just felt strange things.
Wren: If I may, I would like to walk up to the nearest tree and place my hand on the bark. You know, palm meeting the trunk. The soft dark wood core of my palm touching that rough exterior of the tree, and I would like to try and commune with nature using, I don’t know mechanically what you’d like me to do but since I’ve been blessed with the God of Nature’s Blessing? I would like to maybe try and talk to the tree.
Dax: What did you use the last time you did it? We can call it Survival, just for the sake of argument.
Wren: What difficulty would you like to assign for me to talk to a tree?
Dax: Make it Medium difficulty because I think that’s what I had you, I had assigned you when you reached out.
Wren: Can I spend a Story Point to add a green dice to this?
Dax: Sure!
Wren: As I kind of place my hand on the bark, I stop, look at the rest of the lush grass and the river’s edge around me, and take a deep breath in. [inhales deeply] Just listen to the sounds of nature around me and [dice roll]. I’m left with two Threat, but a Success, as I think at the tree.
Wren (as Eight): Please, great forest. My friends and I are lost and need your assistance. Can you tell us which way to go? We must escape.
Dax: You feel something in your brain, in your chest cavity. Something that feels very moist, very earthy. As if you were a part of the tree itself. And you get an image of heading upstream.
Wren: I shake my head once in agreement with the feeling I’m getting, and I stop and look at the rest of my companions at the building and simply say,
Wren (as Eight): Gather Maeve, gather Bessie. The tree is telling us we should head upstream.
Dax: And that is where we are ending this session.
Music fades out [53:32]
Dax: Thanks for listening! We hope you’ll join us next time but in the interim, follow us on Twitter @RoadsUncharted.
The “Roads Uncharted” podcast is GMed and produced by Dax, using the Genesys Roleplaying System published by Fantasy Flight Games. You can follow me on Twitter @GM_Dax.
Jokul Genhorn is played by James and Arthas, Champion of Offam is played by Neil.
Rialla Lenoir is played by Cole, follow them on Twitter @ColeMorreale and check out their art.
Eight is played by Wren, who also composed the music for our opening theme, follow them on Twitter @ThornyDryad.