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Ngarungadurung had run, then walked, then clambered far from his usual trails, following the broad track cut by the Calder expedition. Eventually it had proved as he had feared: the trail had led up towards the place that was said to be haunted by witches and woollymen. He'd seen more whitefellas on his way across, and one of their women oddly not covered head to toe in the usual manner, and he'd found the bad place set between songlines, amplifying something his thoughts shied away from. One of the whitefellas had come down from the mountains. Why Budyirikaranga had not, Ngarungadurung could not say, and so he'd gone to ascend in the white men's footsteps.

It was extremely dark, here where people had not burnt off the undergrowth for as long as anyone in the country remembered and lightning rarely seemed to strike. The sick forest straggled too close together, choking itself with desperate reaching for light like the stretched throat and open mouth of something drowning, roots knotting over each other with a jealous tangling that made motion difficult. A man had to walk differently here: he had the impression the country had forgotten his kind and told of itself in ways he could not quite interpret, like dream-clarity forgotten on waking.

Ngarungadurung had gone to sleep without hunting, simply drinking water and eating half of the bush bread the wife of his father's sister's son had given him when he'd visited their camp. They'd been heading to the Moth Gathering, since the past years' plague had left far more moths to roast than mouths to eat them, despite the drought. Yet Ngarungadurung had this to do first, so he'd come up to this place he was a stranger and made what bed he could.

Now, despite the darkness his awareness came to focus. No spear came, but he thought someone was crouched nearby, behind him in the dark.

"Urr'kk'khhhgk...hh...hggk..g'n..." if there were words, they were lost to a sound like breathing through a mass of wet bone, like a death rattle that did not end. "Hhh..hg'gkk...hh'nhgkk...hh.."

Ngarungadurung caught his breath as his blood ran cold. His fingers curled around the spear at his side. In his head, the sound of his beating heart grew loud as the rasp behind him. Yet he forced himself to keep his inhalations rhythmical and slow: the hunter’s breath, gentle, steadying.

As smoothly and silently as possible, he twisted himself around into a crouch, his spear low and at the ready. With his free hand he grasped for the woomera—a tool of many uses, and a small shield in a pinch. Now he listened intently, trying to make out the shape and location of the rasp-thing.

A shaft of silver light fell before him, illuminating the forest floor and producing an intense feeling of disorientation. The moon should be a snipped circle now, at his back, yet it was bright gibbous moonlight that touched the leaves there and sheened his skin. There was a smell like old blood and stagnant water.

The other crouched where he was and made no move towards Ngarungadurung, a darker shape against the dark yet too bright forest. As the hunter's eyes adjusted he saw the man was painted with white clay as though to dance the part of a ghost, all except the face. The face...

The man moved back to deeper shadow when Ngarungadurung looked, but Ngarungadurung had a hideously strong impression that the visitor's face was not as it should be, the lights and hollows a mess below the forehead like something smashed.

"Hhhkhhh'kkhrnn...hhh..." the man tried to say in explanation. He extended his right hand into the moonlight, the bright glow picking out the carefully-smeared finger-bones as his pointing finger jabbed rhythmically at the ground. "Hkk..hk'kkk...hrr'gk'krr..."

Ngarungadurung could not hear this one breathe when he did not speak. The wet smell made no sense, here in the midst of a drought. The light was wrong.

He was in the Dreamtime now, he knew it. The time before this time, the time that had never ended. He had slipped into it, as happened, now and then, to certain people and in certain places.

It had never happened to him, Ngarungadurung. And yet here he was.

The knowledge of his circumstances calmed him, a little, despite the unsetting not-quite-human man squatting in front of him.

Was his visitor one of the ancestors? A ghost? A being to be feared, to be honoured, or both?

Ngarungadurung realised the error of his thought. It was he himself who was the visitor, out of place and out of time. He lowered his eyes in a gesture of deference. His host was more of this place than he.

Still in a crouch, low, or lower than his host, Ngarungadurung laid his spear on the earth. Ngarungadurung placed his right hand on his chest in greeting, then raised it to mirror his host’s gesture. He jabbed his finger downward.  “Here.”

There came a soft wet crackling Ngarungadurung came to realise was a laugh, though not an ominous one. He had the impression it was his greeting that had caused it: the other was loath to say anyone was well-come to the Dream of the place Ngarungadurung had laid his head to sleep.

"Hhh'k...hhhh..." upon the imitation the hand he could see unfurled, thumped flat upon the earth in insistence or expectation, perhaps drumming along the Song of the place that was outside Ngarungadurung's knowledge. "Hhh'k..hhhkh..."

From under hooded eyes Ngarungadurung studied the man’s paint, and searched for scarification or other markings that would testify to the ghostfella’s provenance.

The hollowed out face spoke to a warrior’s death. Here might be the place he fought and... Ngarungadurung uncoiled his own hand and slapped the earth. “Fell.”
This message was last edited by the player at 04:19, Wed 17 June 2020.

The paint is the clearest thing about the man, though its brightness too retreats into shadow. The painted ribs and sternum, lines and joint-marks tell him little, however, save that what he sees is a representation of a man who's left his skin. If the light were slightly brighter he might have a better guess at the composition of the paint and the country it came from, but who knew what that meant here?

By the few lines of scarification visible trailing back from the shoulder it's clear he's definitely adult, though the suggestion of a beard in his general silhouette might have told Ngaungadurung the same. The distraction of so opaquely strange a stranger causes Ngaungadurung to be entirely unprepared when his hand strikes the earth and it strikes hollow.

He has to strike again to be sure, his thumps and the ghostfella's just out of time, overlapping enough that he can feel the shared vibration start, criss-cross like weaving and drop away into void he cannot guess at. It is deep.

"Hhh," the other says, encouraging the repetition of the gesture. "Hrrk'hh."

Ngarungadurung nods and brings his palm down again, and again.

"Hhhk'kk! Khk!" the stranger encourages, and Ngarungadurung feels their crossed communal rhythm travel down, falling far into the ground, earth where neither sight nor listening in the air might reach. To keep up the thumping vibration is almost to inhabit it, concentration swimming down through soil and rock to find...

Something stirs. The size of a child, perhaps, it turns over, its movement and entire body a guileless question mewled in sleep.

{{ ? }}

...and far off, far down like something on a horizon where gravity had been yanked out of true, some great slide and shift, an uncoiling of attention...

Ngarungadurung finds the ghostfella has caught his wrist, the contact a sudden shock of cold though it lasts only a moment. Halt.

Ngarungadurung was deeply discomforted at the sensations. The shifting and turning of the earth beneath him—had he awoken one of the ancestors? The icy grasp of the ghostfella—the touch of the dead. Ngarungadurung was not a clever-man. He didn’t know the proper ritual action in such a place as this. There was great danger that he could disturb the natural patterns of things—that he already had.  Now in closer proximity, Ngarungadurung’s questioning eyes drift to the face of the other, expecting to find some answer there.

Ngarungadurung carefully meets the gaze of white gum flowers pushed into the less damaged socket of the man's left eye. The darkness had been a mercy, since there is not much left of the rest of his face: the killing blow from a heavy waddy came through the jaw and temple on the right at a low angle first, perhaps a wounded foe rising once more. The skull is crushed there like an emu egg smashed by a rock, bits of jawbone forced into the throat.

The man gives something like a sigh, noticing the attention on his face. He gestures at it, points with all fingers to his chest, his ghost-paint, and down at the sounded ground. He smells of still water, old blood. "Hhhh." He cups his hands a short distance from each other, as though to contain a small animal or infant. Dead. Down. Small.

[[Optional EDU roll to try and identify Ngarungadurung's new friend's scarification more precisely at this point, if desired.]]

He waits to see if Ngarungadurung can interpret this, then touches the ground again, pulls his hands out wide to suggest great, great size, and makes a motion away from himself, excluding it. Down. Big. Not.

Then, quite clearly, the dead man makes the hunter's sign for Move quietly.

Ngarungadurung bites his lip at the sight of the man's face, but nods and returns the gesture for quiet.

He had sensed, he thought, two stirrings—two separate entities beneath the earth. Was that what the ghostfella was telling him now?

He makes the cradling sign, points to the earth and holds an open palm towards the dead man. Small one, down there, belongs you?

He holds his hands wide, points downward again, and makes a negating gesture—wagging his finger the way whitefellas did when scolding blackfellas.  Big one, down there, not good, not with you.

07:16, Today: Ngarungadurung rolled 11 using 1d100. EDU (65).

The intact corner of the ghostfella's mouth pulls the burst bloom of crushed flesh back from his remnant teeth in what's probably a smirk. "Hh-hh-h'hh'kk."

He shakes his head at being kin to the small one, bonemarked hands spreading wide, small, then curling in widely as though both sizes of subterranean shifting were gathered in together, or a parent took a child to itself. Then he pinches his paint, does the 'small' gesture again. Small. Dead.

He doesn't seem to recognise the wagging gesture, apparently taking it for ambivalence. He touches the ground, gestures big and makes a grand whirling that winds down to a point, then motions as though to press that whirlwind into the ground. "Hhhhhh."

Again the Go quietly. Then a beckoning.



[[Great sucess! Ngarungadurung realises the man is Darug and could understand him verbally, even if the ghostfella can't do more than make throatfull-of-mashed-larynx noises back. The man's probably Clan Burruberongal, but his adult scars turn under at their ends near the shoulders in a manner Ngarungadurung only remembers seeing on one very old man; likely a variant that died out with the patrilineal moiety of that specific branch.

Since by general condition he looks like he died in the prime of his life, this in turn suggests the ghostfella has been out here at least since the grandfather with scars like those was young, probably longer.

Lastly, to Ngarungadurung 'whirlwind' would be a shorthand for a strong/wicked spirit or sorcerer, something hostile and powerful.]]

In the space of a breath several threads of the mystery loosen and become more tangible to Ngarungadurung, like an intricate string puzzle untwining in his fingers.

The ghostfella is an ancestor, from a time before Captain Cook. And that means the things felt in the earth, the sleepers beneath, are not whitefella magic, but Dreamtime denizens.

For an ancestor’s ghost to be here, like this, means his dying is probably linked to the sleepers. Some of his mob, Darug forbearers, has pressed the whirlwind into the earth. Catching malevolent dreamtime things in the dreaming, where they belonged. The ghostfella is a guardian of that dreaming.

With his drumming, the ghostfella was not trying to wake the sleepers beneath. He was warning Ngarungadurung of their existence. Go quietly and do not disturb them.

Only… the big one is awake. Imprisoned, maybe, but not sleeping.

Ngarungadurung wondered if it was Captain Cook’s coming, the whitefellas transgressions, that had disturbed the equilibrium of this place too. The world was falling apart, and had been for all of Ngarungadurung’s short life.

Ngarungadurung nods in his limited comprehension and opens himself to the beckoning gesture.

The ghostfella rises, but before going anywhere presses his fingers to the sturdiest bit of his forehead and nods at the ground where Ngarungadurung had slept. Remember.

Then he is moving off, his paint the most visible thing in the dark. He goes quietly. Once sure Ngarungadurung is following he speeds up to a soft-footed run; should Ngarungadurung copy this he'll find that even for a practiced runner such as himself the effort is mild and more mental than physical, like flying in a dream. With the right suspension of concentration they blur like moonlit reflections on water, moving fast and ever upward, if a little north.

They pass a broad low outcropping in the dapples of the night and come to a gentler rise of land, where up among the trees ahead glows a light like nothing Ngamurudyin has seen: a brightness like fire with no flickering, like a buried patch of sickly sun. The other goes slower now, an easy quiet stride, not wary but perhaps reluctant.

Ngarungadurung shoulders his string bag and wraps his skin cloak around himself. In his mind he reviews the day’s journey and the landmarks that brought him to this place where he slept. By retracing his route he should be able to find the spot again. He gathers his remaining few possessions and is off after the hunter, easing into a run. He is pleasantly surprised at the effortless movement and the sensation of speed. After a night of worry and fear a small smile creases his lips.

The ghostfella is only trudging now, circling about to come up on the lip of the rounded hollow and its strange glow. He looks back at Ngarungadurung rather than down at the bright place as he waits for the living man to catch up, the light drawing a clear outline of the more intact side of his face. Ngarungadurung has an impression of this moment as an echo, a ripple through Time: this man has stood here and looked back before, in an instant between flickers of flame. There is no flicker now.

The ghostfella nods at the spear in Ngarungadurung's hand, and indicates a target flat-handed. The brightness gives his hand and arm a warm colour and makes the paint less obvious, the semblance of life enough distraction that Ngarungadurung gains a moment's distracted respite before viewing the horror below.

There are nine witches, five women and four men. He cannot recognise their tradition of paint, but from the men's scars and the cropped finger of one woman it looks like they are outlaws from all over: Dharawal and Gundungurra, Sea-Darug and people whose ancestry he can barely guess. All wear strange ornaments: dingo jawbones with shrivelled skin, human and kangaroo longbones tied to limbs, masks with claws arrayed like teeth. Three drum, two hold a pair of captured children, two hold a man to his knees whilst the most ornately painted spears him at the base of the the throat beside a pit (an inefficient kill; there is intent to make him suffer there but no hatred in the killer's look). One does something with the welling insides of the prone and mutilated woman whose side she has cut into (by the blood around her hands Ngarungadurung has a guess that the corpse's heart has not yet stopped its beat). All are motionless. Their fires, too, do not burn.

"Hrn," his companion  says, for he knows it is awful. He continues to indicate the one to be speared, and Ngarungadurung realises he is not indicating the man holding the forward child but the little girl herself. "Hrrh'hh...hrrn," he says, and though the words cannot be understood there is a plea in them.

Ngarungadurung gives the ghostfella a quizzical look. Was it mercy the deadman wished for? Ngarungadurung remembered the child-sized thing turning under the earth.

In the Dreaming, he knew, this could be a vision of something that had already happened, something yet to be or something that was happening right now. Because things were all happening together, anyway. Ngarungadurung regards the little girl with sadness. This should not have to happen to her.

Ngarungadurung lets slip his bag and cloak, freeing his torso. He nocks the spear into the woomera, and draws back his arm.

The dead man can only show his empty hands to ask for trust. The figures in the hollow of cold fire do not move at all, bent in their terrible tableau of life. The girl, perhaps eight summers to look on, is frozen in a struggle against her captor's grip that strains her body forward, helpless tears stopped in their track. She looks like she knows the torments that will follow her father's death: though Ngarungadurung cannot hold such invention of horror in his own mind he knows instinctively that the terror is justified.

[[A Throw roll, please. Good luck.]]
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:44, Fri 26 June 2020.

15:17, Today: Ngarungadurung rolled 74 using 1d100 ((74)).
I should have said, I'm jinxed with dice. I always roll failures at dramatically critical moments.

[[Oh. Oh dear. Magic 8 Ball, does he hit the witch?
13:30, Today: The Keeper got the result "It is certain" on the magic 8-ball. Uh. *rolls*]]


A spear thrown true to its target is an extension of the weilder's will: Ngarungadurung realised the instant the woomera regained its light and empty state that there had been hesitation in his heart, too late. The spear moved as fast as the thought, blurring from dark to light. It entered the witch's body above the girl's head and the man staggered like a living thing. Then he looked up, the spear stuck through him equally before and behind, and grinned.

Ngarungadurung feels a cold yank on his arm as the Ghostfella tries to pull him away, but gets a good glimpse of the speared man stooping for something - a heavy boomerang - and running directly up towards them, apparently heedless of the fact he should be dead.

[[Your move, Ngarungadurung!]]
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:31, Fri 26 June 2020.

Ngarungadurung is transfixed for only a moment before he snatches at his possessions and follows the ghostfella’s pull. His heart and arm had betrayed him. He had woken one of the terrible dwellers of the Dreaming. He knew his fate from the song lines—those who meddled with powers beyond their ken. He imagined a fate similar to those in the hollow below, and he deserved it. He regretted that he would not see his wife and child again. Still, he took foot, hoping his mortal body could carry him beyond this place.