Murphy had sat himself back when Jack brought over the scarf, tense but still a bit bashful to have a fine lady do something as odd as lean down on his shoulders. Then the cutting starts, and that gets a muffled scream from Murphy and a spasm Jack has to lean against despite himself. Ngarungadurung works fast, Fire working with him against Death though blood quickly makes it hard to see what he's about and he has to jerk his free thumb along the extent of the burning sickness, following it with the foreigners' strange stone. His hands feel painted over as he casts corrupted flesh to the firepit. The cicadas scream down at him and all of them in an unceasing pulse.

The stick seems to be keeping Murphy from swearing as much as saving the man's teeth: though he makes no more loud sounds his breath comes very fast. When the knife comes up for the last time Jack guesses that he's meant to salt the wound like a sore and set the wrap of red soil - much like the clay he was given whilst half-dead of overwork, perhaps the same - to pack in and push against the bone, moulding down on the well of blood. At some point in this operation he realises the tension of Murphy's flesh has changed and his breathing hitched and abruptly quieted; Brigitte finds herself slumped against, the Irishman gone deadweight. She sets Murphy's hat aside and proffers her shift-made bandages to Jack, easing Murphy's skull to the ground with both hands to free herself and let what blood was not all over the forearms of Ngarungadurung and Jack return to the freckled man's head.


[[Normal damage for a normal success, though Murphy muffed his CON roll and passed out at the last. Jack successfully educated-guessed what the more esoteric stuff was for, and Brigitte can roll me a d3 to mitigate that damage (yes, I know that's more than 1920s 7th edition heals with First Aid now - I rule it this way as there are rather more ways to get horribly maimed in a frontier colony and distinctly less doctors in the setting).]]
This message was last edited by the player at 00:02, Sun 15 Nov 2020.

Struggling to be any help Brigitte tried to hold the man down and then to bind the wound once he has thankfully past out.

Brigitte d'Anjou rolled 3 using 1d3.  First Aid.



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This message was last edited by the player at 20:16, Sun 15 Nov 2020.

When the grim cutting is done, Ngarungadurung returns the knife to the fire to burn away any lingering poison; he scrubs his forearms arms with sand to do the same. As he does so casts his glance about, to be sure no one has crept up on them in the meantime. Then he turns to inspect the patient and the bandaged wound.

Ngarungadurung can see the riding-animals backed well away from the disturbance on their tethers where Jack had hitched them. The beasts seem generally uneasy, clearly disliking the scent of blood and just as wary of any approach the intensity of makeshift surgery might have covered as himself. It's hard to see anything other than gently shifting foliage or hear anything beside cicadas.


Dubious of Jack's binding skills, Brigitte moves in and gets her hands as reddened as the rest. She sends Jack to watch Murphy's breath and fish the stick out of his mouth and ties the bindings down tight before easing the scarf unbound. Flies are beginning to find them, skittering over her wrist and elbow and pooling about the blood to suck with their little straw mouths at soil and sticky skin alike.

With the application of some of their precious water flicked against his brow Murphy recovers at least enough to groan. It's certainly promising in terms of being able to explain to the sergeant why they just carved a chunk out of him alive.

Laying aside the deeply-bitten stick, Jack reaches to take the scarf from Brigitte's fingers, belatedly realizing that it is Pegeen's token. He handles it carefully to avoid staining its fabric further with the red earth, hoping he will be able to wash it clean. He puts it in his jacket pocket.

He fans Murphy's sweat-slicked face with his hat.

"There, Murphy, there. You'll be right as rain in a bit," he murmurs to his unconscious friend.

Jack can picture the mock-scolding Peggy would give him for that, probably with a harangue for Murphy as well; the feather-lashing of words cunningly falling too soft to be curses; the way her exaggerated scowl would break to laughter she'd forget to be ladylike about and just laugh, raw and true and stark as briars. Her scent is harder to remember, though, like something dreamt of and lost on waking, long past. Here there is only the scent of blood and smoke and foreign trees. The flies edge over every still part of him. The cicadas screech as they would screech were Murphy dead or not harmed at all, deafeningly indifferent.

"Hrrngh..." Murphy mumbles a collection of nonsense sound like an Englishman trying to read written Gaelic, then screws up his face with a more voluntary expression. "...'s this the good pain, then? Hssssht..."

[Language unknown: "Are redersman."] Ngarungadurung stands and casts about. [Language unknown:  "Waatme i utof etsson ngurur la en?"] He paces a circle around the little camp and scents the air.

[Language unknown: P ith a...] Murphy murmurs, then rolls his head that way and seems confused. [Language unknown: pail...?]


Brigitte tries to copy Ngarungadurung's hand washing, but has no instinct for the sandiest soil - on finding she's mostly sticking grains of clayish stuff and mulch to herself she frowns and tries a little water on the remains of the shift used for bandages. It gets the worst off, but much is still caught in the tricky places of her hands and smeared thinly across the skin.

Murphy breathes, occasionally twitching his bandaged leg to shake flies off it. The cicadas chant constantly, as though there were no humans but these few ever alive in this place to make a sound besides their own.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:59, Sun 22 Nov 2020.

"Great" was all Brigitte managed to say as she looked at her hands and then she just left it. She finds a stick with some leaves to try and keep the flies off Murphy.
Other then that she got the feeling her skills were not suited to this environment....


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Jack shifts direction with his hat, fanning the flies from Murphy's wound with considerable gusto.

"Countess, where'd y'leave Wilkins then? Ye figger he'll be along presently? We may need help gettin' Murphy on a horse. 'Tis sure we can't carry him any distance."

In reply to Jack Duggan (msg # 70):

"To be honest with you Jack I am not sure. We all seemed to head off in different directions to fight the speared man and I stayed close to the sergeant. When did you last see him ?"


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"I've ridden with worse and not even a familiar horse," Murphy puts in, hoarse but still very much alive, though that didn't stop things talking around here. "-just get me upright. An' pass the water t'me here, if y'tink I'm half dead it's thirst that's killing me."

Once he's taken a measured if shaky pull of water, he adds: "I'm surprised we've not heard him myself, but could be he wanted t'move away from that mantrap wit' the shirt, finding a trail or keen t'leave the others at camp. 'Twould be a foolishness, though, an' he was resisting the likes o' that. Them under the ground are surely paying us attention - we're gettin lost lower than Calder's lot, too. They're in an agitation for some reason-" he takes a swig of water. "All right, help me up."

The tracker makes well sure the fire is out before returning the red man's knife to him.

[Language unknown: "Ie et urwetaev loadni? Reshatoul ul atianyrom ndivpa. Olsssi Bowenfellah whi men thuandour k enpehoil."]

He lifts a finger to indicate a ridgeline somewhere uphill from the party.

In reply to Brigitte d'Anjou (msg # 71):

"When I rode away from ye, before I got lost.

"Oh! And Murphy, Bowen jumped me an' stole Brass, th' bugger. Savin' yer presence, Milady." He's a bit embarrassed by his rough language.


"Here, Murph, lean on me an' we'll get ye back astride yer mount."

Murphy nods thanks for the knife and slides an arm across Jack's shoulders, using the younger man as a more trustworthy leg on that side as his own limb trembles with the pressure of his weight on recent trauma. The bandages hold, however, no creeping red showing through from underneath as Murphy hisses through his teeth.

"Ah, poor horse," he says to Jack when his breathing's evened out, "-but it's a wonder he didn't kill you when he had the chance there...did he say anytin?"

"Hang it, it must've been him rode past us whilst we were puttin down that speared devil, we didn't know..." he shudders once, hard. [Language unknown: "Thu wersa essthelin...ntitindintha? Ntmema p?"] he tries to Ngarungadurung, looking apologetic for his broken Darug.

[Language unknown: "Na prck inencelat, ame ureivecon astni, ar Si alnica larkorear ek rom wer horse le pl, rene wane is er Dugganfella. Ee eraca ted ensan ce undoutsta loest,"] he manages. "Jack, if y'could call out for the sergeant once I'm up that'd help us."

He looks to Brigitte as he passes on the tracker's information, since she'll be included in making any decisions. "Our fellow says he smells dead people away up yonder, reckons them t'be Bowen's...'collection'," he informs her. Flies crawl over him, crawl over them, mostly sit and sip at blood. "If we are that close we could get up there and wait for him at his camp, providin' we don't get lost or meet t'rock-layer that isn't a dream. Isn't in the Dream, I mean."

Murphy sighs hot air and pain. "There's little of this seems quite real. Bí éasca, Aoine..." he murmurs to his horse, mounting up wrong-sided with a rising shove against Jack's shoulder that makes him glad it's not the bruised side.

"Was the man taken to fright that he had to leave by any means ?" Brigitte helped as best as she could when the time came to move. She then mounted her horse and prepared to move off.


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This message was last edited by the player at 02:44, Thu 26 Nov 2020.

Jack grunts at Murphy's weight.

"God is me witness, seein' him was like lookin' at me own corpse. He reeked o' death indeed. Knocked me off Brass, he did, an stabbed th' poor beast's withers an' they was gone.

"'I need t'find her at th' minute,' he shouts, 'I'll come back fer ya!' An' away he went through th' bush. Don't know who he meant. I was that worried it was you, Milady."

"No Jack, not me. Perhaps he saw someone else.... it was all so confusing. So what next, do we return home and hope those missing make their way back or camp for a day and hope they find us ?"



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Murphy gracefully ignores Madame la Contesse's momentary inclination to bolt at the last, looking pensive. "...Miss Towler's still alive," he surmises.

"He's kept her alive and now she's seen her chance and made a break into th' bush...she'll die if no-one finds her. She'll die if Bowen finds her, sure, but I never got th'impression he'd keep her for...for a wife," he says, trying to soften the horror of what some bushrangers stole black girls or farm maids for to save Brigitte's courage. "After this long I'd say there's sometin specific he wants her for."

"Th' choice is," he says, pointing onward so that Ngarungadurung can tell what kind of discussion is underway, "-d'we gamble on Miss Towler's life that she'll be caught up by Bowen horsed and dragged back t'his camp where we can set a sure an' certain ambushcade f' himself, or," he points across, off left, what might be west-southwest, "-d'we try and track him direct an' hope t'God we don't get mazed so much as t'be lost forever an' picked off like Calder's men?"

The pulse of the cicadas' seething song comes in clear when he's finished speaking. The slight and constant variation of the background roar sounds almost as though a great crowd were counting something with uncontainable excitement: aristocrats brought up to the guillotine, lashes across a convict's back, moths being picked and stripped and smashed for the festival, or just counting down to some vast thing that would take so many observers simply to see, a happening so huge one human mind could not compass it.

"We'll try t'raise sign of others, either way," Murphy says. "They surely can't be so far yet."

The aboriginal glances briefly upwards to the mounted man, [Language unknown: "Ecer larouscon p ilnger tiie resien. We anul uslabe wer ssplnatase anble p Bowenfellah le besan int."]

Ngarungadurng turns and seemingly asks a question of the bush itself. [Language unknown: "K tedwa ous inmiil acugh rofont'usad witeos si?"]

Jack gives his head a thorough scratching before replacing his hat. In truth, going home has a certain appeal now. But Murphy doesn't seem to see it that way and if he were to light out--lost and unhorsed into the bargain--he's certain Wilkins would take it as flight and proof of guilt and hang him. He sighs.

Taking her horse's bridle, he kneels. "C'n I be givin' ye a leg up, Milady?"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:35, Mon 30 Nov 2020.

Murphy frowns, swiping remnant sweat from his brow and looking about. [Language unknown: "Ev ieeidi? K artromine our."]

Giselle makes an uncertain rumbling at Jack's blood-smeared hands near her face and drops her head to shake away flies as soon as he lets go. The cicadas sing of passing yet eternal time and the last of the smoke-smell blows away.

Ngarungadurung scents the air again, and again seems to address the forest.

[Language unknown: "Man sta oer t wiich ncha ur, m al prwhe. Ich rat me oreic. We iooler hat ithardion din aveatiastmen naai pr, arst ionnteect."]

Murphy's frown doesn't ease any at that. "Jack, d'you know who he's talking to there?" he asks, as though the answer might be obvious to only him.

"He says Bowen's left more traps but they're marked somehow," Murphy adds to Brigitte. "Talkin to a ghost best I can figure...I did think I saw sometin whilst I was half-fainted but I haven't the Sight myself."

A shadow of uncertainty passes across his face but he seems to reason that if he was actually out long enough to dream someone would've told him about it.

In reply to Jack Duggan (msg # 81):

"No, no I am fine." Once up she asked "Do you think this speared man had a lair of sorts ? Any captives may still be there regardless as to who is holding them ?"



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