Being a Thread of Ye Clues Such as Are Known ~
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The Situation as it Stands:
- Polly Durbin, a local lass, has apparently vanished off the face of the earth some time between 10pm on the first of May and 10am on the second.
- Enquiries sent out along the coach roads and haphazard casual searching by villagers have turned up no trace whatsoever of the young woman.
- Dazed or insane woodland creatures have been seen around the village from midmorning on the 4th, many of which seem to be trying to enter human habitation.
- One of these was a rabbit that deliberately climbed into a window to get chopped up - other reports indicate similar determinedly suicidal behaviour, including a pheasant attempting to climb into an oven.
- A black stag came and stood on the green until Andrew Sexton went out and poked it, whereupon it startled, gored him, stood a moment and ran off.
- Domestic animals watched these creatures but refused to interact with or even bark at the easy prey. They did not seem affected themselves.
- A seemingly alert and unaffected doe hare came into Doctor Lovelace's kitchen with some of the mazy wildlife, remaining even after they were captured. This hare accepted a carrot proffered by the vicar, but reportedly laughed and ran off when blessed in the name of the Lord.
- Inkeep John Collins organised a more concerted and focused search for any trace of Polly.
- A first pass of this fine-level searching turned up tracks of a man coming from the rough direction of the Criddle farm, keeping to the shadows of nearby woodland.
- This man apparently met up with a smaller person, presumed to be Polly, and Maggie Yendale interpreted disturbance to local vegetation that initally resembled a trysting-place as the location of a murder: it seems Polly was strangled and carried into the Wyzenwood.
- No corpse has been found in the Wyzenwood, only a frayed rope and the marks of some terrible thing that cause hardened men to flee with a primal urge not to be preyed upon.
- Long Tom, Master Fox and Sam Hartman ran into the Wyzenwood and reappeared separately, claiming to have seen a tree above a mire at the centre of the Wyzenwood and been chased out by the black stag.
- Sam seemed fairly unaffected by his ordeal, Master Fox reappeared covered in blood and went home with his fiancée and chaparones, and Tom claimed to have seen the Devil (or a devil, at least).
- Rumours of ancient witchcraft have caused the Vicar to request a watch set on the surviving local standing stones. This has not come to much over the night of the 4th-5th, but you never know!
- An entity apparently able to take the form of people who have been into the Wyzenwood (clothing included) has been seen mimicking Master Fox and Tom Bees in places they could not have been due to being elsewhere.
- Goodie Westcott and the Vicar have joined forces to agree to making tokens out of church lead to identify the real versions of this group - Master Fox's will be taken to the Hall, as he missed church due to poor sleep.
- A mysterious sack-mask-wearing, axe-wielding person was seen and pursued by the Doctor, Andrew and Polzeath among the trees by the river. They captured the axe but failed to catch the axe-haver, who ran off into the trees around the Fox estate.
- All that have been in the Wood now possess tokens (Sam though has taken to dividing his and possesses only a third, the other parts distributed to siblings), the importance of which has been underlined by the Wood's agent almost abducting Sam's niece.
- Trugred intervened in the above emergency, possessing Maggie Yendale.
- The Doctor, his servant, the Vicar and Maggie have gone to investigate the latter's sightings of mysterious men standing about in the woods.
- Tom went off on some unannounced mission of his own, and Andrew Sexton took the younger Bees and Yendale siblings to look for him after an attempt to find and question Jim Stone.
- The mysterious men standing about in the woods seem to be infected, possessed or held captive by the same substance seen on the mazy wildlife. They do not share any clear connection to each other save for looking broadly south-west English.
- Polzeath attempted to expel the possessing substance with some kind of folk charm and has become certain Herself in the Wood now recognises him as an individual in a hostile fashion and has some ability to sense through "Her ink".
- The Vicar left a later gathering at the inn to feed a lost carrier pigeon he had captured and hasn't been seen by most of the party since.
- Jim Stone proved to be the Bag Head Man when he went after Master Fox with a billhook.
- Both parties were injured in this encounter, but neither killed. Jim has been challenged to pistols at dawn for his reported accusation of murder and been locked in the village cell awaiting treatment.
- Choosing to harrass the Squire in the street to obtain a blood sample, Maggie has drawn accusations of witchcraft to herself and by extension, Mercy Westcott.
- ...she has also somehow alerted the dark substance to Polzeath's current position, causing the inn kitchen to flood with balefully seeking stuff, Herself's power seemingly bearing up the dreadful mire through stone from soil and mingled amongst groundwater though metal.
- The inn has been evacuated and a high proportion of the village has headed for the church on the advice of the Doctor as a result.
- At church, Maggie was somewhat grudgingly forgiven her assault, Nathan Fox dismissing claims that "wormicles" of Wood-stuff in his blood had caused the upset by having Sam create rolls of dirt and skin by friction.
- The Vicar announced that he had been witness to another murder, that of Widow Sawyer, perpetrated by the Wood-thing (which he identified as a Fox ancestor, namely Edmond of lady-murdering/witchcraft-dabbling fame).
- A vexed Mrs. Criddle appeared with Janet in tow and an official marriage was arranged at once in case the morning's duel went in any way wrong. Janet is now Lady Fox, huzzah!
- Jim Stone was patched up and interrogated, but the Doctor failed to persuade him that trying to kill the Young Squire was generally a bad idea.
- The inn stables have been briefly looked over, but no-one has yet found out where the midwife has got to.
- In the morning, the duel was undertaken: Stone was observed to miss fairly on his second shot after one misfire, and Fox deloped.
- Food was sent down from Fox Hall to those that spent the night in the church.
- This crowd was summoned to the vicarage when the Vicar, noting signs of nocturnal entry, tried to go in and was promptly mugged for his keys by a Mazy Man and delayed by others.
- It transpired that the Vicar had trapped Edmond Fox in a box in the house, and that the Wood had sent first the black stag and then the possessed men to guard and extract him: there followed a pitched battle between villagers and agents of the Wyzenwood in which it was found that the latter's healing was inhibited off the ground, killing them in such straits leads to the corpses being grotequely puppeteered by a previously unseen bush- or jellyfish-like semisolid form of the ichor, and that under specific (yet unidentified to most) circumstances the village guardians can leave their areas of guardianship and partially or fully manifest.
- Trugred (in the form of a magnificent heavy metal unicorn) fought and killed the stag, and Edmond Fox was chased down and discorporated in the ditch behind the vicarage garden.
- Casualties were cleared up, the remaining Mazy Men captured, Goodie Westcott was arrested and sent to Taunton for incitement to assault, and Trugred galloped out the parish's ancient bounds.
- The guardians seem to have been busy since.
~
Items of Possible Pertinence:
- It is speculated that Polly met a young man during the distraction of the May Revels, possibly for sex, before going home on the evening of May 1st.
- Although of fairly respectable status, Polly's mother is not the world's most stable individual and her father has never provided much mitigation; it is not known precisely what they said or did to her on the evening/morning prior to her disappearance.
- Mrs. Criddle seems to have a low opinion of the missing young woman and implies she might have been associating with Mercy Westcott.
- Mercy Westcott was absent and not witness to any of the above events. Some villagers find this suspicious, particularly Samuel Smith, who seems convinced of her witching abilites.
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It has been proposed that the wildlife trapped in the Doctor's house be kept for obseration. The Doctor decided that termination was preferable for these beasts and by afternoon (subsequent to those who had been in the Wyzenwood coming out) the animals were acting naturally and showed little to no sgn of infection or disease, save for one partridge that had shrivelled and decayed to a plant-covered skeleton. This bird may never have actually had any flesh when it looked alive, being nothing but glamoured leaves and mud on a frame of bone. - Jim Stone found a hurdle or trapdoor in a local patch of bog by falling into it. He claims he was caught by a 'man' and shows injuries consistent with being held by someone very strong.
- The spay bitch brought along for protection would not enter the Wyzenwood near the supposed murder site, even during daylight.
- Those that entered the Wood found some human remains, but not Polly's. They reported piles of bones.
- Jim Stone apparently went home in a fury after it was declared that Polly had been murdered. Others of her friends have swooned or started crying at the news.
- Goodie Westcott suggested that the witch associated with one legend may have fought or been sacrificed to the Wyzenwood entity, which she describes as a 'priestess' and associates with Druids. She claims the hares sometimes seen observing people around the periphery of the village are Iron Age women, specifically virgin sacrifices.
- Polzeath names the Morris characters as Burnt, Hanged and Drowned, and the local 'obby 'oss as Mercy, suggesting they might be village guardians.
- Goodie Westcott's story of the interfering Anglo-Saxon Bishop suggests he and another interloper were hanged and burnt respectively, and another man involved disappeared before the worst of the disturbance stopped.
- Nell's version of the story has the Bishop interacting with fairies who created a cursed spring where he made them pull up the Field Stone, but in both women's folktales and the Church report of the witch having poisoned a local well, taking up a standing stone seems to have caused some kind of initially waterbourne disease or poisoning.
- The Bees and the Vicar have determined that Bishop Aelfric's grave is indeed the one next to the Devil's Stone, and that it's labelled something like "he who exhumes me takes this spot" in Latin.
- It has been noted that a Fox ancestor, a killer of women thought to have turned to witchcraft at the end of his short life, was thought to have been hunted down and killed in the Wyzenwood.
- All the Criddle hands who passed May Night drunk on the floor of their lodgings (and possibly Master Fox who was with them, too) had a vivid dream about an ancient sacrifice by hanging.
- When chased away, the double proved it can take at least one non-human shape by turning into a large fox.
- Theodosia Hartman, a maid at Fox Hall, reports getting a fox skin out of an old box amongst other 'odd things' from an attic with orders to clean it.
- She also reports feeling endangered by what she latterly presumes to be the double inside Fox Hall, though she took it to be her master acting oddly at the time.
- The possessing ichor seems to be able to heal what ought to be fatal wounds, though instantaneous action appears to leave blackish scarring of non-mammalian, more plant- or fungus-like texture. Slower, non-fatal damage to hosts seems to scab thickly but naturally - it is unclear whether healing occurs faster once the blood is sealed off from light.
- Someone - quite possibly the person that put a hole through one of the mazy strangers - has been camping out near the Mazy Men and may know more of their movements and possible provenance (this someone may, however, be a 'gentleman of the roads' and more likely to rob inquirers at gunpoint than talk).
- It's possible higher salinity or greater holiness causes the goop-infected to flinch from holy water.
- Sam saw the black fox trotting about the outfields and nearby woods in the afternoon.
- A fireless heat was felt near the Fox hives, also in the afternoon.
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Things Known by Individual Investigators:
~ {Private Messages} ~
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This message was last edited by the GM at 19:08, Sun 14 Jan.
