The man in question shows a certain amount of that horsey Cornish look, with bad scarring near the jaw and scattered across his exposed body from some childhood bout of smallpox. The Vicar stands back to let Maggie make her indication, though still frowns at the notion that these are simply witches paying the price for wickedness. The knotted black tissue swirls over the fatal wound like a swiftly-closed fist or the knot of a tree where some parasitic worm-nest had been: simply stained skin, but filling in an entry wound for shot it would be hard to mistake, almost right over the heart. Certainly this fellow should not be breathing after such an injury, calmly and deeply as he evidently was.

Cecil strokes his chin, a puzzled look on his face. "Curious," he remarks upon revelation of the Tall Man's wound. He turns his attention to the mazy man's apparel, as if something has occurred to him. Fingering the hem of the man's coat, he asks, "Does this look outdated to you, Doctor, even for a working-class man? The cut, the fabric?"

---

10:27, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 15 using 1d100.  Spot Hidden 50.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:08, Mon 09 Jan 2023.

The man just stands there under all this attention, breathing evenly, his stockings torn to flinders much as his calves and hands seem to have gone heedlessly through bush and briar all the way from wherever he's come from to here.

"Here now, what's all this?" Cecil exclaims, crouching behind the Tall Man to turn the leaf litter with a stick. "Does it seem to you as well that the detritus about this fellow's feet," he says, the tip of his finger tracing a semi-circular arc just above the ground, "is decaying at what to mine eye is a vastly accelerated rate? Deuced peculiar, Doctor."

[[GM edit: Martin is not a sidekick.]]
This message was last edited by the player at 20:42, Mon 09 Jan 2023.

The Doctor leans down to investigate the aforementioned ground about the mazy man, then straightens and taking his blade he bears the man's arm and makes a shallow cut in the flesh, the type used to bleed the ailing.

Whilst rolling the sleeve back, he also takes note of the temperature of the man's flesh. "Most peculiar. I should expect that with a wound like that there would be no blood left to flow, but let us see."

Cecil directs the doctor's gaze to the recently-discovered exit wound. "Indeed. A wound like that, I would not expect him to even be standing. Reminds me of the myths surrounding the Cauldron Of Rebirth from the old pre-Christian romances."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:43, Mon 09 Jan 2023.

The man's brow twitches slightly at the nick of steel through flesh, but he stands and takes it without complaint. His blood comes slow, as from a sleeping man, darker than it ought to be but not consistent in colour, as though ink were swirling in his veins somewhere.

The kidskin gloves allow the Doctor to feel the temperature of the man's flesh, though it's little different to his own. Polzeath hesitates over near the Old Man, but at length sidles near enough the Vicar to clear his throat and ask:

"Ah, zir, might I see your flask of holy water a moment?"

Cecil mulls the odd request for a moment before replying. "When did you last attend church, Polzeath? It may be best were I to bless you before you handle it, so as not to profane the water within if you've sinned between then and now. Has an application occurred to you apart from the traditional and liturgical ones?"

"I was there this morning, sir, and I...I don't think as I've done any wickedness since." The ill-favoured servant swallows and drops his gaze. "Though if y'want to put blessens on me to be sure, Reverend, that'd be your right and prerogative."

Polzeath shuffles, aware of having drawn rather too much unasked-for attention from the gentlemen. "I...well I thought...that is I heard somewhere as holy water was made with some mix of holy salt, to keep the pond scum from growen in the font and such, and that's another variable, isn't it?" He looks to his master to be sure that's the word.

"It was just my thought that maybe some things that don't mind fresh or brackish water, such as you might call blood, they don't like saltwater any."

Cecil smiles kindly at Polzeath. "Very clever, Polzeath. Very clever indeed. Whilst your hypothesis is sound, I fear the amount of salt used in the church font may be insufficient to test it." He thoughtfully strokes his chin. "A fuller test would include seawater and springwater from Bath, but acquiring either would take time and a horseman suitably knowledgable of Somerset's roads to make the trip there and back."

Maggie has taken herself into the bushes to seek out some vines with which she can hobble these strangers.

Coming back to the others with several strands of ivy, she says, "P'rhaps, Vicar, ye'd bless us all. An added token o' God's Favour be not amiss dealing with these uncanny being' eh?"

She stands, waiting, before setting to the task of binding the mazy men's ankles. Ivy vines won't restrain them long, to be sure, but a moment's notice might be useful if they choose to bolt or attack. And it might stop them wandering.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:38, Wed 11 Jan 2023.

Cecil agreeably assents. "Quite so, Miss Yendale, quite so. Although crism is more properly used for such, blessed water shall suffice." He retrieves his flask and anoints the foreheads of Martin, Maggie, and Gregory in the shape of a cross with his thumb. "Heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God, who safely brought us to this day: Defend us in the same with Your mighty power; and grant that we fall into no sin, neither any danger; but that all our acts may be ordered by Thy governance... to do always what is righteous in Your sight. We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen." He considers the mazy men for a moment before moving to bless each of them in turn. "May the grace of God keep you and deliver you from evil. Amen."

[[10:13, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 36 using 1d100.  POW 60.]]
This message was last edited by the player at 15:01, Sun 15 Jan 2023.

Polzeath respectfully holds still to be blessed, though he doesn't seem very sure about it. His skin has an odd texture, remarkably smooth yet dry around the middle of the forehead and cat-tongue rough in other places, seemingly depending on the direction of passing pressure against it.
"Amen."

Once the others are seen to, the Vicar turns his attention to the Tall Man, who flinches a little at the first contact of holy water (or salt) to skin, but otherwise ignores him. The Vicar passes back to the Old Man, who is probably not beyond his sixties and very sound, simply the oldest by about three decades: blessing him gets a few uncertain twitches from the fellow and a slight sensation of false warmth or fine tingling from the direct skin contact.

Finally, the Reverend descends the few steps across the uneven landscape and blesses the Young Man, whose body jerks once, twice, under the attention, like something impaled. Then that easy deep breath of a sudden hitches and comes out as sound, as though a thick door had been opened onto a ship's deck where the crew were at line setting the sails:

"-LEY; BULLY DOWN IN SHINBONE A.!" The youth takes a sharp, sobbing breath, tears of a sudden beginning to streak his face, and grabs for the Vicar. "O God, sir, 'elp me-! Please, it's dark, I-I-I-I'm not-" there's a bad sound in his lungs and he hacks and wheezes, starting to painfully hyperventilate as his knees buckle under him, dark foam flecking his lips.

Startled, Cecil grabs the Young Man's arms just above the elbows and guides him gently to the turf. "Urgent need of assistance, please!"

Doctor Lovelace instinctively moves to help, but vocalises his thoughts as he does "Saline, or blessed. It's dark he said, dark in the depths, or in a grave I suppose. The sound of those lungs though, the foam. A drowning victim perhaps, at sea making salt water fearsome?"

"Just in case, let us roll him onto his side and see if more flows."

Cecil moves to comply with Martin's suggestion, carefully rolling the Young Man onto his left side.

[[would both of you roll me either STR or Brawl to pin/grapple this fellow.]]

"I, er, should I get 'is legs, or what should I?" Polzeath asks his master, flinching at the sound of the suddenly-active stranger's attempts to breathe.

The Young Man tries to grip at anyone in reach, tries to breathe, and shortly tries to scream, producing a horrible bubbling screech and yell. It hardly sounds human, more like a beast torn into by some predator, raw fear and despair forced through an injury not yet felt.

"hgghkkkEEEEYYYYAAAAAAAGGHHHH!! EghkHRAAAAIIIEEEEghEEEEEYYYYAAAR! HnYEEEEEEE-YEEEEEEIIIII!"

Cecil barely manages to keep a grip on the Young Man and wrestle him partway into position. "Young man, please! We are trying to help!"

[[17:07, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 41 using 1d100.  STR 45.]]
This message was last edited by the player at 14:23, Fri 13 Jan 2023.

The Doctor manages to get a grip on the young man.

[[18:52, Today: Martin Lovelace rolled 35 using 1d100.  Brawl]]

Judging that Polzeath can provide any extra assistance the two gentlemen might require, Maggie turns instead to watch the other two mazy men, lest they use this distraction to get up to mischief.

The other two just stand there, quiet, ignoring the tortured sounds nearby and Maggie's determination to wind ivy around their ankles. Their complete impassiveness suggested they might have been standing so forever, save that Maggie had seen them standing twenty paces away earlier, and that the scratches on their lower limbs suggested pushing through scrub at some pace.

The Doctor and the Vicar get the screaming man pinned and wrestled onto his side, though the youth is intermittently convulsing now, like a badly-axed ox under their combined efforts to still him. The foam has mostly given way to something with the viscosity of blood, still green-black and apparently loath to actually drip to the leaves, though it pushes from the youth's nose and tear ducts as though ousted by his own fluids. Spittle flies as the young man fights against them, or his own body, or some force as yet unseen, his screams giving way to rasping sobs.

"AAAAIIIUUGGGhh-! ...hrugh...hHhraa..hnnn...augh, no, NO! ...hraaaagh...it rots, it rots...O God, O God, please...please help...AAIIIGGGHHHRRRHOOooUH! Hhrraaa..."

"Gadzooks, Doctor! 'Tis the color of gangrene!" Cecil cries out, clearly disturbed. "How could a man's innards be so corrupted without his succumbing to death?"

"It... I... I've never seen the like of it!" the Doctor exclaims. "I don't know that this is working. I don't think it is water in his lungs though, not for it to leak from his eyes like that."

Maggie works quickly to loop vines around the ankles of the Tall Man. She will then move on to the Old Man. She ignores, as best she can, the tumult behind her, though she hears the words of the gentlemen and understands the implications of 'gangrene'.

[Is there a small of corruption and decay as well?

The strangers continue to ignore Maggie, who knows enough about gangrene and the decay of flesh to tell at once that the smell of the stuff is more like the mazy pheasant at the inn and what Master Sexton reported from the stag: a wet scent like bracken rotted in a ditch or leaf mould spilled into stagnant water, thick and dully repulsive.

Polzeath sets the rapidly-loaded pistol down on the Doctor's bag and hastens back over, wincing at the ongoing screams and clearly disturbed. He hesitates, knowing his master's hardly likely to approve, but compassion pushes him to kneel at Martin's side and reach out to the patient.

"Here, let me help, zirs," he says, snaking a hand in to set it on the man's back. He does no more than that, at least until starts up with the little humming charm he uses to keep the village children from crying or troubling the Doctor with cuts and bruises. Polzeath frowns a moment and his hum falters, but before he can be told to get away with his nonsense he sets his hand over the youth's writhing spine and tries again.

The cloth under his hand abruptly darkens, the Young Man giving a sudden gasp. Polzeath yelps.

"Aah! No no no no no no!" Martin hears the flick of some thick liquid onto nearby leaves as his servant bounds up with extraordinary rapidity and flees back the way they'd recently come to scale the rocks. Their patient, or captive - or specimen - seems to have hit a calmer state between spasms, though his breathing is rapid and terrible to hear, if slightly better than it was.