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Woodland nearing Kennick's Camp, ~5:15pm Sunday May 5th, 1771

The quality of the light had slipped towards gilding as the four made their way out into the budding countryside, birds squabbling through the hedgerows and the wildflowers waving to them from the ditchside grasses. They navigated fields and copses and sparse stretches unclaimed and so technically reverting to the Crown, every step striking earth with its own tally of ownership winding back into the unremembered past. They entered trees near the great working of earth that had been Kennick Rolger's camp: land worked by hands that weren't human; a mind that saw men as food (the educated gentlemen, of course, knew the hillfort to have been raised on the backs of savages, doubtless brutally coralling slaves into the work and dedicating it to dark and bloodied godesses before the merciful light of imperial Roman civilisation dawned over the British Isles).

The group had kept up with Maggie easily enough, though she had been occasionally at fault and needing to cast about to get her bearings, darting onward whenever she saw a familiar bush or branch or hint of passing. Now she leads them amongst trackless tumbled rocks and trees heading into the giant's ditch, the woodland smelling thick with the scent of mulch and good green leafing. It's a hard scramble, and Polzeath keeps behind yet close to the others fretting they might fall: only Maggie's bare feet are absoloutely surefooted on the moist moss and root-crumbled rock.

The men have grown used to her hair as they would grow used to the company of a harvester in only hat and girded skirts, or that of some sorrel mare, all social judgement fading as they draw far from the village bounds. Maggie is still full of energy and without any shame to be found in her skin. She reaches the spot where she's fairly sure she saw the men, less than ten paces from one last squeeze through a gap between boulders and subsequent drop onto loam. The ground remains a great many shades of brown, spotted with old beech leaves like coins, but aside from dark patches and a disturbance near a rough X-shape bound of branches, the mazy men are not immediately in view.


[[Try a Spot Hidden, perhaps.]]

"Are you sure this is the spot?" Doctor Lovelace asks as he looks about for a sign of the men she described. "Perhaps they have come to their senses and gone about whatever their business is?"

10:03, Today: Martin Lovelace rolled 72 using 1d100.  Spot hidden (60).

Margaret Yendale rolled 2 for Spot Hidden 25!!

Maggie stops, stock still, as she emerges from the foliage. Her face burns, colour flushing up from her chest to her hairline. She begins to feel mortified before Dr Lovelace. And the Vicar and Polzeath.

It's not possible that she's mistaken the spot; there is the snare she fashioned to trip the one whose clothes she had disarranged to stop any sudden movement. And the dark spots on the ground where the three waited so frozen.

She starts forward to the place where the three stood, where she knows they stood. She doesn't quite drop to all fours, bur she bends very close to the ground, eyes searching for some sign to tell where they went and how. She practically snuffles after their scent as she casts about, starting at her snare and moving in a widening spiral, setting her feet carefully to avoid obliterating any track.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:41, Sat 17 Dec 2022.

[[Bravo!]]

Maggie hears the other men move a little way forward behind her, concentrating intently on the ground. Though the uncertain texture of plain leaves is hard to read, the spots where careless ambling has crushed spindles of herb and fungus are evident. She keeps to her circling, however, aiming to see if the strangers had split up, and in passing a boulder another ten paces on she spies the unmistakable print of a shod horse and a shod man near it and catches a near-ground scent that draws her eye to a mound that might have been a campfire as recently as that morning.

She can see where the horse was led away by someone with enough woodskill to make their passage no more obtrusive than a stag's track, and stands briefly near the depression that might have been one man's bed, noting that she can see the others milling uncertainly through the gap between boulder and slope. It might be that that one man watched her likewise, earlier that afternoon, breathing quietly and saying nothing as her attention was taken up by the strangers, his thoughts opaque. A thumb-smear of oily grit marked a rock nearby, suggesting he had not employed an ability to shoot her, at least. It's hard not to wonder about his hands, cleaning the weapon, adjusting his clothes, tacking up the horse - a well-fed beast, by the few golden grains of dried oats Maggie can pick out as she returns to her low-bent circling.

The mazy men had continued to wander in step, it seemed. The others move after Mistress Yendale as she vanishes amongst low beech branches, setting up a concerned rustle behind her. Polzeath even calls out, as though with some knowledge of danger: "Be wary, Mistress Yendale, please!"

The noise distracts her enough that her brain takes an extra half-second to parse an object that presents itself before her as a shoe. Still moving as she straightens, abruptly, she collides with the Young Man: her shoulder catches him in the gut. The stranger doubles, wavers, and falls like a thrown corpse.

#CRASH#

He llies on the ground for two breaths, then starts to rise. His movements are languid yet precise, as though some strong, unseen hand guided the motions of a man half awake. The Old Man and the Tall Man stand a little further away than they had before, but make no reaction whatsoever.
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:27, Sat 17 Dec 2022.

Maggie’s eyes fly wide open as she sees the Young Mn pitched onto the ground before her.

"Here, Doctor! Look ye, here's one a them!” As the man gets to his feet, the tall woman catches hold of his collar. Then, she sees the other two nearby. "Oh, here, Vicar! Them's t'other two. Restrain 'em, Polzeath! Don't let 'em give us th' slip."

Polzeath hastens up, ready to seize a man and wrestle him to the ground if necessary. On catching up to Maggie and seeing the strangers showing no immediate inclination to bolt he hesitates, however, staring at the scratched and ragged men who seem to sleep, upright as they are. There's a high unnerved uncertainty in his voice as he calls back to the Doctor, recalling his master's insistence on consigning all animals that might be plague-touched to the flames:

"Do I ought touch 'em, sir?"


[[May I have a Strength roll, Maggie, please?]]

Maggie feels a sudden strength come up her captive in a surge: he straightens despite her grip, as though she'd grabbed an iron bar sunk deep into the earth, incidentally hauling her a step towards him with the motion. Once re-planted in his new spot and undisturbed, however, his body relaxes. There has been no appreciable change in his breathing throughout.

Margaret Yendale rolled 76 for  STR 75.

[[GM edit: empty post pounced on and mercilessly devoured.]]
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:27, Fri 23 Dec 2022.

Maggie gives a yelp as the figure surges up, doubling her fist in case he offers violence. When his body relaxes and simply stands mazy again, she opens her hand and peers into his blank eyes. After a moment she releases her grip and steps back.

"Shoulda brought some rope t'bind th' feet," she says, more to herself than to her companions.

Have the others also stopped walking?
This message was last edited by the player at 19:00, Wed 04 Jan 2023.

[[Posting for the Doc, it being over a week with notice given.

The others were encountered at rest - they seem to have just shifted a little and re-planted themselves here according to the angle of the sun, or availability of moisture, or "planet"...whatever is inducing them to do anything.]]

There's nothing much for Maggie to see in the slight sliver of white seen below the youth's eyelids: just flesh and behind it presumably just blood, with bone behind that. He doesn't react to the scrutiny.

The Doctor comes up, pulling on bleached kidskin gloves from his bag. "No, Polzeath - if you can avoid touching them it would be for the best, but hold them by some covered area if you must. Avoid breathing in their exhalations, too," that last comment takes in Maggie with a concerned rather than reproachful air. The strangers simply breathe.

Doctor Lovelace sets his bag down beside him and gets out his perfumed handkerchief, holding it over his nose and mouth left-handed as he comes up beside Maggie to gingerly examine her captive: pulling one eyelid up and forcing the man's head back into a dapple of sun, taking his pulse under the jaw, rapping him on the chest and examining the long scratched wounds from thorns and briars marking his forearms. The Young Man ignores all this manipuation like a corpse, still breathing.

Maggie notes his eyes are a deep blue like a reflection of the sea he seems to have come from, fixed in a blank heavenward stare. The uncovered pupil is sluggish in its reaction when forced into the light, and the eyelid drops easily to its former position when released.

"Hmm. Well, this one is alive in the sense we usually use the term, at least. As for his state of consciousness or bodily compromise I can't say. He might be a little feverish, and it seems as though his natural responses are having to pass through some sort of filter first."

The Vicar had approached the Tall Man meanwhile, and seemed to be praying over him. Both Polzeath and Martin looked over sharply when a light flick of holy water occasioned a flinch on the part of the mazy man, though no more reaction followed after that.

"Yes, well. I'd say that killing these fellows would be found to be murder in a court of law, even if it proves the best course for them. I have an uneasy feeling the gentleman who made camp behind that rock there made the attempt, however. It seems they offered him no threat on being unsucessful...indeed, I should think he continued to keep his unusually out-of-doors domestic routine with these fellows nearby, specifically so that they might draw fascination to themselves and not to him."

"Polzeath, you might see to loading the pistol at the bottom of my bag once you've wiped down a blade with spirits of vinegar and handed it to me, please. Now, Ma- Mistress Yendale, could you show me the one you believed had been shot?" He gives her a comradely smile, determined and warmer than tolerance.

A thought comes to the Doctor and he voices it "I wonder. Might someone splash one of the mazey men with un-blessed water please?"

"The thought had occurred to me that these unfortunates have somehow had their souls removed, but the reaction to the holy water would suggest that there is at least a residual of some soul within, albeit an evil one."

"This hypothesis can be confirmed or rejected by the reaction, or lack of it when normal water is splashed upon one."

Polzeath hands over the scalpel, too-round eyes still rounder to look at the three strangers. "Y'think they've zold their souls to Old Tep, sir? That's a sad reward an' true for their zinning, no mistake."

Sticking the pistol in his belt for now, he jumps to the request for water, raising his head more to scent the air than look about. He scrambles over to near where Maggie had found evidence of presences other than these still-silent men and returns with a double-handful of rain scooped from a hollow in the rock.

He hesitates a little near the Old Man, who whilst nearest seems to be the highest in social status of the three, the fellow's grey hair shaved close to accomodate some missing wig and wearing considerably better cravat that the others' workmanlike neckerchiefs, though no ruffles and no watch. Polzeath frowns, but reassured by a look at his master, dashes the water at the Old Man's face. The man does not give any sign of noticing.

The Vicar has his hands steepled and a look of intense thought by now. Polzeath sets to wiping his hands thoroughly on his clothing, mindful that his next job is to handle powder.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:11, Tue 03 Jan 2023.

"Here, Doctor sir," Maggie says, crossing to the Tall Man, "See here."

She pulls open the man's loose-hanging coat and waistcoat and lifts the un-tucked shirt. She points at the black circle, not quite touching the skin.