---

Streets of Scorch Norton, ~7:40pm Sunday May 5th, 1771


The Reverend had excused himself to his companions and made his way out of the inn, clearing his throat a few times to make startled paritioners aware of him and get out of the way. Outside, the air smells of drying road, hay and horses, and many green growing things in the blue twilight. A robin sings from some nearby garden and through the dusk the squabbling of other hedgerow birds sounds like tiny bells.

It is a fine evening for a walk, past the houses and in amongst the lanes to quickly pass by the church, heading home. The top of St. Giles' little hat of a steeple catches the last of the gilded sunset light and every flower by the roadside seems luminous as the rooks' settling chatter comes to his ears, much like the "Arr - Oh? - Ahh" of idle back-and-forth at the inn.


[[a Spot Hidden available, if you like.]]

Cecil pauses a moment, cocks his head, and smiles broadly. "Ah, Motacilla rubecula... so named by Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae. Tenth edition, if I'm not mistaken," he observes, rather pleased at his recollection of this tidbit of natural philosophy. He prepares to continue on his way...

[[15:28, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 29 using 1d100.  Spot Hidden 50]]

...and notes the shape and shadows of the bushes near the left-hand wall of the church grounds look subtly different, somehow. It's as though someone or something considerably bigger than the expected child or cat pushed through to the wall behind and either clambered over or otherwise failed to come back on themselves, leaving the branches tangled in their wake.

Unsure of how recently the bushes might have been disturbed, Cecil approaches the lychgate, opens it, and enters the grounds. He closes the gate behind him and feigns as much an unhurried pace as he can manage, as if nothing were at all amiss, and sings to himself in Latin. "Non nobis Domine, Domine! Non nobis Domine! Sed nomine, sed nomine, tuo da gloriam!" He raises his small lantern high to maximize the radius of its shed light.

[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmYcpUtvR9U]]
This message was last edited by the player at 23:03, Sat 25 Feb 2023.

The eyes of some night animal catch Cecil's light away amongst the old tombstones like two small candles. It subsequently stands up to perhaps a toddler's height to watch him awhile: either a bold hare or an extremely bold member of the Good Folk, or perhaps some tiny ghost. In any case, the apparition turns away from his song and flees the place, leaving Cecil to marvel at the spectral sweep of a barn owl passing overhead, the rooks' vehement following curses the only sound of its passage.

The bushes do not respond to being lit, even with the small rustling of mice. Whatever went through here must have been taller than him to leave the tops of the shrubbery so disturbed. To shove through the bushes and over the wall to follow it directly would be no great effort, if a little undignified. He might equally leave the lantern on the wall and walk around, presuming the wandering thing was not simply crouched down on the other side, awaiting.

Cecil pauses and looks upward at the passage of the barn-owl. "Strix alba, Scopoli's Anni Historico-Naturales. First... or was it the second volume? Must write the Bodleian to enquire." He holds the lantern higher and cocks his head whilst looking toward the suspect bushes. "One of those mazy animals must have come crashing through here! A very strong hart could mayhap clear that wall in such a state, gracious!" He stood there for a time, hoping to seem as if scanning the upper reaches of the wall and the bushes rather than alert for anything else.

The bushes continue to ignore the vicar's lecture on ornithological citation, or possibly listen with rapt attention. Cecil stands, listening to the rooks in the deep dark of the rookery beyond the wall and the dusk-songs of small virile feather-puffs too wrapped up in the concerns of spring to care for the threat of gliding owls.

Out of the corner of his eye and largely out of the light, he spies a movement - no, a hare: the gait can be nothing else as she hop-circles in close, at length getting so near she stretches herself right out for stealth, arriving somewhere behind his right calf to see what he's doing.

The landscape ahead doesn't change, but on genuinely fixing his gaze on what can be seen over the wall through the shrubbery the Reverend comes to think there might be a peculiar excavation somewhere out in the rookery. There's no particular movement behind him, though it's hard not to think of the last time he was so close to a hare: when the beast had pulled the carrot from his hand and laughed like a woman at the blessing of the Lord.

Cecil furrows his brow, troubled by the implications. What in the names of all the saints is going on here? Come to feed the poor pigeon before giving it its morning sendoff and find evidence of... what? Something amiss in the rookery? How could anything amiss with the rooks be the subject of concern, the noisome things.

Since whatever attracted the man's attention doesn't seem to be inciting him to move or do anything at present, the hare behind him sits back and starts making little movements, probably cleaning her ears and face.

Cecil clandestinely glances sideward at the hare. ”What do you think, madame? Am I jumping at shadows?” he says barely above a whisper before returning his gaze to the bushes and rookery.

Seemingly feeling safe enough behind him where grabbing hands can't reach, the hare pauses: Cecil catches the movement of her ears turning forwards and then the sudden brush of her small body against his calves, like a cat suggesting it's time for home and hearth and a saucer of milk. Save, of course, that this is either a wild animal acting in a manner no hale beast should, or else the new shape of a girl dead and with the heart torn out of her some two thousand years before.

She's sitting right by his heels now, he thinks, warm and solid and not quite right in the world. Woman or witch or worse, she does him no harm, unlike a badger might if it had taken to making holes out under the trees for some reason. It seemed a very precise hole, however, and the hare certainly couldn't see it from here to have an opinion anyway.

Cecil murmurs further to the hare, wondering aloud. "Have you a form there beneath the rookery, old girl? Hares don't burrow, so the only other thing it might be is..." A startling thought occurs to him and, eyes wide, he turns his gaze to look directly at the hare. "Saints preserve! Are you... the old you... buried there?"

The hare startles away from him a few paces at his turning, a streak of speed and then a stop. Her eyes glow like tiny moons until he lowers the lamp just slightly and turns them to burning amber. She watches, one ear towards him, ribs moving with the quick breath of small things, so convincingly alive that flowers might grow at her feet.

The disturbance over the wall is too hearty for a hare's form - perhaps the size a fox might dig, going after a snug of tasty mice - but the thought of graves causes Cecil to recall the thoughts of the leper hospital or whatever it had been. There might well be people under there, though the bodies of those offered to the Wyzenwood likely lay up in that shunned place, a foundation to the present drifts of wild beast bones.

The hare cautiously folds back down, two golden embers and a slightly different texture in the grass marking her eerie stillness as the presence of something other than a tuft of weeds. Martin had told him something of what wild Maggie Yendale had said after seemingly manifesting the 'obby 'oss character from the village morris troupe, and a fragment of his own dreams...graves. A tower. Maggie had said Trugred knew - or had helped - steal Polly's soul away from the Wood and buried it in the village bounds. The Doctor thought there had been trees, and the shadow of a tower. A tower indeed lay close at hand, and here were trees...if it were possible to bury a snared soul, perhaps one of his paritioners had come and dug it up again.

Cecil mutters mostly to himself. "Investigating this matter alone is impractical at best and unwise at worst," he reminds himself. "Where angels fear to tread, a fool veers not from his path."

His sole and ambiguous companion remains a quiet hunch of hare, like a loaf dropped in a field. Somewhere a blackbird shouts a sonnet over the rooks' low conversation as rusty Mars and a few bright stars appear. He might just as easily tell his companions after his mission to feed and write a note for his pigeon guest was completed, of course.

Cecil sighs in resignation. "Yes, practical course of action for a practical man dealing with a practical matter." He pauses briefly to say farewell to his lapine companion, wondering if talking to hares is a sign that he in fact has become mazy. "Thank you for your company, good lady. No worries, shan't let it go to my head." He steps toward the vicarage with exaggerated slowness.

The hare raises an ear when Cecil seems mostly past, then the other, rising enough to mirror his gesture when he gives her a little goodnight bow. Fiend or maiden from before a time when Christ was born or thought of, it's still rather charming to interact with something come freely from the fields.

The Reverend passes out of the lychgate and wanders down the lane, the last few daffodils outside the vicarage bright in the gloom then lit by his light like little lanterns. A lack of suspicous scufflings suggests the garden adders are at their duty as the birdsong starts to wind down in the still dusk.

As soon as he shuts the door he knows something is badly wrong. It's the smell: not the thick green rot as found on the mazy men, but the deep woodland scent of what he'd read were innumerable and infinitessimal fungus rather than the dead leaves themselves, a writhing vitality in decay. There's something of copper, salt and ash to it, too, and although Widow Sawyer has lit the hall lamp and at least one in the kitchen to see to his supper she has not responded or called out at his entrance.


[[a rather more important Listen, please.]]

There's a quiet noise from the kitchen, like someone shifting a chair in rising, but still no-one calls out.

[[14:33, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 16 using 1d100. Listen (50)]]

GM edit: pouncing upon empty post to devour it
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:31, Fri 03 Mar 2023.

"Good evening, Widow Sawyer! Whatever it is you're making, I don't recognize the the smell." Cecil pauses to remove his hat and coat, hanging them on the pegs just inside the door. "I shall endeavour to stay out of your way, just recalled that I neglected to feed that pigeon I found." He crossed to and enters the kitchen.

The Vicar notes a few dark flecks on the hall floor as he turns into the kitchen doorway. A panicked fluttering in the top corner to his right turns into a blur of wings escaping over his head, but what catches and holds his gaze after that is the young man caught rising from the table.

The youth looks very much like Master Fox, but at least three years younger, the paleness of his skin brought out by being clad in what looks like Cecil's own rainment of clergy black, bands and all, and the bright blood smeared over his lower face and hands. His eyes, perhaps a shade lighter than Master Fox's, perhaps not, gleam golden as he shakes out of the last of whatever introspection he'd been absorbed in and continues to rise, attention fixed on Cecil with the gaze of an experienced if youthful predator. Only now does the Vicar note the smears of blood on the table, the long spatters over wall and ceiling, the dark pool on the floor in which he can just see a limp hand and crumpled heap of what was Widow Sawyer lying, the red ruin of what was her face and neck thankfully turned away towards the kitchen door. The fire burns happily in the hearth, oblivious.

"I'll make you a deal, sir," the youth or devil offers as he stands, no knife on him, blood on his teeth. "Help me rid of this body with nothing said to my nephew and I'll let you live."

Cecil's jaw tightened at this devil's gall. "I have made my peace with the Almighty. I suggest you leave now before I do something very unchristian."

The redheaded youth breaks into a grin and tilts his head like a puzzled fox as he comes on, genuinely amused by the defiance and the expectation he might be commanded by the owner's rights, like some fairy. "What, you'll stamp your foot and say 'damn your eyes and bugger ye'?" he asks, his accent hard to place.

He steps up, beautiful, merry, murderous, and Cecil can see not all his teeth are human teeth: there's been patching-up of this skeleton with fox, maybe badger, maybe ancient bear, the sharps going too far back in the mouth. The grin gets a new edge that's hard to interpret as he comes close enough to reach and seize the Vicar's shirt. "Or-?"


[[He got a normal success to grapple: if you roll a successful Dodge or Hard Brawl Cecil can avoid being caught at all.

 If not it's Brawl or STR to try and break away next 'round'. I try to keep 7e's mess of a combat system streamlined and fair on here, but feel free to query anything.]]

Cecil does not flinch when his shirt is seized, instead spreading his arms as if welcoming Edmond into an embrace. He closes his eyes, a beatific expression on his face, and smiles. Almighty God, Blessed Virgin, the saints, and all the hosts of Heaven, forgive me for this violence I am about to inflict.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:02, Sun 05 Mar 2023.

[[ XD XD ]]

Perplexed by this behaviour or simply excited by the prospect of more slaughter, the Fox-thing hauls the Vicar to him and kisses him on the mouth.

The smell of dead leaves hits first, overwhelming, then the feel of the other, unchristian, too close. Part-dried blood shares sticky-slick between them with an unavoidable coppery tang of salt. Though it's clear that any hint of a response will be followed through with terrible enthusiasm, as yet the teeth merely touch as the youth lingers and does not bite. Dead some two hundred years and more, the youth's breath is warm, perhaps warmer then mortals': the decay at the heart of the heap, the new-grave warmth.

Although repelled by the smells and tastes assaulting him, Cecil keeps his wits about him and waits for Edmond to withdraw just enough for Cecil violently plant his forehead squarely in the center of the other's face.

[[07:59, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 1 using 1d100.  Brawl 45 (25 + 20 modifier).]]
[[08:07, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 7 using 2d3+2.  Headbutt Damage (Critical Success).]]
This message was last edited by the player at 13:09, Sun 05 Mar 2023.

Cecil feels something crunch, hard, under his forehead; the youth releases him and staggers back. He looks at the churchman like a child perplexed, raising a hand to the viscous gush of greenblack ichor from his nose, then looks at his hand with equal incomprehension, and keels over.

The thud of the body hitting the floor is accompanied by a patter-scattering of leaves, bark, twigs and other woodland débris scattering about the kitchen as the youth essentially discorporates. Stepping forward with his forehead barely feeling the blow and blood hammering with holy wrath, Cecil can see peat-dark bits of bone amongst a pile of leaves, red strands clinging to the skull. The kitchen has that wet rot smell now, as well as blood.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 12:58, Mon 24 Apr 2023.

Cecil stands over what remains of Edmond or whatever had taken his form, the muscles of his neck and jaw clenching so tight they seem to bulge. He screams then, at the top of his lungs, a primal sound filled with rage and hate and pain. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" Another breath, deeper, and he screams again. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" Another breath, still deeper.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"

He walks to where the Widow Sawyer's body lies, kneels. Grasping her shoulders, he rolls the dead woman into his lap, holding her there as if to subconsciously recreate Michelangelo's Madonna Della Pietà. "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." Lowering his head, he begins to weep.

 ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietà_(Michelangelo)


[[GM edit: tense fix/paragraph add for flow, since this sequence is awesome.]]
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:51, Sun 05 Mar 2023.

The Vicar tucks his housekeeper's face against his body as though comforting a frightened child, for too much of the flesh is gone to work out how to close her eyes without a disrespectful poking, flensed to the bone in some places. It must have happened fast, but he cannot bring himself to contemplate if she had time to think, to know she would never cross the little distance to her own home again, never see sunlight again, never taste what she meant to set up in the pot; never do any of the simple things the living did, forever.

He'd seen her in church that morning, smiling, alive: Cecil is pierced through with the grief of a voice gone into the void of never, along with little gestures, a gentle and always-respectful sense of fun, and yes, her cooking. He'd miss the care she put into making a pie pleasing to the eye, the way she 'just happened' to make enough cake 'extra' when baking for herself that he should have some at breakfast or afternoon tea, her criticism of her crusts and her pride in chicken soup. The thing he holds is just flesh, gone pale and colder than his skin.

He realises how much he loved her, in the way of good, familiar things; how much he loves all his flock, maybe even to the worst of them. The pain receeds a little, though his body sobs.

Memory clasps hands again with a little Irish boy dying of red measles - Michael, really Michael, though so many of them were Michael he had to force himself to remember it was true - quiet and wise in the particular way of children who have come to terms with their oldest age being less than ten. It's as though the lad's determined, lisping lilt has been running through his head for a while, and only with the calming of Cecil's breath does the repetition of Psalm 23 surface into audibility to his mind's ear:

...I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters...

    ...He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake...


[[Aye, I think it's time for a SAN check to see what's going on mechanically, now he's had some time to process.]]

Cecil kisses the top of the dead woman's head and strokes her hair. "You were a dear, dear friend, Elsie, and I shall miss you." He recalls then the flask of holy water in his jacket pocket. Retrieving it, he speaks a brief benediction and hopes the holy water would suffice as a substitute for the tears of saints and angels. "The terrors of your final moments cannot follow you to Heaven, dear Elsie. God gather thee to His bourn and grant thee life eternal. Amen."

[[19:09, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 30 using 1d100.  SAN 56.]]
This message was last edited by the player at 18:11, Mon 06 Mar 2023.

Leaning close, some remnant of her scent is perceptible under the blood and the pond-smell, though the recognition does not cause her to stir, come alive. Cecil takes a swipe at his nose to avoid getting snot on the corpse, trying to forget the taste of her blood, the mouth that had done the damage pressed to his.

...for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Michael's whispered repetition surfaces.

      ...Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil...

What light had entered from the windows has faded, leaving him with lamplight and embers and shadows that shiver at a draught. Night settles on the country, and all is changed, and all the same. Belike if he went outside he might find the same robin, last of the day birds to rest, still singing to wake the stars.


[[not robin-related, but give me a Listen, would you?]]

Cecil cocks his head as an odd sound impinged on his consciousness. He gently lays the Widow Sawyer on the floor once more, and rises to his feet to look around.

[[07:25, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 35 using 1d100.  Listen 50.]]
This message was last edited by the player at 18:12, Mon 06 Mar 2023.

The soft whistling wingbeats upstairs are probably the pigeon trying to find a safe roosting-spot, but it sounds like there's something big in the back garden, something that doesn't quite move like an escaped cow. It steps carefully, out there in the dark, but there's some intermittent sound like sticks against bone when it approaches the apple tree nearer the house.

Cecil eyes the remains of whatever it was that had taken Edmond Fox's form, then eyes the rearward portion of the vicarage. "Please, Lord... let it be nothing more out of the ordinary than Trugred," he mutters to himself. "I have had my fill of supernatural shenanigans today." He retrieves the stove poker and the lantern he had carried earlier. Once lit, he proceeds quietly to the back door and listens further.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:13, Mon 06 Mar 2023.

The beast outside seems to be wandering with no great purpose but evident agitation, like a creature herded to a spot and penned. The clergyman steps carefully over the bodies in his kitchen - noting that the heap less deserving of that term seems to have seeped its dark contents in a curiously stable pattern, the way chips of iron scattered before a lodestone make bands and waves by will of God - and draws nigh the door beyond. There's what can only be described as a stealthy jingling out there now, and then a woman's voice, exceedingly muffled through the thick old wood but speaking in the tone of one who's encountered an unknown bull whilst carrying some burden through a field and has a child or dog along running loose at heel: soft, tense and wheedling.

The big thing turns about, bone - antler? - sliding against wood and doubtless sending petals snowing from his poor apple blooms, and Cecil hears the congested *hough* between cough and moan as something with no will to fight finds nonetheless it's doing so. As he reaches for the latch there's a sudden outbreak of jingling and a rush and scrabble at the door as some human hand grabs handle and thumb bar together and attempts to get in...

Cecil raises the lantern to better shed light on whoever or whatever is trying to enter the vicarage, trips the latch with the tip of the stove poker, and backs off to let the door swings open.

The Reverend steps back over his housekeeper's body and perhaps helps the woman outside open the door: she swings inside at the best of her speed and hauls it to. She's barely in time as a tine of antler flashes into sight, lit by the interior light, and then is simply scraping along the outside of the closed door.

*scoooooooooorrrrrcccccc~*

The sound cuts off abruptly amongst jingling and a thud like flesh to flesh. The beasts without circle in the garden and hold off, seemingly at an impasse. The newcomer, Widow Sexton, looks up and sees something that looks like the Vicar holding a lamp and armed with a poker, blood around his mouth and standing over her neighbour's mangled corpse.

Clearly she'd come to save someone, armed with her own poker for the iron and the heavy weight: Cecil has only once seen such wrath rising in a woman before, and it's no less terrifying now. The failure to get here on time brings bright tears to her eyes but she's not blinded, nor crippled with grief.

"You!"

Cecil warily eyes the Widow Sexton. "Yes, me! I've already been assaulted once tonight, thank you, and I've no wish to be set upon again! If I may fetch my coin to prove my identity? I suggest you do the same." Not taking his eyes from the old woman, he sets down his lantern and fishes in his jacket pocket to produce his leaden coin.

"An' you'd killed the Vicar, ye'd have it on ye just the same," the carpenter's mother says, not moving, nostrils flared to the scent of blood and green decay. Her body is one shape of held movement, a fury trapped in glass as a tear runs down her cheek.

"Quote on the morning's sermon, then I might believe you're our own Palmer," she says, tense.

"Those with whom we share Christ's fellowship are our brothers and sisters," Cecil responds, "in a manner deeper than earthly kinship. We are kindred souls beholden to Almighty God for our salvation."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:17, Wed 08 Mar 2023.

Temperance looks deep into his eyes and wedges the poker through the door handle and under the adjacent counter for maybe a moment's extra resistance or warning of a battering from without, getting herself together. "As for proving who I am, well, I dint write the sermon to give it, an' naught we've been at together after has been out of sight of what the hares might tell, if they were minded, so you'll just have to take faith that Trugred's doing its job an' brought me with hands to help."

Those hands are shaking now, the hot humours pulled up with nowhere to vent. Possibly her fearful tension around horses ever since her husband - a man Cecil had known but slightly, steady and pious - was caught and killed underhoof had not lent her much speed in trusting the most chaotic guardian.

She stoops to pull Widow Sawyer's apron up over the corpse's upper torso and face, since the eyes can't be closed. When she next speaks, her voice is gentle. "What happened?"
This message was last edited by the player at 09:33, Wed 08 Mar 2023.

Cecil exhales slowly. "I returned to feed and water the pigeon, in preparation for its release tomorrow," he began, the weight of things starting to settle upon him. "I knew something was terribly wrong the moment I entered." Retrieving a handkerchief from the sleeve of his jacket, he pauses to wipe his brow. "There was a smell of rank decay, mingled with copper, salt, and ash. I heard a chair shift in the kitchen, as if someone were rising from it. When Elsie didn't return my greeting, I went to see what was amiss." He gestures to the other remains. "It was that thing able to take others' forms. He was very much the image of our young Master Fox, though pale of skin and eye. He resembled an old portrait I once saw when first I came to Scorch Norton. Edmond." Though clearly still in shock, Cecil nonetheless keeps a stiff upper lip. "It sought to make a deal with me. In exchange for helping it dispose of the body and not mentioning its presence to our Master Fox, it would spare my life." His face took on the same indignant expression it had earlier. "I told it that I'd made my peace with the Lord, was unafraid of death, and that it should leave before I did something I might regret. Grabbing my shirt-front, it hauled me close thinking to frighten me, and I... well, I... I slammed my forehead into its face."

"That the young Fox that killed all those women?" Widow Sexton queries on the mention of Edmond, crouching near the pile of wet bones and leaf litter. She's quiet awhile, studying the patterns and the threatening shift when the warmth of her hand gets too close to that dark damp.

"Sounds like whatever its buisness was, it wasn't meant to do this," she concludes, straightening and looking at him. Her look softens at noticing the mirror of her grief in hs face, though her tone stays grim. "Sounds dark on our Master Fox, too: do they know each other, or did the old one seek to hide from gettin' the attention of the new?"

She considers the sounds outside. "Are ye hurt, Vicar?"

Cecil gingerly touches his forehead. "I must look quite the mess, but believe I am unharmed. Physically, at least. I shan't forget the horrors of this evening; indeed, I pray they renew and strengthen my faith." He looks down at the detritus of the thing that was Edmond. "I am tempted to find a shovel and make a bonfire of this foulness, but fear the smoke may cause people to take ill."

"The stag's guarding your garden besides - or that," Tempe nods at the pile. "Not the first time this Edmond's been dead, though...I don't know if he's the leaves or the black stuff, but we ought t'get him contained somehow. I'd pull out the teeth from his skull, the horrible thing, but I don't trust how that mazy blood moves when you get near it."

She moves off a way, eyeing the cupboards and pantry. "Do you have a store of salt?"

"...an' will ye want someone in the house tonight, or to sleep over with us withal? Providin' we get out to report the body without that great thing chasing us to impale us for headwear."

Cecil directs the Widow Sexton's gaze to the cupboard immediately to the right of the cooking-hearth. "Third shelf from the top is where Elsie kept the salt pig."

Widow Sexton fetches the coffer down from its spot. "Salt circle seems like the least we can do, though perhaps if you have a chest we could lock him in it."

Making to start on that task, she notes the Vicar still seeming dull and stunned, and looks him over. "Why don't you go change clothes whilst thinking on how we're to get out, an' I'll bring you hot water up and take those ones away for the wash?" she suggests with the practicality of a woman who's buried a husband, both parents and a couple of children. It's said gently for all that, perhaps more so.

[[edit: weird typo.]]
This message was last edited by the player at 23:59, Sun 12 Mar 2023.

Cecil nods silently and makes his way upstairs. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the washbasin, he stops to stare at the horrific apparition therein. "Dear God in Heaven," he mutters to himself, "will I ever feel clean again?"

This too shall pass, God tells him, by still and collected thought if not by burning bush. He pours cold water to make an attempt at the blood on his chin - near-dry, it's surprisingly stubborn - and draws up a chair to strip off stockings blotted with human blood, then the rest.

There's a dull thud from downstairs as he does so, and almost a tremor through the house, but Widow Sexton calls up "It's all right, he's not got in," and something about making objections known and no acute terror follows. The hot water arrives with a gentle knock on his chamber door just as he's thrown on a new shirt as swiftly as possible and corralled the old clothes into a pile.

"Ye just set the laundry out when you're ready, Vicar, I'll look for the bird," Widow Sexton tells him from the other side of the panels. "It's sweet tea with the sugar in the pot against the shock, I didn't much want to have my back to...anything, seeking out the brandy. If y'need aught else of me, just let me know."

There is indeed a kettle sat on a teatowel outside, and a teapot, cup and strainer on a tray. His neighbour moves about with enough noise for him to be sure of who and where she is, and all is quiet in the house.

"Thank you, Widow Sexton," Cecil calls as he retrieves the items outside the door. He sets the tray on the flat-topped trunk at the foot of the bed, then fills the washbasin with hot water from the kettle. Whilst waiting for that to cool, he pours himself a cup of tea which he downs with scarcely a thought before pouring a second. This he nurses for a time, letting the pleasant-smelling steam sooth his nerves. Polishing off his second cup, he turns to the washbasin anew and soaks one of his towels thoroughly. Wringing it out, he applies it to his face much as he would do before shaving in the hopes of softening the dried blood and ichor prior to a thorough scrubbing. He keeps a small bar of soap at the ready, should he need it.

Blood loosens, dampens, and swirls slowly into the basin, though the soap proves needed for the stubborn orangish stain. The sweet tea spreads its warmth through him and takes away all taste of...well, the incident.

He turns his attention to his legs where his stockings had soaked through, spending a little anxious time in seeking out every fleck and drop-stain once the majority was dealt with. When he knows he's wearing no part of Elsie Sawyer, he puts his stockings on. Tempe's tread and admonitions to the pigeon form a background that almost lets him forget the beasts in his garden and the contents of his kitchen.

"All right, I've got your pigeon," Widow Sexton reports from the other side of the door at length. A slightly indignant cooing confirms her assertion. "Where d'you want 'er?"

Cecil pulls on a fresh pair of breeches as he replies to the Widow Sexton. "I made her a homey little place in my fishing creel," he says with a laugh. A clean shirt and collar come next, then the jacket which matches his breeches, and finally his spare pair of shoes. He gathers his hair backwards and secures it at the nape of his neck. He gives himself one last inspection in the mirror before opening the door. "I left it near the back door, as I recollect."

Widow Sexton hands him a pigeon. "Right. Well, I'll go see if it's escaped the unpleasantness and check our guest hasn't pulled himself together. The study would do to shut 'er in, if ye didn't want her kept up here." She gathers up the pile of left laundry, folding in anywhere still-tacky blood might mark her clothes.

The bird is small and warm if fidgety in Cecil's hands. Temperance breaks from her plunge into the immediate moment's needs at the top of the stairs and remarks with an effort: "We'll have to report the body sooner'r later."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:07, Sat 18 Mar 2023.

Cecil acknowledges Temperance's words. "Yes, as soon we're able." He follows her downstairs, finds the wicker basket fortunately intact, and sets the pigeon inside. Closing and securing the lid, he strokes the bird's head through the small hole in the top. "There, there. Back shortly with a bit of food." He steps to the hearth, gathering the iron ash bucket and shovel there, then proceeds to trowel Edmond's remains, such as they are, into the bucket. He places the bucket in an out-of-the-way corner and, closing its lid, stacks a couple of heavy items atop it. "Safest place I can think of to keep our guest," he tells the Widow Sexton. "At the very least 'tis easily replaced."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:04, Mon 20 Mar 2023.

The Vicar's words are largely lost under the shuddering { {{WRNCH}} } of cervid muscle and scraping hoof hitting the door. A bolt pings from the lower hinge into the brickwork of the hearth, the whole fitting tearing loose from the frame.

Distracted, the Vicar fails to notice the hand he'd left resting on the bucket of warlock is getting rapidly hotter until searing pain tells him he's been burnt, like grasping a pan-bottom straight off the fire.

[[2 damage for Cecil.]]

In the blind instant where thought is stabbed out by pain and awareness of a high, weird whinnying and crashing outside, the Vicar misses Widow Sexton's movement. Then he has breath to gasp and attention for the world and sees her pick up the salt store and hurl the contents across the floor for no reason he can at first determine, at least until he sees how fast the dark leavings of his scraping at their 'guest' had run, raindrop-swift, for the dead body in the room and the blood under it once the temporary circle was interrupted.

The darkness halts, turns back at the salt drift, and starts making its patterns again, incomprehensable natural glyphics on ordinary kitchen stone. Widow Sexton arranges the salt to make sure no gap remains and looks at the Reverend wth concern, perhaps not yet realising his injury.

Cecil stumbles backward in pain, howling and clutching his left wrist, yet somehow avoids tripping over his own feet. He grimaces at his left hand, fingers curled inward as they were on the handle of the ash bucket when he was burned. "Ah! Merciful Lord, that smarts!"

"Stay there but a moment, Vicar - and mind the dark stuff on the floor, it's not a natural thing," the Widow Sexton says, grabbing her skirts and running upstairs in the best haste she can make.

For a moment Cecil is left alone with the smell of blood and leaves and singed flesh, the heavy breathing of the deer outside and the sounds of pigeon anxiety. His hand hurts, even if the Lord hears his complaint. Still, he draws breath, and the thing in the bucket does not, at least as yet.

Cecil mutters a prayer to himself. "Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen."

Praying with the words of his God made flesh brings its usual sense of divine proximity, fleshbound though he is. The ritual rhythm of the words and an discomforted snort from outside largely mask the Widow Sexton's pounding down the stairs.

She appears with the teapot, grabs a spoon and dumps the boiled tea leaves into the sink, giving them a pump of cold water and testing that they're no warmer than skin before giving them to the Vicar to lay on his burn.

[[she got you a HP back, huzzah!]]

"Do you know where there's clean cloth t'be had? Better bind that so's you can use the other. I'm sorry I didn't warn ye about him an' the shovel - didn't see what y'were about whilst I was putting the laundry through." She pauses, eyeing the damage to the sturdy oak of the back door. "So...shall I see if the big fellow comes around the front if I open that door and shut it like I've gone out?"

Cecil reaches up the left sleeve of his jacket and produces a handkerchief. "I thought to procure another after... soiling... the one I had earlier," he tells the widow. "I fear I shall make a muddle of it, however, should I attempt to bind it myself."

Widow Sexton looks puzzled a moment, nearly comical in these weird circumstances, then fishes in her apron for her version of every woman's little roll of pins. "I was meaning us together, Vicar, now let's see here..."

She comes in close and takes the kerchief, smelling it for any irritant oils before carefully bringing his hand to her favoured working position in the lamplight and setting to bind it. She smells of kitchen smoke, woman and woodsap and a little of iron at the moment, though that might be the hot bucket behind them. Temperance works firmly though gently through her pinning, and makes sure her Vicar can move the wrist and fingers to some extent without sticking himself. The cloth gently soaks cool across the back of Cecil's hand, the tea leaves already drawing the worst of the sting from the wound.

The stag outside scrapes an antler against the door, then commences to scratching against the stonework. The pigeon settles wedged in a corner of her creel, occasionally giving an upset *whuw* whenever stronger sound or motion might indicate the return of frightening things.

Cecil echoes Sooty's *whuw* as he sags against the table-edge. He asks the Widow Sexton, eyeing the wrongness that stains the kitchen floor, "Any thought what might get that out? Out of the wood, out of my home? Exorcism? Replacing the floorboards? A thorough scrubbing with hot water and lye?"

"Could be any of those, or none - my thought's that it'll go with him-" she nods at the bucket, "-seein' as it came with him. It doesn't seem minded to seep under the flags, that's good, an' I'm not for diluten it...we could try putting ash or flour down to soak it up an' sweep it onto some cloth or paper or wooden thing to throw out. Only we don't know we can get out, saving we throw it from upstairs. Don't want nor need that stag in here."

Cecil nods in agreement as he contemplates the back door. "Someone would doubtless welcome our antlered friend into their home, provided they had assurances it'd only be from the neck up and mounted for hanging on the wall of their den or study." He steps to the sink and gives it a pump. Cupping the cold water in his right palm, he flicks a few drops at the ash bucket to ascertain whether it is still hot. "Would it be uncharitable of me to pray we could carry our bucketful of 'guest' to some high, lonely place where nothing grows nor ever has and build a cairn over him so he can never trouble anyone again?"

"What a queer thing to think of doing..." Widow Sexton marvels at the notion of preserving a head and neck, taking the lack of voiced objection as permission to head carefully into the pantry for some soaking matter, "-but then I'm sure you've seen stranger things in gentlemen's cabinets or the 'dens' of Irish folks, as you put it."

The droplets hit the bucket with a faint pssh but no evident steam, indicating that even if there were no will - conscious, comprehensable or otherwise - behind the heat, use of a teatowel or other thick soaked cloth would be sensible should he mean to pick it up. His burnt hand feels hot and raw rather than painful at present.

Widow Sexton comes back with a sack of bran and experiments with scattering that on and around the uncanny ichor on the floor. "Might as well pray him an' all this mess straight to Hell, if we're wishin'," she observes. "Don't know how long he'll stay down, but I wouldn't make any plan as needs a mason."

Cecil takes a seat in the nearest chair and sighs. "This has been a very, very, very long day, and I fear 'tis far from over. I should make a start on poor Elsie's eulogy, but my heart just isn't in it right now." He rests his elbow on the table and his chin in his uninjured palm, silently staring at the body for what seems an eternity before sighing again.

"Ye might see to the living yet," Tempe says, nodding over at the pigeon as her hands work. The substance seems confused under the bran, absorbing some and briefly stacking into new patterns before lapsing into the same loops, like the jumbled writing of a dream.

Seeing the Vicar more inclined to sink into the dazed mire of his own ache, she sets the sack on the floor a moment and comes to ease a hand onto his shoulder to grip and knead a little if he'll let her. "Come on, now, Vicar. Help me."

Cecil gratefully pats Temperance's hand. "Yes, of course. Forgive me. Meant to feed our wee sooty Colombe before I set her on her way come morning, which clearly did not work out as planned. What shall we see to first?"

Tempe lets her hand stay whilst she considers, her skin rough from decades of work yet not so much as the country men's, alive and there. "See to the bird, set 'er somewhere quiet and dark - poor creature can't understand our trouble. Then we make sure the "guest" is as contained as he might be, and after that we work out if one or the both of us can leave to go for help and set to all else that needs be done."

She stays by his chair when he rises, however, raising an arm in offering: "...less ye'd like a moment held, to start."

Cecil nods as he rises to his feet. "Bird, guest, help, yes." He curls his right arm about Temperance's shoulder and gives her a fatherly embrace. "With the stag at the kitchen door, we can maybe sneak out the front and make for the church. Once inside, we could ring the bell. That ought to catch some attention."

Widow Sexton doesn't go halves on hugs; the Vicar gets a firm press back, Tempe's warmth and strength confirming that even if nothing else in the world makes sense, they two are alive. She lets go when he seems to want and listens carefully.

"All right, but if the stag comes round the house, we split up - go ye straight for the church, I'll make away amongst the houses. Can't get both of us."

Cecil rounds the table and steps to the breadbox. Not much caring for appearance, he pins the partial loaf under his left forearm and tears off a small hunk with his right hand. Returning to the table, he tears the hunk into smaller hunks then gathers them by the handful to deposit through the creel's small flap for the pigeon. He retrieves a teacup from the sink and fills it with water, then carries that and the creel into the study. Placing the creel on the floor, somewhere out of the way, Cecil opens the lid just enough to slip the cup in whilst preventing the bird's escape.

The Reverend feels the soft brush of feathers against his hand on balancing the cup in the corner and leaving the handful of turnip greens Tempe had pressed upon him. It strikes him how little there is to a bird: a little life wrapped in fluff and air with a lace of rolled-ribbon bones, and yet the small life endures (and is thirsty, apparently).

Widow Sexton is crouched near his fortified bucket holding a stray breastfeather on the palm of her hand when he returns, explaining when she sees him: "Seein if there's enough heat that it might cause the air to shift like at a stove, Vicar - I put the soaked stuff in there with him an' swapped off the thick board for a couple clothes irons. Don't want t'leave him with anything flammable in reach, though She never did like fire for her own part. She'd pull a man straight into the ground, they say, anyone bringing a spark into the Wood."

She levers up. "Ngh - what's to do with him, then? Leave him there, set 'im in something that locks, out the window? Take him with us, even, though I don't know we need burdened with that and the wet towels to hold him..."

"The privy perhaps?" Cecil uncharitably remarks.

"I'd not want him crawling out of there whilst I was about my contemplations, Vicar, besides that the bolt's on the inside," his company replies with cast iron sensibility.

Outside there comes a distinct shift on the part of the stag, and a heavy breath. A faint jingle indicates Trugred still present, yet watching, both beasts alert. Listening very carefully might catch a smatter of light footsteps in hurried flight - running for this place, it seems, this very house, and quite unaware of the visitors.

"I know exactly where we can stow Edmond for the short term," Cecil remarks. "Floor closet by the front door. Key ought to be in the top drawer of the writing-desk."

---

[[11:23, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 75 using 1d100.  Listen 50]]

[[GM edit: noticeable anachronism removal: Josiah Davenport is at most a couple of weeks old at this point, and has not commissioned any desks, being otherwise occupied.]]
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:23, Thu 30 Mar 2023.

"Ye set a soaked towel down an' hold the door broad ajar, then, and I'll carry him over," Widow Sexton agrees after a moment's consideration.

There's a shifting and scuffling outside as the arrangements are carried out, the heavy tread of the stag following parallel to the bucket's course: human steps within, deer steps without. When Temperance has scooted the bucket and those weights that will fit into the little cloak-closet, the pair catch a worried murmur of femminine voices outside.


"-oh no, it is..."

                           "...is he there?"

             "He ought to be, there's lights burning - lessee if shouting drives it off...Vicar! Hey, Vicar, are y'in?"


The shout sounds like Bethany Collins. Her elder sister Hester, conscientious if far less inclined to raising her voice for any reason, manages to join in at volume:


"Sir! Vicar! There's the stag outside your house! Only you're needed at the inn!"

Cecil glances at the front door. "We may have to move our guest here somewhere toward the back of the house if we're to give ourselves the best head-start when we leave. Or perhaps upstairs, locked in my trunk." He shouts back a reply. "I am in, yes, and we're well aware of the stag. Not certain he'll let us out, so we're preparing to run for it."

"Well, Vicar, you tell me where you do want 'im and I'll carry this Master Fox there," Tempe says, leaning on the cupboard doorframe. "Only do decide, for it makes me nervous, not knowing when he might get himself together."

"Should we throw things at it?" Beth asks from without. Her sister seems less keen on the idea, but her comments don't quite make it through door and distance.

"Salt," Cecil mutters mostly to himself. "We're going to need lots of salt."

"Don't rile him up! Can y'hear bells out there?" the widow responds to the gaggle of girls outside.

"Bells?"

"We...oh! Yes, we can hear bells! Is it well to hear them?"

Something inaudible from Lucy follows. The older woman listens to the stag moving in the darkness outside with anxiety, calling back:

"Ay, bells are good - stay ye all together unless that stag turns for a charge, all right?"

Some confused noises of assent sound without. Tempe takes a deep breath and considers the bucket and its weights to be moved again.

"Well, we might sweep some off the floor and there's what was out afore, but otherwise we've to be out before we get a lot of salt." She hefts up their visitor's unholy reliquary once more. "Where's this going, then?"

Outside, Long Tom had reached the church gate, but seen the building shut up at a glance and passed onward, heading for the vicarage. Everything is very dim now the sun has left and the birds quieted, the stars and lagging light doing little to show him where his footsteps fall.

There is a light within the vicarage, but the girls - young women, really, tall enough to be picked out above the low garden wall and higher hedging - seem to be all huddled together looking at something. Running into shouting distance, Tom catches a movement in the direction stared at. It's a very large movement, indeed too large to be a human being, and of a sudden Tom realises he's looking at antlers.

The black stag stands beside the vicarage door, head up and alert. There's a slight rippling of the nearby shrubbery and faint jingling sound as the great beast turns his ears towards the newcomer and takes a deep breath, letting it out in a barking sigh of warning.

*HOUGH*

"To me girls, to me..." Thomas kept his position while watching the stag and its posture trying to work out what it was going to do. Given his previous experience he hoped he could to just that.


-

Cecil frowns and rubs his chin in response to Temperance's query. "If we take it upstairs, that might provoke the stag into trying to bust down the door," he quietly opines. "But it might just confuse the beast as well, the farther our guest is from the ground. We have to try it."

"Upstairs it is, then," Tempe responds, hauling the burdened bucket away in the direction of the stairs.

---

Outside, Lucy and Hessie look at the long dark outline of the man that's joined them, Beth watching the stag. At length Lucy draws them over nearer Tom, but holds her hand out whilst largely watching the animal. "Hand me your token, Tom," she says quietly, not keen to be stolen away whilst the intrusion of the Wood's power is writ so clear within the village bounds.

The stag, meanwhile, turns his ear and then his head towards the closed door, then steps forward around the house as though following something. He takes another step, then another, head raised as though watching something inside the house ascending, then abruptly trots around the back of the dwelling. A quiet falls.

Before anyone outside can call in to report this development, however, the stag shows up again from the other side of the house, then doubles back. Gravel crunches and small sticks break under the great circling weight, antlers occasionally scraping trees or brick.

---

Inside, the Widow Sexton pauses at the top of the stairs, listening to the faint restless pacing that hems them about like the grand hunt played out in reverse. She throws a glance to Cecil that asks where to next? but does not speak aloud. As yet there is no final bursting through the broken timber at the back door, nor any shattering of glass and leading below, but the stag goes around and around the house, seeking to be as near the bucket as he might be, and that is no permanently certain thing.

Cecil heads into the guest room across the landing from his, opening the trunk at the foot of the bed and hauling out the blankets stored therein. "In he goes," he tells Temperance. He then packs blankets around the bucket so there is as little space around it as possible. "A moment," he says, dashing downstairs to his desk in the study. He returns with the key to the trunk and locks it after packing as much other material around the bucket to make the trunk difficult to close. He sits on the lid and turns the key once he is able, removing it after the lock catches. "Let's hope that will suffice."

"Mm...well, the woollens won't burn, at least," Widow Sexton says, still wary for all their guest is locked away and sat on. "Perhaps sport the room door as well, as precaution."

---

Outside, the collected youths see the stag come around the front once more, then around the left-hand side of the house, where he seems to stay for a bit. There is the sound of turning and trampling on the spot, then an odd sound like hard objects scattered on slate. The jingling sound makes its way around the bulding.

Cecil nods and waves Temperance out of the room. He exits close behind, closing and locking the door to the guest room before returning downstairs. "We should lock the doors when we leave, just in case. I don't know whether the back door can be, half off its hinges as 'tis."
This message was last edited by the player at 04:36, Wed 12 Apr 2023.

Thomas removes his token and then turns to Lucy "Go to the church and wait by the door, I will come collect you and do not go with anyone else. Do you know who is inside the house ?"


-

Lucy takes the token and feels it over to be sure it's genuine before handing it back. She looks over at the dark church, the approaching lanterns, and all the shadowy places for crouching men and beasts with teeth to hide between here and there. "...no? No." She takes a deep breath against a sudden ache that surprises even her and makes her complaint with all the eloquence she can manage: "I'm not huge like you, Tom. This is...probably as big's I get, 'less I find out how to get tall, or fat, and I'm a girl...y'don't know what it's like, being told you're being hunted to be killed or worse, an' being small. I'm staying with someone - with Hessie and Beth if ye won't have me."

"Ay, Master Bees, y'can't just leave her tied up places like an ass," Beth puts in, definitely meaning the pun because this is Beth, heir to her mother's ferocity and father's wit. The strange sounds around the house resume, like a group of men hammering on tile.

"It's the Vicar and...sounds like the Widow Sexton, though she's not said," Hessie says, bringing them back to the practical question. "I don't think there's anyone else. They've been quiet awhile, though."

---

"If one of us goes out the back, we might wedge the table against the kitchen door, keep anything inside from getting into that room and out, at least," Tempe suggests. She cocks her head to listen. "Hm. I don't hear the stag trotting about the house any more."

The Vicar is just downstairs and Widow Sexton stepping off the last step when there comes a tremendous shattering crash from the room they've just left.


           -'. ,, " {.  {{ {CRSHKDKWHUDWHUDKTNKRTNKL} }}.  },' " ,  -

There's a further scattering of small, hard shards, a scrabbling and the heavy sound of deer hooves overhead: they step, and step, and stop. A quiet descends that sounds thicker for the preceding bedlam of breakage.

---

Outside, Hessie gives a little cry of alarm at the sudden crash around the corner of the house. "Oh!"

"Must've jumped up on the privy," Beth observes, concerned but unsure what to do about it. She cups her hands about her mouth to shout at the closed door. "Hoi! He's gone in upstairs!"

---

"Well...he's no way to get into the chest..." Widow Sexton says, her figure tense as she looks back up the stairs. "I say we get out whilst gettin's good."


This message was last edited by the player at 07:27, Wed 12 Apr 2023.

Cecil cannot help but concur with Temperance's assessment. "Unlikely to batter its way through the door onto the landing either, so the window may be its sole choice of exit henceforth. Let us make haste," he says, heading for the front door.

"You see that stag over there Beth, well that animal has been possessed by who knows what and it will not blink an eye before goring you with all it worth, so keep making you silly little jokes."

"Yes I meant all three of you to leave and wait for me on holy ground as close to the church door as possible, is that acceptable ? I will try and see if we can get those in the house out."

Tom looks for any sign of life within the building, not up to shouting his arrival to any occupants not now the stag seems to have gained entry.


-

"Oooh, we're in your service now, are we?" Beth catches her skirts to swing them in a mocking half-curtsey.

"The Vicar was needed at the inn..." Hessie adds uncertainly, though the eldest Collins seems most easily persuaded to take herself out of danger.

"What're you going to do about a great stag like that?" Lucy asks, standing her ground now she has backup.

"Maybe he plans to throw his head at the stag, it being a block of wood an' all," Beth suggests, then more seriously: "Widow Sexton was right, if y'get charged y'ought to have someone by to run tother way and be distraction. I'll come, if no-one else will."

She steps forward, fearless and ready to help. "Whatever Herself in the Wood's done to the beast, it can't be worse than the post boy's horrible horse."
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:31, Thu 13 Apr 2023.

"I'll meet ye round front with the lantern, Vicar," Widow Sexton assents, and grabs her skirts in her fist to make a dash for the kitchen.


[[feel free to make your exit/entrance outside, Vicar.

Looks like we're finally in touching distance of getting everyone together on a new church thread, huzzah!]]

Cecil has his keyring in hand when he exits the vicarage's front door. Closing the door behind him, he nods to those outside and pauses to lock the door. "Whateever guides the stag presumably hopes to liberate the warlock Edmond Fox, who killed the Widow Sawyer before the Widow Sexton and I managed to constrain him with cold iron.," he tells Thomas and the girls. "Now... what news? I've had quite an evening already. Why am I needed at the inn?" He glances toward the rookery as if to remind himself of something, and does not start toward the inn until Temperance arrives, with or without Trugred. "I've a hunch there may have been something important buried 'neath the rookery. Whether 'tis there still we'll only know if we look, and it most certainly will not be there if we don't look now."

The Vicar's words draw a great deal of consternation from his little audience: cries of "Who?" "...what?" and "warlock?" follow. Hessie takes the lead whilst everyone else struggles to find mental balance, gradually becoming more visible as Widow Sexton rounds the house and comes to light them with gentle yellow illumination, like a genius of the hearth on some outdoor stage.

"Well, first that Polzeath came in, an' he says the Doctor needed silver water as the Squire and someone had been in a bad fight, with weapons, and the fellow that attacked Master Fox was taken prisoner but they both needed stitching," she explains in a rush. "Then wild Maggie came in and showed Polzeath as she had blood all over her hands, right red like her palms were bleeding, an' he went to look, only when he tried to straighten her fingers to find the injury he started screaming and cast her away from him, getting up on the table. Then the kitchen pump broke and all in the water and up from the ground come this dark bog stuff, an' Maggie screams out fetch the Vicar, and Mum gives me the nod I should go, so I fetched Beth for witness and Lucy that was with her, and came here, sir."

She gives the Vicar an anxious look. "What you're to do about it I don't know. Everyone started off to running away." Indeed, if not exactly running, there seems to be a large portion of the village heading for or collected about the door of the church, the key to which sanctuary lies in Cecil's hand.

"Hold up, hold up," Beth says, annoyed, "-you said someone else was murdered? By one of the Squire's relatives? Who's a-" even Beth doesn't quite dare say "fairy" "-a one of Them or some like? Or just locked in with iron locks? Will the stag get him free? What powers does he have to him? What's that to do with treasure in the rookery?"
This message was last edited by the player at 09:47, Sat 15 Apr 2023.

Cecil answers Beth first. "One of the Squire's ancestors, to be precise. Whether the stag can free him I truly don't know. I suspect he'll be quite cross with me should he somehow escape. Either that or I've put the fear of God into him and he won't trouble me again." He eyes her curiously. "Who said anything about treasure? I'd seen signs of some disturbance 'neath the rookery, which seemed odd to me. Village history being on the colourful side, I thought it worth investigating. The night's events incline me to haste in this instance."

"Looks to be the musings of a fox, Reverend, and there was need of you at the Church to bless some saltwater if I heard correctly, someone has been injured and I believe the request was urgent as people need to be let in as well."


[[GM edit: post un-hidden, assuming it fixed enough with player forgetting to PM me.]]
-
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:07, Mon 17 Apr 2023.

Cecil wonders at Tom's words. "Let us make our way to the church, then, and on to the inn once all is settled." He mostly mutters to himself. "Saltwater? This far from the sea? At this hour? Busy night, hmm Lord?"

It seems that God would have His servant be prepared for many trials, even if it might be hoped they should not all fall upon the same night. The Vicar strides churchwards, the upset murmuring of anxious girls and reassurance of Temperance's able hands about him and faint jingling following - after some hesitation - a way behind.