Sessions 14-15-16

The events and story of the island of Larkhall, as exposed and interfered with by the expedition's crew:

• Around the year 1050, during the height of the Norse raids to the south, King Aelfric, after converting the human inhabitants of Sjaeland and Fynn, land on the island, which was a trading post between the local human population and the Norsemen. Thelocal population is converted  but under unknown circumstances Aelfric is beheaded and thrown into the sea.
• Legend has it his body came out of the water carrying his head.
• Around 1220 Gregory Adams of the Royal Society arrives on the island and, claiming he has discovered Aelfric head he joins the Thelemian church and receives a royal accord to form a Cathedral on the island to guard the relic. For this reason the Forest and local flint mines were given by the king of Sjaeland to the church. The head was in fact a fake, Adams kept searching for the real one.
• In 1298 a Fynnian naval depot is established on the island to support possible future expeditions to the North.
• By 1330 Adams was still alive and had form strong ties with the leader of the converted local community (Eduard Coffin) and had betrothed his daughter to the man's son.
• By the same time, a thick red substance was found to leak out of the mines that contaminated the eastern part of the island. People started becoming sick with what Adams recognised as symptoms of mercury poisoning. The posioned men though remained animate even beyond death, though they ceased to be responsive, passively hanging around in apparently complete dementia.
• At about the same period Adams discovered the actual grave of Aelfric and recognised it as the source of the red substance. The only other thing in the grave was the king's head, lacking eye holes, ear holes and having an extremely small lower jaw.
• With access to great ammounts of the substance, Adams, working secretly managed to create a ritual that made the substance inert and slowed, or halted, the advance of the poisoning. Without any time in his hands in which to convince the priests and local community to consume the substance, he made the whole act into a religious ritual, the consumption of the blood of the Saint King Aelfric.
• Meanwhile, around 1345 the prison ship Pandora arrives to the naval depot. The ship, which has just returned from the far South (continent of Godwanna) where it arrested the Harloch mutineers, was quarantined due to an unknown sickness that consumed the crew.
• (The slave ship Harloch was deoarting with a cargo of slaves from a southern isle when it was seized by mutineers, who released the captain in a boat, returning to the island to live peacefully with the local tribes. The ship's captain navigated the boat back to Fynn and reported the mutiny. The ship Pandora was sent to arrest the mutineers, which it did in 1340. During the return journey the mutineers consumed the heart of one of their own, performing a ritual they had learned from the island tribes, turning the victim into a Tuyevera, an avenging undead that would attack and slay their captives by eating their hearts and liver. The Pandora returned to Fynn where it was placed in Quarantine, since the actions of the Tuyevera are perceived as an unknown tropical illness. The ship is finally sent to the secluded Depot on the island of Larkhall, During this time, under undisclosed circumstances the mutineers manage to trade with a northern legendary being, known as the Clinkerknocker, reportedly becoming immortal when aboard a ship at sea).
• As the ship arrives at the depot, the Tuyevera continues to be active and directs its attention to the personel of the depot and local prostitutes that visit the depot.
• The Tuyevera at some point attacks mercury poisoned individuals. When those die by the attack, they do not become the passive undead that Adams is used to. Due to the effects of the "blood" they survve the removal of their heart and liver by the tuyevera and become aggressive undead.
• As the first attacks begin in the local forest, the northern sailors start speaking of the Draugr legend (aggressive heathen undead that avenge then theft from or destruction of their burial mounds). Most sailors accuse the priests for using the local ancient graves are mining shafts for extracting flint. At tabout the same time the aggressive undead in the forest start assuming the forming of dead horse, a common legend about the Draugr (they later assumed forms of recently killed victim, feeding the legend of vampirism).
• As the citizens become restless Adams choses to reveal to Coffin his knowledge about the substance and Aelfric's real skull. Coffin receives the information unfavourably and considers the priest as responsile for the island's problems.
•  With the rest of the citizens he attacks the temple, while Adams retreats into the cave where the skull was discovered. There he meets for the first time the Banshee that inhabits the grave (an old elven lady that lost her court to Fir Bolgs after the second battle of Magh Tuiredh). The Bnashee agrees to save him by transferring him to Faerie. From this position he manages to continue performing the ritual upon the "blood" emerging in the grave, thus keeping the blood consuming ritual effective even after his apparent disappearance. He is forced in stealing magical items to provide materials for the rituals.
• Coffin does not find Adams but claims the real head of Aelfric, which he considers responsible for everything. He seals it in a box, forming a pious religious cult around it, denying any relations with the priests in the tempe.
• In the town the granddaughter of Coffin and Adams, disobeys her surviving grandfather and visits the cave in the hope of meeting her lost grandfather. She is followed home by the Banshee. The fact that the head has been held in the room in ritualistic reverence, bends the law of Fairie enough for the room to be considered a grave. She uses that room to cross into the world and abduct the young coffin girl, taking her place.
• The Banshee Coffin grew and married James Nickerson. When old Coffin almost managed to discover her she transfered him into Faerie, where he reunited with his real grand-daughter but died trying to find a way out of the Fairie city, becoming a Shadow.
• Meanwhile the Banshee Coffin attempted to manipulate the population, by tightening the rules of the town's religous cult, the Society of Friends. As part of this attempt she tried to keep the people cut off from other supernatural beings, including the Clinkerknocker, which the men of the town respected, like all northern sailors.
• She attempted to exorcise the Clinkerknocker from the ship of her husband, resulting in the spirit appearing in the ship's next voyage. During this voyage the spirit appeared to the crew of the ship, an action that, according to legend, ensures their death during their next seabound voyage. The ship was severy damaged, but miraculously arrived at port, allowing the crew to disembark before falling appart and quickly sinking.
• Since then Nickerson never travelled. he lived in is family house, away from his wife.

• In 1402 the group arrived in Larkhall. After an attack in the forest they are contaminated with the disease.
• Due to the severe measures employed to keep sailors safe from the dangers of the island, and a mix up in the Fynnian ship's shifts, a city young prostitute was murdered by one of the ship's first mates. The event resulting in the sailors evoking the clinkerknocker who slew both of the ship's first mates.\
• During one of their ancounters the Banshee imprisoned them in Faerie and taking the form of captain Beric, ordered the crew and citizens to attack the temple.
• The group, having acquired Aelfric's head encounter young Coffin, who has not aged, but lives alne in the fairie city, under the protection of her Grandfather. Only her hairand nails seem to have grown all these years and she is extremely dirty.
• heads towards the depot through Faerie. during this crossing they cross a derelict bridge, above a ravine, where they are bound by a being named Grog, to never use magic at his bridge in the future, under pain of death.
• They also encounter a hunting group of two Fir Bolgs, which they slay. The last of them declares to Fitzeroy: "If you came to start a war, you have achieved it. They shall know of this in Rockholm" before commiting suicide.
• They finally arrive at the depot where the Clinkerknocker crosses them into the world, requesting that they take the mutineers with them when they depart.
• The group visit the temple where they find that the ship's crew is returning to the ship, while the citizens with the marines have pursued the retreating priests into the forest towards the caves.
• They find them there surrounded by many undead horses. They enter the cave, without using the magical torch provided by the priests and they finally encounter Adams. he informs them of the situation.
• With this information they encounter the mutineers once more, finaly revealing the truth about the Tuyevera. The tuyevera is slain with the help of the ritual that summons it and the undead on the island become timid once more.
• Adams is very reluctant about the events, claiming that events do not actually seem to add up. he finds the conection between the aggression of the undead and the tuyevera extremely frail, adding that events like this kept happening to him since he arrived to the island. Stories like this that seem to work out in the end but fit very loosely with each other.
• The group return to the town with the citizens and the crew and they examine the women in the Coffin house for witchcraft, after the citizen's request. They find the Devil's mark on them, as described by John Stearn in Kingsport.
• They decide to release the women, commanding the citizns to keep a close eye on them. They claim that Coffin (who has disappeared) is the real witch who should be burned.
• The citizens are convinced, until, durin the same night the young (real) Coffin appears at the outskirt of the town, claiming to have been brought back into the world in the caves and walked to the town.
• The citizens catch and burn her at the town square.
• The group withdraw to their ships in confused anger. On the next day they find out that the women from the Coffin house have acquired the ashes of the witch, bringing them into the Coffin house, possibly turning it back into a grave and an access for the Banshee into the town.
• With the forest safe though, the group Fitzeroy and Royk wisely decide over a game of chess that they should leave the town to its cursed fate of prolonged stupidity.

Effects on the progress of the expedition:

• marines and a few crew members have died.
• Adams has revealed before dying:

1. He was summoned by Nicholas Remy, an esteemed member of the royal society, as an expert on matters concerning King Aelfric. He met Remy and Jonathan Wesley, an archeologist specialising in matter concerning King Akelon.
2. Remy revealed to them his theory that the two kings were not human, and came from the north.
3. A pendant containing three gems was forged for each one of them that would show who of them was still alive.
4. Adams discovered the head of Akelon, and the red substance in his grave.
5. Wesley claimed to have found similar things in the grave of Akelon, which he discovered. Later Wesley started writting not under his own name but as Akelon Rex. Adams consider he was driven crazy and thought he was Akelon. Adams was releaved that the group killed him.
6. Remy claimed to have visited a formerly unknown Thelemian king in the north, whom he did not name,  in an attempt to find a living specimen of the creatures that Akelon and Aelfric were. The pendant still shows that he alive.
7. Adams claimed that all the stories he encountered on this matter so far, seem to have a way of fullfilling all his expectation, in a weird way, even when those do not seem valid in any way. He feels something is manipulating the events and stories he encounter to make them fit his expectations. Not sure about anything anymore he is left alove and dies in Faerie.

Σορυ που είναι για το μπούτσο ποστ αλλά δεν έχω χρόνο λόγω διαβάσματος, και αν δεν τα έγραφα τώρα δεν θα τα έγραφα ποτέ, οπότε από το να σταματήσω το blog προτίμησα απλά να γράψω ένα για το μπούτσο ποστ.  Είναι ανακριβές και ελλειπές, αλλά έχει ότι πληροφορία έχει σημασία για το μέλλον.  Τσιρς!