Everybody’s interests heading in

Avoid:

• The North
• The cold
• Torstein Rolfson
• Spiders as the main feature

Interests:

• The twilight
• Playing with resin
• The east (though less than the twilight)
• The ancients

Intro

You dream, as if for months, of crowds and roads and faceless inns, an inexorable draw to the coast. The moments snap into each other in a lurch, a focus on the sounds of boots on dirt, of braying animals, creaking timbers, squeaking wheels. You’re alone, then with others, faces blend and come and go and return dirtier, more tired. The faces of the other N player characters recur, and when you look on them you feel warmth and companionship. There is a port, the caw of gulls, turmoil, bells, the shouts of sailors. The breath of the ocean, it’s chill, its moist touch. Rocking cabins, dry salty cotton hammocks. The lighthouse, its beam piercing the bay’s fog. A dry room above a murmuring pub, the smell of stew and bacon wafting up.

Core named locations

Porto Ibenza De Barille

The last port town reached before heading to the islands. In northern spain equivalent. Crown safe house.

Cobh

The port town in the south eastern end of the isles, first stop on their wakeful trip.

Cladh Coineanach

Gaelic for rabbit graveyard. Closest small town to the wellspring.

Saintsberry - medium size port town on the coast

Ballyswan - large port town on the northern coast

Quick link to ireland in maps

Hidden things

Kostis himself has been hypnotized, with large blanks prior to the mission. These are not obvious to him yet.

“Have you ever dreamed of the moon’s cold regard?”

Something bad, gotta figure this one out.

Worrystone status:

• Kostis tossed his in to the lake near Killeen
• Nadja lost her’s in the tree
• CC still has her’s

—

The players are under hypnotic suggestion to go along with a crown mission to explore rumors of “a wellspring of youth” in the southern forests of Ireland. They were put into a fugue state and brought to the island, then awoken to their mission. They are bound to Kostas, but the compulsion may begin to crack with more time away.

Forward story progress should head generally in this direction:

• Figure out which town the reports actually referenced.
• Travel to the town (chance for bandits?).
• Meet Ol' Benton and the rabbit graveyard (cladh coineanach)
• Find the brook
• Search for the spring
• Meet The Keeper
• Get the source (sap of the world tree)
• ESCAPE!

Backward progress into “the fog” can be done via dream sequences. I’m not sure if this should be in a specific order (like, recent-to-older) or more of just “this piece is most relevant” kinda jumping around. This is harder to work out, since I need to figure these out a bit… maybe just back-pocket these?

• Ship’s crossing. Wake up in the hold and find Kostis on deck.
• The hostel on the shore. Wake up to the waves and find Kostis at the end of the pier.
• The basement and the faceless man. Kostis dreams this too.
• The anointing. Kostis also dreams this one. Turns out he’s a seneschal of some Irish cult.
• Welcome to Porto Ibenza De Barille and the faceless man
• CC specific - how she came to be selected
• Nadja specific - how she came to be selected
• Kostis specific - the hidden elements of his mission he doesn’t realize

Todo

• Make a list of hyponotic phrases for Morgan
• Figure out more Black Forest spooky details for Dono and more about his witchy upbringing
• Get Kaylee in on the action
• Figure out more about the origin of the harp with Khiri
• Figure out the faceless man’s name
• Figure out all the routes out of the second branch

The Twilight’s Access to the World Tree

Door Symbol	Destination
Crescent moon over square	Tanneon Tower
Destroyed	???
5 upward pointing spires	The ring in the city
Two interlocked swirls	The lonely shore (many different entrances and exits)
Crescent moon over circle that surrounds a squiggly dot	Killeen Island
Simplified maze glyph	THE MAZE
Crescent moon over 3 boots	Isle of Mann

How do doors open?: well that’s a fine question there traveler. I don’t rightly know. They’re magic though, use magic. Aha! They use the acorns.

Scheme? Perhaps the crescent moon means “outdoor”.

4/5 doors per tower

Tower 1

this works top-town, matching the direction the players explored

Entrance from the spring at the top. Large root platform with another one of the plate-doors: crescent moon over square.

Downward a few levels is the cleft/destroyed door.

About 2/3 of the way down is the prison.

3/4 down is the 5 upward pointed spires, with the burnt out body.

Down at ground level is the interlocked swirls door, an alter with elk skulls hung with censer-style cups.

Tower 2

this works bottom-up, matching the direction the players are headed

Basement level:

Another censer altar, this one of all bird skulls. Mostly small bird like starlings and buntings. In the top of the pyramid there are three larger bird skulls: raven, hawk, albatross. These three have their desiccated wings setup behind them holding the censers.

Another door to the interlocked swirls (same destination, gotta expand on the lonely shore).

Part way up the next door is the crescent moon over circle that surrounds a squiggly dot.

3/4 of the way up is the maze door.

At the top is a single door, the crescent over boots.

The Lonely Shore

A seemingly endless expanse of cold rocky shoreline, awash with the bones of ancient behemoths. A profound sense of lifelessness abounds. Out into the surf light shows nothing but the glimmer of the peaks of waves. Inland the rock becomes craggy and hard to navigate. The sky is empty, bereft of any light. The whole world is lit as if by ambiance. There are no shadows, just a soft failure of darkness. The air is chill but not bitter, and a soft but continuous breeze flies down from the inland side.

You emerge from a great driftwood log, smoothed over by the waves but still displaying a deep charred black scar with an almost glassy texture. The diameter is immense, dwarfing any tree you have seen besides the one you were just on.

Other ideas

Crazy hill folk in rabbit graveyard (in Gaelic). “Everything’s backward here. Yonder brook flows up hill, farm animals out at night, things seem ta grow young”. The graveyard itself is a low walled square paddock, guarded at night, surrounded by scarecrows using antlers.

… and his footfalls are the echoing thunder upon the hills and in his quiver lay bolts of light. The dark storm clouds gather as vultures. Amen.

Another

Ware the unblooded brow who grasps the weeds that are not weeds yet grow from the darkness of the midnight [… cut off here …]

Start ending the dreams with the snap-click sound of a lighter closing. Build this up so that when fetching agents use the snap as a paralysis it all “clicks”.

The thing inside Nadja

Sent to Dono already:

One thing: there isn’t enough personality there to fully assert itself, but it may “push” you towards various things, and might be slowly “collecting” itself now that it is complete.

New workshopping thing:

It begins as a needling at the base of your skull; a shrill ringing that you cannot shake; a drawn out tinnitus episode. Your new constant companion, on the edges of everything you hear. It is a distraction, but - after time - a comfort. You find yourself unconsciously retreating into the sound, away from the world.

Sometimes you think you catch hints of words in the ringing, but they slip away when you focus on them. Can a sound be shy?

Where do I want this to go?

• Keep him from going too crazy.
• Hook for “saving” her by “extracting” it

What are some names for it?

• Ormuelon
• Callisha
• Evron
• Saenid

Other ancient names:

• The Herald
• Jovian

The Faceless Man

In your dreams he is a gaunt figure; his clothes hang off his frame in a fashion that you find vaguely discomforting. It’s not that they are oversized—proportionally they’re the correct fit, but un-tailored. The man’s choice of clothing is somewhat striking as well: everything military-adjacent but completely lacking insignia. Heavily treaded boots, thick canvas pants, a clean white shirt under an open leather work jacket.

He moves with an economy of motion that would make him easy to ignore, under other circumstances. When still he has no apparent ticks, no jiffy feet, no swaying leg-to-leg. He is simply there, static and unyielding.

Standing close, you can catch a faint whiff of cigarettes. It has no linger; more a memory of fire and charred tobacco than the smoke itself. You almost doubt you smelled it at all.

I need a name for him…

Known stuff:

• Turkish/Crown origin
• Married to his job
• High ranking Crown Intelligence
• Strong use of hypnotism

Possible names:

• Matas
• Jurgis

Ballyswan

Abbotston Station: the train station they arrive in. High streets.

Boatswain and brews (“bow-sun and brews”): low street inn run bar Sara O’Nolan.

The Abbey: Blind Bishops Suzanna, Talbot, and Fawsen.

Port destinations

Cheap

• Albioch (mainland - London equiv)
• Dannofer (Bristol equiv)
• (Dublin equiv)
• Cobh
• Isle of Mann
• (Glasgov equiv)

Pricey

• Pont Du Mer via Dannofer (north west coast of france)
• Porto Ibenza De Barille via either Dannofer or Cobh (north coast of spain)

They decided on Porto Ibenza de Barille via Dannofer on the good ship Lion of Duluve.

Persuitors. Suitors who pursuit.

Dannofer

Group took the Lion of Duluve to the Dannofer ports. Lodging booked at The Tattered Vine run by Mr Howard.

Nadja bought a bunch of ore and crystals from a curio shop.

They’ve arrived on a Monday, and stayed one evening. It is currently Tuesday, and the end-of-summer high holiday is Wednesday. They have rooms for one week.

CC is performing Thursday mid-day for the Blind Bishop’s patrol of this part of town.

“South St George Street” is really the lowest “street” in the Worm, which occupies what was once the St George canal.

Things that happen on Tuesday:

• Nadja and CC go buy rocks at a curio shop in the northern end of the mercantile quarter
• Kostis works on his resin, catches Eternity walking in it and discovers the poppies growing behind the Tattered Vine.
• CC visits St Martin’s square in front of the High Abbey of Dannofer, learns that it opens for an evening service later and that “Susannah” will be getting appointeded to the role of Justice.
• CC heads for The Worm, and meets Devon and Barney, some general criminal types. She befriends Devon by being nice to him and encouraging his singing. She says she’s looking for a doctor or something like that and they mention “three of flowers” would be the person to talk to, but Barney isn’t allowed around there any more. Devon says he’ll take her for a song so CC sings him a lullaby.
• Meanwhile, Kostis decides to look for the crown safe house at “121 South St George, round the back, ask for a reading”. This also leads him into The Worm, where he spies CC wandering around. He doesn’t make himself known and follows her, suspicious that she might be going to the crown safe house too. She passes it and speaks to a guard outside of some criminal stronghold. They meet one of the higher ranking guard people, “Petal”, who has a tattoo of a three-branched thistle on her spine/back of head.
• Nadja has went out since she’s unsupervised and sneaks into the lower levels of the High Abbey through the motor pool. She’s noticed, but causes a commotion and finds her way into the forge where she sees a giant plasma torch firing into a crucible using a lightning channel to assist. Its the first Nadja has seen lightning “harnessed” like that.

The halucinogen sequence…

So… they all take a strong drug together (Temerak root) to help them explore their conditioning. Three of flowers does a tarot-like reading as the tea steeps.

The cards tell me this is why you are here bard. To walk the path, to hold loud the keening note. You are about to navigate a world more of story and thought than of stone and fire. All journeys need a guide. Hold in your mind your goal and listen for your song.

Themes:

• The caravan, slaughtered, under the “loose ends” banner. Shades of guilt as enemies.
• A steady rain of blooded music cards flitting down from above.
• No stars, forever no stars.
• Obsidian columns in the distance.
• The fog, but press through-able.
• A light cord, flaring in time with the metronome, guiding deeper.

The hypnotic phrases to work through and remove:

• Falling into a starless sky (all but Kostis)
• The moon’s cold regard (Kostis)
• Measure of man
• Calmly consider

Hopes and fears

Kostis

Fears: becoming his father (mildly successful military man, never satisfied, manipulative etc.) Not having control of his life/fate. Bears?

No apsirations in life. Subconscious want to return to the tree to study it. Currently being driven by the anger of being manipulated.

idea:

You come to sudden realization: this is all a fucking hallucination. You’re probably puking your guts up right now. There’s no spider, you haven’t been cured of anything. You fucking idiot. He knows you’re coming too. That safe house operator, he realized who you are. You revealed yourself and now the faceless man knows you’re on some side operation. Just tell him everything. Confess, and maybe you can save your career. You’ve lost peers to court marshals over less.

Nadja

Fear one: Gunnr finding a way to completely take over Fear Two: Nadja find a way to shut Gunnr out completely Fear 3: learning that “grannie” orchestrated being outcast as a child

Hope 1: being able to stop being scared Hope 2: (Gunnr) become strong enough to burn t the foreign influence out of Nadja ma brain Hope 3: find a way to be happy and safe and away from violence.

As you turn to leave you notice a small crack in the obsidian wall that you hadn’t noticed before… it’s low, you’d have to crawl through. On the other side you find, an alter of bones, and… feathers? They’re matted down with years of ash and blood, but at the edges a few tufts of pure white stick out. As you step closer you notice that the mound of feathers and bone is pulsing slightly—breathing slightly. You see it there now, a curled figure sleeping on top.

CC

3 fears - 1. that my musical instrument is actually an abomination. 2. That my grandmama will have passed away when I return from my travels 3. I will never want to settle down with the Caravan and start a family.

3 hopes - 1. that I will compose the next great gypsy song 2. To see the eastern reaches of the world 3. That eternity will never die.

Heading to the source

Kostis makes healing injections: 2 ties and 1 win. All tend towards more healing + tumors over less healing.

Beyza.

Open questions

• What is up with eternity and the instrument?
• What other ancient outposts are on the tree?