What Happened Last Session
Terms for the Undead
The company woke beside the pillar of salt at 0506 with a new problem sleeping in their camp: Seeli, dead, undead, and stronger than any of them. The terms settled themselves quickly — she keeps the might death gave her, though her spirit came out of the grave diminished, and her guard is a shadow of what the black knight carried. She must still rest like the living. Her skin, strangely, is still warm.
That night the whole company dreamed the same dream: a green summer that no longer exists anywhere in the realm, birdsong, a warm gust — and a dove that looked not at Seeli but past her, at someone standing behind. She woke certain she had known the face, and unable to remember it.
The Blessed and the Bound
Morning brought singing through the snow at 0507: green-robed acolytes, come from across the northern mountains, rejoicing in winter as if it were spring. Their god’s blessing was real enough to eat — Ro’an proved it by swallowing a strange blue fruit whole, warm as a hearth in the frozen ground. Their scripture was less comforting: “The blessed are bound for tragic end, while jealous eyes make wrath their friend.” The company promised to return for the revelry, and rode on instead.
At 0408 they met three hooded figures who were hunters only by grief — Dristoc, Friswold, and Ulf, vintners of the Silent Glade of Thok, their village trampled by a great boar. That night the screaming started: the boar had found the vintners at their ruined white-walled vineyard. What followed was the company’s finest fight — Ro’an’s vine-javelin hurled from a standing saddle, a mounted chase through the snow, Seeli’s improvised lasso snaring its legs, Robin stopping it cold, and Arthur severing its hamstrings before it died mid-charge. The survivors feasted the knights until dawn and swore to rebuild as New Thok, with four statues in the square. Every knight carried away a piece of tusk — strong as anything in the realm, and useless until a blacksmith can work it. All four knights now stand at Glory 3: Knight-Gallant, worthy of a seat at any court.
A Steed for a Warning
Two nights later the dream came again, and this time it bargained. An elderly rider, Beltor, sat a low wall while horned wolves chased off his steed — no knight, by his own insistence, though he carried a knight’s scars and a knight’s steel. Seeli gave him her dusty steed, the one her ghostly mount had orphaned, and asked for nothing.
What she got anyway was a warning the whole company woke carrying, minds sharp and clear as if a Seer had spoken: “Trust no one. The changeling walks the realm.” And the dusty steed was truly gone — hoofprints in the snow, leading northwest.
The realm wasted no time testing the advice. The very next morning a stranger rode out of the west: Kelwun the Iron Knight, newly arrived, seeking the Seat of Power to offer his service. The company measured him, wondered aloud afterward exactly what the warning had told them to wonder — and pointed him toward Dowell all the same.
Found Standing Over the Body
Then the trap closed. On the trail at 0505 lay a dead bull — unwounded, well-fed, small as a calf, and green. While the company performed their autopsy, two children on the tree line began to scream that the knights had killed it, and fled northeast before anyone could reach them. The company did the only sensible thing: loaded the corpse onto Seeli’s ghostly steed and gave chase. The children vanished into the dark. The body is still riding with them.
At 0504, the accusation arrived armed. Five guards in leaf-clad mail — armor identical, plate for plate, to Ro’an’s own, a question he asked out loud and no one answered — charged on sight: “You are enemies of the realm for killing the bull!” Ro’an’s attempt at parley made it worse, and the fight nearly made it fatal: struck from his saddle, scarred, and left dying in the snow while his company fought over him. Robin caved in a chest with his flail, Seeli’s pale sword opened men through their mail, Arthur crippled the leader — Solas — with a single terrible blow, then rode down the last guard as he fled to raise the alarm. When it ended, one guard was dead, three lay dying, and Solas was screaming in the snow, leg ruined, faith intact.
Looking Ahead
The session ended with Ro’an breathing again and the afternoon not yet over: four prisoners, one of them a fanatic commander who believes absolutely that the company murdered the thing he loved. Someone killed that green bull without leaving a mark, made sure the knights were found standing over it, and has an order of zealots to do the rest — and somewhere northeast, two children are still running with their story. The road north to Hynere still waits, with its hoped-for Seer and blacksmith, and the snow that started all of this remains exactly what it was: everywhere, worsening, and utterly unexplained.
The blessed are bound for tragic end — so mind whose blessings you stand beside, and whose corpses you’re found over.