Scene VIII: The Neverending Forest
Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2025 8:22 pm
The Bean Bunch gather about the collapsed cairn and begin pulling apart bits of fallen stone, looking for anything of interest within the rubble.
Beneath the stones they uncover scattered silver coins — sixteen in all — and a stone tablet, presumably once placed upon the cairn. The tablet has engraved upon it the following words:
I know a shore, a frozen waste, I travel it by boot and karve.
But when the fever takes my wit, then up is down and close afar.
The harsh wind lashes yet again, to drive me through this numbing pain.
My friends, I suckled on their bones and burned their hair to warm my toes.
Tomorrow, I will cut them off before another waste I’ll cross.
A soft, warm whisper in the wind: Cut out your eyes and flay your skin.”
Help or hurt, it matters not.
To save yourself, tend to the lot!
To the south, to the west and to the east of your position, there is nothing but an impenetrable wall of frost-encrusted pines, surrounding the ruined cairn in a semi-circle.
To the north-west, staring through the falling snow, you think you can make out a silhouette of some sort in the distance; a ghostly figure?
To the north-east, you believe you can see a path leading between two walls of trees, deeper into the woods.
All of you feel the biting cold gnawing on your flesh; you should get moving!
Beneath the stones they uncover scattered silver coins — sixteen in all — and a stone tablet, presumably once placed upon the cairn. The tablet has engraved upon it the following words:
I know a shore, a frozen waste, I travel it by boot and karve.
But when the fever takes my wit, then up is down and close afar.
The harsh wind lashes yet again, to drive me through this numbing pain.
My friends, I suckled on their bones and burned their hair to warm my toes.
Tomorrow, I will cut them off before another waste I’ll cross.
A soft, warm whisper in the wind: Cut out your eyes and flay your skin.”
Help or hurt, it matters not.
To save yourself, tend to the lot!
To the south, to the west and to the east of your position, there is nothing but an impenetrable wall of frost-encrusted pines, surrounding the ruined cairn in a semi-circle.
To the north-west, staring through the falling snow, you think you can make out a silhouette of some sort in the distance; a ghostly figure?
To the north-east, you believe you can see a path leading between two walls of trees, deeper into the woods.
All of you feel the biting cold gnawing on your flesh; you should get moving!