Archibald looks around at their new surroundings, checking what's got the pursuers spooked

Aluve removes the arrow from his abdomen. "Arghh! If anyone could lend a hand it would be much appreciated....or maybe a bit of a rest would do the trick."

Branch breathes a sigh of relief when she sees the other ship turn away from them.  Seeing Aluve on the ground, she goes to him "I'm sorry, I do not have a way to heal you" she looks towards the rest of the group, "do any of you?" 

She then heads back over the prisoner woman, "Thank you for the advise to get away from them.  Please, can you tell me more about where we are heading?  Or anything else about this strange land?  We arrived here out of nowhere very unceremoniously last night."

Bramble stows his bow and rushes to Aluve's aid. "Keep pressure on the wound, Aluve... Han, you, ah, said you could heal, right? I think now would be the time! Is anyone else wounded?"

"Ok I will keep the pressure up...If you could help Han...that would be great......"

Han happy to have gotten away jumps to aid the worst wounded first! “I’ve got you!“ Han quickly plays a light upbeat toon as a faint light forms around Aluve. 

Healing Word: 4

For the rest of the party who are not a bad he plays a calming song slow and methodical. 

"Thankyou my friend"

Aluve stands once more. "Ahhhh, that's better"

Aluve looks out at their new surroundings. He takes in the sights in this brief break from the action. He contemplates, thinking about the situation he and his fellow party have fallen into.

"A nice song. It brings, ah, solace in a dark, dreary and mysterious place like this. Thank you, Han."

“Ya things have kinda gone to hell in a hand basket but a little music can alway lighten the mood.” 

Jack, Cooke, and the other remaining crewmate gather around their fallen comrade. Their grief is palpable in the air as, in quiet tones, they solemnly discuss about what to do with the body. How to properly honour this man, who's name had gone unlearned. Pulled away by their duties, they separate before too long has passed. Cooke takes the body to be placed out of sight, until they can decide what to do with him.

Music drifts over the deck, accompanied by the steady sounds of the river, and the sails at work. Having left the small valley they were in, the wind has shifted more favourably. Scrutinizing the woodline and the river, Archibald comes to the odd conclusion that while this stretch of the river is as dark and dreary as all the others they've passed there's nothing striking about it, nothing out of the ordinary. He wouldn't want to explore the woods here, but that could've been said about almost any part of the seemingly all-encompassing forest they've since passed.

===================================================================================================================

"Such is the way of us all," speaks the man they'd saved. Turning again to the woman he speaks in the language of power, "Saa vithrinn er bolvathur. Thu vili drapu oss." Despite the fact that little can be discerned of the meaning behind his speech--when it does not amount to a spell--the venom in his words is not beyond notice. Nor is it so for the woman, who's attention snaps to the man. Despite what must have been a scathing insult, she keeps a cool head and replies in a level tone. "Thiin huginn's bolvathur."

Turning again to Branch she continues in the common tongue, "All who've yet come to this land did so as you did. If not themselves, then their parents, or so on. All can trace their lineage to that fog. All know the story. About this land? It is like any other, wilder than what you may be used to, but not cursed." She pronounces the last word strongly, giving a pointed look to her companion who scoffs indignantly.

"It is not the land, but this forest. Especially near The City."

She waves his objections away, continuing, "That is our destination. Or rather, a town beyond it, where others such as yourself have built new homes to survive this land. But, between them and us--"

"The dead city, Stayar-dauthr. An accursed ruin, few ever come back from that place."

"I would not take them into the city!" She snaps at the man, tiring of his incessant interruptions and fearmongering, "The river travels through its outskirts, we will be safe so long as we stay on the waters."

"We would be better off beaching the ship and walking back. We could then avoi--"

"And sacrifice all this?! No, not for your fool-led fears."

Han over hearing the conversation pipes up “Wait if everyone who comes here comes through that fog how to we get back? Also if I may interject once more I’d air on the side of caution if we need to beach and go out of the way to avoid a city of so called no return I’m all for that! This fog could be our ticket back what do you know of it? 

"I'm not sure how the city could be worse than the horrors in the forest, or the pirates on the water. Everything here seems... Pretty horrible." Archibald laments.

Chatcho mentally reaches out to those engaged in the conversation.

I don't think we should beach our ship, especially with opportunistic thri/nomads roaming the sed/water. Though I scarcely enjoy the idea of skirting so close to the Kano/Hell/City of the Dead, losing our ship may cost us our sole means of egress from this land.  

"I think I agree with Chatcho. We should keep the ship close, at the moment it is our only haven from this wretched place." Aluve throws his hood up and looks out suspiciously into the surrounding forest.   

"I cannot say with certainty that you are wrong, my new friend, but to chase the fog is a dangerous path indeed. I would listen to your learned companion. We will travel swiftly through the city and be gone before..." She pauses then, seeming to search for the right words. "Anything unfortunate befalls us." The man eyes her steadily, before opening his mouth as if to complete her original line of thought for her. Before he can, however, something catches his eye and he stops.

As the ship marches ever-forward, the ruin of a tower slowly slides into view off the port side. Stout and once-sturdy, the creation stands at least three stories tall, a strange amalgam of stone and steel. Where damage has removed sections, the inner workings of some large mechanism can be seen. Rusted gears and rotten chords all but spill out of the stonework. The forest that surrounds it was once beaten back, but new growth now threatens to swallow it entirely. Grasses claw at its base while vines strangle the walls. Young trees sprout in the interim, a promise made to once more cast the entire building in the shadow of the forest's menace.

"We pass the gates." The man speaks quietly, in a fearful and reverential tone. He retires from the crowd to kneel at the railing and mutter odd prayers to whatever gods watch these strange lands.

"Roads carved into dirt and rock connected the old world. In the new, we have only the river, but not all that travels it can be called friend." The woman begins to explain, watching the ruin pass with a similar reverence as her companion. "This is the first marker, the entrance to the lands of Stayar-Dauthr. The city fell long ago, none yet live from that time. They built these towers to hoist massive nets of rope or chain to block passage. Few have spent enough time studying their designs to tell you how they function, even less yet live."

Branch watches on in silence as they get closer to the strange, tall tower.  She appreciates the woman and her explanations as they traverse the river.  She can't imagine how her crew would have made it through this area on their own.  "What, what happened to the people that used to live in the city?" 

After a bit her gaze leaves the tower and she looks back at the woman.  "You mention the fog and that everyone here has either somehow come from it or descendants from those that did.  Has anyone ever gone back through it?"

Han grows silent and nervous as they pass the first marker curious about the people who lived here he waits for an answer to Branches question and keep his eye peeled on the forest/fortress around the while trying to look closer at the mechanics of the towers just in case they were to run in to a blockage. “Guess we’re going through“ he says softly. 

Perception: 9 

Investigation: 3

All this ominous talk made Bramble's stomach squirm. "We pass through fog and arrive in a place with horrifying creatures and cities of the dead? Who's to say we aren't in hell already? If there's a way to go back, though, I'd like to know it immediately."

The dilapidated tower of Stayar'Dauthr commands Chatcho's attention. He takes out a piece of parchment and begins recording what he can.

Fascinating.

From what Hanson can glean peering in from the outside as they drift past, the woman has told the truth. The interior mechanism is much too complex to make sense of without possibly hours of study, but he does spot a hole in the wall, from which dangles the tattered, rotten, remains of what used to be a rope. It's entirely feasible that rope once held a net aloft in years past, but that net, if it ever did exist, has long since rotted or been carried away by the river's current. Nothing blocks their course now.

"It's... hard to say." The woman answers Branch's initial question haltingly. "Cursed or not, it remains a dangerous place to linger. As you might surmise, whoever these people were had a much stronger grasp on the natural arts than we do. But few are brave enough to venture even into the forest surrounding it. All this to say, few have gone looking for the answers you seek, and if they have found anything, they did not share it, or did not return." The woman pauses for a moment, arranging the thoughts in her head, before speaking more.

"What can be said is that there was a battle. Who they fought, or why?" She shrugs, but then gestures to the ruin which now slowly slides back into the concealment of the forest as the river takes them away. "That ruin was not made so by the forest. Something rent the stone from its wall, and tore through its net. Whoever they were, they were powerful. The people who built Stayar'Dauthr were powerful in their own right, more so than you or I, and yet..." She gestures again to the ruin, "nothing beside remains. Cracked stones and rusted metals, and the bones of the dead. You can see why the more feeble-minded think it cursed."

A moment of silence passes after her answer, before Branch and Bramble prod her again for more information. She looks between the two of them with kind, sympathetic eyes before shaking her head simply. "If anyone has found a way home, they have left already, and forsaken us. But..." She looks to Chatcho, "You are of the learned arts, usven chetowa, you should recognize that this is no mere act of chance. The unexplainable happens all around us, but in small minute ways. For such a force to come into this world? It would be unheard of, not unless someone made it so. The gods, or a particularly powerful practitioner? I cannot say, but whoever they are, I doubt they made it work so simply. For whatever reason, they want us here. It will take more than going back through the doorway to make it home again, I think."

A minute passes. A minute of silence save for the wind and the waves, and then stone. Around the newest bend in the ever-serpentine river, a stone wall, easily thirty or more feet high, and expanding in either direction until the forest swallows it. Like before, with the tower, there remains evidence of it once being clear-cut for a distance away from the wall, but new growth steadily regains that land without the maintenance that must've once been performed. Again there is a tower here, in a better if still ruinous state. Built into the wall, it still shows the signs of its disuse, but seems to have suffered no damage in whatever combat might've taken place. This time a chain stretches down to the waterline from the port-hole, linking with others and forming a steel net. It is in the lowered position, inviting them into the fabled city of the dead.