VEYL: First Campaign Thread

Rory has seen such things but only a few times, his face contorts when he sees the condition of the Firbolg woman called Mirana.  He hears Toil's words, the offer for them to camp, and he darts a sharp look at the tiefling.  His fists squeeze imperceptibly tighter.  He watches the assessment and diverts his eyes from the Hollowed, knowing what must come next.  "Sometimes, death is a kindness, a release.  A transformation of sorts.  I'm all about healin someone if we are able... but this is too far gone."  He speaks the words softly and to himself.  

When Harper starts to sing his song, he gives a small smile, for just a moment, but when Cork speaks up, Rory agrees and he says so.  "I agree with that.  Not safe to prolong it.  Doesn't help her, or anyone else.  We can help if you wish it.  I don't think you'll like the direction of this, if you let things linger..."  Rory puts his hand on his sword hilt, standing there at attention, waiting to see what will happen.  

The roadkeeper frowns when Cork says the obvious part out loud, but says nothing in response.  Instead, he looks back at Mirana, and then motions with his chin toward the fire, indicating to the Orc to help his sick charge sit.  When the Orc sets to motion, the roadkeeper steps away from the party, making a summoning motion with his hand as he beckons his traveling companions to circle up around him.  There's a few minutes of hushed whispers, nodding heads, shaking heads, and hand gestures, before finally the silver-light toting pilgrims step away and the roadkeeper returns to the party to discuss next steps.  

"We do not wish to stay."  He said calmly, his voice low and morose.  "My comrades have no desire for the sight of blood, especially not blood that belongs to someone who was one of our own not so long ago."  

He paused for a moment, reaching up to scratch his nose and rub at his eyes.  

"I do not wish to be rude, or to seem eager to leave Mirana to her fate..."  He said finally, stepping back toward the rest of his group.  "But the silver candles must march on while their is still darkness to show their brilliance.  "Would you have anything of us before we go?  Would you like us to carry your names?"  

As he says this, one of the pilgrims steps forward, handing him two rolled parchments.  He offers one to the party.  

The Orc sitting next to Mirana looks distressed as he watches this exchange.  He hasn't left her side the entire time. 

"you are not being rude, that is not your intent, nor is it ours." Toil begins. Turning within the group of pilgrims so that his back is to the dying woman, so that he is not smiling directly at her frailty and her situation any longer, he continues "...but if you have resigned yourselves to this duty, to her, until the point comes that she is not longer in control and may devour and turn the rest of you, then what point would there be to carry our names?

Perhaps I have misunderstood what your plan for her is, what it is that you truly offer to us now...

The things we have offered you, they range from simple comfort to a release of burden at the cost of discomfort. You are of course free to reject all offers, we cannot help in a way that undoes what is done, for that I am sorry.

But is there not one or two of you who would leave this group, to save yourselves from from demise and continue your duty? Sometimes splitting the group ensures the survival of the mission does it not?"

The seemed rejection of the roadkeeper's offer makes him pause for a moment, his brow furrowing as he examines Toil with deep thought.  

"I...to carry a name is to ensure it is not forgotten.  Just as we carry Mirana's name forward, so too would we carry yours.  It is a practice of remembrance, remembering the help you gave us.  Endurance, of keeping your actions alive as a reminder to others of is sometimes required.  Of becoming, because change is the only thing you can be certain of, and this changes out group, and yours, and Mirana's legacy so that now she will have dignity instead of disgrace in the end.  And release, for Mirana's plight, for our pain in watching what has become of her, and your initial uncertainty of how to help."  

He pauses, shifting a little as he examines the group, and then his eyes land on Mirana.

"To carry a name is a time honored tradition.  I would uphold this tradition as I always have."  

Aubrik is only vaguely aware of the conversation drifting around the camp as he focuses on the pouches in his lap. He selects a few choice leaves and roots, laying them out alongside the tools from his Herbalism Kit. Whispering low words of magic, he weaves a few small, deliberate gestures over the components as he considers them.

He nods to himself, looking up just as the orc finishes helping Mirana across to the warmth of the fire. Still letting the others handle the logistics with the roadkeeper, he wanders over and kneels heavily beside the orc and the sick firbolg.

"The bond you share is special. I see that", he says to the orc in their native tongue, his voice low, private, and devoid of judgment as he motions to the firbolg. "I do not know her ways, but we both know the ways of our people. We know what needs to be done".

Switching back to the common tongue, his gaze softens as he looks down at the sick woman. "I can help Mirana. There will be no pain. No more suffering".

With steady, practiced hands, he places the herbs into his mortar. The rhythmic grind of the pestle fills the quiet space between them as he crushes the mixture, adding a few precise drops of water until it forms a smooth, dark draught.

He sets the mortar down safely within the orc's reach. "When you are ready, you will simply need to feed this to her".

Toil meets the road keeper's gaze, and holds it unwaveringly even as the man looks away and around for his support and his meaning, "still I refuse your offer, I would not burden another with the task of remembering my name, I would not hold another's name for the same reason. You know nothing of any of us but this short interaction, do you offer this service to remember a person's life and legacy based on a five minute bypass of an encampment? You have peaked my interest though... are there people you remember who you would rather not? Is everyone deserving of remembrance? If you remember the people that you have encountered and then the folk that come after you remember you plus all of those people, when does it stop? Five hundred years from now will your order still remember you and the hundreds of thousands of people that they have collected over lifetimes of passing on more and more names?" Toil's smile doesn't fade but his voice becomes insistent, pleading, that even a single one of them would see sense, he breaks his gaze from the road keeper and looks about the pilgrims, he looks out over the candle flames and sees nothing but people needing to be saved. "You wade toward inevitable failure like your lives depend upon it, but what are you using your lives for? To be remembered for doing nothing but remembering others? You dedicate your existence to the fear of being forgotten and in the process..." He pauses, his voice becoming quiet and saddened as his smile takes on a more nervous curve. "...you'll have done nothing memorable." He catches the eye of a dragonborn woman toward the rear of the group clutching tightly to her silver candle, lingering in her before turning back to the road keeper and addressing him once more

"I'm sorry, I am... But the answer, for me personally, is that I'd like nothing more than to be free to return to the soil when my time comes, without being remembered by those who never truly knew me."

After his outburst he takes himself off to the side of the group of pilgrims and watches their reactions, positioning himself not too far away from the dragonborn woman. 

Harper's hands went still on the drum. It wasn't the talk of mercy that stopped him, or the pilgrims leaving, or any of it... it was Toil. Return to the soil without being remembered. The words sat wrong in his chest in a way he couldn't let pass. He set the drum aside and looked across the fire to the Roadmaster.

"I'll have my name carried," he said to the roadkeeper first, quietly. "If you'll take it." He gave it plainly, no ceremony, just the offering of a thing he had spent a long time giving to others and never once asked for himself. Then he turned back to Toil.

"You're wrong," he said not unkind, not loud, just certain in a way he rarely was about anything. "Not about wanting to rest. Everyone wants to rest. But you're calling forgetting a freedom, and it isn't. It's the thing that's breaking the world." He gestured vaguely at the dark beyond the fire, at the road, at everything. "You've felt it. The places that feel wrong. The roads that don't go where they should. The silence settling in where there used to be something. That's not peace, that's forgetting, spreading. The world is being unmade one name at a time and you're calling it returning to the soil."

He paused before going on, quieter now. "A thing that is remembered can be mourned. A thing that is forgotten was never there at all. One of those is rest. The other is erasure... you're confusing them." He picked the drum back up and let it sit a moment. "But I'll carry your name too, whether you want me to or not. That's rather the point of me."