The Yule Log RPG

[littlemanpoet]

Wenda had heard Mori's and Stamo's words, and had overheard those of Goody. It seemed there were more allies than she could have hoped; if only it would make a difference.

Wenda was scratching White Paw's ruff when it happened. Pada and Muna were calling to her, pulling at her. She did not know whether she was safer in this skin or the other. It did not matter, the pull was upon her. Sometimes she did not feel it for months; sometimes the next pull was only hours after the last. Fear added to its urgency. I must get outside. She marked that she was holding onto White Paw's fur, and he was becoming ill at ease and started to back away. She let go and stood abruptly.

Mara looked up, concerned. "Are you well?"

"I must see to the needs of my reindeer," she murmured, and rushed out of the room, trying not to stagger. She went to Pada and Muna. They were pulling her to loose them. She undid their harness with feverish hands.

Mara had followed her; but by the time she had come into the waning sunlight, she saw three reindeer running away from the sledge and out of the grounds of the Green Man.

[piosenniel]

Almost hidden in the shadows of a tall balsam’s boughs perched a single raven. A look out for his companions below as they cawed in excitement and flapped their wings and pecked one another in order to get closer in to their meal. Wren glided in silently to a nearby tree, his eyes searching the small clearing.

The snow was bloodied and thrown up in heaps here and there as if a great struggle had gone on. Now on its dark red little hills and valleys the footprints of predators crossed and recrossed the clearing. All gone now save for the dark dusting of ravens that feasted on the remains.

It was a deer, a large buck to be exact that lay on the icy bed. Wren shuddered wondering what animal had brought it down. The antlered head was torn off, and rested where it was thrown against the base of a thick fir. Eyes open, it stared at its own remains as the birds stripped ribbons of its flesh from the carcass. The great buck’s back was broken, its limbs twisted at odd angles . . . as if something had toyed with the deer. It seemed not a clean kill - not one meant for food. Wren’s mind took in with horror that this might have been the handiwork of the dark creature.

With a loud warning call, the sentinel raven glided across the clearing, calling the others away. They answered his call and took wing, leaving the carcass to its snowy bed. There had been a noise, as of some beasts crashing through the trees a ways away. Wren flitted from tree to tree, keeping in the shadows, as he neared the source.

Three reindeer plunged in under the branches of the outlying trees. What are they doing here, the little bird wondered, cocking his head at them as they passed beneath his perch. Curiosity drove him after them.

[Nerindel]

“Oh Wenda!” Mara sighed shaking her head sympathetically, her brow creased with worried concern as she watched the fleeing forms of the reindeer race from the grounds towards the dark silhouette of the forest against the dying light.

She hesitated then glancing back at the door which she had just come through, where the others sat over supper contemplating and planning how to survive this thing when it came and come it would! Deep down inside she believed this to be inevitable. She knew that she should return and tell the others of Wenda’s flight, but Master Stamo’s words still echoed in her mind… 'I’ll say yes, the creature will grow more powerful, more dangerous. I think it would be best if we do not wait for events to give proof to that. Better to kill the snake before it grows another rattle and bites,' by the time she went back inside relied what she had seen and a search party arranged it might already by to late.

Besides she had promised herself that she would stay close to the young woman, partially out of guilt for having taken the woman’s recount on their first meeting so lightly to heart, but mostly because she had formed a strange affinity with the young changeling, both hunters of sorts and both embodied with gifts that they would probably never fully understand and that would ever be coveted by the greedy and the wicked.


Her mind finally made up she turned from the inn and hurried out in to the fading light, following the deep tracks left by the reindeer in the soft snow. Into the forest she followed, careful to avoid any of the halfling‘s traps. Fresh deer tracks and a broken twig here and some ripped up foliage there marked easily the reindeers passage and if the snow held off she would have no trouble tracking them, it was the catching up to them that was her main concern, although raised by elves she had not their pace and if Wenda and her deer did not rest, there was little hope that she would catch up at all.

Hope is with us!

Again it was Stamo’s words that echoed in her mind and although she could not yet see what hope he spoke off she held to what little she had and hurried on hoping beyond hope that she could find Wenda and convince her to return to the relative safety of the inn.. at least until an adequate plan could be devised to see off this evil.

[piosenniel]

As wren rested for a moment on the tip of a snowy fir, yet a second noise caught his ear, as if something were following behind the reindeer he pursued. The little bird pushed in among the shadows of the needles and stayed very still. ‘What if it’s that creature?’ he thought to himself. ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he muttered, shivering a bit. He was alarmed to find that his slight movement had shaken a bit of the snow down from his perch.

He watched with a horrified fascination as the falling flakes trailed down toward the floor of the forest, some of them falling on a cloaked figure below. He held his breath and snapped his eyes shut just in case the fading day’s light would give him away somehow.

Then a certain realization poked at his thoughts and he opened his eyes wide as the figure passed on beneath him. It was a rather smallish figure. Not that the wightish one need be large, but this one seemed fairly unimposing. And it didn’t glide along above the ground as he supposed a wight might do. No . . . there were definitely bootmarks in the snow.

Wren flitted on to another perch in front of the new figure. A low branch, hardly one wing’s span above the pursuer. He peered hard at him . . . No! Her! It was one of the women from the Inn.

His little bird’s brain began to put two and two together . . . or at least one and three. One of those reindeer was Wenda! And this other had gone after her. Now what was that name he’d heard the other two-leggeds call her? ‘Think, you addlepate!’ he chided himself. ‘Mara!’ That was it.

He was now in a quandary. What would a hero do? Should he follow them further to see their destination? What? What? In the end, he decided his little version of hero would need assistance. He knew the general direction the two women and the reindeer were heading. And he would be of no use if they were to be attacked. One cold look from the creature’s eyes, he imagined, and his stiff little body would be found feet up on the snowy ground. In the end he opted to fly back with all the speed he could muster to find Owl.

‘Owl! Owl!’ he cried, a bit surprised to find the old bird nearly to the forest himself. ‘You must turn round and tell the tall men I’ve seen Wenda and two of her deer crashing through the forest and behind them is the other woman following after them it seems . . . Mara.’ He gave Owl a bird’s eye description of where the women were and what direction they were headed. He stomped about on the branch he’d perched on waiting for the other bird to answer, all the while thinking that while Owl sped back with the news, he’d best be back on his way to keep an eye on those females . . .

[Child of the 7th Age]

Owl fumed and fussed, dismayed that he hadn't been careful enough to keep his presence hidden from Wren. Worse than that, the small bird now seemed determined to follow the reindeer and the woman! For one instant, Owl considered ordering Wren to go back to the Inn, while he continued chsing after the fleeing party. But one look at Wren's perky eye and cheeky demeanor told him this wasn't likely to work. Determined to prove his worth, Wren would sneak back, and no one at the Inn would have the slightest idea what was going on. Owl decided to give in, but not without a getting in a shot or two.

"I don't like this. I don't like it at all, Wren. You shouldn't have left without my permission. And now you've put us in a very hard place. Yes, indeed. Someone should fly back to the Inn.....someone responsible who is articulate and aware of the gravity of the situation, someone who can impress upon the two-leggeds how they must help. Presumably that someone is me. You must follow these silly creatures, and not let them out of your sight. But you had best stay well hidden. No one is to see you, and you are absolutely not to speak with anyone, or it will go very poorly with you when you return to the Inn. Do you understand me?"

Owl drew himself up to his full height and spread out his wings, taking off in the direction of the Inn. It was not long before he saw the outline of the Green Man Free House. Coming into the courtyard, he alit on the window ledge and again banged strenuously on the pane, calling out loudly. "Mori, Stamo, where are you two? We are in grave danger. We need your help. Wren is out in the woods, taking on the whole world by himself. He's managed to find Mara and the deer fleeing northwards some distance from here."

Owl quick reported on where the women were and exactly what direction they were going. "Please come quickly," he pleaded. "You can follow me. Just give me one minute to arouse that rascal Tevildo. I promised to tell him if I found anthing unusual. I don't suppose I could persuade one of you to let him ride on your shoulder? I know that puffball doesn't like to admit this, but he's really a bit small and out of shape. Still, he seems to know a lot about things that go about in the shadows." Owl looked over at the two-leggeds, waiting for a reply.

[littlemanpoet]

Pada, Muna, and Wenda raced deeper into the darkening forest. Wenda smelled fear. She felt the snow and ground beneath her quick hooves. Away, away! Away from the fear! But where were they runnning to? It did not matter. Pada and Muna did not know what Wenda had heard in the stable for two-leggeds. All they knew was that there had been word among them of someone strong, someone akin to ground and snow and tree and thistle, home in the wind and cold. Pada and Muna asked her, What did they say of this someone? A strange and hidden one, this someone, sometimes strong, sometimes not. In winter? In the fear of no-more-running? Strong against fear, weak in winter when all the land is sleeping.

They raced through the ever thickening woods, the dark fir trees closing in around them. But reindeer may pass through the narrowest of ways; all they need is the width of their horns, less if they had no horns. Fleet and silent they moved, their hooves the only sound, passing through thick groves, through quick cold creeks, around ice covered ponds, wending north and up, ever up. The land climbed slowly here, slowly to the feet of the northern mountains.

They paused at twilight. The wind had died. Surely they were far from the fear. The branches of the firs moved around them. They moved again, trotting now, careful of the branches that moved in no wind. They stopped. Eyes. Before and above them. Two of them. Deep green. A long face went with the eyes, and a longer body, with feet that hugged the ground like evergreen roots. It looked at them for a long while. Transfixed, they stared back.

"What have we here?" asked the deep, woody voice. "Three reindeer far from the plains?" It looked closely and carefully at each one of them. "But one of you is more." Its eyes rested on Wenda.

Wenda could not speak to it as a reindeer. She gave off her fur and changed. She was so cold! Now she wished she had not given so to the panic of hte moment, and brought at least a thread of clothing with! She shivered in the cold snow, and folded her arms around her.

"Hmm!" it said. "Like one of our wives."

"Are-" her teeth chattered "-you .... the .... Green Man?"

His eyes seemed to receded into depths of thought. "I do not know of what you speak. What do you fear?"

[Envinyatar]

Stamo appeared to cast his eyes upwards at Owl’s words. Was he sending off some quick plea for strength and assistance? It was hard to tell. But from the quick, sharp look Mori gave him it seemed the tall man’s thoughts might be of a different tenor.

‘Right, then,’ he murmured, fastening his cloak about his shoulders once he’d stood up. He handed Mori’s cloak over, and stood holding their staffs as his companion buckled the clasp and pulled it round about him to his satisfaction.

‘We’ll follow after you, Master Owl,’ Mori said, taking his own staff in hand. Owl perched on his shoulder as they went out into the kitchen’s courtyard. Tevildo was there, keeping watch from his perch on the stone wall.

‘You take the cat!’ Stamo whispered low to Mori. He placed Owl on his own shoulder for the moment and urged his friend forward toward the feline. ‘Makes me sneeze,’ Stamo confided in a hushed tone to Owl. ‘Something fierce! Wouldn’t want that now, would we as we’re trying to go quietly after the two ladies . . . and the creature?’