Session 2 - Five Naps and a Funeral
General Summary
After returning from the hunt, Kaleb went to check on the horse that was put to sleep, Ginger. While there, he managed to insult the horse’s rider and Winifred’s brother, Kaspar. At dinner, Kaspar managed to have Kaleb (and by extension, Manfred), ejected from the dinner, and sent to sleep that night in the guard’s quarters. There, the pair met Edmon, a gentle giant of a guard. The guards' quarters also function as a kennel, and Kaleb befriended the dogs Rufus and Malachi there. After dinner, Winifred told Kaspar that if she accepted Manfred and Kaleb as entertainment at her wedding, she would go along with the wedding without complaint. Kaspar agreed. Overnight, Winifred struggled again with her wild magic.
The next day was the day of the funeral for Amala, Sigisar's mother. Kaleb was convinced to stay and entertain himself with his new dog friends. Manfred assisted with the service as an altar boy, as was his intention in coming to the castle. At the end of the ceremony, Sigisar and his brothers carried his mother’s coffin down to the crypts. After the service was completed, Sigisar convened with Father Nepomuk - the Margrave's confessor, who advised Sigisar to stick to the path of being a holy, unwed knight, as the power politics of the families were “the ways of the world”, or something similar. Manfred returned the ritual vestments and also spoke to the priest, who confused him for another traveling scholar that had apparently been summoned to the castle. Winifred next asked for Manfred’s help in escaping the castle, and Manfred began trying to think of ways to do this for both Winifred's and Sigisar’s sake.
Kaleb took a troupe of dogs with him to see Ginger the horse. There he met a stablehand who tried to convince him to believe in God and tested to see if he was a demon. Kaleb mentioned he saw someone crushed to death by a falling crucifix one time. He and the dogs were later put to sleep temporarily by Manfred to contain their chaotic energy.
Edmon struggled with laying stones with his father, who was working on the tomb of Amala. He then went to do guard training, where he was knocked unconscious by his trainer, Thilo. Kaleb gathered excrement into a cup, and used it to revive Edmon.
Manfred tried to enlist Sigisar’s help in freeing Winifred clandestinely through a fake kidnapping, but Sigisar insisted he must convince his father to release him from the marriage in an honorable and honest way. Sigisar went to his father, the Margrave, and told him that he once again desired to pledge his life to holy fighting orders and not to marry. In response, the Margrave appealed to the family’s impending financial ruin.
He also revealed to his son that his mother was not buried, but still being kept in a bed. She appears to be in a magical coma, having some human warmth, but not breathing or with a heartbeat. She proved unresponsive to holy healing from Sigisar. Sigisar went and enlisted Manfred to investigate the situation of Amala’s coma, who was sworn to secrecy by the Margrave. Manfred’s magical healing also failed, leaving him to believe that black magic or sorcery was involved. The Margrave then showed both Sigisar and Manfred a mysterious sewing wheel spindle in his treasury, which he believed might be what put Amala into a coma. Manfred said that the cure was most likely with whoever created the curse, and recent arrivals like Winifred and her brother were the most suspicious possible practitioners of black magic or sorcery. Manfred tried to use these facts to erode the Margrave’s certainty in Winifred’s marriage to one of his sons. Sigisar discovered the spindle was fee influenced. Manfred now struggles with how to help Winifred escape, while also not giving up an opportunity to study one of the most phenomenal coma patients of his life.
Narcissa once again convened with the Grandmother, who alluded to her…hunger for a certain type of person. Narcissa then went to the nursery where Melisande - the newborn child of the Margrave was being nursed, but nothing much happened, perhaps in part due to the presence of Winifred. The pair then considered borrowing books from the castle scriptorium, where the senescent Renfrid had fallen asleep with a book in his lap. in the castle’s library of books, and struggled to read. While Narcissa searched for the oldest book in the scriptorium, Winifred deftly removed the book from Renfrid's lap without waking the old man. Its title was the Gesta Birmorum - a tome written in a foreign tongue that neither woman could read. Taking the book, they went off in search of someone who could.
Report Date
10 Feb 2023
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