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A Thing has been called. Sigrund has exiled Juki and his family for being Christians. She says they will not stay in the settlement and spread their weakness and promises of the straw death. She looks visibly saddened by this, but she has to stick to the rules that she, or her father Oskar, has laid down.
In the morning, the old blacksmith leaves with his wife and daughter. Einer, Braggi and Aeowulf also go out with a team of dogs to find lumber for the fence that must be built. They spend the day cutting and prepping the felled tree when they hear a loud splat.
Aeowulf investigates and finds a skraeling in a puddle. He is visibly wounded and babbling. He is clutching three giant white feathers and saying what sounds like OOKPIK. Aeowulf also notices that there are no footprints in the mud, nor trees close enough for him to have fallen out of . He then takes out his broadsword and cuts a smile on the neck of the wretched soul. He says it will save him a painful death, as he had an open, festering wound from snakebite.
Braggi takes the three feathers, but one blows free from a gust of wind, and falls apart into ash. This scares the superstitious giant, Einer, who falls down and prays. Braggi, joins him, as Aeowulf storms off in a huff. For over an hour, the two seek some sort of forgiveness, as Aeowulf steams. The prayers are broken by the sudden appearance of Unn, the daughter of Juki. She is walking oddly and bleeding. Aeowulf sees she has a gaping wound in her neck. He knows she has not much longer to live. The three scoop up the girl and try to staunch her wound, at the same time , knowing she is beyond their help.
The three get a feeling of horrible evil, and they turn to see the most ghastly skraeling they have ever seen. He looks maniacal and he is laughing and saying over and over again WEN DI GO.
Aeowulf swings his sword at him, only to be knocked to the ground by the fiend’s bony hands. Einer and Braggi attack, and Braggi trips over Aeowulf. Einer hits the fiend with his hammer but it doesn’t look to hurt.
The skraeling attacks and sends both Braggi and Einer for a loop. Aeowulf gets up and sneaks behind their foe, and stabs it. Einer and Braggi both then hit the wretch, snapping its neck and impaling it.
They stop to catch their breath, and Aeowulf cuts of their foe’s head and hands. The head exhales, screams, and a swarm of flies burst out of its mouth, which turn to smoke, then evaporate.
This makes Einer scream the high pitch scream of a guy who does not want to shit his pants. Again.
They return home with the tree, the girl, the two feathers, and the head of the skraeling. They show all this Sigrund, who is only interested in the feathers. They give them to her, and she orders bells to be forged so they can ring alarms in the case of more attacks. She is unconcerned about the girl, saying she is left to her straw death god.
Aeowulf takes it upon himself to bury her and say a prayer to the old gods.
They then try to make sense of the day’s events. Einer visits Uld, the oldest woman in the universe, or at least the settlement, and asks her to consult the bones.
She rolls the bones and then they seem to move on their own. Both are a bit scared of this, and they knock them off the table. Einer gathers them up, puts them on the table, and they move again of their own. He then finds out that Uld cannot read them. She has been tricking him for years. He grabs the bones, and goes to Aeowulf, who sees that they do move on their own. They say.
“The Great Owl Spirit hunts the snake”
He rolls them again and they say,” Wendigo likes his meat fresh.”
The next roll, the bones do not move on their own.
Again they tell Sigrund, who is getting annoyed. She does have more pressing problems then bones and dead skraelings.
Braggi dreams of a white owl who drops a mouse at his feet. The mouse runs off, and in the distance you can see two houses. One his, the other Sigrund. The mouse looks back, seeming looking for a command. The owl, as owls do, says WHO?
The next morning, Braggi finds his feather on his doorstep. He walks over to Einer’s and finds his at his doorstep. He wakes Einer and they go to Sigrund again. They tell her of the feathers, and the dream. And what Uld’s bones say. She is surprisingly pleasant. And listens to them, instead of boxing their ears. Braggi again gives her his feather, and she says it will make a fine quill. She asks him for vellum to write her father’s will and last commands. Braggi then asks his friends to hunt with him for a nice stag.
Aeowulf stays to tend his injuries, and Einer and Braggi go off to hunt. They find a nice deer, and shoot it with an arrow. They follow it until it bleeds out. Einer picks it up, and goes to carry it off. They are stopped by a huge hairy man. He doesn’t move, so neither do they. He says OOKPIK as he waves his arms. He takes out the arrow from the deer, and draws a squiggle on the ground and then steps on it. They try to take to him, they offer him food and mead, which he seems to like.
They figure out that he is friendly and hates the snakes, and so does the Great Owl Spirit, Ookpik. They think that the Great Owl has given them three feathers as a favor, but they somehow offended him, so one feather turned to ash.
They also figure out the hairy man’s name is Queeg. Queeg makes a magic circle and starts a fire and cooks the deer meat for them all. He also draws a circle with various lines and then draws himself walking on those lines. They can’t figure out what he means.
The then takes them to a temple, a temple with serpent figures on it. They are in awe of its terrible beauty when they are disturbed by a man in a red cloak. He pulls down his hood and they see that he has the face of a serpent.
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The Greenlandic Sagas (Read 4810 times)
