Upon The River: August 19, 1921 [English Eerie] [One-Shot] [In-Line]
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| Art by Doug Bolden but see Credits for more explanation. |
Previously...
Jules has grown ill under the increased stress while Geoff was barely thwarted for striking out on his own.
About Upon the River
August 1921: Carlston Dale takes his dying fiance on a trip down a idyllic river so they can have the honeymoon they will never get to experience. Things go wrong when they wash up upon a riverbank where the rules have changed and things move in the constant fog that always blocks the horizon.
Content Warnings: Mild tobacco use, mild drinking, some cosmic dread...
Upon the River is played using English Eerie scenario "The Lost River" (with obvious nods to Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows," as will be obvious). No additional oracles or tools are used. It will be played in one-day-per-day style format.
Any errors in geography, history, or language are all mine. I do my best.
This "one-shot" will be played In-Line style.
CARLSTON DALE
5 Spirit :: 3 Resolve
The son of shop owners in Bicester, moved to London after a war injury involving a landmine occurred in the very final days of The Great War. Became an undertaker and got engaged to Julia "Jules" Harcourt. She has been diagnosed with an incurable heart condition and is not expected to live past the end of year. She refuses to marry Carlston, now, so instead they take a trip with two of his friends—Mary Jones and Geoffrey Rose—as well Mary's friend Ivy Prairie. Meant to be a chaste honeymoon and likely Jules's last outing.
Distinguishing Features: Red hair, deep scars on right arm, walks with a notable limp.
Fears: Silence, Deep Water, and Being Trapped.
Morning Card: Environmental Obstacle (5)
Ravens swarm and peck at you. Rolled and 8 so Carlston Succeeds.
Afternoon Card: First Gray Lady
Strange sigils are drawn near the camp. A Resolve is spent as per the rules. Tension increases by 1.
August 19, 1921. Afternoon
Writing today's entry is a bit rougher than normal because I have fresh wounds along my right arm and I have never quite mastered writing with my left.
Jules was in better spirits this morning. Still bedridden but able to communicate and fuss about herself somewhat. This helped to lighten the mood of everyone. In brighter spirits, we took some time to access our situation. The fog refuses to lift and we found that our map of the river had been left behind in the canoe—for who needs the map of a well traveled river—and therefore lost. We had no real way of knowing how far along our journey we were.
There was unspoken trouble upon us. This river does have a number of travelers and it is summer, even if a strangely chilly one. This is our third day on this sandy bank. Where are the others. Have we merely missed them in the fog? Or maybe the fog has deterred others from launching?
That aside it was determined that our next priority should be to try and establish if we were having much ado about nothing. What if there was a bridge only a mile or two down? What if we passed a small village during the initial fog? What if some farm or house was only a few short minutes away past the trees? No, we had heard no sound of people or even animals but the fog had distorted the sound of rain to make us hear it an hour or more before it hit. What other tricks might it be playing?
The plan was to split this into four for the four of us that were able to move. The path back upstream was rockier and harder to traverse so Geoff would take that. The path into the woods behind us was full of strange bramble and trees so Mary would take that, being the most experienced off-trail hiker. I would follow the path downstream where the sandy bank carried on for a bit and the trees looked thinner.
Ivy would be our muse and lighthouse. She would stay with Jules and prepare some lunch. Every minute or two she would sing a few loud, high notes. If we felt lost or disoriented in teh fog, we were to follow her voice back to camp. If her voice got nearly too faint to hear we would stop and turn back immediately.
I was excited to be part of this triple expedition. No longer the lame undertaker whose war wounds stop him from contributing to the team but a vital part of something. I was in very high spirits indeed.
I was some distance downstream and out of the easy going portion but not turning back when the incident occurred. The birds I heard last night? I could hear them again, and growing louder. The sound is something I have trouble placing. Somewhere between a fox and and frog and a crow, I suppose. Deep, distorted, but also slightly mocking.
Pushing through some bramble back towards a small stony flat patch near the river, I spotted the root of the sounds. A corpse had washed up, here. I say corpse. It was definitely a dead body but what it was I am not sure. Perhaps a horse? The limbs looked too human, though, even if outsized. The overall flesh had the sense of being a form of fungus you might see growing on a tree. The smell was more like chlorine gas than a rotting corpse—and trust me, I know both from the war. The worst aspect were the birds.
Each had the rough appearance of a raven though a bit bigger. Like a vulture and a raven had interbred. The heads of each were a bright red. I could tell at a distance that something was wrong with their head but I could not focus my eyes enough to tell exactly what. So I made the mistake of getting closer.
One does not have to be on safari to know a general rule of wild animals is to only interrupt their feeding with caution. At the time, all I could think was getting closer to the body—a small elephant comes to mind trying to pull it forth, now—and seeing what was up with what I assumed to be some kind of Cumbrian corvid I had merely never seen. Around a half-dozen yards from the body, the birds took notice and attacked.
I am not too proud to admit I screamed as the first beaks and claws tore into my body. I am quite proud to say that I gave much better than I took. Some obscure training from the war reminded me to get my injured arm up to protect the good. Using it as bait, I came down with heavy blows using my left. A few birds were dead set on taking my eyes but got the blasted beasts in my grip and wrung a few necks.
Around this time, I heard Geoff shout as he was making his way rapidly to my location. Pistol shots rose in the air. I did not know Geoff had brought his server revolver but I am glad he did. This helped to spook the last of the birds.
Here is where a second mistake was perhaps made. While I heard both Geoff (from the south) and Mary (from the east) coming in my direction, I glanced at one of the bird bodies and noted what it was the struck me as weird about their head—besides the bright red plumage. Each had a third eye in the middle of their forehead. Black and glossy. Clearly some local mutation. Disgusted, I threw the bird I was holding into the river. Then, seeing the others I had struck, I quickly scooped and tossed the others into the river as well. I then moved quickly towards Geoff, calling out for Mary and saying I was ok.
I had the idea that Geoff would not be able to process the birds or the strange corpse and that Mary would undoubtedly tell Ivy about it and Jules might overhear.
By the time I reached Geoff, and Mary came crashing out of the woods a few seconds later, I was a bit surprised to see Ivy tailing behind. She had also heard the screams and rushed along to help. I wanted to chide her for leaving Jules but instead I told them that some vultures had been eating on a dead cow and took offense to me getting close. I could see Geoff trying to peer through the fog to corroborate this story when I made a big deal about needing to treat my wounds before they became infected—a lie aided by the fact that it was completely true.
The second oddity of the day, and so far the last, occurred when we got back to camp.
In the spot between our tents and the river, someone had drawn three large symbols where each symbol was composed of numerous smaller sigils. On the surface, it was not truly a problem. Just shapes in sand and what child might not find a stick to draw any old thing in sand. Many adults do as well. It was the impact it had on the others.
Ivy went pale, seeing them, and swore they had not been there when she ran towards my shouts mere minutes ago. Geoff got unreasonably angry. Mary looked as if she might run away. Ivy and Geoff for perhaps the tenth time in three days began shouting at each other while I tried to get them to calm down. Geoff ended up kicking the sand to break up one of the odd markings and this had a strange impact upon him. He stared at the broken lines and looked queasy and nauseated. He stumbled back, retched for a moment, and then walked off.
Through all of this, I wondered if Jules had perhaps gotten up, seen the camp abandoned, and drew them to pass time until we get back.
Looking at those weird sand doodles, I did have a moment of disorientation. I got the sensation that they were masking other shapes deeper in the sand, That we were seeing a projection of some complex lattice.
It is now an hour later. My arm was expertly bandaged by Mary. I sit in the tent near Jules and let her sleep. The other three are at opposing points in front of me. Geoff to my right, has not really recovered from his moment of weakness. He sits in the sand looking like a person who has drunk far too much alcohol. Mary, on my left, is chain smoking the few cigarettes she has left that did not wash away.
It is Ivy that worries me. She sits near the river's edge, humming some strange song.
God help us all.
CREDITS
Upon the River is played using only Scott Malthouse's English Eerie, Second Edition and a regular deck of cards built in the instructed manner. For this playthrough, no other oracles or tables will be used.
The picture at the top is something I created using a few settings and tools in GIMP. I just wanted a bird that was like a bird but also off-putting. I accomplished this by starting with "Bird Tree, Black and White" by Kytalpa and then started by removing all the parts that were not black and white, ran it through filters to make it more like a stencil of the the original photo, and then blurred and warped it a bit. I took that version and color-swapped to red and then cloned in the bits (which were further blurred and warped) until I got what I wanted. Only, it was not weird enough.
I took this public domain sketch of a bird head and then warped it and fitted at the wrong angle on top of the other. The eye and feathers and such line up incorrectly and that is 100% on purpose.
It's a quick fix and super big thanks to Kytalpa and OpenClipart-Vectors for uploading some sources I could use.
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