This is the full narrative replay of my Call of Cthulhu / Cthulhu Dark Ages scenario, Branches of Bone.
This narrative replay is for my own Call of Cthulhu / Cthulhu Dark Ages scenario, Branches of Bone. I did most of the playtesting for this scenario on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast’s discord server. If you’re a player, or just don’t want to know everything about the scenario ahead of time, you can read or listen to the first, spoiler-lite section of my overview of Branches of Bone here, and if you want to purchase it, as a thank you for visiting my site, you can get it on 25% discount through this link for $3.95.
And now, on to Branches of Bone.
Frigid waves broke against the faering’s short bow, spray lashing the four rowers. Ahead, dull moonlight lit the craggy isle of Skógrbein, the Viking’s goal.
Harald Askerson, child of the chieftain Askr, grit his teeth. His father led the clan’s remaining raiders across the sea chasing a vision. Harald worried his father had lost his mind, so often rambling and barking in his sleep, but at last the island jutted out of the sea before them, right where his father, and the old Saga of Suin, had said it would be. His father may be mad, but at least he could still navigate.
A mad grin breaking his ragged features, Njal pumped harder at the oars, his aching muscles bulging under the tight armour. Rowing for a week taxed his body, but not his mind. For that, he needed combat. Svend the Steersman might say sailing was combat against the seas, but Njal knew only killing men brought meaning to his life.
Revna fought against the wracking shiver. Huddled in the rear of the boat, wrapped in her cloak, she focused on Askr’s faering ahead of them, dipping in and out of sight behind the dark swells. Freya had favoured that old bastard over her, the clan’s next Volur? Madness. But she’d be there. If he found some relic from her negligent god, she’d be the first to truly understand it.
Askr’s faering rounded the island’s steep cliffs, closing in on the narrow cove they knew held a small dock. The boat slipped between jagged rocks and out of sight. Svend the steersman eyed the cove. Two approaches, following Askr through the rocks would keep them out of sight of any watchers, but they’d need to go slow to avoid smashing against the stone. Most of the tide rushed into the cove through open water, and they could ride the current in to catch up with Askr, at risk of being spotted.
Svend grunted at Harald, gestured at the cove with his chin. Harald considered briefly, then chose the open current. Njal bared his teeth in a wild smile and threw everything into the oars. He needed to get up there, now, before Askr and his Vikings took all the glory. Revna didn’t help with rowing, she doubted she had much strength to lend, but she prayed, loud enough for Svend to hear and be bolstered.
With expert precision Svend glided the faering into the cove, and rapidly slowed at a stubby dock before grounding up the rocky beach. Njal jumped onto the dock before coming to stop and without seeing if his companions followed, marched away. Harald and Revna followed once still, leaving Svend to grumble and secure the faering. He noted Askr’s boat up the beach, hull banged up from a quick grounding. Another boat, not in their style, tied up at the dock. No doubt a local ferry.
A steep path wound up the bluff from the cove to the main plateau of the island, and while Harald and Revna cautiously chose their footing, Njal barged up the trail, sure his feet would find a safe path up. Evidently someone heard the rocks sent tumbling in his wake, or they had watching the faering cut into the cove, as an arrow whizzed past Njal’s prominent forehead and skittered off the rocks. He caught site of a man on the bluff, back-lit by the moon, fumbling with an arrow.
With a joyous roar Njal smoothly sprinted up the last of the slick bluff, great axe in his hands. The man, an old man Njal now saw, stared with wide eyes, jabbering something in his foreign tongue. He raised his bow, and the string promptly snapped in half when he drew. He looked at it dumbly, then back up at Njal just in time to catch the axe blade between his eyes.
His companions crested the bluff in time to see Njal stalking away from the scattered remains of the old man. A trail ran into the centre of the small island through sparse copses of ash trees to a stone temple. Its front double-doors had been broken open, the sounds of shouts and screams drifting out with torchlight. Harald, Svend, and Revna hurried after their berserker, passing through the small courtyard at the front of the temple. Harald noted it was the only structure. On past raids there had been houses, sheds, dorms.
They stepped over a body in the doorway, cleaved down by a sword, and entered the high-ceilinged church. While the building was stonework, two internal wooden structures crowded the hall, doorways facing inward. As Harald walked past them, sword and shield in hands, chickens clucked and goats brayed from the right structure. He stopped, cracked the door open. Half the room held stores, barrels and sacks, and on the other side of a partition, chickens and two goats.
Svend peeked in the left room, finding beds and a desks, along with piles of scrolls, books, and various stone and wood artifacts. Harald and Svend shrugged at each other, and continued after Njal. Revna stopped at the doorway, though, looking at a stained glass window depicting an older man standing over a younger man bound to stone altar, stabbing him to death. Beneath the window, inlaid in the wall, or more accurately the wall seemed to be built around it, stood a man-high stone, similar to the rune stones back home. Only a simple carving of drops into a circle marred its smooth surface.
Harald and Svend found Njal roaring at a group of monks at the centre of the cross-shaped hall. A tall, strapping monk and a scrawny monk huddled on the ground by a dead older man, an axe having split his head open, while a portly monk stood between his fellows and Njal. A altar sat behind them, silver goblets and a silver thurible atop it, and beyond that, lining the rear wall, were two doors on either side of another stained glass window. The right door was close, while the left yawned open, another dead monk pinned against it by a spear through the chest.
The portly monk stared up at Njal, defiant but trembling, clearly not understanding a word coming out of the berserker’s spittle-flecked mouth. Njal wanted to find warriors. These men of the cloth had no weapons. He screamed at the monk, demanding to find the warriors. Not getting a response, he head-butted the monk, sending him sprawling, then stomped to the open door. Spiral stairs led down, the faint voices of his clansmen echoing up. No doubt the closed door to the right led up to a belltower. Without a word to his companions, Njal continued on down.
Harald and Svend hurried on down after him, but Revna lingered at the centre of the hall at the centre of the four wings. She turned seeing the four far walls, each with a stained glass window and a standing stone beneath it. To the west, the sacrifice. To the north, a weeping woman tearing her robe, rubbing ash on her face and on rocks at her feet, and the standing stone clearly depicted a fire. To the east, a dozen men eating and drinking, spitting their wine out on the ground, and on the stone, drips falling from a square. And to the south, seeds spilled on the ground becoming a great tree, its roots tangling and snarling an evil looking tree beneath. On that last standing stone, specks.
Revna murmured a prayer to Freya, then approached the corpse of the old man. The monks seemed to consider blocking her, but in the end dragged their still-unconscious fellow to the side and watched. She tore a pendant from the body’s neck. Silver, with four symbols. The same as the standing stones. Putting it in her pouch, she followed her companions.
A scream rang out before Njal reached the bottom of the stairs. Above, Revna heard the slamming of doors and the surprised screeches of the monks. All at once, the Vikings felt something press on them. Just a brief pressure on the head, but all of them had a dream-like vision. For Revna, Harald, and Svend, it was brief, just a sense of looking down on a crowd of people. But for Njal, it was more.
He stood on the island, but without the church. Far below him, crowds of sparsely clothed people dragged large stones to him. The stood them on his roots, dragging down painfully into the earth.
And then it was gone. Njal felt light-headed. And he itched. Rashes broke out on his hands, joints, and his skin felt tight.
Hurrying the last few steps, Njal, Harald and Svend on his heels, entered the crypt. Leaning against one of six pillars, Skarde, one of the other Vikings, clutched a weeping gut wound. Seeing Harald, he pointed, and said ‘You’re damned father stuck me.’
In the centre of the crypt, with weapons abandoned on the floor, Askr and three of his Vikings stood in a circle, facing outward, hands held, looking up to the ceiling. Their mouths gaped open, eyes rolled back in their sockets. Harald saw blood indeed coated his father’s sword. He demanded Skarde explain what happened, but the man‘s head lolled, skin pallid, breathing shallow. Harald knelt down. He knew a bit about fixing people. A bit.
Revna pushed Harald out of the way before he could do any damage. She took out her pouches, readied herbs, and inspected the wound. Deep, a ragged chunk of flesh ripped away revealing slippery innards beneath. She took a deep breath, recalling her master’s teachings, and reached in.
Skarde died instantly.
Shaking blood and viscera off her hand, the volur said there was nothing more she could do.
They all realised they could hear whispers skittering around the edges of their hearing. The echoes in the crypt made it difficult to find the source, but Svend eventually tracked it down to Askr and his frozen Vikings. Whispers slipped out of their mouths, despite still jaws, tongues and throats. Extremely quiet, but Svend could make out brief words. Freedom, hungry, tired, awake, awake, awake!
Only Askr whispered intelligibly. The others spoke in languages unknown to Svend, though he thought one of the voices was in the tongue of the heathens upstairs. Trying to shake Askr or the others out of their fugue state proved fruitless, as did screaming or slapping them. Even bodily yanking at one of the Vikings only managed to break his arm, cracking at obscene angles to maintain its grip on its neighbour.
Shaken and confused, they looked around the crypt, taking in the details they’d ignored thusfar. Murals covered three of the walls, depicting an army of soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms and carrying smoking swords and spears, marching towards the far wall. The wall that stood out by lacking similar murals, and it appeared to bisect the murals, as if it had been built later, blocking off more of the room. The wall was blank, with the exception of a sigil in the centre, cracked, as if it had been struck with a sword or axe. A tree, surrounded by four symbols which Revna recognised as the same as the standing stones in the hall, and around those, a ring of some script she didn’t recognise. Similar in a way to their own people’s runes, but older, much older. Wild, savage.
She shuddered and turned from the blasphemous scrawlings. With a deep breath, she slipped under the arms of Askr and his cripples, and sat in the middle of their circle. She withdrew two pouches, one full of the herbs and plants used to alter her mind, open the door to the real of the gods. From the other, she dragged out a live rabbit. Slaughtering the rabbit and smearing its remains and herbs on the floor, her arms, her face, her tongue, she began humming and chanting. As her eyes rolled into the back of her head, the Augery began.
In her fugue she didn’t feel it, but for the other three, again something pressed on them. And this time, they all saw something, they all felt something worm through their skin and bones.
Njal watched the savage people below him dance about fires set by the northern standing stone. They rubbed ash on the stone, and it grew heavy, pulling his roots into the ground.
To Svend’s east, the tribes-folk drank salt water from the sea, then spat it back up on the stone. It glowed, and its glow tore at his roots.
West of Harald, the wildmen and woman slashed and stabbed, spilling their blood over the stone. He drank deep, thirsty, but the stone grew fat, plunging down, dragging him down, down, into a slumber he could rage against, but not resist.
Back in the crypt, they breathed heavily, scratching at reddening skin. Njal winced at stinging in his joints and fingers. Scabs grew from the rashes, thick, brown, and jagged. He covered them up, but fretted at the raw and bulging tips of his fingers. As if the bone pushed at the skin, trying to break free.
And in Revna’s vision, she saw fire fall from the sky. A great mass, screaming, tumbling down and smashing into a primordial Skógrbein. A thing lost and abandoned, it squirmed and mewled, hugging the earth and digging into the stone. She saw a great tree, rising from Skógrbein, ringed in fire, striking into the sky and burning away the clouds. Its roots wormed through the oceans and continents, choking out the kingdoms of men.
Revna awoke with a choking cough. The others watched, waiting for her wisdom. In the silence, the words of Askr whispered through the crypt. Free, awake, finally, hungry.
Revna shakily stood. They hadn’t found Freya. Not Yggdrasil. Something else. Something worse.
Off-balance from his own vision, much less the madness spouted by Revna, Svend stumbled away from the others, towards the far wall and its cracked sigil. Likewise disturbed, but instead driven to angry frustration, Njal stomped back up the stairs. No warriors, nothing to fight, only this damned magic. Njal was leaving. Harald stared at his father, frozen in place with his followers, words not their own, in voices not their own, in languages not their own, slipping from unmoving lips. He shook his head and followed Njal.
Revna paused before also going up, turning an ear to the ensorceled Vikings’ whispers as something snagged her attention. Four Vikings, each speaking in a different language. Their own tongue, the tongue of the monks, and three others. Three others. Four Vikings, five voices. She shuddered, shouted to Svend they were going up, then hurried to the stairs.
Svend waved her off. He’d never taken to runes. Couldn’t read them, certainly couldn’t write them, but he could tell the brutal scratchings ringing the sigil did not exist in his language. Their harsh angles and savage lines spoke of something primal, something violent. He could almost hear, almost feel its meaning. Its rhythm. A steady thumping beat.
His brow furled. He reached out, setting a palm on the wall, right over the cracked tree at the centre of the sigil. The brittle stone vibrated under his palm with a slow and steady beat. Putting his ear to it, he could hear the muffled beat. Disturbed but curious, he spun around a spear and bashed at the wall with its butt.
It proved thin, and chunks broke away without much persuasion. When he’d made a hole the size of his fist, and he had hefty fists, he squinted through, perplexed. Only two knuckles in was another wall. One of wood. His squint tightened. He knew wood, he built his own ships, cut the timber himself. The wall’s wood was knotted and swirled. No one had worked that wood. It wasn’t a wall. It moved, in time with the beat, pulsing, throbbing. Beating. Living.
Under a strange compulsion, he pushed his fingers against it. That familiar pressure rushed through his body from his fingertips, up to and squished his brain.
Below him, those insufferable little bipedal creatures flung seeds around that stone, the southernmost of the four. Amongst his roots pitiful little trees sprouted, but soon the tangled and choked him, stealing his water, and the stone grew fat with their plunder. He cried out as it and the others overwhelmed him with their weight.
The wood thumped away under his fingers, his own heartbeat slowing to meet its pulse. And with a horrifying certainty, Svend knew a heart, a great, vast, and terrible organ, beat away on the other side of the living wood. He pulled his hand away, ignoring the stinging pain as if the skin on his fingertips ripped away, like tearing skin from frozen iron. He pointedly ignored the feeling of something bony and rigged poking through the torn flesh, and the horrible itching breaking out over his body.
Svend fled, trying not to realise he understood two of the voices flowing from the cursed Vikings, one of which spoke in the exact manner he instinctively knew the writing around the sigil would sound on a human tongue. And he certainly ignored the bark-like knotted and swirling scabs growing with observable speed over the Vikings’ skin, or the spurs breaking out of their fingers and joints, splitting like branches that twisted and groped for him as he sprinted past.
Njal planned to find the pudgy monk and drag him down to the crypt. This all stank of magic. Heathen magic. And what were monks if not magicians? Njal snarled at the three robed men, huddling together. Damned sorcerous freaks, the lot of them.
But just before he snatched one up he checked himself for two reasons. One, Revna was a Volur, and while Njal couldn’t claim to be an expert in religion, magic, or words, he guessed a Volur wasn’t much different from a sorcerer, and she was alright by him. The monks may be cowards and southern barbarians, but they seemed just as frightened out of their minds as he would be if he wasn’t fearless.
The second reason was the racket from down the hall. Goats braying and chickens squawking in a maddening chorus, like a wolf had gotten into the pen. Something about their screeches set his teeth on edge. They were muffled, gargling like they were being drowned. The scrawny monk met his eye, said something in a shaky voice and gestured at the animal shack.
Njal hefted his axe and stomped forward. In tune with his man, Harald readied his sword and shield and fell in step with the berserker. Revna, huffing from going up the stairs so soon after her augery, leaned on her staff in the centre of the hall and waited. By the time Svend reached the last step, sweat stinging his eyes, Harald and Njal had already crept into the storeroom.
Feathers wafted in the air. One squawking hen fluttered up, nearly cresting the partition. Something snagged its leg. With a crack the chicken snapped down, its rattling screech drowning out as its throat clogged.
Njal and Harald looked at each other. Nodded. They peered over the partition.
Njal grunted. Harald stumbled back, tripping over his own feet, and cursed and prayed in a string of obscenities.
The goats and chickens huddled together in a wriggling mass. Not together, in each other. Jammed through one another in crude angles, beaks and necks, horn and talons, wings and heads sticking out and wrapped around, all held together with woody blotches and tendrils. Two gibbering goat heads rounded on Njal, still frozen in place by the hideous sight, and the thing tried getting to its many feet.
Clearly not yet comfortable in its growing form, the amalgamation struggled and flopped about, giving Njal time to snap out of his funk, and with a roar bash his way into the paddock and swing his axe. The mighty chop lopped off a slab of flesh and barky growth, taking a goat head with it. Little blood flowed, but a thick, sickly sweet yellow liquid splattered the walls and Njal.
Braying in pain, though Njal swore it actually laughed, the abomination gained a semblance of balance, and two tendrils slithered towards Njal. One tendril met his axe, spinning off to squirm and die in the corner of the room, but the other seized his ankle, drawing him into the wriggling mass. Spurs jabbed into his skin, and something within his flesh answered, reaching out to break free of his own body.
Harald pushed up to his feet, and dow his fear. With a war cry he bounded into the pen, driving his sword into the beast. The blade clanged uselessly off a hard bit of bark, and the freakish eyes of the goat turned on Harald. It gave a wet scream, gnashing its flat teeth.
Then the head whirled the air, spurting yellow gunk over Harald and Njal, whose axe tore through the mass of the amalgamation, tearing it apart. It crumbled into pulsing chunks, and those too soon died.
The sweet goop sank into their skin. Their minds jolted again out of their human confines.
Harald watched crowds of men and women, bearing swords billowing smoke, slashing into his roots, his trunks, trying to find his heart. He ripped and tore them apart, but the scars remained, and he would always know how close they’d come to poisoning him from the inside out.
Njal remembered dreaming. The stones held him in a deep slumber for eons, but he still dreamed. The people who had snared him into sleep gave way to others. They planted trees around him, and worshiped him, but they kept him locked away with gifts of spit, ash, seeds, and blood. Others followed, clearing the trees and covering him with a stone temple. He almost awoke then, but legions with smoke and iron hurt him enough to put him back to sleep. And finally others took their place, building a larger stone temple, but they did not feed him as the others had. And so he grew stronger, still asleep, but with enough power to let slip a dream out into the world, where another lost soul found them. And that soul had come, and finally the dreams slipped away. It was time to wake up.
In a daze Harald stumbled out of the storesroom, nearly tripping over something that snagged his foot. A branch, gnarled and pitted, growing up between cracked stones. Harald didn’t remember it being there before. With a rising terror, he looked across the floor. Twigs, branches, roots, bark, all splitting the stonework floors and walls, reaching out as if grasping for him, for Revna and Svend in the centre of the hall.
Harald knew then that it stirred awake. Whatever it was, wherever it was, its long slumber ended. If he had spoke with Svend, if he heard of the beating below in the crypt behind the living wood, maybe they would realise where it was. What they were inside of. And maybe if he spoke with Revna, she’d share her theory on the standing stones, their symbols, and the stained glass. And if Harald knew all of Njal’s visions, maybe they would all decide on a path to repeat what those people long in the past had done.
Instead, Harald grabbed a torch from a nearby sconce – notably, the branches did not grow near the fire – and marched to the front door, stomping on branches and roots. Something blopcked his way, though, something rising from the ground. Long, spindly branches like spider legs jutted out of its wretched form, bark crusting its face and arms. What remained of the monk, cut down at the door, smiled, then with a howl like wind through a forest, skittered towards Harald.
With a half-swallowed scream he managed to duck the monk-thing’s grasping appendages, then trust his torch at its face. It screeched and scrambled back, but the flames licked its head, quickly engulfing its body. Hearing the commotion, Njal came sprinting and roaring out of the storesroom, cleaving his axe through the thing, sending burning branches and splinters spinning across the hall. It crumbled in a ball of embers and smoke.
A cry from Svend drew their attention, as the fallen priest also rose on a web of branches and roots. The monk pinned with a spear against the crypt door fumbled at the shaft with hands of bark and twigs. The three monks screamed and huddled in a corner, stomping and kicking at grasping roots snagging their robes.
Harald and Njal rushed forward, as Svend and Revna fought the priest-thing with staff and sword. Their unskilled slashes and swings bounced off the priest’s thick bark hide. It enveloped Svend, pulling him into an embrace, spires of wood jabbing into his skin, spreading their corruption and madness.
Njal’s axe cut the steersman free, and as the priest stumbled back from the fierce attack, Harald shoved the torch into its chest, alighting robes and wood alike. The thing screamed and died in a blaze.
A spear thrust into Njal’s shoulder. His armour caught most of it, and his return swing lopped off the tree-monk’s head.
Breathing deep once all their foes lay dead – again – they started coughing. The fires spread from the burning corpses, flames rolling along the floor and up the walls, catching branches and roots cringing away from the licking blaze. Billowing smoke rapidly filled the hall, and already the ceiling had vanished into darkness.
Eyes and throats stinging, they tried to duck down and keep the smoke out of their lungs. Njal sputtered and took a deep breath, and by the grace of his gods his great wiry beard filtered out most of the soot. Revna’s fortitude and luck proved not as fortunate, and soon she hacked and spat, choking on the smoke. Seeing her falling to her knees, Svend grabbed and pulled her to the crypt’s staircase. The smoke might be thinner further down.
The others followed, and once into the spiral stairway, mercifully largely free of smoke, they shoved the door closed. Wispy tendrils puffed through the edges, but the air in the stone passage was cool and breathable. With lungs and throat raw but functioning, Revna stood on her own shaky power, and the group started down the stairs, wanting to get as far from the fire as possible. Maybe it would burn its way out of the monastery before it consumed the air in the crypt, or maybe they could find another way out. Or dig their way out, if it came down to it.
A five-voiced cry rang out from the crypt. Only one voice spoke in their own tongue, and in a voice they recognised. Askr, roaring in outrage. That they’d ruined everything. That he’d finally awoken, that he still had to find mother again. The ranting chorus, and the clatter of armour and weapons, grew louder, and the Vikings readied their weapons.
Around the curve of the spiral staircase, Askr and his host rounded in all their horrific glory. Branches splitting crusted flesh groped forward, scratching against the stone walls. Root-like fingers clutched at swords and axes, and their mail and leather armour wove through with bark and bone-like spurs. Mouths gaping painfully wide, screeching and cursing, the things scrambled up the stairs, then paused.
Askr’s blank eyes focused on Harald. In a voice like his father’s, but still all wrong, the thing offered Harald an escape. If the others died, left behind to feed it, Harald could leave as a priest, spreading the word of the great return.
In reply, a throwing axe and a javelin sped forward, driving Askr to his knees. Harald’s sword parted whatever was left of his father’s head from its body, spraying yellow goop across the hall.
The three tree-Viking’s screeched as if in pain and rushed forward. Blades screamed and slashed against shield and armour, blood and branches spitting on the stone. Despite their best efforts, Njal, Harald, and Svend were pushed back step by step, until Revna at the rear found herself pressed up against the door, once again breathing burning-hot smoke. Unable to move, she squeezed her eyes shut against the soot and prayed to all her gods.
They answered with a deep rumble.
And then the world started crashing down around them. Stones crumbled from the ceiling, smashing into helmets and shields, crushing the tree-creatures. A chunk of the wall slipped free and bashed into Revna, sending her spinning and bleeding. With a helping hand she found her feet, only barely keeping conscious. The church was falling apart. With nowhere else to go they decided to make a run for it, hoping the entrance way would be clear.
They sprinted across the hall, narrowly dodging falling pieces of the dying monastery. The double doors at the entrance smoldered and buckled, and with a roar Njal smashed through them. The four stumbled out into the courtyard, coughing and hacking, wiping blood and ash from their leaking eyes, then turned to watch the monastery finally perish.
But it didn’t. The stone fell away, revealing a mass of twisted, bulging woody flesh beneath it. A massive trunk, roots as thick as mules slithering out, spindly branches unfurling, and their tips formed the mocking figures of hanged men. Black pits where the church’s entrance and windows had been gaped like a baleful face.
The thing blazed, the fire rising into the sky chasing away the night, and it screamed. But it did not die, not yet. Instead its mop of roots dragged its mass forward. Starting slow, ripping free of the earth and remaining stone foundations, then gathering speed, the great beast towering over the four came closer and closer, branches reaching down, grasping.
They ran.
The copse of ash trees they’d passed through when they first landed on the island now stood as a thick forest. Njal reached the trees first, and without giving thought to where they had come from, began wildly swinging his axe to cut a path. Knowing his companions lacked the strength needed to push through the brush quickly, he widened his attack, scything clear a corridor for the others.
Harald and Svend sprinted through the cleared path, passed the winded Njal, and straight towards the bluff. Revna came up last, winded, weakened from the fire. And on her heel, the great tree slithered after, smashing through the forest.
Njal leaned huffing over his axe, watching Revna plod across the clearing to the bluff, then turned to the forest, hearing their pursuer closing in. It would catch her, and at its pace, Harald and Svend soon enough as well. Smiling and standing straight, Njal tore off his armour. Gnashing his teeth and howling, cutting his flesh and drinking his own blood, he howled like a beast. As the pillar of fire and flailing limbs burst from the forest, Njal laughed and threw himself forward.
His battle axe swung in a blur, lopping off branches and splitting bark. As tendrils shot forward he spun and danced, joyously carving more wood and giggling like a child at the beast’s screams. This was what he had come here for. This is what he lived for. And this is what he would graciously die for. Battle.
Even with his berserker fury, Njal had only two arms, while his opponent had uncountable limbs. They wrapped about his waist, jabbed through his biceps, lifted him into the air. It pulled him into a bone-breaking embrace, dragging him into the mass of bark and thick, yellow-stained flesh. He felt it tearing away his skin, and its madness pierced his mind. And still he laughed, and cut as best he could with his axe, and when he could no longer swing, he bit and tore with his hands.
Svend and Harald carefully picked their way down the slick bluff to the dock. While Svend continued down the dock, then jumped into and started readying the boat, Harald stopped and looked back. Revna came careening over the edge of the bluff. With no hesitancy she ran down the steep cliff trail. Harald watched with eyes wide, ready to see her trip and dash herself on the rocks. But like a billy-goat she hopped from rock to rock, coming to base of the bluff on her feet.
And over the crest, the Bone-Tree, engulfed in a great fireball came tumbling over, spilling down the bluff.
Harald grabbed Revna and bodily carried her to the boat, screaming all the way. The faering sped out of the cove, skipping over waves under the power of Harald and Svend rowing like mad, Revna calling out directions only half-heard over the surf and the roar of the beast smashing, steaming, into the water. They slipped between the rocks, the beast crashing through them recklessly behind them.
The ocean refused to cooperate, and a rogue wave smashed the faering into a craggy rock, spilling Revna over the edge. Harald and Svend held strong though, and the faering sped out into open seas. Choking on salt water, and hearing the waves from the tree boiling on her tail, Revna used what little strength and luck granted by her gods she had left to swim.
Harald and Svend watched in wonder as Revna sped out from the rocks, and behind her the pillar of flames and screams waded out. And just before it grabbed her, it tumbled forward, slipping over a drop-off beneath. And in the moment before the creature disappeared beneath the ocean, they swore they saw a face among the burning wood, a face smiling and biting and raging.
Njal remembered falling from the heavens. He remembered his mother, summoned to this world, and being forcefully split from her, and tumbling away onto this horrible earth. As he screamed and slammed into the ground that would hold him captive for aeons, his mighty mother disappeared back into the cosmos.
And now, after such a long slumber, he’d been so close to starting his search once again. Only to burn, and drown. Njal could feel the tears inside him, bit and ripped by his own teeth. He had died, or something like him had died, but now that he was something greater, or part of something greater, he died again. Deep beneath the waves, falling into a cold, crushing blackness.
Once a shivering Revna had been pulled up into the faering, they set off for home. Their bodies and minds scarred, flesh twisted with bark and dreams plagued with ancient memories. But, back among their people, they would return with stories of slaying a beast of legends, and blessed with the wood of Yggdrasil in their very flesh. They made their plans, and would return to their land as a great captain, a wise Volur, and a fabled chieftain.
And beneath the sea, they hoped the Bone-Tree drowned. But they would have nightmares of something crossing the endless plains and canyons of the ocean floor, dragging itself ever closer to those who had cast it down. Those who had abandoned it.
Thank you for reading. If you would like to see how Branches of Bone goes for your group, you can purchase it on DriveThruRPG. And as a thank you for reading all the way through, you can get it for 50% off using this link.
Before you go, though, maybe take a look at some more scenario replays?
MJRRPG: Branches of Bone
Seeds of Terror: The Mummy of Pemberley Grange, Endless Light, One Less Grave, Hand of Glory
Chaosium: Amidst the Ancient Trees, The Necropolis, What’s in the Cellar?, The Dead Boarder
Japonism: Do Gods Dream of Digital Drugs?
Bibliothek 13: A Cup of Horror
