Nobody feels any need to speak up against the general consensus building about heading to the beach, and the group turns eastward to head towards the ocean. Following the ravine is relatively easy, resulting in a pretty gentle walk downhill, the sound of rushing water as a companion.
As you travel, the ravine gets more and more shallow, but only on one side. After about two hours, the river has disappeared into an underground cave, and there has risen about twenty-five feet of dirt cliff-face where the ravine once was, which the group is at the bottom of. This cliff curves around in front of the group as well. Either a Climb must be made, or the group has to turn North and backtrack parallel to the beach in hopes of there being some easier route.
"I... I haven't decided what to do with them yet, when I picked them up I thought they might be something useful, I mean, useful for something else other than killing. Let me study this poison some more. If it kills quickly and without pain, you can have it. I do not wish to stand in the way of your revenge, but I also do not wish to be the indirect cause for delivering unnecessary suffering. There is enough suffering in the world as it is. I hope you understand."
-----------
Murob sighs as yet another obstacle rises in their path. The humid heat is oppressive, even with the slightly cooler air rising off the river. She stops as she feels the tremors, thinking at first it had been her imagination. "Yoseeyah!" she hails the Arcadian, trying to convey her questions through gestures and pantomime. Hands together in an inverted V shape for mountain. Brwoooom, fwoosh, brawrarooom! and expansive hand gestures to indicate volcanic activity. Arm sweeps to encompass their surrounding, eyebrows raised for question.
Or perhaps...
Stomp heel twice to indicate the earth. One arm flat and parallel to the ground, the other one snaking underneath, fingers and thumb snapping together to indicate predator. Minute movements of the fingers and pointing down to signal the rumblings that she's feeling. More expansive hand movements to indicate something of large size. Eyebrows raised.
The farmer stops and blinks at Murob, wondering what has gotten into the woman. There ain't no volcano in sight! Wait a second. Oh. Ehiz draws his spear and nods at Arven to do the same. "Until that gut feeling starts spewing lies at you repeatedly, it is best to listen to it. Especially when the person having them is somehow connected to the spirits.."
He then stays vigilant.
Arven draws his spear, gripping it tightly in two hands. He nods at Ehiz, standing at the older farmer's back. Pharast approaches Murob and Ehiz as they draw their weapons, one eyebrow arched. "What's wrong? Are we going to continue forward?"
Oleg, with an arm over Elizabeth's shoulder, grunts. "I'm not sure I'll be able to climb that thing. Not with my muscles the way they are."
"I felt... tremors. Like a rumbling. I don't know what it could be, but I don't like it. We should be careful." She glances at Oleg with concern. "We... and by 'we' I mean the men with nice big muscles, could pull you up. We have rope, we can fashion a sling for you to sit in. But first, one of us needs to get up top."
She tilts her head back, examining the face of the cliff, looking for an easier ascent path.
Mogwai looks at the high dirt cliff-face, at his own small body, and at the others around. "Mogwai maybe climb, but not can be pulling others up." He pauses a moment, thinking how far back they'd have to go to go around. "Lose time if not able to climb. Sling takes time." He frowns. "Not sure worth doing."
The cliffside looks pretty muddy and uneven, with few solid places to really grab hold. That said, hauling somebody up the hill should be fine, if just one person could get up. In addition, it's not like you're being chased by soldiers, and you could take your time.
Ehiz grumbles. "I had almost prepared a ritual this morning to give a person the strength of a pack mule for hours on end. If only I had, because it seems we need to lift someone for quite a bit .. on the other hand, I could enlarge someone for a couple of minutes, but I am unsure whether that's long enough to see our friend carried up onto that cliffside."
Yosiah sighs, staring at the cliff-face and understanding the situation, if not the words being used. After a moment, he unpacks a coiled length of rope from his pack. He ties one end around his waist, and tosses the other end up over the stoutest looking tree branch he can find.
His precautions in place, he begins to climb the wall carefully, using his hatchet and folding shovel to dig into the muddy cliff-face with his hands, and finding purchase wherever he can with his feet.
Yosiah attempts to climb partway up the hill, though it is too muddy for him and he slides down after just a few feet.
Sorala frowns as Yosiah gets nowhere, fast. Sheething her falcata, the White Squire takes the rope from Yosiah and ties it around her waist, and then slowly, with much caution, makes her way up the hill.
Sorala, a practiced climber, manages to get up the hill with no trouble. It takes a few minutes, though, and the group as a whole notices a few additional rumbles from below while she climbs.
Try as he might, the vertically challenged farmer can't manage to make his way up the hillside. The last attempt ends in disastrous failure.
Fail
Fail
Fail
Painful failure
Ehiz loses his grip when he's mostly up the hillside and takes a painful tumble down the side of it, landing on the flat ground with a huff.
Her eyes casting about for the cause of the rumbling, Sorala clears her throat and begins to work as quick as she's able, tying the rope off to any nearby support, to aid the others' climbs.
Sorala is able to pull up Mogwai, and together they can pull up Pharast, and then the rest of the group one by one. The rumbling subsides after a bit, and the group is able to move on.
Heading out towards the beach is a simple affair - you are already nearly there. Pharast comments on how nice the sound of the ocean is.
Rounding a corner around a copse of trees, you come out onto the beach. It is low tide, and the sky is growing overcast. The day begins to cool down as it reaches early afternoon. About a quarter-mile down the beach you can see something... more wreckage of the ship! A big pile of twisted and warped wood sits on the beach, a wide area of litter and refuse spread around it.
Other than that, the beach is mostly clear aside from driftwood, tide pools, seaweed and the occasional crab.
"Pharasma have their souls" prays the farmer priest under his breath as he stops to observe the sight. The man's eyes narrow as he pushes away the thoughts of how much suffering all of this must've caused. No mortal flesh could survive such a cruel journey of destruction. Yet here they stood.
"Is everyone okay with checking out the wreckage? By the looks of it there is nothing here to stop us from doing so, but I must admit that a certain wariness has made itself master over me."
Ehiz didn't have the heart to mention they might find survivors.
The half-orc woman is already striding down the beach towards the wreckage, her hand poised over the healing kit hanging from her belt. If there were survivors, they would likely need help as soon as possible. She can only imagine their state after spending almost two days under the merciless sun. In her head, she runs through the best remedies for dehydration and sun stroke, eyes roving along the edge of the jungle for any useful plants, and along the beach for any bodies.
Murob runs up towards the wreckage of the ship. As she gets closer, she passes a few bodies. Checking them for signs of life, she finds them all dead. There are about twenty bodies on the beach, and while many of them have drowned, it seems that there are about four people who died with weapons in their hands, stabbed to death by spears.
While Murob is checking people on the beach, she hears something from the inside of the ship's wreckage... wood striking wood, and an short, involuntary yell.
Focused on the bodies, Murob barely notices the tracks; she does notice the noise though, and signals the rest to approach carefully, pointing at the ship and cupping a hand around her ear.
Oblivious to what the tracks could tell him, Ehiz keeps his eyes on the price and approaches the ship with spear in hand.
Following behind the others, Sorala takes her time, looking about for tracks and strangeness. There was little point to not doing things thoroughly, as there didn't seem to be any immediate danger, and anyone in danger would have died long ago.
Stopping by the dead with weapons, Sorala walks slowly around the sand, repeatedly staring into the surf. "Gilmen, likely. About a dozen individuals fought here. Perhaps six were drug into the ocean."
Moving towards the surf, the White Squire's head snaps up and she sprints towards the ship. I was wrong. There is still danger here.
"Did you hear it? An infant, and something else, on the ship!"
Yosiah hangs back, letting his foreign comrades investigate the ship. These are not my people, and I do not wish to be rude. He examines the wreckage, a low whistle escaping his lips as he takes in the sight of chaos. He shakes his head, looking out over the water, in the futile hope of spotting the Gillmen and their ship.
He is wary, but does not make any move to push his friends - it is important to care for the dead, after all.
Mogwai nods. "Something there." He says quietly. "Maybe from ship." Not wanting to startle them further with an approach, especially not knowing who or what may be within the ship's walls, he looks towards Sorala. "Call at them?"
There comes a young woman's plaintive cry from the inside of the ship, "Help us!"
The young woman's voice is hollow and strange-sounding. Despite being one of panic, it is difficult to really feel the emotion of the cry. It must be faked.
As you get closer, there comes the unnerving sound of a child whimpering softly. The sound comes from right behind you, no matter where you are, like it's an infant softly crying into your ear.
Ehiz lifts a hand and makes the universal gesture for 'halt'. He then exchanges a look of worry as he eyes his companions. His voice is barely more than a whisper when he talks. "Weapons out, something is horribly amiss."
He could feel how the situation made the hairs on his arm stand on end.
Elizabeth moves to draw her scimitar, but realizes that she's still supporting Oleg's weight. Trying to be helpful, Arven takes her place so that the old man can continue to walk. Elizabeth pats Arven on the shoulder and draws her sword, coming up to the front of the group.
"What do you think it is?"
"Do you think we should just move on?"
Mogwai sniffs the air. "Ehiz right. Voice lies." At Elizabeth's suggestion, Mogwai shakes his head, gesturing to the dead around. "Maybe is doing killings." He starts to move closer, hoping the sand will help mask his approach.
Mogwai creeps closer, stepping lightly on the sand as he walks over to the ship. As he gets within spitting distance, he feels an unnerving feeling come over him. The child's whimpering gets louder, splitting into a multitude of children softly singing, whimpering, crying, muttering to themselves, and other expressions of despair.
The inside of the ship is very dark, but Mogwai's keen goblinoid vision can see a number of figures. Slumped on the ground in a rough circle are four adult humans, and in the center of them is a creepy figure - a child-sized skeleton topped by the skull of a turtle, wearing ratty clothes.
The creature looks up at Mogwai as he gets to one of the breaches in the ship's hull. In the voice of an adult man, it asks, "Are you my daddy? I don't know where he is."
Murob stops abruptly as the truth of the voice becomes apparent to her. This was a trap, no doubt of that, but she felt that they still had to confront whoever has set it. After all, the next people who came across it may not be as lucky, or as perceptive, as their group.
She follows Mogwai's careful approach, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness inside the hull. She hisses as the creature comes into view, putting out a hand to grasp the goblin's shoulder in warning.
"Stay back from it. That's an attic whisperer, an undead, their voices are poison to your soul. And whatever you do, don't let it touch you! Or bite you."
She eases her crossbow into a firing position, pointing it at the child-sized abomination. Even knowing what it is, she finds it difficult to pull the trigger. The sobs and whimpers of children are difficult to ignore and she cannot shake the feeling that she would be killing a child. She hopes the priest has a better way of dealing with the creature.
The singing brings tears to Mogwai's eyes, and looking at the creature doesn't dull them, with multiple beginning to roll down his face. "Not Mogwai..." He says quietly. "Was on ship? Mogwai can start search. When last being together?"
The creature forlornly looks down at the ground. "There was a storm..." it says. Its voice switches to that of an older human woman. "The hold was filling with water... I couldn't find my parents anywhere."
A shiver crawled up Sorala's back. Men - even gillmen - she knew. The motivations of a slaver or a noble were simple enough. But the living dead? Like the fey of her homeland, they were inscrutable, mysterious, and most of all - terrifying.
Gripping her falcata tightly, so as to hopefully not show too much of her fear, the White Squire stepped in front of Ehiz and Murob, who Sorala figured, if any of them, would know how to deal with this 'attic whisperer.'
Sorala flexed her wrist and fingers, prepared to bring forth words of power, birth her destruction upon the world. But... not with four possibly alive people between them and the abomination. The White Squire held her tongue and cast an unsure, worried glance over her shoulder.
"What now? How do we free the people?"
The attic whisperer is an undead creature. Like most undead, they are created by some fundamental wrong. They can be destroyed by violence (and in fact, attic whisperers are not too difficult to destroy if you can catch them) but undead will also usually discorporate when the reason for their existence is rectified.
Attic whisperers are terrified children at heart, and will not react well to aggression, cruelty, or neglect.
Ehiz joins Mogwai as no matter what terrifying creature resides inside the wreckage, this apparant evil needs to be dealt with.
But the evil he confronts inside is one that blends past and present into a terrifying and overwhelming reality which viciously tears at the man's sanity. Memories of happier days, where love and warmth were a given, are flooding back to Ehiz, only to be then cruelly dragged down by the sobbing undertow of the undead child's crying. He doesn't understand nor comprehend the horrifying nature of the child's undead nature, but what he does know is that it needs to be destroyed. Pharasma would embrace the poor child's soul and nurture it back into something beautiful.
But that requires destroying it first.
The creature kept talking, not attacking. Murob's crossbow dips down as she frowns uncertainly. She looks around, trying to gather more clues about the situation.
"Erhm. Perhaps we can help. If we give it what it wants, then it should release these people from their slumber. Mogwai, could you talk to it, please? I'm... I'm not good with children."
She holds up a hand towards the rest of the group, signing them to not attack the attic whisperer just yet. Perhaps the child's parents had died in the storm, or perhaps they had been dragged off by gillmen. If the latter, then there was still hope to rescue them... if they could find the place where the gillmen had taken them.
There's about twenty bodies on the beach. It's not really that easy to tell which of them might be the creature's parents, of course - if indeed any of them are the right people. Only a few of them are outside of the age range you'd expect them to be - the majority of colonists were young and fit hopefuls.
This section of the ship looks like it was once the hold of the ship, and that it just recently washed up on shore after having been completely submerged, judging from the state of the water damage on the interior.
Another thing you notice - on second glance, one of the adults slumped around the attic whisperer is a gillman. His spear lies nearby, and a bite mark is evident on his ankle.
Sorala nods, and ducking out of the ship, surveys the carnage on the beach. Frowning, she goes to the nearest body and pulling it up, slings it over her back. Hunched under the body's weight, the White Squire slowly trudges back into the ship, and groaning, sets the body down against the hull walls as gently as she can. Wiping the sweat from her brow, Sorala looks to the others. "Keep it talking. I'll bring in every body I can find. Maybe its parents are on the beach."
Not having a better idea, Sorala ducks once again out the hull and makes her way to the next body...
Sorala combs the beach, dragging body after body to the bit of shelter with the attic whisperer in it, but it doesn't seem like the undead creature reacts in any particular way to any of them. Perhaps it would have found its parents already if they were in walking reach or easy sight.
"Mogwai understand." He replies to the creature, cautious not to make any movements towards it or away. As Sorala begins to comb the beach and the others formulate a plan, Mogwai continues to speak to the 'child'.
"Crash was scary. Mogwai lost someone, too. Not am having many friends. Lots judge Mogwai. But Mogwai understand that insides count more." Pausing, he shakes his head briefly. "Mogwai not know where Azeban is. Mogwai not know where parents are. Mogwai not know if they are okay. But Mogwai know we can be brave for them."
Ehiz wanders out with his soul under his arm and falls in behind Sorala, not saying much as he stares out over the beach, ready to drag some flesh and bone memorabilia of their ill arrival to Arcadia towards the wreckage.
It doesn't really seem like any of the corpses on the beach are the attic whisperer's parents... perhaps you might need to expand your search?
The attic whisperer nods and continues to cry as Mogwai talks to it. "How can I be brave when I don't have anything? None of these people wanted to be my new parents... I had to bite them to get them to stay with me... You aren't my daddy... is one of your friends my daddy? Do you think they know where he might be?"
Sorala places the last corpse on the ground, and disappointed, wipes some dried and flaked blood from her shirt. Moving cautiously forward, the Irrisenian looks to her companions. "Perhaps the Gillmen did take its parents?"
Turning to the attic whisperer, Sorala frowns, unsure how to proceed. Was there a proper way to address the unliving? Mogwai hadn't, and he was still alive. Shrugging, the White Squire continued, pointing to the lone gillman in the creature's circle as she spoke. "Little one, could you release that one? Perhaps it can lead us to your parents?"
The attic whisperer hisses. "These ones are mine! None of them will abandon me like my parents did!"
Sorala raises an eyebrow, looking to her companions. The Irrisenian was out of her league, and she knew it. Talking to the dead was a job for a Winter Witch, not a White Squire.
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Mogwai shakes his head at the child-creature, understanding too well how it feels to be abandoned, to be alone and lost. "No abandoning." He says softly. "We not are knowing where your daddy is... But we searching for others lost." Mogwai looks around the remains of the ship, hoping his actions cause the creature to see the place for what it is as well. "Mogwai think you know he isn't here. Come with us, maybe find him. We bring others, too." Moving closer to the creature, Mogwai holds out his hand. "No abandoning, no being alone."
Though the strange undead creature has no facial features, it seems to be frowning in concentration. "Green thing... want me... to come with it? To look for parents?"
It looks forlornly at the ground. "I don't believe that you really want me. That you wouldn't leave me."