Casting Shadows

This is a very brief entry, but as usual, I feel that the possibilities contained within may spread outward like ravenous, carnivorous vines. This entry is for Desolation, and would be an appropriate encounter while the group is enroute from some awful place to some other awful place, through the humbled wreckage of what once were mountains.

The Seed
The party stumbles across the ruin of a seaside community, splashed like a drying wave across the sunward face of a scarred and decapitated mountain. Within this reeking ruin, far from the sea, they find two survivors…of a sort.

Planting the Seed
Shanties, wharves, boats, and fine manors are shattered like the scattered toys of angry children, with a few odd relics left in the piles of rotted seaweed, scrub trees, beach sand and oppressed-looking fish bones. All is silent, but for the irritated warning cries of nesting birds, and the distant sound of a heated argument.

Exploring may hasten discovery of the arguers, but as the argument is roaming all over Hell’s half-acre, it may find them before they find it.

The bickerers are two old men, dressed in ill-fighting and quite small looking rags. Dirty, covered in food stains, such as jams and other preserves, the wild haired old-timers look like demented boys out past supper more than anything else. Unkempt, shaggy maned, and furious about something, the duo, easily seen to be brothers by the cast of their features, are yelling, pushing, kicking, punching, falling, rolling, and stomping their way through the ruins of the hamlet oblivious to everything but their dispute.

They seem to be arguing about a toy.

A small wooden toy, finely wrought, but…

As the party takes this all in, any sharp eyed member may also detect a lurking Ostovhore patiently lying in wait to spring upon one of the oblivious combatants.

The details
The men are indeed brothers and they are indeed arguing over a toy. More importantly, they are completely out of their minds.

Closer investigation, if the Ostovhore is denied its meal, will reveal the men are so lost to madness they can rarely if every articulate anything and the sum total of their existence would seem to be fighting over this toy. Such inspection will also reveal the oddity that these two actually are wearing children’s clothes stretched tight across their lean frames, and that they are in perfect health… not so much as a scratch is on them.

Should one or both of the boys come to harm, such as by the laborious attack of the slow-moving Ostovhore, or some other source of peril, it will soon become evident, that though they can be harmed, killed, and even eaten, they don’t stay that way for very long.

The toy itself is common enough in appearance, but inspection of the right kind will reveal that it retains an enchantment from the Before. The toy may be whatever sort of thing you wish, but I think a seated ape, with worn fur and a stretched and not at all convincing grin would do wonders here.

Despite whatever conclusions the revelation of enchantment sparks in the players, it is not the source of the fate which has befallen these survivors. It merely has the power of limited movement twice a day; clapping and doing backflips.

Investigation of the area will find the usual remains and belongings to scavenge, and stands a good chance of revealing that these men were boys on the Night of Fire, but have been irrevocably changed by that night into these savage immortals, squabbling over an old toy for all that remains of eternity on this battered and burnt-out world.