Session 01: Fresh Cuts

Dawn had never truly broken in the Valley, but a pallid gray seeped through the wagon’s slats — just enough to sketch Alwrig’s gaunt silhouette where she lay upon timber slick with coagulated blood. A copper tang clung to her tongue as she pushed herself upright, Öde’s ruined hymns buzzing like flies in the hollows of her skull. She stumbled toward the razor-thin seam of light, shoulder to door, and the threshold gave way.

Mud swallowed her knees. The chill bit harder than any blade, yet the spring-fed pond before her gleamed with uncanny clarity, as if the earth itself bled clean water. Behind, the Meat Wagon creaked shut. The Butcher stood framed in its iron-banded maw — a cherubic visage atop a gore-sodden apron, cleaver resting easy at his hip. “Fresh meat,” he rasped, prodding Alwrig’s arm as though assessing marbling. “Always tender.”

The wagon door yawned again. Börda spilled onto the mire in a tangle of gaudy rags and misplaced dignity, two mangy monkeys clambering over him like grave-born jesters. “Stringy,” the Butcher mused, testing a bony finger against Börda’s arm before waddling off to soothe the mismatched pair of mules that dragged his dimensional abattoir.

Last came Von, fangs bared in a reflexive snarl as he face-planted beside his loyal gore-hound. “Tough meat,” the Butcher pronounced with a grin too wide for mortal kindness. His appraisal complete, he unlatched a side compartment, revealing parchment curled like shed skin and a quartet of empty vessels: glass, wood, leather, iron.

Upon the charcoal map, a pond identical to theirs sat scrawled with the single desperate word house? Farther east, ink branded the mountains with the dread name Knogbrüth. A second sheet listed rarities fit only for a monarch’s final feast:

• Black Salt
• Bone-Marrow Honey
• Lich-Moss
• Ember Fungus
• Blood Gourd

Sous, the shadow-chef in Schleswig’s cursed kitchens, had promised silver enough to drown a pauper’s guilt. All that stood between the Scvm and coin was this scavenger’s litany. Memories trickled back like pus: the King’s hundredth year, rumors of paranoia-swollen gluttony, and whispers that the feast itself might herald the world’s last sunrise.

The Stream of Half-Remembered Promises

With no sun to steer by, they chose the stream sluicing from the pond, its course a silver scar through the darkwood. Alwrig pressed eastward, voice cracking through a hymn to her dead goddess — a dirge so discordant that Von’s patience snapped. A shove of axe-hardened shoulders silenced the prophetess, but Börda applauded the “performance,” ever eager for an audience even in desolation. Discord trailed them like carrion birds.

Hours later the trees withdrew, revealing a glade where quiet hung heavier than grave-soil. At its heart stood a horse of pure bone, each vertebrae bleached and immaculate, harnessed to a narrow sled. Empty eye sockets regarded the intruders with a saint’s serenity.

Greed warred with superstition. Alwrig, heart hammering against her lone lung, proffered shriveled carrot-leather in a trembling palm. The beast’s skull darted forward, teeth clacking like closing manacles. Blood geysered where her wrist had been; fingers fell to the loam in crimson petals. She shrieked, collapsing as life poured away.

Von was there in two strides, hands already slick with the medicine box’s jaundiced salve. Cloth, pressure, whispered oaths — the bleeding ceased, leaving Alwrig ghost-pale but breathing. A silent pact formed in the gore between them: debts paid only in flesh.

The skeletal horse, its mandible crimson-lacquered, turned and walked into the green gloom, sled skimming behind like a coffin on runners. None dared follow.

Into the Foothills of the Dead

They pressed on, the prophetess swaying but unbroken, until thorn and trunk relented at last. Before them spanned a wind-flayed plain; to the west, the Bergen Chrypt reared black and jagged, every peak a rusted spear against the heavens. There, somewhere between twin glaciers, lay the tomb of Knogbrüth — if the songs Börda half-remembered spoke truth. Legends claimed the lich once seeded this very valley with its first walking corpses, and that untold armies died to hurl him beneath the ice. If lich-moss still clung to that frozen skull, it would season the tyrant king’s plate with despair itself.

Debate was brief. The stream’s dwindling trickle could not mask the mountains’ siren call. Börda’s theatrics faltered as he pictured the spoils of a legend made manifest; Von tasted purpose sharper than steel upon his battered tongue. Alwrig, arm bound and throbbing, felt Öde’s dead voice guiding her toward the cold wound where gods once bled.

With dusk’s gray rot settling over the land, they descended the hill. Each step toward Bergen Chrypt echoed like a drumbeat in a funeral march — three Scvm, ragged yet unyielding, set upon a path to pluck delicacies from graves and storms alike. Ahead loomed glaciers whispering with ancient hunger, and somewhere beyond, the black salt winds prowled unseen.

The Meat Wagon and its butcher faded behind them. The King’s feast awaited. And in the hush between heartbeats, the Valley listened.