Session Thirty-Five: The Nun's Priest's Tale

Some Late Night Shopping

Later in the evening, Maurice slips out of the King’s Arms, goes back to the market district, and breaks into the herbalist’s shop. He avoids the guard presence, conducts a thorough search of the place, and makes off with a large, locked box. He returns to the King’s Arms and convinces Garnier to bypass the lock, thus revealing that the box contains the mysterious assassin’s distinctive armor and weaponry. Maurice tucks all of this away and plans to have the armor resized to fit himself at the next available opportunity.

Captain on Deck

Early the next morning, the company visit Antonella Sclephani. The excitable inventor has almost completed work on the mighty landship and invites them aboard to inspect it. She points out its various features, escorts Andre to the helm, and presents Maurice with five blunted arrows that should allow him to stun targets from range.

The pilgrims are gathered from the inn and escorted to Antonella’s workshop. Some are impressed with the landship. Others are dubious. The more religious types, especially the Prioress, believe it to be a work of heresy. Garnier politely tells the prioress that she can walk and be responsible for her own luggage.

After a protracted conversation, some of the pilgrims and the company bundle into the landship, while the rest remain with their horses and carts. Antonella, in a fit of enthusiasm, fires up the ship’s boiler, only to have Sabina nervously remark that there’s no real way to get the ship out of the barn.

Antonella points out four sets of pins, which, when removed, will allow one of the side walls to fall away and the ship to roll very gracefully into the street. Andre tries to keep the ship moving as slowly as possible, while other members of the company pop the pins and bring the side wall crashing down.

Sir Henri and Magnus decide to ride for Colmar’s eastern gate, to ensure that it will be open prior to the landship’s arrival. They find the gate closed (though a smaller door within the gate is open). One of the guards, who is either particularly lawful or particularly lazy, tells Sir Henri that, according to civic ordinances, the gates remain closed to cart traffic until 10 in the morning.

Magnus frets and keeps a lookout behind him while Sir Henri gets into a protracted argument with the guard. All too soon, Magnus sees the prow of the landship appearing from a side street, and he shouts at Sir Henri to hurry things along. Sir Henri tosses a small fortune in gold to the guards to get them to open the gate early. The guards agree to do so, at first happily, then in a blind panic as they see the landship trundling toward the gate.

It is not Captain Andre’s first day at the helm of a ship, but it is his first day at the helm of a landship, and his captaincy is off to a rocky start. He scrapes the ship’s port side against a storefront and smashes a turnip cart flat beneath its treads. Panicked citizens and travelers leap into building and down alleys in order to avoid the inexorable approach of the ship.

Sir Henri aids the guards in opening the gate, while Magnus shouts at the guards and encourages them to hurry. Between them, the gates open just wide enough to allow the landship to pass out of Colmar and into the countryside beyond. Captain Andre manages to navigate his vessel around a herd of very confused cows before setting sail down the road to the town of Epernay.

Sunny Epernay

To Epernay

The ship has to pull “into port” a few times on the journey to refill its water tanks and take on additional wood for fuel. Despite this, the trip to Epernay is both easy and swift. The company arrives in the early afternoon. At the gates, they are told, politely but firmly, to leave their interesting vehicle outside the town walls. They park it in a nearby field and leave Magnus’ troops top stand guard. That done, they enter Epernay, find a nearby inn, and take some time to refresh themselves.

Once this is done, Henri the innkeeper volunteers to escort anyone who is interested up to the Shrine of the Hens, located atop one of the hills of Epernay. Most of the pilgrims beg off, but the company goes with Henri, who takes time during the journey to relate the tale of the miracle of the hens.

The Miracle of the Hens

Many years ago, a family of pilgrims passed through Epernay on their way to Turin. Their eldest son, being quite handsome, caught the eye of a local woman. She attempted to woo him, but when he realized she was already married, he spurned her advances. Jealous and angry, the woman stole a chalice from one of the Lady’s shrines, hid it among the son’s possessions, and accused him of stealing it. In those days, justice in Epernay was swift, and the elder son was tried and hanged in the branches of the execution tree.

The next morning, when the family went to collect their son’s body for burial, they found him alive and hanging from the tree. Their son said to them, “the Lady knew my innocence and spared my life. Go to the captain of the guard and tell him of this miracle. Ask him to pardon me and cut me down.”

The family went to the captain of the guard and found him seated at table, about to tuck into a meal of finely cooked chicken. The family spoke of the Lady’s miracle and asked the captain to honor their son’s request. But the captain only laughed, saying, “I don’t believe you. Why, your boy is as dead as these chickens on my plate.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the two chickens sat upright on the captain’s plate, sprouted feathers and beaks, and began to caper, prance, and crow upon the table. The captain, awestruck and ashamed, immediately pardoned the son and released him from the execution tree. The family went on their way and the hens were taken to the Lady’s shrine, where they lived in a blessed coop for the rest of their days.

The Holy Hens!

At the Shrine

Henri finishes his story just before the company arrives at the door of the shrine. He tells the company that the descendants of the Blessed Fowl still live in the shrine, and still inhabit the blessed coop that the faithful made for them.

He then opens the door and finds that his story is no longer true.

The lay folk of the shrine are in great distress. Though the company does not speak to them directly, it becomes clear that someone (or something) has broken into the shrine and has made off with the Holy Hens. The company performs a quick search of the premises and finds the mouth of a hastily dug tunnel at the base of one of the walls surrounding the shrine.

Maurice ties a rope around his waist and shimmies down the tunnel. Andre follows along right behind him. The two find bits of feather and rather strange, animal-like tracks in the tunnel. They soon emerge from the other side and discover that they have burrowed beneath one of the town walls and are now overlooking the wilderness outside. Andre gives the rope a pull before Maurice unties it. Then the two men follow the tracks and the feather dander down a slope, across a stream, and into a forest.

Meanwhile, Renee feels the rope tug in her hands and pulls, only to find no resistance. When the rope comes back with nothing on the other end, she squeezes into the hole after Maurice and Andre. She questions Andre about tugging the rope, saying that she assumed that it meant “something was wrong.” Andre assures her that he meant, “we’re leaving to explore.”

Realizing that the rest of the company are likely to come down the tunnel in ones and twos, Andre offers to leave, head back into Epernay, and bring the company to the head of the trail using more comfortable means. He beseeches Maurice and Renee not to leave until he comes back. They do, but Renee gets bored, tries to stretch her net between two trees to serve as a hammock, and gets horribly entangled as a result.

A Foul Smelling Cave

The company follows Andre out to meet Maurice and Renee, frees Renee from her net, and follows the trail of the Holy Hens through the wilderness. They soon come to the entrance of a cave that reeks of wet animal and excrement, its walls coated with a bioluminescent fungus that provides fitful radiance.

The company enters, finding the tunnels within narrow and the ceiling uncomfortably low. Squeezing through in single file, they eventually get to a point where natural, albeit very slick, steps lead downward into a much larger room.

Sir Henri takes the lead, slips on the top step, and tumbles ass over teakettle into the room below. As he struggles to rise, Magnus follows after him, also slips, also falls, and knocks Sir Henri off his feet again.

As the two men struggle to disentangle themselves, swarms of screeching, hissing rats boil from side tunnels. Both men are buried in a torrent of rats as the rest of the company fires arrows and tries not to topple down the stairs themselves.

Magnus, overcome with rage, draws the enchanted dagger that he took from Squire Charlotte and lays about him, butchering rats on all sides. Sir Henri—spared dozens of bite wounds thanks to the coverage and durability of his armor—throws lamp oil on the rats and shouts to his companions to burn the creatures. Maurice borrows bandages from Pierre and ties them around several of his arrows, only to discover that he has no means to light them…

Tip Your Local Rat Catcher, Because This is a Big Job!