From The Jackals To The Shepherds

The poet this week is Sara Teasdale: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/sara-teasdale

Make your calls to make the world a better place: https://5calls.org/

Stance: http://takeastance.us/

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor

Help The Show On Patreon

Riverhouse Games Website

Twitter

Subscribe on iTunes

Subscribe via RSS!

Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:

Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames

Battlebards Tracks used:

Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet

Crypts of the Undead – Where the Dead Dwell – Score Music – Wilddog Productions

Transcription:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

A week has passed.

Before the storm hits, the camp of marauders shares hot beverages and crumbling trail cakes. Their leader watches our community in the charged autumn air. The moon tonight is like a scimitar, a little silver scimitar, a-drifting down the sky. And near beside it is a star, a timid twinkling golden star, that watches likes an eye. Drach looks up at the smoke in the hills from their camp, and through the window-pane of the hospital he helps to build he sees the bandits have a fire again, just like the ones we make,— and somehow he knows the meal they share, having shared similar ones before. Eileen jolts him from his staring to ask for his help with a beam, the artist helping to accelerate the project before the snows hit.

In the mountains, The Monster reaches the gates. As the freezing girl who has been with us a long time steps into the cavern where the Frost Shepherds slowly struggle against their bonds, she casts small spells. Her might and magic stand no protection from the ancient withered shepherds, but shepherds aren’t the only things living in the mountains. With her first footsteps into the cave, tiny tempests whisk themselves up, stirring sand and dust from the floor. She pleads to the four winds blowing through the sky, they have seen the cycles of life and death in the mining camp, to tell her then what to do. She keeps an image of Eileen, Drach, Llyana in her mind, knowing that if not for their affection that she would never have been captured by our community. She knows nothing stands in the way of the Frost Shepherds’ annihilation, and yet if she could bring those three with her into the next cycle, the winds may hold the key to keep her love may be true. As the winds stir, the mountains pick up their snowy caps and in calling the elements to help her, the foolhardy girl who has been with us a long time may have doomed us all. Unnoticed to her, the storm rages down from the mountains, and the valley where miners centuries ago toiled rests at the ending point of the storm’s path.

First comes soft rains from the winds and the smell of the ground from the mountains, and songbirds circle with their shimmering sound; and frogs in the river sing in fear at the night, and wild plum trees shed their tremulous white, robins wear their feathery fire and whistle their whims on a low fence-wire; and not one of us foresee the storm, nature will not care at last when it is done, would not mind, neither bird nor tree, if we all perished utterly; and Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, would scarcely know that we were gone.

In the caves, said the wind from out the south, “Lay no kiss upon his mouth,” and the wind from out the west, “Wound the heart within zer breast,” and the wind from out the east, “Send her empty from the feast,” and the wind from out the north, “In this tempest save them not, when thou art more cruel than they, then will we be kind to thee.”

Before she kissed Eileen only winds of heaven had kissed her, Before Drach, only the tenderness of rain, before Llyana, the fire of the summer sun— with winter coming, how can she care for kisses like theirs again? In the river, she sought the sea, yet now she sends her winds to meet us, surging down the mountain singing of the south— She looks on from the cave her head turned away to keep still holy our kiss upon her mouth. And swift sweet snows of shining November weather found not her lips where living kisses are; she bows her head lest they put out her glory as snow puts out our star. The North Wind speaks “They are yours forever, sealed with a seal and safe forevermore— think you that we could let beggars enter where monsters stood before?”

Crisply the bright snow whispers, crunching beneath our feet as we walk through the ruins of snow collapsed buildings, our shadows dance, fantastic shapes in vivid blue. On the broken foundations of the hospital the chickadees flit to and fro, with sharp turns weaving a frail invisible net. In ecstasy the earth drinks the silver sunlight; in ecstasy the birds drink the wine of speed; in ecstasy they laugh drinking the wine of love. Had not the music of their joy sounded its highest note? The bandit leader holds Drach’s arm, the marauders and our community having struck a bargain to ensure their help getting everyone to safety. Our homes may be destroyed, as well as our hopes of a hospital building, but no lives were lost in the storm. Eileen and Llyana hold each other underneath a door frame, all that remains of one of our homes crushed under the weight of wet snow, and suddenly, with lifted eyes ze tells her to look. There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple, fearless and gay as our love, a bluejay cocked his crest! Oh who can tell the range of joy or set the bounds of beauty?

We begin a new project. Consolidating our community into the few remaining shelters is no easy task, and between marauder, newcomer, and our original settlers, there are plenty of people looking for beds. We plan on moving everyone into main living areas over the next three weeks, and sorting out other structures for purposes of storage and other needs. Drach’s thick hair keeps his head warm during this work and he grits his teeth against the appetite he builds. Despite the rough work, Llyana’s long nails remain pristine and zer blue eyes glow in the sunlight. As Eileen flows through the camp, leading us in our efforts with inspiring song, we look to the river. If it can keep running after the storm, so can we.

Thank you for joining us for the thirty second episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Sara Teasdale. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.

Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that scares me in the world, but we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. Today I’m calling to demand that congress MANDATE THE DISCLOSURE OF ONLINE POLITICAL AD INFORMATION

This fall, the US electorate learned that Russian operatives spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on political ads across Facebook, Twitter and Google to influence the outcome of the 2016 US elections. Because online political advertising is not currently covered by political ad disclosure regulations (unlike television, print, and radio advertising), these ads went undetected for over a year. Campaign advertising requirements have not been substantively updated since the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, when Internet advertising was still in its early days. Consequently, the millions of American voters who were targeted by Russian political operatives were unaware of who was behind the political advertisements they were seeing, how they were being targeted, or the scope of Russian advertising influence on the electorate.

Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Mark Warner (D-VA) and John McCain (R-AZ) have introduced the bipartisan Honest Ads Act to update standards for political advertising and reduce the potential for foreign interference in future elections. The bill would mandate that all online ads include a disclosure statement identifying the ad as a political one. The bill would also require that platforms running online political ads (such as Facebook, Twitter or Google) build and maintain public databases of these ads. The databases would include images of the ads as well as information about the buyer, linked organizations, cost, and targeting. Furthermore, online platforms would be required to make “all reasonable efforts” to ensure political ads are not being purchased by foreign citizens or governments, just as radio and television broadcasters must already do. The new rules would apply to online platforms with more than 50 million active users, organizations buying political ads with a total value of over $500, and ads for both specific candidates and for legislative issues of national importance.

The Honest Ads Act is not a sufficient standalone response to Russia’s election interference in 2016, but it is a reasonable and necessary first step in safeguarding our democracy, informing our electorate, and ensuring campaign disclosure rules reflect the rapidly changing landscape of advertising and online media.

Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.

And until next week, I hope your week goes well.

The poet this week is John Donne: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/john-donne

Make your calls to make the world a better place: https://5calls.org/

Stance: http://takeastance.us/

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor

Help The Show On Patreon

Riverhouse Games Website

Twitter

Subscribe on iTunes

Subscribe via RSS!

Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:

Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames

Battlebards Tracks used:

Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet

Crypts of the Undead – Festering Heart of Evil – Score Music – Novak Cuic

Druids Grove – Life Answers – Score Music – Richard Daskas

Transcription:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

A week has passed.

We live in a little world made cunningly of elements, and an angelic hope that violent desperation has betrayed to endless night and of our world, both parts, no, all parts must die. Our lives, which beyond that heaven which was most high have found new spheres and of new lands can write, pour new rivers in our eyes, that so that we might drown our world with weeping earnestly, or wash it, if it must be drowned no more: but oh! it must be burnt; alas the fire of lust and envy burnt it heretofore, and made it fouler; let their flames retire, and burn with a fiery zeal and, which does in eating heal.

Drach sleeps outside, giving his bed to Djuna’s cousin, Heru, wounded seriously in the marauder attack on our community. His sleep is restless, tossed by the chill of the autumn dew and of his dreams. The embrace of she whose face shocked his during the attack. In his dream they fight, holding off Jackals. Those nights in the city they shared together and as his dream pushes them to one another in an ephemeral kiss he wakes to a quiet snowfall. She too wakes in the night, dreaming of closeness, and as the wet snow silently drifts across her camp she pulls her blanket closer and runs her thumb over Drach’s name monogrammed on the wool.

So, break off this last lamenting kiss, which sucks two souls, and vapours both away; turn, ghost, that way, and let me turn this, and let ourselves benight our happiest day. We ask none leave to love; nor will we owe any so cheap a death as saying, “Go.” Go; and if that word have not quite killed either, ease the two with death, by bidding them go too. Or, if it have, let the word work, and a just office on a murderer do. Except it be too late, to kill them so, being double dead, going, and bidding, “Go.”

Heru dies in the night. In the morning Djuna employs Drach to help bury the body, the work warming the autumn frost from his muscles. His silence betrays his feelings as her vengeful rage pours in mourning.

Unheard, she gathers her newcomers. Never treated like members of the original homes, those of us who found the mining camp first, Djuna and her family find hardships and setbacks in integrating into community life. Djuna warns the newcomers that our community will never be their home, maybe not through malicious intent, but through oversight, limited resources, and now the misguided sentiment Drach harbors for the marauders who beat down our homes, our community is not the haven they sought to find. She gathers those close to her, as well as some vital supplies, and sets out into the woods. As she leaves, she notices a small letter tucked into her pack, with a map and directions into the woods.

The letter reads: Come live with me, and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove of golden sands, and crystal brooks, with silken lines, and silver hooks. There will the river whispering run warm’d by thy eyes, more than the Sun. And there the enamored fish will stay, begging themselves they may betray. When thou wilt swimme in that live bath, each fish, which every channel has, will amorously to thee swim, gladder to catch thee, than thou him. If thou, to be so seen, beest loath, by Sun, or Moon, thou darknest both, and if my self have leave to see, I need not their light, having thee. Let others freeze with angling reeds, and cut their legs, with shells and weeds, or treacherously poor fish beset, with strangling snare, or windowie net: let coarse bold hands, from slimy nest the bedded fish in banks out-wrest, or curious traitors, sleavesilke flies bewitch poor fishes wandering eyes. For thee, thou needst no such deceit, for thou thy self art thine own bait; that fish, that is not catch’d thereby, alas, is wiser far than I.

At the bottom of the letter is a signature in an unintelligible script, and the symbol of a snowflake.

We begin a new project this week, for as the night brings snowfall, our generator ticks itself nearly into exhaustion to keep up with the cold. If we salvage what unused technology we have, we may be able to duplicate the device and increase the power available in order to better heat our homes. A freeze will surely kill as well as a spear, knife, or gun. As we approach the dark night of a cold winter, we do not want to die. No, Death, be not proud, though some have called you mighty and dreadful, for you are not so; for those who you think you overthrow die not, poor Death, nor yet canst you kill us. From rest and sleep, which but your pictures be, much pleasure; then from you much more must flow, and soonest our best with you will go, rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery. You are cursed to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, and do with poison, war, and sickness dwell, and poppy or charms can make us sleep as well and better than your stroke; why swell you then? Soon, the Shepherds wake eternally, and death shall be no more; Death, you will die.

Thank you for joining us for the thirtieth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is John Dunne. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.

Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that scares me in the world, but we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. Today I’m calling to demand that congress rush to SUPPORT THE ALEXANDER-MURRAY ACA STABILIZATION BILL

In a deliberate move to sabotage the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Trump recently decided to stop payment of cost-sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies to insurers selling Healthcare.gov marketplace plans. These payments help insurers provide lower-cost health insurance plans on the exchanges. In anticipation of the lost CSR revenue, insurers have already increased their rates dramatically. Some insurers may even exit the exchanges entirely, further jeopardizing health insurance access for the 18 million Americans who buy their insurance plans on the ACA individual market. However, Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) have announced a bipartisan bill, the Bipartisan Health Care Stabilization Act of 2017, to attempt to stabilize the ACA’s individual markets by reinstating CSRs for insurers for two more years. The bill would also create a low-cost catastrophic coverage exchange plan and reinstate funding for ACA enrollment outreach, funding which the Trump administration has slashed in yet another attempt to undermine the ACA. In exchange, the bill would give states more flexibility to let insurers offer new types of insurance plans that are comparably affordable to existing ACA plans. Most importantly, the bill would preserve ACA standards for what exchange plans must cover preventing the erosion of protection for those with pre-existing conditions. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a score of this bill and concluded that it would not negatively affect insurance access and would, in fact, reduce the federal deficit by about $3.8 billion over the next decade.

Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.

And until next week, I hope your week goes well.

The poet this week is Isaac Rosenberg: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/isaac-rosenberg

Make your calls to make the world a better place: https://5calls.org/

Stance: http://takeastance.us/

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor

Help The Show On Patreon

Riverhouse Games Website

Twitter

Subscribe on iTunes

Subscribe via RSS!

Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:

Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames

Battlebards Tracks used:

Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet

Crypts Of The Undead – Where The Dead Dwell – Score Music – Wilddog Productions

Transcription:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

A week has passed.

Striking in the night with wounding pain and ruthless might. The marauders push to camp, taking food and supplies from storage. Few of us rise to stop them, but the fight is rough. Night cacophony rings through the hills and wakes those sleeping in our homes. The need for warmth and nutrition keeps the marauders coming, they know if they run they will starve, but we know the same of our community, if we let them off with too much we’re doomed, especially with all the extra mouths of Djuna’s Newcomers.

The bandit leader propels them through the darkness, skipping through trees like turnstiles, sickly branches snapping and rotating in the night. She whoops loudly, to encourage their momentum and to drive our fear higher. We stay indoors, mostly.

The first one outside is Drach, his wrench held high in the night, but his spirits low in his heart. Working as our mechanic and carpenter allowed him to repurpose his strength from violence to creation, but now his building tools become weapons. He fells the first bandit with one swing, and inspires others to step up as well.

He stops when he sees the face of the bandit leader. He recognizes the scar across her forehead, and he knows that the Jackal that gave it to her lies in a ditch with his bullet in the same place. They both stand still as violence bursts around them. Quietly he shakes his head at her, and she meets his gaze with sadness. As more of us pour from our homes she whistles and calls back her marauders into the black of the night and as the sun rises we’re left with tattered ruins of the houses in progress for those new among us.

The marauders had torn down the buildings closest to the area of their descent, the freshest structures they could find while looking for resources. All of Drach’s work to set foundations and raise walls torn down in an evening of violence.

As the marauders had struck our homes, we hear The Beast strike them in their retreat. Muffled roars and a single scream echo into our camp as we pick up broken trusses. The Beast has a meal tonight and we shudder at our relief that it was not one of us. Eileen hums a dirge and we all join in as we pick up the scattered pieces from the ground.

Sombre the night is, and, though we have our lives, we know what sinister threat lurks there. Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know this poison-blasted track opens on our camp— on a little safe sleep.

We discover something new today, as small skinks stir in the leaf litter on the forest floor, come out to hid under the large bits of debris, and as the autumn sun lights on their hiding holes they scamper to and fro to find larger bits of shade. Up high in the mountains, the bandit leader wakes to find one of her marauders slipped away in the night, the small skinks lightly licking their bandaged wounds.

The darkness crumbles away. It is the same old druid Time as ever, Only a live thing leaps to her hand, a strange sardonic rat, as she pulls a frosted poppy to stick behind her soldier’s ear. Droll skink, they would shoot you if they knew your cosmopolitan sympathies. Now you have touched this bandit hand you will do the same to Drach’s soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure to cross the sleeping green between. It seems to inwardly grin as it passes strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes, less chanced than it for life, bonds to the whims of murder, spawned from The Creature’s lair, sprawled in the bowels of the earth, the torn mountain valley. What does it see in our eyes at the shrieking iron and flame hurled through still heavens? What quaver—what heart aghast? Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins drop, and are ever dropping; but hers in her soldier’s ear is safe— just a little white with the frost.

Thank you for joining us for the thirtieth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Anna Seward. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.

Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that scares me in the world, but we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. Today I’m calling to demand that congress protect the Clean Power Plan:

On October 9th, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that the agency will take steps to repeal the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era policy aimed at reducing carbon emissions from power plants and combating climate change. There is no question that increased carbon emissions have led to climate change and the rise of more and more floods, droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes that have put populations in the US and around the world in danger. It is irresponsible for the EPA to roll back policies that curb carbon emissions under false promises of reduced costs or a coal industry comeback.

Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.

And until next week, I hope your week goes well.

The poet this week is Anna Seward: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anna-seward

Make your calls to make the world a better place: https://5calls.org/

Stance: http://takeastance.us/

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor

Help The Show On Patreon

Riverhouse Games Website

Twitter

Subscribe on iTunes

Subscribe via RSS!

Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:

Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames

Battlebards Tracks used:

Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet

Druid’s Grove – Life Answers – Score Music – Richard Daskas

Heavenly Plane – Crystal Arch – Score Music – Ian Fisher

Transcription:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

A week has passed.

While summer roses all their glory yield to crown the votary of love and joy, misfortune’s victim hails, with many a sigh, thee, scarlet Poppy of the pathless field, gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield thy flaccid vest that, as the gale blows high, flaps, and alternate folds around thy head. So stands in the long grass a love-crazed maid, smiling aghast; while stream to every wind her garish ribbons, smeared with dust and rain; but brain-sick visions cheat her tortured mind, and bring false peace. Thus, lulling grief and pain, kind dreams oblivious from thy juice proceed, thou flimsy, showy, melancholy weed.

We wake and the girl on whom we all depend who had been with us a long time is gone. We can feel her absence more than we had in her time in the woods. Now she has left for good.

While one sere leaf, that parting Autumn yields, trembles upon the thin, and naked spray of the river, November, dragging on this sunless day, lours, cold and sullen, on the watery fields; and Nature to the waste dominion yields, stripped her last robes, with gold and purple gay — so droops our life, of our soft beams despoiled, Youth, Health, and Hope, that long exulting smiled; and the wild carols, and the bloomy hues of merry Spring-time, spruce on every plain her half-blown bushes, moist with sunny rain, more pensive thoughts in my sunk heart infuse than Winter’s grey, and desolate domain faded like my lost Youth, that no bright Spring renews.

On the fleet streams, the Sun, that late arose, in amber radiance plays; the tall young grass no foot hath bruised; clear morning, as the marauders pass, breathing the pure gale, that on the blossom blows;  and, as with gold yon green hill’s summit glows as the rising sun sparkles off of their sharp weaponry, the river inlays the vale with molten glass and the desperate heart of their bandit leader glows with hope as she sees our community nestled down the mountainous slope: now is the year’s soft youth, yet one, alas! Cheers not as it was wont; impending woes weigh on her heart as she sees Drach putting final touches on the houses for Djuna’s newcomers; the joys, that once were theirs shared during the War against the Jackals, Spring leads not back; and those that yet remain fade while she blooms. Each hour more lovely shine her crystal beams, and feed her floral train, but oh with pale, and warring fires, decline those eyes, whose light romantic hopes sustain.

Lurking as the marauders do, The Beast watches the bandit leader. Its jaw tight with hunger but its body too weak to strike outright. As it perches above the marauders, it watches them as they watch us, both waiting for the right moment to strike.

Behold that tree, in Autumn’s dim decay, stripped by the frequent, chill, and eddying wind; where yet some yellow, lonely leaves we find lingering and trembling on the naked spray, twenty, perchance, for millions whirled away! Emblem, also! too just, of humankind! Vain man expects longevity, designed for few indeed; and their protracted day.

Down in our community, Safwan gives a small cough as the autumn chill tickles their lungs. What is it worth that Wisdom does not scorn? The blasts of sickness, care, and grief appall, that laid the friends in dust, whose natal morn rose near their own; and solemn is the call; yet, like those weak deserted leaves forlorn, shivering they cling to life, and fear the fall. We begin a project to erect a hospital, a safe tent for those ill. As the nights grow longer and the warmth of the mountains turns into a rocky chill, we may need this facility in short order.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the twenty ninth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Anna Seward. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.

Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that scares me in the world, but we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. Today I’m calling to demand that congress pass a clean DREAM act:

In September, Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals act, threatening over 800,000 undocumented young people with deportation. The declaration gave Congress until March of 2018 to pass a legislative fix or equivalent to DACA, or else those currently protected would face rapid deportation. The most robust legislative fix is the DREAM Act, a bipartisan bill originally drafted in 2001 that not only provides protection and work permits to roughly a million undocumented immigrants, but also a path to legal citizenship.

Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.

And until next week, I hope your week goes well.

The poet this week is Christina Rossetti: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/christina-rossetti

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor

Help The Show On Patreon

Riverhouse Games Website

Twitter

Subscribe on iTunes

Subscribe via RSS!

Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:

Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames

Battlebards Tracks used:

Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet

Underground Lake City – Whispers of the World Below the World – Score Music – Marko Gugic

Transcription:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

A week has passed.

Our hearts are like a singing bird whose nest is in a water’d shoot; our hearts are like an apple-tree whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; our hearts are like a rainbow shell that paddles in a halcyon sea; our hearts are gladder than all these because my love is come to me.

As Eileen works over the mural of our city, she reflects how our quiet year passes quickly and we sometimes lose sight of its progress, lacking gratitude for the moments of Spring and Summer. We should have come to the cuckoo’s calling, or when grapes are green in the cluster, or, at least, when lithe swallows muster for their far off flying from summer dying. Fall brings the apples’ dropping, a time when the grasshopper comes to trouble, when the wheat-fields are sodden stubble, and all winds go sighing for sweet things dying.

None of us in the community die this week, but death comes for a dream.

Come to us in the silence of the night; come in the speaking silence of a dream; come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright as sunlight on a stream; come back in tears, o memory, hope, love of finished years.

The mural spiraling up on the wall of a shelter now drips with a vandal’s paint.

A fool we were to sleep at noon, and wake when night is chilly beneath the comfortless cold moon; a fool to pluck our rose too soon, a fool to snap our lily. Our personal gardens we have not kept; their shoots now faded and all-forsaken. Eileen weeps as she has never wept: oh it was summer when she slept, it’s winter now she wakens.

Oh why is heaven built so far, oh why is earth set so remote? We cannot reach the nearest star that hangs afloat. We would not care to reach the moon, one round monotonous of change; yet even she repeats her tune beyond my range.

Safwan does not weep, nor Djuna, nor her cousin Heru. The newcomers who hail from another city over feel no attachment to our towers and why should they? Safwan falls asleep, pretty one, warm on Djuna’s shoulder: sleep soft, small one, through trouble and treasure; sleep warm and soft in the arms of your carer, dreaming of pretty things, dreaming of pleasure.

The remorseful girl who has been with us a long time mourns with us the loss of our monument, the tie back to our old life. As the sun sets over the glint of the river waves she lilts a song to the rapids, soft and sweet. She stays on the river all night, we never see her leave the bank.

Where sunless rivers weep their waves into the deep, she sleeps a charmed sleep: awake her not. Led by a single star, she came from very far to seek where shadows are her pleasant lot.

To replace the vandalized mural, we will need to come together as a community first and identify why it was ruined in the first place. A project begins, planning a tribunal. Eileen, Clovis, and Drach take responsibility as artist, elder, and worker of the community. Suspects will be listed, motives unearthed, and restorations made. But time must first pass.

And as Spring and Summer passed, Fall trudges on, and as the leaves begin to fall in earnest,

A week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the twenty eighth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Some people have been curious as to the poetry that gets woven into each episode. I’ll begin putting the poet’s information in the show notes, and in hindsight I should have done so from the beginning. As I’m able, I’ll go back to old episodes and include this information. This week’s poet is Christina Rossetti. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.

The poet this week is Gertrude Stein: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gertrude-stein

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor

Help The Show On Patreon

Riverhouse Games Website

Twitter

Subscribe on iTunes

Subscribe via RSS!

Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:

Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames

Battlebards Tracks used:

Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet

Transcription:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. As the determined girl who has been with us a long time returns to our community, we only now notice that she had been gone. Her head dips low in failure and while she does not speak of her time in the woods we know that whatever mission she set out upon, the results were not to her satisfaction.

Up in the mountains, the ponderous bodies of the Frost Shepherds stir underneath miles of rock and exposed to miles of air. All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again, and as the cycle of autumnal chill bathes the community in its shivering rain, the grinding of stones produce a wailing hum. The magical girl who has been with us a long time had attempted a spell, a ritual to interrupt a spiral. But the spiral still continues, and she knows there will be no escaping. If anything, she has only accelerated its progress.

If you were to sit above the thrones of the inscrutable, untranslatable, ineffable Frost Shepherds and watch the valley between the mountains you would see over eons the same patterns played out. A great spiral, a slow, ever-widening, unmeasured spiral unrolling itself horizontally. The people in this community, frozen in time and sometimes frozen in ice, appear to be motionless at every stage of their progress, each one is simultaneously being born, arriving at all ages and dying. You would perceive that it is a world without mobility, everything taking place, has taken place, will take place; therefore nothing takes place, all at once.

To the people in the community, this spiral moves so slowly as to be immaterial, they do not see the spiral, it only makes itself known at the beginning, and at the end.

The ritual has completed. The desperate girl who’s been with us a long time had tried to stop the spiral but as a small shell worn down in the river’s flow the spiral continues even after the form has gone.

A violent luck and a whole sample and even then quiet.   

A new discovery. A glass carafe of frozen ice by the door of every home. Every home except those of the newcomers to the community. A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The newcomers know that the first groups bound well, and pushing sticks into bonds can stretch. The difference is spreading.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the twenty seventh episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor

Help The Show On Patreon

Riverhouse Games Website

Twitter

Subscribe on iTunes

Subscribe via RSS!

Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:

Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames

Battlebards Tracks used:

Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet

Heavenly Plane – Crystal Arch – Score Music – Ian Fisher

Crypts of the Undead – Restless Souls – Score Music – Phil Archer

Transcription:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

A week has passed.

Some moments in life sing with poetry, but others sit flat on the page. Not every week will show our lives bustling with rhythm or meter and the vivid images of a poet’s pen do not suffer any obligation to show themselves. This week we live our lives plainly.

That said, plainness comes with benefits. For this week we live our lives in this community, as we forage around our camp, fish from the rivers, till our fields, show love to family members, orient ourselves with Djuna’s family, chronicle our history in Clovis’s journal, marvel at the skyscraper model in the center of the town, play with dolls, or lay by the river.

Things don’t always have to do things, utility is not the pinnacle of purpose, and a life without flair can be just as valuable as a life oversaturated with sensation. The trick is to find the stillness in life’s still points and to hone in. We make the most of this warm autumn week, and relax amongst ourselves as life passes, nestled in craggy rocks.

Some of the foragers, bolstered by the still-warm sun of autumn, explore deeper into the sickly trees on our side of the river’s bank. Joking amongst themselves, Reese and their friends bustle through the undergrowth, laughing as they push through twisted trunks. Further than they’ve travelled before, emboldened by the happiness of the harvests, or just at peace in each others company, they reach back to the foots of the mountains. The mines would dig into the rocky bases here, and as the young adults skip pebbles off of the foothill’s cliffs, the stones clatter throughout the thin forest.

Sometimes you never notice something until it shows up after being gone for an extended time. We hadn’t made too much of a deal of the lack of wildlife in the mining camp, but every one of the boisterous explorers freeze as one unit as a timid marmot climbs out of a hole in the rocky landscape. A deer here or there we’ve seen in our community, or a rustling bird flying overhead, but no small ground mammals live in the hunting grounds of The Beast or The Creature. The marmot slowly waddles to a trio of dandelions and lazily munches on the leaves of the weeds.

The explorers watch the marmot for minutes, stretching the time out in wonder as they see a natural creature not bound by fear or scarred from an attack. After the marmot has filled his stomach for the time, it wanders back into its burrow, and Reese and their compatriots head back to camp, with wide eyes.

Underneath the rocks, the marmot trundles through dirty passageways, its eyes glazed over with a glowing blue film. As the passageway grows larger around it, the stones and roots begin to glow with a similar blue light. The marmot stops in front of a scaled Creature, whose warm breath mists up the glowing chamber. The furry mammal vomits the contents of its lunch on the earthen floor of the cavern, and rearranges the chewed leaves into a rudimentary map. The saliva coating the chewed leaves starts to glow with a blue tint, and a trail emerges in the sick slime. The creature grins a scaled mouth, and the marmot trundles back into the darkness.

Back in the community proper, we undertake a new project. A great mural begins on the largest shack in the camp. Soaring images of our once great city rise up on the wooden walls, painted by Eileen and the newcomers as a way to remember our past lives in the metropolises.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the twenty sixth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor

Help The Show On Patreon

Riverhouse Games Website

Twitter

Subscribe on iTunes

Subscribe via RSS!

Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:

Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames

Battlebards Tracks used:

Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet

Transcription:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

A week has passed.

The first sunrise of Autumn peeks over the top of the highest mountain and the golden rays of sunlight dance upon dew gathered on the collar of a corpse.

Yesterday was a cold evening, down by one of the fishhouses Clem sits netting, his net, in the gloaming almost invisible, a dark purple-brown, and his shuttle worn and polished. The air smells so strong of riverfish it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water. All is silver: the heavy surface of the river, swelling slowly as if considering spilling over, is opaque, but the silver of Clem’s bench, the holding pots, and nets, scattered among the wild muddy shore, is of an apparent translucence like our small old buildings with an emerald moss growing on their shoreward walls.

His big fish tubs are completely lined with layers of beautiful herring scales and his wheelbarrows are similarly plastered with creamy iridescent coats of mail, with small iridescent flies crawling on them. Reese visits and brings Clem a rolled cigarette. They talk of the decline in the population and of codfish and herring as they wait for autumn to come in. There are sequins on Clem’s vest and on his thumb. He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty, from unnumbered fish with that black old knife, the blade of which is almost worn away.

Reese finds Clem this morning, as a group of foragers clears the river’s bank and reenters the community center. Reese is concerned at first that the fisherman had stayed up too late mending his nets, but when Clem does not move at Reese’s call, the other boy grows nervous, then runs and calls for help. Gathered around the body, we move Clem from his place and see the wounds on his front, left in the night by The Beast.

While mapping the forest, a topic of conversation common amongst foragers, Reese in particular, was where The Beast was, lurking in the forest it called home. Complacent to take our peaceful gathering at face value, we forgot the danger in the woods, but now The Beast has struck us at home.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. We lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Even losing Clem it’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may sound to listeners like disaster.

We mourn Clem’s passing. We add another plot to our cemetery. We discover something new about our community: as the newer members mourn with us, Safwan scampers near the edge of the crowd, and stumbles. As they right themself, they stare into the trees across the river’s bank and lock eyes with The Beast as it slowly backs into the forest. The trees themselves move around The Beast’s passing and seem to give off a silvered glow. As they return to their natural standing, Safwan could swear they see faces on the bark, faces whispering a soft chant.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the twenty fifth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor – Vi – Past – Sarah – Nyssa

Help The Show On Patreon

Riverhouse Games Website

Twitter

Subscribe on iTunes

Subscribe via RSS!

Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:

Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames

Battlebards Tracks used:

Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet

Heavenly Plane – Crystal Arch – Score Music – Ian Fisher

Heavenly Plane Caelum – Score Music – Maria Milewska

Transcription:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

A week has passed.

Earth has not anything to show more fair: dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight so touching in its majesty: our houses now, like clothing, wear the beauty of the morning; silent, bare, fish nets, field plows, shacks, statue, and community square lie open unto the fields, and to the sky; all bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep in his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; never saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! the river glides at its own sweet will. The very houses seem asleep; and all that mighty heart is lying still! But while the houses sleep, they sleep well full, for the influx of community members has packed them wide. Djuna’s family and friends sleep on makeshift hammocks, or nestled tightly invited into already full beds. Housing once again is scarce in our community.

Drach, having spent time still in quiet rest on the river bank with the charming girl who’s been with us a long time, now stirs restless in her absence. His journal, neglected for a time, not occupies his days and he begins to feel the call of idle hands again as the summer days begin to cool. No longer as warm as to make work sting with sweat, he begins to look for more work in the community.

As he polls the newcomers, Djuna’s friends and family reunited with her once more in our small community nestled in the mountains, they ask themselves “Who is this happy Warrior who no longer holds his blade?”

It is the generous spirit, whose high endeavours are an inward light that makes the path before him always bright; who, once doomed to go in company with Pain, and Fear, and Bloodshed, turns his necessity to glorious gain; controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves of their bad influence, and their good receives: more skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, as tempted more; more able to endure the light of the sun and the strain of the work as he begins to build new houses, and, as more exposed to suffering and distress; then, also, more alive to tenderness and warmth to those newly come to us.

Drach’s work brings him closer to those new to the community and as his hands build walls, his chatter builds bonds with folks of all sorts. He labours good on good to fix, and owes to virtue every triumph that he knows. He comprehends his trusting nature and knows each person good and as he works to expand the houses we have in our community we start to grow into more, into the first inkling of a town. He works happy as a lover; and attired with sudden brightness, like a Man inspired; he who, though once suffering storm and turbulence in the fight against the Jackals is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans to homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;

Drach works, not tirelessly, for he feels the strain of his work and in the evenings retires to a bunk to sleep strongly through the night and wake in the morning with stiff muscles. As he works, the youth in the community greet the newest youngster, a small child by the name of Safwan. Yuen carries with her the doll that Ezekiel had made to mend their feud, it having been completed this week only. She holds it to Safwan as an introduction, and as they reach for it, the three youngsters go to bonding over the new doll, all admiring Ezekiel’s craftsmanship.

As the last light from the summer sun edges below the trees, we take a moment to sigh and appreciate our summer. It went by too quickly but most of us are better for it. As the forest foragers go their rounds and Llayana tends to xer soil, we take stock of the dusk light and ask ourselves what should our focus be going into autumn.

I think Drach’s (pronounced like ox) got the best idea, for sure. Especially if more people find our camp, we should have roofs to put over their heads. Especially if the days are getting shorter and colder.

Shelter’s great, but we’re barely keeping up on our food supply. I think we should focus on stocking our larders for the leaner months. Winter may freeze this river solid, and crops won’t grow under snow.

Any time we prepare for something, it goes wrong, or something new happens, or we change priorities. If we live life day to day and let the magic of the mountains come to us we should be ready to adapt to whatever life sends our way!

The Beast in the woods and The Creature underground have left us alone for a suspiciously long time, and we haven’t seemed to have even met the Monster in the river. The warning on those metal plates still rings in my ears. We should make sure we can defend ourselves when the inevitable happens.

Indecisive, the only thing we can all agree on is how beautiful the summer sun looks as it dips behind the peaks.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the twenty third episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor

Help The Show On Patreon

Riverhouse Games Website

Twitter

Subscribe on iTunes

Subscribe via RSS!

Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:

Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames

Battlebards Tracks used:

Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet

Druids Grove – Life Answers – Score Music – Richard Daskas

Transcription:

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

A week has passed

Eileen lays her sleeping head, nestled with her love, human on Llyana’s faithless arm. Soul and body have no bounds to the lovers as they lie upon her tolerant enchanted slope in their ordinary swoon, grave the vision Venus sends of supernatural sympathy, universal love and hope; while an abstract insight wakes among the glaciers and the rocks the hermit’s carnal ecstasy.

Early, at the first peak of the sun’s rays over the mountains, as the golden light splashes down into the mining camp, the foragers in the woods return to camp with more bodies than they had set out with. As we welcome, blanket, and feed the newcomers, Djuna brushes the morning dust from her eyes and catches a heartbeat as it nearly jumps from her chest. She runs to a small man in the new crowd and pulls him into her heavy arms with a strong embrace.

Down by the brimming river that night we heard a lover sing under an arch of the railway: love has no ending.

The shores are pummelled by the waves; in a lonely forest the rain lashes an abandoned mine cart; magpies fill the mountain caves. Unendowed with wealth or pity, clever birds with jet black legs, sitting on their speckled eggs, eye our happy community.

Ezekiel, playing with Yuen in the mud, as if no time and no feud between them has passed, kneels and digs with a small trowel. It strikes something in the mud and, as excited as he was on the first day in the camp, he scampers about in a small circle before resuming his dig. He finds a thick cable, buried in the rivers edge. However, unlike the frayed chord that led us to the old generator, this cable thickly plunges into the mud under deep waters.

Based on its direction, it looks to head directly into the dark and thick woods on the other side of the river. As Ezekiel and Yuen follow its course and try to guess where through the dirt it may travel, a harsh roar from across the river sends songbirds into flight. The two children rush from the river, without the protective girl who’s been with us a long time, their fear and memories of The Beast and The Creature make their flight stronger. As we sleep tonight the roars continue, quieter but no less hungry than the first.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the twenty third episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.