From The Jackals To The Shepherds

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

Gnome Village – Tinkertown (Short Loop) – Score Music – Kevin MacLeod

Crypts of the Dead – Stain of the Departed – Score Music – Evan Kitchener

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.

Yuen dances on the river’s shore, cloudy and blustery as Summer begins its descent into autumn; What need has she to care for wind or water’s roar? She tumbles her hair spraying wet river drops; being young she has not known the fool’s triumph, nor yet love lost as soon as won. The hesitant girl who has been with us a long time watches as Yuen plays, watching also the foragers in the woods, Drach finally goaded into assisting. He, the best warrior, whose violence now lays dead and all the sheaves of river reeds to bind it! What need that yuen should dread the monstrous crying of wind?

The conflicted girl who has been with us a long time hears the brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, looks up and sees the brilliant moon and all the milky sky, and all that famous harmony of leaves, which had blotted out The Beast’s image and its cry.

She rises, noting the indentation her legs leave in the grass and the mud near the river’s edge, the way her scales, hidden so well from human eyes, leave tessellated imprints in the wet soil. As she rises so too does the wildness on the river, and on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, and all that lamentation of the leaves, could but compose her image and her cry.

Venturing to the ring of pines where once she sheltered Yuen, the headstrong girl who has been with us a long time crouches into the woods and begins to draw circles and lines in the dirt of the forest floor. As she draws, the outline of a face begins to appear in the air, the pines pull into the center of the ring, and the birds go quiet. With the last circle she traces in the soil, she looks back to the path to the river.

The face in the trees solidifies into reality, etched into the bark of each pine for moments, then incihng and creaking down the trunks to slough into the earth. Rising from the clay is a prone body, a sleeping man. The magical girl who has been with us a long time rests her eyes on his face, and her memories turn back to those who first came to this mining camp. She can see him still— the freckled man who goes to a gray place on a riverbank in gray mining clothes at dawn to cast his flies— it’s long since she began to call up to the eyes this wise and simple man. All day she’d looked in the face what she had hoped it would be and the reality: the living men that she hated, this dead man that she loved, and how when the Frost Shepherds came, the work of The Beast, The Creature, and her The Monster tasked with the beating down of the wise and all the great art beaten down.

She knows this ritual, and despite having never cast it before she knows the length she’ll need to afford it. Waking up after a chilled afternoon nap, Eileen finds a note from the absent girl who’s been with us a long time, devoid of details but noting her disappearance. Not to return to the community for six weeks since suddenly she began, in scorn of this forested audience, imagining a man, and his sun-freckled face and gray mining cloth, climbing up to a place where stone is dark with river froth, and the down turn of his wrist when the flies drop in the stream— a man who does not now exist, a man who is but a dream; and the pines themselves moan around his sleeping form, “Before we are old we shall have written him one poem maybe as cold and passionate as the dawn.”

High in the mountains, the Frost Shepherds stir. Now as at all times they can see in their mind’s eye, in their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones appearing and disappearing in the blue depths of the sky with all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones, and all their helms of silver hovering side by side, and all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more, being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied, the newest inhabitants of the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

In the community proper, Ezekiel begins a small project of his own. Becoming of age and maturity, or at least approaching those steps, he realizes his past mistakes. Though still very much a child, he can see the damage his fight with Yuen has caused on their relationship and regrets the lost weeks of their friendship together. He remembers how Yuen would look in wanting at the doll tied to the watchful girl who has been with us a long time’s belt and begins to gather materials for his own creation. A bit of unused cloth here, a stray bead or button popped from its original home there, in two weeks he’ll have a present, a peace offering to give to his friend. With this new project in his heart, Ezekiel begins to work his creativity and keeps in his mind the joyful memories the two youngsters have shared.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the twenty 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. 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

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.

White, glittering sunlight fills the community square, spotted and sprigged with shadows. Double rows of bartering booths spread out their tempting shows of harvested golden fruit, the morning air smells sweet with ripeness, on the pathway there a wicker basket gapes and crashes down spilling out small, meek plums. The market glows, and flaunts, and clatters in its busy care. This week we finish the project to build the centerpiece of this square and as the final touches are put upon the magnificent monument the sun peers out from behind a cloud and glints off of the model skyscraper, throwing reflections across the camp in beautiful sparkle. A stately Eileen at the northern side lifts her voice to the distant sky, and through the wide clear camp peals a song, suddenly — crashing, triumphant in its joyful tide, quenching the square in vibrant harmony.

The summer warms not only our bodies but also our determined hearts. Addressing our food shortage has been a concern since we first set up camp in this wooded clearing, from farms and fields, to river catches. Today Eileen’s song brings us warmth but melodies and song can’t replace the warmth of a full belly.

We double down efforts to bring food to our tables, more hands assist with the farm, repairs are made to the tangled nets of the fisheries, and most importantly, a cadre of brazen individuals set forth across the river to forage in the thicker woods. Our hunger outweighs our fear of The Beast and while we sometimes hear the rumbled growls in the woods we manage to bring back overflowing handfuls of mushrooms, berries, and roots unimpeded. We start a project to organize protected details of foragers to address this bounty of untapped resources. We estimate small groups at first but if we see success we plan on having fully stocked market stalls and food storages within four weeks.

The only ones opposed to this plan are Eileen, Drach, and the nervous girl who has been with us a long time. Every time we venture into The Beast’s home she watches at the river’s shore. The children say she mumbles under her breath and seems to see things they cannot but we pass this as worry for our safety.

One afternoon as we explore our limits in the woods she sits unseen on the river’s bank and watches The Beast, who looks on our explorers with a great hunger. The Beast is now barely a set of fur over bones, kept from meals by the watchful gaze of the torrential girl who has been with us a long time. It lets out a ravenous whimper and meets her eyes, but she shakes her head and we walk into the woods, wary yet unaware.

In the absence of Old Miley, lost in the earthen tunnel weeks ago, a younger man named Shaddock works to repair the fish farms near the river’s bank. Cold, wet leaves floating on moss-coloured water, and the croaking of frogs – cracked bell-notes in the twilight. Tonight he sits with Yuen & Ezekiel and shows them the ropes, encouraging them as they splash lines into the water. When the three get tired, they sit on the shore and stare at the stars overhead. Shaddock recites a rhyme from the days in the City to teach the children about the constellations overhead:

By day you cannot see the sky for it is up so very high. You look and look, but it’s so blue that you can never see right through.

But when night comes it is quite plain, and all the stars are there again. They seem just like old friends to me, I’ve known them all my life you see.

There is the dipper first, and there is Cassiopeia in her chair, Orion’s belt, the Milky Way, and lots I know but cannot say.

One group looks like a swarm of bees, Papa says they’re the Pleiades; but I think they must be the toy of some nice little angel boy.

Perhaps his jackstones which to-day he has forgot to put away, and left them lying on the sky where he will find them bye and bye.

I wish he’d come and play with me. We’d have such fun, for it would be a most unusual thing for boys to feel that they had stars for toys!

As they watch the stars sparkle in the warm summer night, a dim point of light in the sky sparks to life in a supernova infinitely far away. The three of them watch as the star, almost so small as to be unseen before, grows and grows until it outshines the other sparks in the night. When the sun rises the next day, the light from this blaze is still strong enough to be seen in the blue air.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the twenty first 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

Elven Dirge – The Passing Of The Elves – Score Music – Mark Stothard

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.

For months we lived under the assumption that we were the only survivors of the war with the Jackals. Only we few living in this mining camp, here to live out the rest of our days and watch ourselves fade into the mountains as an echo of the last cities to fall. Today that changes, as a woman walks into camp an hour before noon. Her feet run bloodied as her torn shoes flap on the forest ground. Her torn and ripped leather jacket hangs near rags over her muscled shoulders, and her eyes glare determined, then soften to relieved, as she sees our concerned faces. As Eileen rushes to her, she collapses in the dirt, and Eileen carries her inside to sleep. As she sleeps she dreams.

She dreams of the dark, when the Jackals came for her wife and for her city. She dreams of the wind-blurred pines that lined her escape, with a glimmer of light between trunks. She fights for a time, as they come in wave after wave. Then she runs, entombed for an hourless night with the world of things unseen.

As the woman sleeps in Eileen’s bed, resting the miles from her feet, the sun moves overhead and dips below the mountains. The night comes down, in ever-darkening shapes that seem to grope, with eerie fingers for the window of the shack—then— to rest to sleep, enfolding her, as in a dream. Faith—might she awaken!

The morning eventually comes, and those able to wrest sleep from the vice grips of curiosity wake to find Eileen, Llyana, Drach, and Clovis, a foursome of welcoming faces, supporting the woman as she gingerly steps from the shack into the sun of the mining camp. Drach and Eileen support her arms and Clovis & Llyana offer encouraging words with her steps. They bring her to a table near the community’s center, and bring food and water to entice her story. She gives her name as Djuna, and thanks the community for her welcoming.

We begin a project, a catalogue of our history. Clovis leads this effort, interviewing Djuna about her time in the forest. The goal is to create a lineage of every one of us in the community, so that nothing is lost when we leave the world.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the twentieth 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

Druid’s Grove – Vision Quest of the Bearheart – Score Music – Geronimo Snijjtsheuvel

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.

Two weeks have passed.

Summer is fleeting, and the weeks pass almost unnoticed. The first seven days go by as normal, but on the eighth day the river floods. Llyana, having helped to clean the shore of the river, now plants thistles and brushes, aromatic wild brushes gathered from the scrub trees nearby, to pad the river’s shores and break the sting of bugs as we play on the shores. Stirred by the summer storms, great mountainous glaciers break and melt and over the days past the storm we are allowed some peace before we feel their floodwaters. However, on this eighth day we see the sweep as the river swells and drags one of Llyana’s sage bushes with it, the whole purple herb, a stray branch among meltwater teeth, they chewing weeds that line the shore,- perhaps tomorrow’s moon will grant us refuge and community again.

With the tenth day the rush of the river pulls us back from its edge, much to the annoyance of the insistent girl who’s been with us a long time. The floodwater does not push up to our homes in the mining camp, but we stay wary of its currents and marvel at the rush of the new rapids, somehow divine in their strength. We take in the sight, sleepless as the river under, vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod, unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend and of the curveship lend a myth to God, perhaps, and, despite his ongoing grieving for his late husband, even Clovis comes to see the magnificent waters flush.

You will not hear it as the sea; even river stone is not more hushed by gravity. But slow, As loth to take more tribute – sliding prone Like one whose eyes were buried long ago, The River, spreading, Bows – and spends our dreams. What are we, lost within this tideless spell? And bows within itself, heaps itself free. At the end of the twelfth day All fades but one thin mirror of skyline ’round on the water’s surface. Ahead No embrace opens hut the stinging sea; The River lifts itself from its long bed,

Imponderable the dinosaur sinks slow, the watery saurian ghoul, the western bank, While rises along the coastwise range, slowly the hushed land – Combustion at the astral core – the dorsal change Of energy – convulsive shift of sand. But we, who watch the bends, the promontories Where strange tongues vary messages of surf Below grey citadels, repeating to the stars The ancient names – return home to our own Hearths, and as the rush of the river settles so too does our excitement over the floodwaters. For the rushing shift of the river clears out the bank and washes the outstretching log where Drach loved to sit and journal, and in it’s crater left behind we find rich clay, no more of the muddy silt of the river, but a deep rusty red. Eileen immediately gathers some in her hands and declares that this discovery will supply us with an abundance of resources to build, sculpt, and use in healing.

Our project to dig out space for a cemetery has come to its conclusion and as we put up tombstones for those lost, we look upwards, the stars have grooved our eyes with old persuasions of love and hatred, hirth,-surcease of nations. But who has held the heights more sure than us, o listener!- Ascensions of you hover in me now As though at junctions elegiac, there, of speed with vast eternity, do wield the rebound seed. As we clear the cemetery for the night the competent loam, the probable grass, pushes forth a seed and sproutling, red stalk and rose colored budding flower, a twin to the flower clinging to the Jewel of Gerrard, a pure natural impulse bred to answer deepest soundings! 0, upward from the dead it grows, to represent our grief in death and celebrate the blooms of our living brotherhood.

This acceleration of summer sparks our energies, but as we feel our happiness, love, magnificence rush as the river does, we feel in the back of our minds the lost time as autumn speeds towards us as well. We know that we must begin to start preparing, as the summer weeks are finite, and our loving celebration may need to give way to amorous patience to shield Love from despair – when love foresees the end, leaf after autumnal leaf break off, to descend descend.

And a week passes.

This week we drew the King of Diamonds which discards two cards from the Summer deck in an acceleration towards autumn. You may have noticed that we missed an episode last week as I was in Saint Louis for Geekly Con. As we follow our game in real time this lost week takes the place of one of the discarded cards in Summer. The other lost week will be the week of August 20th, when I will be in Indianapolis for Gen Con. I thank you for your patience between weeks as con season takes time out of our production schedule, and hopefully this narrative cheat will cover the weeks lost in our story to the interruption.

Thank you for joining us for the nineteenth 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

Portents of the Future – Glimpses of Pasts to Come – Score Music – Ben Chandler

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 are beset by storms. They crash over the sickly trees, they crack a live branch and split a bough to show the wood beneath the twisted bark. The branch is white, the green crushed. Each leaf is rent like split wood. The storm burdens the trees with black drops.

As we remember those lost in the tunnels we storm within ourselves as well. The short project begun to shore up the hole under the tree and bar the doors of the mines has completed. Yet anger and arguments flare to who is responsible for the loss in the first place. We should never have allowed or encouraged, the excursion beneath the earth. Were we so fresh from the Jackals that we strike up against any threat to come our way regardless of the danger? As thunder peals through the rocky mountaintops and rolls through our mining camp, the shouts of anger rumble through the wooden walls of our shacks.

The storm breaks one tree clean in half, snapped like a weighted leaf in the wind, it is hurled out in the wind to crash into the river, foaming and black, the branch whirls up and sinks, a green stone.

The community is in two minds, there are those spurred on by the spilt blood who quiver for vengeance and are pushed by anxiety and the spectres from the woods, the ground, and the water. In opposition are those unmoving for fear, as a rabbit stops in the field to be snatched by an eagle, those who would do nothing rather than violence, but whose trepidation is not unfounded. The Jackals inflicted tragedy on tragedy and a life ended prematurely yet unstained further with blood is preferable to continuing the horrors of war.

The storm rages on. Shadows in the night sprint around the camp. Some shadows have legs and arms. In the gale it’s difficult to tell if the shadows are attached to bodies or if they’re tricks of the storm, tree limbs moving as our own. Who knows if it was by hand or by wind that the walled structure carrying our food was toppled.

The wind breaks, scattering pink-stalks, snapping off spiced heads of fruit, to fling them about with dead leaves— spreading the paths leading to the shack with twigs, limbs broken off,

We do not wake to find this, as the storm rages far too loudly for us to sleep, but as the clouds part and we walk from shelter into the open camp, we discover that food, once in abundance, now has become a scarcity once more.

We begin a project over the next week to clean the shore of the debris, to pull branches broken from the roofs of shacks, and to remove the wasted food from the muddy dirt of the camp. The hot summer sun will cause rot if left to bake, and the trashing of the spoiled food serves as an insult to our injuries.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the eighteenth 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.

Mild CW for non-graphic character death

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor –Brandon – Frankie – Cole

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

Ancient Chamber – Eon City – Score Music – Mark Stothard

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.

Following the ceremony to memorialize Figueroa, we return to our dedication to explore the earthen tunnel, exposed by swollen roots and clotted dirt. The summer sun has ducked behind storm clouds, and the rays of warmth disappear in favor of a chill and humid wind.

Months have gone by since we last raised arms, and while the war against the Jackals is far from over the memories still haunt our minds. Trembling before the mouth of the cave, with ancient armaments polished and reflecting the grey sky above, we poise, ready to venture into the earth.

Concerned faces greet the brave explorers. When once we mocked their drills as having forgotten the terror of the Jackals the passing of Figueroa reminds us again of the two lost first in the camp. No mockeries now for them who stand at the mouth of the newly opened cave; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs of birds and the silent faces of those watching from the field. The memory of Gerrard and Jules who met their end at the hands, no, claws, of the Beast within the woods, echoes ringing like metal plates struck by grief thrown mallets ring in our ears of the scaled creature deep within the mines. Spurred by warnings our generator hums on to power the bright lights to ward off the Beast, and despite the soothing words of the calming girl who’s been with us a long time, we keep a wary eye on the river to watch for the Monster as yet unseen.

Together we steel ourselves and take our first steps into the dirt tunnels. The first boot steps into the darkness of the tunnel, as Micha tests the soft loam of the earth and smells the rank scent of the caves. In order to combat against the nausea, he packed flowers from his personal garden into a face mask over his mouth and nose.

As the mask passes under the cave opening, back at Micah’s home, his garden wilts. As one, every stalk in his planter goes slack, and the colorful blooms searching for a sun obscured by clouds go grey and slimy. Atop the Jewel of Gerrard, the lone flower closes its bud. Playing on the hill near the sealed doors of the mine, Yuen and Ezekiel see a quick flash of pearlescent blue light peek through the cracks in the barred doors.

From the distant woods, a smug growl rumbles in the trees, and at the river’s bank, helping with the morning’s washing, the wary girl who’s been with us a long time gives pause and her luned pupils sparkle in the water’s reflection.

Twelve of us enter the dirt cave. What candles may be held to speed them all through the lightless earth? Not in their hands, but in their eyes shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes we thought we would not need. After three hours, eight of us walk out. Of the missing four, Micah’s face is the most absent, the leader of the excursion having disappeared in the tunnels.

As the eight survivors gather, wounded and in need of healing, a voice from the back asks “What happened? Where is Micah? Where are Miley, Arah, and Eugenia?” The remaining eight look battered & confused, but some of them respond, with conflicting answers.

“We made it through the caves, into a blue room, they stayed there, they wouldn’t leave, they wouldn’t move.”

“Micah was the bravest of us, but when he saw it there sleeping, he… he just laid down next to it, like he forgot we were there to attack.”

As the storm clouds break, we light candles in mourning, and move to gather petals from the gardens of those lost. As we see Micah’s garden wilted and rotting, so too do we see the gardens of Old Miley, Arah, and Eugenia in similar stages of decay. The forest sends us omens, and the seeds that sprout do so for good or ill. Their flowers tell the tenderness of patient minds,

And a week passes

Thank you for joining us for the sixteenth 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. Additional voices this week were provided by Frankie Garza who is at Frankie Extra on Twitter and who runs the Actual Players of Color podcast, Cole who is At king cole miner and appears on the Blue Dawn podcast, Brandon Leon Gambetta who is at Dr Captain Kobold and who hosts the Stop Hack And ROll podcast, and the aforementioned Dave. 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.

Mild CW for non-graphic character death

The Woods:

The Map:

Dave – Taylor – James

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

Elven Dirge – The Passing Of The Elves – Score Music – Mark Stothard

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.

It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. Hear me out for I too am concerned and every man who wants to die at peace in his bed besides.

Clovis rises early as usual and prepares to begin his day. His heart stirs and falters, as he sits in his bed next to his husband, and can no longer hear Figueroa’s labored breathing. Death came quietly in the night for the old man.

As the brave and strong among us finish our drills and prepare to explore into the exposed root cave, Clovis puts them to pause as he walks to the center of the town carrying Figueroa’s light frame. The old man weeps for a considerable time and we as a community mourn with him. We prepare a funeral, placing Figueroa’s body on a wooden gurney, and wreathing it with flowers from our personal gardens. With Clovis in the lead, we carry the gurney to the river.

We set Figueroa down near the bank of the river and as the summer light streams through the thin leaves it sparkles on our tears. Clovis walks a few paces into the water and pulls the floating gurney to him. The cold running water soothes his arthritis as he grips the gurney, and he speaks, half to us gathered at the riverbank, and half to Figueroa’s still face. As Clovis gives his eulogy, our flowers light upon the water’s surface, begin to trail downstream.

“We lived long together, a life filled, if you will, with flowers. Today I’m filled with the fading memory of those flowers that we both loved. There is something, something urgent I have to say to you and you alone but it must wait while I drink in the joy of your approach, perhaps for the last time. And so with fear in my heart I drag it out and keep on talking for I dare not stop.

I have learned much in my life from books, and out of them about love. Death is not the end of it. It has been for you and me as one who watches a storm come in over the water. We have stood from year to year before the spectacle of our lives with joined hands. It is the mind, the mind, that must be cured short of death’s intervention, and the will becomes again a garden.

It was the love of love, the love that swallows up all else, a grateful love, a love of nature, of people, of animals, a love engendering gentleness and goodness that moved me and that I saw in you.

We are assembled here today to pay final respects to our honored dead. And yet it should be noted that in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life in our new home in these woods. Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most… human.”

We begin a sorrowful project. We prepare to spend three weeks putting aside a plot of land to memorialize Gerrard, Jules, and now Clovis. We can not know yet how much use we will make of this plot in the coming months, but we will soon find out.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the sixteenth 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. The voice of Clovis was James Malloy who is At and the meltdowns on twitter. You can find James on the Stop Hack and Roll podcast. 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

Heavenly Plane – Caelum – 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.

Summer joy delights the community. Breathless we fling ourselves upon windy hills, laugh in the sun, and kiss one another amidst the lovely grass. They say a kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years and nowhere more is this true than the home of Clovis and Figueroa. Despite their considerable age, the two husbands frolic as much as they can, arthritis and asthma be damned. Each kiss they share rejuvenates their elderly bones.

In the farming fields, Llyana and Eileen share kisses as well, the artist and the farmer each teaching the other their craft. As Llyana sketches crudely in the sandy soil of the fields, Eileen guides xer hand. Likewise, as Eileen struggles to plow through the harsh earth Llyana is there to offer xer shoulder for strength.

As Micah, Reese, Clem, and Giuseppe all share romantic looks over a picnic lain over the dried river bank, the summer birds chirp in the sun. Reese, a lanky nurse pulls their hair back to reveal a tattoo of a fox on their shoulder. Clem pulls back their thin hair and pulls a bottle of wine from a basket. Guiseppe pulls a small block of cheese.

But in the river swims she who swam before rivers were begun. Immense, of fishy form and mind, squamous & omnipotent, but far from kind. As the Monster churns the bottom of the river, mud into mud, death eddies here.

We toil to open the hole in the roots far from the river’s shore. In that rich earth, a richer dust concealed. As we dig it away we sharpen blades. Few of us share the bloodlust but those who do commit themselves. Time enough has passed so that dreams of Jackals now are rare and hot blood stirs even hotter in summer air.

Someone raises caution and cites the story from the metal plates but we don’t care. We are here to explore these caves and root out the Creature within, if it even exists at all. Watching the bravado from their shack, Yuen and Ezekiel quietly remember the glint of eerie blue light on scales. The children watch the glint of moonlight now on swords waving as we engage in drills. By next week when the tunnel is widened we will have trained together as a group and be ready for the worst. We think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by community given. Our sights and sounds; dreams happy as our days; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness In hearts at peace, under a forest heaven.

A second project starts this week as well. A long project, taken at a leisurely pace. Six weeks we will spend, on a large statue in the town center, a scale model of our old city’s most impressive building, a skyscraper that once literally scraped the sky. When our model is complete it will stand just slightly taller than us. Eileen oversees the project, with a tug at her heart as she looks to the field where Llyana works out of earshot and too far away to talk to. The project is the first one we’ve started without a utilitarian goal.

And a week passes.

Thank you for joining us for the fifteenth 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 supporting the show 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.