In the last session of Vaesen, the player characters had encountered Oonagh, a strange old hermit woman who lived in a cottage at the end of the Hollow Lane, above the village of Crocombe, on the Devon/Somerset border. While interviewing her in her cottage, they were attacked by mysterious assailants, emaciated young women with pale faces, which Oonagh called the Hollow Ones.
The Hollow Ones came armed with axes and sickles and sought to break into the cottage. There were four in total. One managed to get onto the roof and dropped into Oonagh's kitchen. All to no avail, as a combination of good shooting and William's knuckle dusters put paid to them. Each time one was slain, she turned into a pile of dried sticks and roots. Also it was noticed that they bled sap, not blood.
After the attack, the men searched the house (Roddy found and pocketed a holy symbol, a small stone with a spiral pattern - see end of post), and took Oonagh and an iron box and some salt back down the lane. Oonagh seemed to be strangely deflated and lethargic after the attack, and kept repeating, "he is coming for me," in a sad voice. She also confirmed that there was a piece of the Hollow Wight inside her, a shard of his being which the Hollow Ones were trying to retrieve.
Back in the village, the party returned to the inn, the Bell & Sheaf, where they took Oonagh to their rooms. George Fallowdrake carried out some spirit writing to try to find out if they were missing any information for the ritual they planned to carry out to extract the shard in the morning. The spirit of Isaac Merrow responded with "the name of the dead." George asked Oonagh what the true name of the Hollow Wight was, and she replied "Mordred."
The Return of the King Slayer
At this point the temperature in the room dropped and Oonagh began to change, her eyes to glow and her hands to elongate, turning into claws. A man's voice seemed to come from her mouth, saying "you will not imprison me again." George was seized with a hallucination of being interred underground in a dank tomb.
William, Roddy MacLeod and Cedric Fitzpatrick all piled onto the transforming creature in an effort to restrain it. The vaesen used its hypnotic gaze to try to drive them off, but failed. It was blindfolded, whereupon it used its phantom howl to summon allies; at this, it was gagged and then tied up. Roddy heard the howl being answered in the distance, by more than one throat.
Fitzpatrick went to the window and spotted another Hollow One sneaking into the back yard of the inn with a rusty carving knife. He shot it with his pistol and it collapsed into a pile of roots. This roused the household. Fallowdrake, now recovered from his hallucination, asked the landlord, Josiah Cribb, to fetch chains and the party bound the creature in iron, whereupon the spirit of the Hollow Wight fled Oonagh's body.
The old woman now seemed to be asleep. Fitzpatrick checked her pulse to make sure she was still alive. The party breakfasted and waited the for dawn. As the sun rose over the misty Blackdown Hills, the doctor went out to cut a branch of rowan. The men left the inn with the bound woman - interestingly Cribb did not seem to register her presence at all. They trooped over to the churchyard and drew a circle in iron and salt, placing Oonagh in its centre. Fallowdrake called on the name Mordred, the name of the dead, and the woman came back to life, thrashing violently. The ground turned to mud and the men began to sink into it, up to their knees, as they desperately shed their blood onto the soil.
Then, Fitzpatrick stepped forwards and placed the rowan branch on the old lady, and a darkness was seen to seep into the wood, turning it black and shiny. He picked it up and it was very cold to the touch. As he lifted it, he could hear a voice whispering to him, promising him power beyond his wildest dreams. With his sixth sense talent he was able to perceive that the shard was an item of significant magical power. He placed it in the iron box they had prepared, full of salt, which in turn was chained up and buried in a stream, out of sight of the village, as prescribed in the ritual.
The old lady Oonagh now seemed tired and bewildered, with no recollection of who the party was or any knowledge of the events of the last few hours. Indeed, her last memory was of looking after her sheep on Dartmoor as a teenager in the year 1802. The party decided to take her with them back to Harrowcombe, where the plan is for her to live in the mansion with them.
Back at Harrowcombe an occult temple has been discovered under the mansion, which has prompted Fallowdrake to delve deeper into the secrets of magic.
Next time: Into the Hollow Vale...
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