Previously:
In our previous episode, Eilwen investigates the ruined palace at Greenhome while Seith and Aron take their rest. She finds a cellar and beyond the cellar a prison, a prison where manacles where wrenched free from their mountings and the door burst asunder. She feels a darkness and evil emanating still from that prison and flees back to the ground floor. She begins to piece together that perhaps whatever was in the prison is where the fighting originated from that slew so many and caused the fall of Greenhome. This is confirmed when later, amidst the ruins of the palace's second floor, where books and scrolls lie crumbling in wet sodden heaps, she finds a secret room behind the moldering book case that has largely been preserved from the ravages of time and the elements. Therein she finds a scroll written with blocky runes that she is able to translate. And at the base of the scroll on its reverse side, beneath the signature, she also sees a skaed rune, the same binding rune she uses to call the shadows to her, the same rune she saw on the back of the amulet and the on her mother's black iron disks.
Eilwen discovers that the scroll was authored by none other than the very hand of Queen Morwen, one of her ancestors. Eilwen unfortunately does not discover the fate of what happened to the other half of the crown, but she does learn some history of her kin and the fate of Greenhome. From the record, Queen Morwen had come to these lands generations ago when Morwen was but a little girl. Morwen reveals that Nar Shiv, one of the Heralds of the Night, that caused her people to flee the destruction of their original homeland, despite its fear of water, accomplished what the rest of its demonic kind could not; for it somehow followed Morwen, her kin, and her people across the wide oceanic expanse and continued to hunt down the bloodline of queens here on these lands.
We learn that Morwen as an adult woman battled Nar Shiv, using runes of power to defend herself and wound the demonic Herald, causing it to flee, possibly to its stone house underground to heal and bide its time. Queen Morwen then fled the ruined Greenhome but where she went to, the records do not say. All this occurred generations ago, and Eilwen fears that this Nar Shiv may again be on the hunt for Queen Morwen's bloodline.
She takes the scroll and returns to the ruined solarium where Aron and Seith slumber in deep sleep. For a long time under the waxing silver light of the rising moon, Eilwen ponders on this place, what she learned, and of her connection to her mother and her ancestors here. As both the silver light and shadows below deepen in their respective qualities, in a near meditative trance, she feels a deep sense of connection within her to this place and to her family who has gone before, not just a connection to her immediate mother, Arwed and to her father, Cadfael, but a joining throughout time to all her ancestors who had gone before her and the roles each played in bringing her life to fruition in this here and now.
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Attributions:
- 'The Long Dark' and 'Emergent' and 'Simulacra' by Scott Buckley (www.scottbuckley.com.au) released under CC-BY 4.0.
- Various tracks by Tabletop Audio ( https://tabletopaudio.com) - released under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0. Minor modifications (fading/splitting) made to support this podcast format with written permission from the creator.
- Sound Effects from Pixabay (Pixabay.com).
- Slow Sad Epic Piano (Power of the Heart) by ashot_danielyan) - (Pixabay.com)
Nov 25 20253 mins