[K62] 25-26 Oltaran, in Bionlear's Skull

After dinner, the master foci sent us away so they could talk amongst themselves. We went back to the room to discuss what we need to get or take care of before going after the Sunk. The things we could reasonably do/get included Jack getting more throwing knives, the group getting more firewood, food for horses, torches, herbs, snowshoes, a better map (May thought Wanthone had one), any information (about the Hidden Lord, the All-wood, the shields, and so on), asking Nutareshan to cast her see-through-illusions magic on us, and I need to check the horses for disease. The things we can't manage before we leave include fixing the shields (or at least, there doesn't seem to be the time for someone to become knowledgeable enough about them) and getting Jack new armor, since his other armor was destroyed on the trip down.

We set up a watch, and I went out to the shrine to pray and see if the shields had changed at all. I asked them if there were some other castle they could salvage (instead of finishing off this shrine), but they didn't know of another. I suppose that would've been too easy a way out.

There were some Woegs shoveling off the shrine. They seemed a group together, some of the people who'd come into town. When I asked when they'd be done, we started talking, and they were excited to meet a Blessed of the Earth Lord - they are miners who worship the Healer in that aspect. They wanted stories of the Earth Lord, and I was nervous to tell them, not for the stories themselves, but because I have not trained to preach. Thank the Healer, they knew some of the same stories I did, and were happy to hear them again, even filling in pieces I'd not heard of before. For a moment, even, they seemed like big-eyed children listening intently to my tales. And they told me that in the mines they been working, there had been whispers, insidious whispers that they'd gather to protect themselves against, whispers from the Hidden Lord, from the natural places he's eaten, calling them. Athough it has happened for the last couple of years, it has been noticeably more in the last year. I assume this means that the Hidden Lord, who rules over the hidden spaces that caves are (even though it is the Earth Lord who rules under the earth otherwise) has had more power with the Sunk building shrines and suchlike there, especially in the last year. Perhaps also the new power base (or the shrine we didn't find last time, perhaps) is near these mines.

After talking with the miners, I prayed at the shrine, and could feel the shakiness of the connection. I focused on the shrine and on fixing the shields in my prayer, and had a vision:

There was a man, a young Woeg, piling up wood outside a hut on a spring afternoon. He paused to look at the antics of some cats playing in the woods nearby. Inside the hut was his aging father. He went to play, chasing the cats, but back at the house, there was a feeling of the father dying. The son feels it, runs back, and there's an animal in the house.

I went back to the room to tell this to the others. It seems we must be vigilant, not straying from our task to play, but it is sometimes hard to figure out what our task is... Cor knew this story as a cautionary tale for children, as well.

Theymelicksen was working on a glove, and made it glow with a rainbow light, like a crystal.

In the morning (the 26th of Oltaran), there was simont stew with blue seeds for breakfast.