Session XII
3rd day, 3rd rule
The rain is almost gone when we awake the next day, and the woman is starting to smell. Chryseis detects magic and sense that the woman has a fleeting aura of necromantic magic on her body. Outside a fog has risen up.

Eki, Ludvik and Chryseis carry the woman down on a make-shift stretcher. Ludvik and Chryseis carry the stretcher while Eki and I watch their backs. Visibility is only about 10 paces. We quickly get out of the back allies and onto the Black boot walk where lots of folk are out and about collecting rat tails and cooking street meat. We resist the hunger pains and move on for a while, but eventually Ludvik breaks down and buys Eki lunch.

As we approach the gatehouse, we following the press of bodies up the road. Chryseis and I stay with the body and Ludvik and Eki move off to question the bleakers. The collector's question our intent (and our right to have the body) but back off when Chryseis identifies herself as a member of the Harmonium. From them we learn there are at least two competing teams of collectors who vie for business. They are known as Shargrave and Farid.

Eki and Ludvik return with Darioch, where we explain that we found the woman; struck-down in an alleyway. Chryseis tells Darioch that the woman's eyes reacted to the presence of light and that she detected a faint presence of necromantic magic. After examining the body briefly, Darioch casts a spell over the body. With its results she confirms that there is a lingering presence of magic. The woman is, however, dead. Darioch suggests we meet her at Zeroes later tonight.

We take the body to the Mortuary. There, we ask to speak to Torranna the Grey, as she is the one who receives all dead barmies. The Mortuary is a beautiful and cold place wrought in black stone. After a bit of a wait, we follow a dustman through an antechamber guarded by four massive skeletons. They didn't seem to move, but their size and the fact that they were armored was enough to keep us all vigilant as we passed between them into a smaller room.

There we were able to place the body on an alter. Chryseis said a few words over the deceased. A dustman knocked on the door some 15 minutes later and Torranna the Grey entered. Torranna tells us that magic that can harm or snuff out the soul can cling to the body for several days. She confirms the presence of necromantic magic on the body as she can feel it. Necromancy calls to the dead.

We agree to stay and see the woman cremated. Zombies enter and bear her away. We are guided to the cremation room atop a tower by a young man about 3/4 of an hour later. In a room with 24 portals (16 to a corner) we see the body unwrapped and, after Torranna opens the portal with a red marble, fed into the portal head-first. The portal is bright with fire light and the heat is palpable, but brief.

We then head home. Once back in the apartment, Eki and I take bathes to try and get the soot off. Chryseis, feeling the need to make something, heads to the forge. Ludvik follows and both end up helping Hinrik with a large order.

After some time Chryseis goes to talk to Sophia. Sophia disagrees with Torranna the Grey's statement. A necromantic effect shouldn't last for hours after the body dies.

Ludvik heads into new market and buys a pair of goggles from one merchant, and old clothes from Rag monger's lane. Once dressed, he heads to the Buthcher's block. There's a cover charge and a large number of people waiting at the door. Most can't afford to pay the cover. Outside, along the pens that line the building, stands another crowd. They're cheering the pigs as workers try and force them up a ramp. The workers bear pikes, but even then the odds are against them.

Inside Ludvik learned that someone matching the Barmy killer's description was around here - but he left this morning.

Ekikos enters and tries to kill a boar. If he wins he gets the boar. Unfortunately he doesn't win. Ludvik and Chryseis jump in and try to protect Eki from the boar -- the whole incident made tempers run high. Ludvik did call before jumping in and so won the boar, but he didn't give the crowds enough time to bet on his chances. Chryseis and I, it seems, had no right to enter the pit and the bartender has to be paid off to return Eki's body to us.