9: The Egg

Guiltag 13^th Pflugzeit

So you stayed in the village all day, despite having been urged to hurry, by Goffman. And you were glad to have a stress free day.

Max was keen to use his engineering education to help make some of the ramshackle dwellings a bit more solid, but after inspecting some of them decided that the locals had made just about as good a job as they could.

And Kris used his ship-board carpentry knowledge to fit one of the pit traps with sharpened spikes and he showed the villagers how to do it, and they showed you where all the other pit traps were hidden so you didn’t have to worry about falling into them.

You had dinner at Wilheim’s again and spoke about the beastmen and the witch girl but you didn’t learn much new. You tried to recruit some villagers to your expedition and Fredereich explained how they had fought against the beastmen and had had a hard time of it over the last couple of years, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask them for more sacrifice, but he said he would come with you.

Angestag 14^th Pflugzeit

So first thing in the morning you set off with Fredereich for the hill. By about midday you had reached an abandoned village. There wasn’t much left of it, with much of the wood having been scavenged. You did notice that the pig sties had been violently vandalised. And the land around the village was bare and infertile. You passed a couple of similar villages, and towards evening you reached the base of the hill and you could see a rough, overgrown track leading up the hill.

Now the vegetation was growing in strange, twisted ways, and becoming more abundant. Balden noticed that local mildly poisonous puffballs were growing bigger and in strange fleshy colours, and warned everyone to keep clear of them. As you climbed the hill you could hear strange snorting noises coming from behind you, and you noticed vague shapes among the foliage around you, seemingly following you up the hill.

And then suddenly a shape darted from the undergrowth and charged at Max’s legs. It looked like a pig and tusked him in the leg. But then the creature stood up and you could see it had sort of clothing and was carrying a farm implement, and it was a pig-beast-man thing.

And two more of the creatures emerged from the undergrowth and one managed to tusk Heinrich. And you could see further down the track a whole load of them following you.

Balden and Heinrich fought back at their pig-men and managed to get good hits on them, killing one of them. Max levelled his Arquebus at one of the ones down the track and hit it squarely. And at the sound of the weapon all the other piggies faded away into the undergrowth.

One pig-man remained, and Kris tried to talk to it but it just snorted back and so he decided it was too pig-headed to communicate with. Max shot at it, but missed and the last pig-man legged it back into the woods.

After a bit you could sense the pig-men regrouping and closing in on you, and so you decided to walk quickly up the hill. And as they got closer you speeded up. You could see a surprisingly pleasant cottage surrounded by a white picket fence at the top of the hill and you ran towards it. You reached the fence but Max fell and twisted his ankle, and was stranded with a bunch of the pig-men bearing down on him.

He was jumped on by a pig-man. Balden and Heinrich ran back to help him. They managed to kill the creature and got Max to the fence. And for some reason the pigs seemed terrified to approach the fence and you realised you were safe.

You went through the gate and headed towards the cottage and were confronted by a little girl carrying a couple of dolls. The dolls looked like mutants, rather than people. You didn’t know what to make of it and by now Fredereich was starting to freak out a bit. But the girl said hello and introduced herself as Egg.

Then a huge lizard-like mutant thing emerged from the cottage, and greeted you, inviting you for tea. You wondered whether you were the tea. He said that you could play for a while and then he would call you, which Egg was pleased about.

Kris thought it might be a good idea to entertain the girl and so got his whistle out and was about to play it, when the girl screamed that she hated pipers, and the whistle immediately snapped in half. She said Mr. Whiffle, indicating the doll with tentacles, didn’t like Kris, but Molly, the other doll, did.

And she asked you to play hide and seek. And when you were a bit hesitant she stamped her feet and shouted that you should all play with her. And so you did. Egg insisted that you close your eyes and count to ten. It didn’t take you long to notice her hiding inside what looked like a huge broken eggshell in the garden, but you looked around a bit before finding her, to make it more fun for her.

You got a strange energy from the eggshell and so you were all careful not to get too close to it. And then she insisted you play again and she went to hide in the eggshell again. And again. You tried to stop playing but Egg demanded that you continue and she said Mr. Whiffle wanted to play, which was a bit scary.

Kris decided to use this opportunity to explore round the back of the house, and he saw a strange rearranged face looking at him from the kitchen window, and whoever it belonged to waved politely.

The hide and seek got very tedious and you left Balden and Heinrich playing while Kris and Max went into the cottage, while Fred just sat by the fence with his head in his hands.

You spoke to Werther, the lizard mutant, and Eva, the rearranged face lady, who seemed very peasant for mutants. They explained that they were long past hoping for children, but one night they heard strange whispers that they would be gifted a child, which they would have to look after for seven years. They said the seven years were now up, but they were just grateful that they had had those years with a lovely daughter. They didn’t acknowledge that they were mutated or anything like that.

After a while Werther called Egg in for tea, and she came immediately. And you had a strange but nice enough meal. Then Eva told Egg that she would have to go away with these strangers. And when she wanted to know why you made up a story about it being time she started school and there was a good school in Marienburg.

After tea Egg wanted to play again, and so Max suggested you gamble at dice. And weirdly she kept rolling exactly what she needed to win, and she ended up taking more than two guilders off him, though it wasn’t clear she knew what money was for.

And when it was time for bed, Egg went straight to bed very obediently, with Mr. Whiffle and Molly. And you were left up with her parents. You promised them that you would look after her. And you had a look at the map in the guidebook, and decided the best way back would be to cross the marsh to Halsdorph, and then take the road straight to Marienburg. Then you went off to bed and had a comfortable night’s sleep.

Festag 15^th Pflugzeit

And so in the morning Eva made you toast and packed some sandwiches for the journey and you set off for Halsdorph. At the bottom of the hill Fredereich was glad to bid you farewell, and he went back to his village, and you turned off and began your journey across the marsh.