Common Worlds

Are you USING the blood stones permanently? In other words, are they part of the sacrifice?

Same deal for the axes: Forevermore a sacred part of the regalia of the temple, not to be used in any mundane way, no longer available as general armament for followers or as trade goods?

15 axes bound in human skin - no rating?
5 Initiates of Babeestor Gor - 15
?Pilch (Hot Blooded) - 18?

Windsday is a busy day at the Fool’s Gate from New Pavis into Old Pavis. Licensed adventurers start early, intent to be back to the safety of the new city before dark. Usually.

There’s no plaza here as such, just low rubble and an ancient roadbed cracked from half a millennium of nomad abuse, stained with every imaginable liquid and the dust whipped up by the desert wind. Usually.

Hard men with well worn gear, men who need not check their scabbards to know their swords secure, they take the lay of the land, rub charms of luck or travel, and strike off into the rubble without hesitation. Usually.

Green boys with cobbled together armor, Lunar reprobates with squeaking-new leather packs still oiled from the tanner’s stall, they fumble into order or not, talk too loudly about which route, check one more time that they remembered the rope, finally walk off down one of the main roads. Usually.

Bug eaters with ancient trash to sell, Zebra herders heading in to deliver milk, cheese, or mounts jostle inside what they know to be the safe perimeter near the gate, waiting to be let through. Usually. But not today.

Today, the bug eaters are in cover, watching the scene. The herders took in the scene unfolding and chose to take the long way through the Wyvern Gate.

The boys who think themselves brave heroes jam the mouth of the gate, bunching at the edge of Old Pavis’ sand and cobbles, then growing quiet and nervous. You hear most of them call on their gods and many make signs to ward off curses and bad luck.

Speth speaks, and her initiates answer her as they should. As she chants, the Axe Sisters arrange the axes around the cramped plaza in a sacred square. Not buried blade in, nor are they laid down. Each axe stands upright on its handle when placed on the ground.

“These are tools of the Goddess of Vengeance, the Lady of Rage.”

“Born from suffering!”

“Taken as spoils of war, to be consecrated in the Earth,”

“Wounded but avenged!”

“Before the Altar where those who offend the Earth shall meet their gory end.”

“Uncompromising rage!”

“These axes shall cut no kindling, shape no board. I swear them to sacred duty only, given entire to She Who Avenges”

“Into the hands of the Avenging Daughter!”
Having placed the axes, the Sisters face outward at the edges and corners of the square, glaring with the Goddess’s face at the bystanders.

“to guard the Four Corners and the Center.”

“Women weave and care, and all benefit from that.”
The Sisters turn and with their steps, trace a pattern between the axes toward Speth at the center, reaching down to touch the axes as they pass.

“Protect the bountiful Earth!”
The Axe Sisters reach the center of the square, surrounding Speth.

“But when the Sacred Women are disturbed, we answer with a different weaving.”

The Axe Sisters turn suddenly outward, again wearing the Goddess’s frightful face.

The sisters again weave among the axes, but now they pull behind them a strip of pale raw hide, heavily marked with the sacred scars and cuts the Goddess teaches. As the sisters dance, they dip to loop the skins around the handles of the axes.

As the first rank of axes gets caught up in the weave, the hide starts to drip blood from its flesh side. The weave of bleeding skin expands out from the center, where Speth holds the ends. Blood hisses on the sandy cobbles.

The Axe Sisters each stop with one strand of hide at one axe. With bloody hands, they tie the end of each strand around the handle of the axe. Then they stand, glare outside the circle, then turn toward the center.

“Our Vengeance, our duty, our purpose, our rage!”

Speth raises the 5 ends of the skin over her head, momentarily looking like a gruesome maypole. When she does, all the axes fall over, blades outward. They seem eager to go out, to seek flesh, but instead fall blade down on the cobbles, where they stay, held by the strips of bleeding flesh, or some darker, hungrier power.

Speth reaches her right hand up to her left and pulls hard, yanking the raw bleeding hide through her raised left hand. The axes jump and their blades make a hideous sound as they scrape and cut across the cobbles, still balancing on their edges.
All the initiates repeat “Our Vengeance, our duty, our purpose, our rage!” as Speth hauls in again and again, axes jumping, coming closer to her. The loose ends of the hide at the center writhe as if they are in pain and they cover Speth in blood.

When the axes hang around Speth’s ankles, blades just touching the ground, the whole mass begins to weave together, loose ends, axes like shuttles in a loom, Speth’s topknot, all twist and braid.

Slowly the entire mass lowers to the earth, revealing Speth as the hide finishes its twisting. At the bloody priestess‘ feet, the strips of flesh have caught up all the axes in a frightfully complex squarish bundle of torture knots, captive knots and weapon knots.

Only the few; brave, foolish or morbid have remained as spectators ‘til the end. The first part of the ritual is done. Notice is served.