After bringing the survivors of Gorgested to the clan ring, the heroes split up and returned to their daily lives. Obby lingered around Loom, discussing his god with the Goodweaver Humakti in preparation for devoting himself to Humakt. Barangian travelled to his home at the source of his wife’s river to spend some time with her. Lucky spent a lot of holed up in his home reading books. Erinyr travelled back to Shuttle.
In Shuttle, Erinyr discovered that a party of Dragonewt traders had set up camp outside town, offering strange objects for stranger prices. The dragonewts were even offering different things, and asking different prices, from each person they met with. To Erinyr they offered a quill that would translate whatever was written with it into the Pure Horse Tongue, and a pouch of strange seeds that the dragonewt interpeter said was for a fruit-bearing fern. As a price for either item the dragonewts would except either a jar full of the darkness of deep within the earth, or information about the activities of someone called Shamed By Death.
Erinyr was able to convince the dragonewts to tell them what they would offer to and ask from Erinyr’s friends Barangian and Lucky. Erinyr’s bodyguard and Obby were offered nothing, as the dragonewts were willing to trade with the Goodweaver Clan specifically. To Lucky, they would offer a magical grimoire or an intricately painted wooden bowl that absorbs magic; in return they would ask for a cutting of grass from a specific but seemingly unremarkable hill in the western portions of Goodweaver territory or three eggs whose sizes had ratios of 2:3:5 between them. Barangian would be offered a spiraled cup that the dragonewt said would do something to restore blood or a klanth of a strange material. The klanth passes harmlessly through draognewts. In exchange they would require an amphora full of water from the headwaters of the Wort Creek or a pearl from a mussel from the Upland Marsh.
Erinyr travelled to Loom to find their friends and tell them of the dragonewts and their goods. Each of the three Goodweavers were fascinated with one or both of the offered objects, and they decided they would travel through Duck Valley to seek information about Shamed By Death and reach the Marsh; they had discovered from asking around that Shamed By Death was a dragonewt that was occasionally seen in the area around the Marsh over the years. Obby joined them, in the hope that he would be a helpful guide and mediator with the ducks. They were not correct about this: they arrived at Mallard Town in northern Duck Valley without incident, but as soon as the residents recognized Obby as a member of the Quackers clan, they gave him and his companions a cold shoulder, discomfited by his clan’s recent raiding of the local clans.
The duplicitous Erinyr quickly recognized the problem and led the others in leaving Obby alone. They would tell the ducks they spoke to here that they had only met Obby on their journey to Mallard Town and had had no idea of his clan’s aggressive behavior. Barangian owes Erinyr a song about it. Even so, the information they sought was still hard to come by. The town’s residents seemed uncomfortable discussing the eccentric dragonewt. Erinyr was able to find out that Shamed By Death had this time spent nearly eight years in the lands surrounding the Marsh, unusually long compared to his previous apperances, as well as a vague sense of where he might be found.
Worried by the uncertainty of their information on the dragonewt’s whereabouts, Barangian released his spirit Keko from its charm to lead the way. The Keko spirit found the right path indeed, bringing them to a small hill overlooking the Marsh before fading away into the Spirit World to restore its strength. On the hilltop sat a dragonewt warrior, carrying a bow, and, unusually, a sword.
Erinyr and Barangian led the group in treating with Shamed By Death, Erinyr performing the clan’s dragonewt-greeting rituals and Barangian charming the Dragonewt with promises of writing songs about him. The dragonewt spoke haltingly, having had surgical alteration to allow him to speak human languages in order to let him speak to the locals near the Marsh. He told them of his shame, of having been killed and turned into a zombie in a previous rebirth, and then again many times on his expeditions into the Marsh to kill his zombies. So long as his past bodies remain undead, he cannot move on in his spiritual progression, but none of his attempts to destroy them have yet succeeded. He also told them that he felt he had prepared almost as long as he dared this time.
Shamed By Death was shocked and grateful when the humans and duck offered him their aid in his quest. They told him that they would need to take care of some things and make some preparations of their own first, and he assented. The group ventured briefly into the edges of the Marsh to find the hoped-for pearl through Erinyr’s water magics. They succeeded, but not without taking some minor wounds from some zombies. They found the relevant hill and cut some of its grass, without any sign of anything remarkable about it. Barangian met Wortes at the waters of their creek outside of Loom to give the nymph some flowers from Duck Valley that they had asked for when he left, and the nymph filled an amphora with waters from her source. The group were able to find appropriate eggs by finding eggs of some wildfowl of wildly varying sizes.
Thus, together they were able to gather almost everything the dragonewt traders had asked of them, and were able to receive everything offered save for the translating quill. When the dragonewts accepted the three eggs from Lucky, the eggs suddenly transformed into eggs much larger and different in appearance, although with the same ratio of sizes. They discovered that the magic absorbing bowl seems to char when it absorbs magic, and Barangian discovered that the klanth does not pass harmlessly through the pinky toes of humans (he will recover).