Skirl o' the pipes...

[Lonely_Hunter]

(OOC: thank you to patrick1 for coming to my rescue as my leading man, and for inspiring the title of this RPG.)
Artisitc license has been taken with the time period. Please don't pm me correcting my chronology, or factoids about the period. It's a fantasy and should be treated as such.
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Scotland
1603

Backstory:
Name: Fiona Boyd
History:
Fiona was born into a middle-class family and her mother and father always practiced what they called 'the old ways' until paganism was outlawed by King James in 1603. Both parents were involved with some higher ranking pagan citizens in an effort to "remove" James from the throne and were found out and burned for witch craft. Fiona escaped as a child of five with her nanny into the Highlands of Scotland and was raised by the MacClellan family, who made sure she kept the old pagan ways, and knew her real name. She went by Fiona MacClellan all her life for her own safety, as the King finally realized she escaped and had an unnatural fear that she would try to kill him like her parents did. Thusly, he wants her dead.
At the age of 23 she's never had a love affair other than the usual teenage fooling around with a village lad, William, and even one or two village lasses, while her handsome Billy watched.
Her adoptive family has made sure she was trained in knowing the power of nature and sex magic, and other pagan rituals. It is not drive she lacks, it is experience.

Eventually the King discerns her location, and one night as she's on the hilltop with William he has his men ride into the village, killing all that are there, and burning it to the ground.
William (or "Billy" as she calls him fondly) tries to rush back to the aid of his own family and is killed as well.
She finds him barely alive the next morning burned and bloody, and his last words to her are "Run. It was you he was after, Fi. Run." Then he dies.
And run she does. For two years she lives like a nomad, still feeling out her way with her power and through a series of misguided attempts to contact her dead parents she finds she has tremendous magical and psychic power.
The King gets word of her still being alive, and by now has turned his vendetta into an obsession and so he sends his very best assasin after her.

Fiona's appearance:
Shoulder length wavy golden brown hair. The color of honey. Lovely dark large eyes with dark brows and a rather pug nose and round face. Full lips that need no makeup to be red, and a small birthmark behind her right earlobe. She is not a skinny waifish woman, nor is she fat or obese. She is strong, healthy, curvy and busty. Clear creamy skin, and expressive sensual hands.
She is a good healer, and a damn good medium and is always concerned about helping those that can't help themselves.


Off we go, then.

 

[Lonely_Hunter]

Fiona wiped her brow with the back of her hand. She'd been running since a bit past noon and it was now well after midnight. She was hungry, exhausted and more than a little annoyed.
Who was this damnable creature that James had sent after her now? Hadn't she proven to that lunatic that called himself King that she would not stand to be hunted down?
Would he never lose interest in her and leave her be?
She'd only seen the man on horseback from hiding and from a great distance, but she thought he sat a horse well and had a grim stance. However,she knew that no one on horse back could possibly keep up with her, on foot, in these woods. Besides, the Goddess would continue to hide and protect her as she always had, and this fool would merely wear himself limp and ragged, and run his horse to death like all the other idiots James had sent after her had done. Then one final spell from her to finish the job and she'd have bought herself another six months of freedom from being hunted.

She stopped and listened to the night, asking the Goddess to reveal any sounds that would give away the prescence of the mounted man, but heard nothing.

"Mounted ninny more like!"

She allowed herself a small smile, and flumped onto the dark, sweet smelling ground with her skirts billowing around her.
Pulling the last of her scanty supplies from her pouch, she tore off a piece of the stale bread and curled it around the dry cheese rind, chewing thoughtfully.
After eating and preparing herself for a few hours of sleep, she lay staring up at the night sky.
"Tis so clear this night. Goddess, guide me to a place of safety and rest on the morrow. I canna keep running like this. Help me to do as you'd have me do. What's best, Eternal Mother? What's best?"
She felt the tingle in her breast that she always got when she pondered the sky, and noticed the wisps of arousal that sent tendrils of heat curling around her thighs. The Power was always there, no matter how tired she was, and the restless spirit of Billy was always near at hand when she was feeling aroused. It was as if he enjoyed watching her pleasure herself even from the other side, and she often felt him in the breezes that caressed her body, and the sun that kissed the top of her head. But this night her exhaustion won out, and she fell asleep without touching herself as she normally did.
As her eyes slid closed, Fiona wondered what tomorrow would bring and if this stupid man would be as easy to throw off as all the others had been.

 

[patrick1]

Rob: a character note

Rob McDonald looked odd when he was young. For he has the looks of one who was meant to be mature, his hair greying, his customary wry smile tinged with melancholy. He's tall, but doesn't immediately dominate a room, a court, an interrogation. He often begins not by proclaiming but by asking, and listening. Many women have trusted him, because of his listening, and his melancholy smile, and the sympathetic look in his green eyes.

Rob is known for his independent ways. Is he loyal to James? He is certainly loyal to the ideas James espouses: he despises corruption, from the selling of indulgences to the currying of favour. He believes powerfully in the individual's own apprehension of truth, in personal revelation.

Rob, brought up by his mother and her sisters after the death of his father in battle before he was born, is fascinated by women's secrets. Some say at heart he's a witch himself, so profoundly interested is he in the ways of wise women. Yet there is darkness at the heart of his love for witchery: he dreams of torment and anguish, of the punishment of witches. He seems constantly burdened, pessimistic, yet forever hopeful that there will be laughter, redemption, joy.

 

[patrick1]

Rob at the inn

There's a likeness of the woman, a miniature, that Rob scrutinises again in the light from the fire. No woman can be as handsome as this. 'Handsome', yes, not beautiful, but with fine features, and a rare character emanating from her dark eyes. One of the king's spies made the likeness, but the artist seems infatuated with her. There's a glow to her that only desire can make a sketch inhabit.

He drains his glass. Usquebah. Some local concoction: damned strong. 'A wee dram more, Sir?' the woman offers. The last wee dram was somewhat sizeable.

'If you'll sit with me and take a glass yourself.'

A personable woman of middle years, the ruddy-faced inn-keeper is used to invitations, and sits comfortably with him. He employs no duplicity: when she asks, he simply tells her he is looking for Fiona Boyd, sometimes known as MacClellan. 'You'll know I'm a MacClellan myself, then.' She raises her eyebrows.

'I'll know that well enough,' he answers, smiling. He takes the merest sip of whisky. As if in a sort of challenge, she drinks more.

'You'll never find her in these woods.'

'I dare say.' And he inquires of Fiona no more. Instead he asks Molly - as she soon tells him she is called - about how she came to own the business, and the qualities of whiskies of different localities, and how it is that the Scots and the French have so much in common, why, she had three as guests for a week only this summer. She talks, he listens, they drink. Once, she touches him on the forearm, to emphasise a point about the delicacy of Frenchmen.

Later he lies in bed, listening to the snores of his neighbour and the intermittent silence of the night, wondering if Molly will communicate with Fiona. He seems a kindly man. - A cold-blooded killer. Surely not: an inquirer into life. - And death.

He smiles, dreaming of witches, and a strange creature, neither woman nor man, with wings, at his window.

 

[Lonely_Hunter]

In dreams...

Fiona slept restlessly. One might think it had to do with kipping on the bare ground with no blanket nor bedroll. But that wasn't it. Even the hardest ground was nothing more than the Mother's embrace to Fiona. No. The cause of her restless slumber was the dream.
A man, standing on a hilltop, beckoning to her. At first she thought, (as we all "think" when we are in that dream state) that it had to be Billy. But as she walked up the hill the man faded, and somehow came to be behind her.
He grabbed her arm to turn her toward him, but as she rose toward wakefulness all Fiona could see of him was a shadow. And as she woke she swore she heard the sound of...wings?

She sat bolt upright, horrified to see the sun high in the sky. She'd slept til nearly noon, and that was not like her, no matter how exhausted she'd been.

"Bloody hell! Here it is broad daylight and I'm lying about like a puppy with a belly full of milk!"

She jumped and her head swam for lack of food. But, she hurried quickly to the small creek she'd been following to splash her face and get a drink. She was out of food, so, whether she liked it or no, she'd have to find supplies today. She hated to bring danger down on Molly's head by showing up there, but it seemed her only choice.
The season was wrong for foraging, and she had no weapon suitable for a hunt. All that would take too long anyway.

Molly's it was then. She'd just gather what she needed, and be quick about her departure. In through the back kitchen door and out again. Molly would kit her out with what she needed and get her moving again.

"Up you get Fiona Boyd. You've slept through your mornin' ritual anyway. The Mother will understand your waiting til sundown to say the verses this one time. Won't ye Mother? After all, the belly runs the brain, as they say."
Smiling wryly Fiona began her zigzagging route to the back door of Molly's inn, watching warily the whole way for The Mounted Ninny (as she'd begun to fondly call him.)
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Evening had set in when Fiona arrived at Molly's back door, even more exhausted than last night.
She poked her head in the back door, and nearly fainted from the smell of Uncle Seamus' neeps and tatties. Well, not nearly. She did faint. She came around to the sight of Aunt Moll's face swimming before her, and heard her say "Poor bairn. She's run ragged. We've got to get her in a bed."

"But, Molly, dear, what about..."

"Shut your gob Seamus and let me do the thinking round here. Risky or no, we'll have to take the chance. She's canna go on like this. No one need know she's here. And anyway, he seems a kindly man. An inquirer. Into life. He'll do her no harm"

She felt her Uncles' strong arms pick her up and she tried to speak, to tell them she was fine. SHe hated to be babied and hated even more for anyone to see her weak or vulnerable. But her body once again won out and she knew no more.

 

[patrick1]

Rob

There are some witches who believe Rob himself has the gift. Accuse him of it, when they are tried. He always denies it, smiling, saying to the king or his courtiers, if they quote the evidence at him, that he is rather a giver of gifts.

Molly, for instance, although a kindly woman, thinks it charity enough that the woman with a hare-lip and a scar across her neck is given work, sweeping and brushing and cleaning, in exchange for her keep. Rob bestows something more upon her: the promise, when she leaves for her next destination, as she surely will - for she's a restless soul, a traveller, a cousin of an informant of his presently in Alloa who is always moving on - there will be silver in a pouch for her if she sends word to him of her new home.

And yet, when the hare-lipped woman slips into his room, and points insistently at the likeness of the woman he seeks, he has already felt a presence. Her name: Fiona. Someone saying it. He sees her thin, pinched, pale face. In another woman's arms?

Is this why the women so often slip into his grasp? Because he knows the dark forces of which he accuses them?

Nonsense, man, nonsense. The usquebah talking. He has his informants, and his knowledge. He was expecting her here, and she has arrived. He shapes a phrase for the day when an imagined acolyte will ask for his wisdom. The logician at work. Never pursue your quarry. Arrange for them to come to you.

~​

There is something wrong. It's the dark of the night, the glow of a red candle. Fiona wakes in one of Molly's beds, and her hands are somehow secured behind her, at the wrists. When she tries to cry out, a man's hand goes over her mouth. It's him: the witchfinder: his green eyes staring at her. Although she's half-naked, he seems to see only her face, her eyes.

No. He's not super-human. He looks down the length of her body, half-exposed outside the sheet. She is at his mercy.

The forefinger of his free right hand goes to his mouth, in a gesture of silence. Then a knife glints there, and she bites into the hand at her mouth as he half-turns her. He cuts the scarf at her wrists.

He snuffs out the candle and is gone.

Was he no more than a dream? A phantom?

~​

Rob sits on his bed, head in hands, staring into nothing.

It's as if the scene endlessly replays itself, under a canopy of glass, in miniature at his feet. The woman - her dark eyes, her lips, the swell of the curves of her body - her helplessness, that she is bound, and yet that she sees into him - sees that he wants this - sees into his soul as he sees into hers -

No, no. Forget it. Not in the official report. No. I received intelligence that the woman was bound for the inn. He permits himself a smile at his own punning half-truth. Bound for. I waited all night in readiness. In the morning -

Who knows what convincing act of the morning will remedy this, this moment of madness, this strange desire, this pulse at the heart of him, the woman helpless and yet her eyes all-powerful, telling him to leave her be?

Rob sits on his bed, staring into nothing, and doesn't sleep. He sucks at the wound in his left hand.

 

[Lonely_Hunter]

There is something wrong. It's the dark of the night, the glow of a red candle. Fiona wakes in one of Molly's beds, and her hands are somehow secured behind her, at the wrists. When she tries to cry out, a man's hand goes over her mouth. It's him: the witchfinder: his green eyes staring at her. Although she's half-naked, he seems to see only her face, her eyes.

She's never seen eyes like that before. She does not worry about her exposed body-men have looked at her for years, seeing her naked in their mind even when she was clothed. What disturbs Fiona is the intensity of the gaze. For a moment she is broadsided by the force of the The Power as it hits her. The scent of him-whisky and smoke, leather and wool seems to make her crave something, but she can't quite figure out what. He can see The Power in her eyes. She can always tell when someone gets their first true glimpse of what she is. She feels the barest tremor go through his hand.
As the man places a finger to his lips, his eyes glint with a spark that is...dangerous? There is a darkness there-a darkness that Fiona's own spirit answers to.
She turns to bite him, hard, on his hand.
But for reasons she doesn't understand she does not cry out when he jerks his hand away for a split second.
He cuts her bonds, swiftly, and is gone as quickly as he came. Fiona is left with nothing more than the salty tang of his blood on her lips, and the heat of his eyes in her mind. She snakes out her tongue to lick away the stickiness of that blood.
Oh, yes, he saw The Power in her eyes when it overcame her. What frightens Fiona is that she saw that same Power in his eyes. Just as strong, and just as dangerous.
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It is late-three hours or so before dawn. Fiona is still awake, but feels relatively safe with her door barred and her fireplace blazing. It will do her no good to run until she knows where this man is.
She performs her morning ritual, even though the sun has not yet risen, for she knows that she must tap into the Mother's power soon and find the man.
It feels good to be honoring Mother Goddess and Father God after two days of missing her rituals.
The Wormwood, and Rosemary. Smoke and candles. The stone, and the cup of water are comforting to her.
Her prayers completed, Fiona undresses herself, washes with the water from the pitcher. Neck, belly and breasts glow with dampness in the red of the firelight. She can feel it already. That familiar warmth spreading like liquid fire through her belly and around her thighs. A slight intake of breath as she reaches lower with the cloth, parting her legs to wash there, knowing that this is where The Power of all women emanate from. The heat moves up her back, over her shoulders and down over her breasts. Almost like the touch of an unseen lover. She has always wondered about making the magic with another person. If it came to her so strongly when she did it alone, how strong could it bewith another who had the gift?
The haze that comes over her when she taps into her Power is already making her lightheaded

"Mother, your message must be urgent, if your Power is already overcoming me. Guide my hands, so that I may channel your Gift as intensly as possible."

Kneeling on the bed, she barely has to touch her breasts before a cloudy image hits her closed eyelids. The man. His head in his hands. He is sitting.

"Where, Mother? Show me where!"

Reaching lower, Fiona parts her moist slit, and delves there with her fingers, a rush of Power hitting her midriff and spreading out to envelop her body.
Fingers slip over her hard pearl, and another image presents itself.
The man is sitting on a bed. Here. HERE!
The image is so strong Fiona can smell him. Taste his blood again.
She bites into her own lower lip, until it bleeds, the pleasure and The Power overcoming her. She can feel the climax building deep inside her, and knows, in that animal part of her mind that this is the true message. Her fingers, wet and slippery, work frantically at her clit, working for the orgasm. Working for the vision.
As she feels the violent shudders of her own body, the vision explodes and crystalises in her mind's eye.
The man, a darkness surrounding him, and over his left shoulder, a vague hulking shape with wings. He looked up and into Fiona's face as if he were there in the room and could feel her looking at him. His face changed from puzzlement to curiosity to rage, and she knew he felt her watching him. His eyes glinted, and he looked straight into her.
In a voice of deadly calm she hears him mutter, "Watch me if you will Fiona Boyd. But remember, lass, I can see you, too. It is interesting to know where you get your power, and how you channel it. Soon I will make sure you get a taste of my feelings about witches. And best of all...you will come to me."
The shape over his left shoulder uttered a gutteral laugh and stretched it's wings to envelop the man, hiding him from Fiona's view.

She collapsed on the bed, the scent of sweat and magic and sex hanging heavy in the room. As the last of the Power ebbed away, she began to shake. Both with the cold, and with fear. But also with something else. Some emotion she couldn't quite name. She knew he was angry. He hated her for what she was, but at the same time he hated her more because she was making him aware that he had the Gift as well.

She pulled the blankets over her naked body and slept like a dead person until the morning.

 

[patrick1]

day and night

He is cured by morning. The sun's rays, the scent of early Spring, the twitter of birds. Downstairs he enjoys Molly's warm porridge and he even essays a little - unsuccessful - flirtation with the frightened maid. There's an overnight dispatch for him: the English queen is believed to be gravely ill, the king may have to leave for the south at any time and hopes to witness the conclusion of the Ladd business (their crude code, "lad" = "boy", Fiona's last name, why is he unacquainted with her and yet thinks of her as Fiona?) before he has to depart.

Rob walks through the woods and is happy. When the king goes south there will be work a-plenty for a finder of witches. New horizons to discover and understand. He keeps glimpsing tormented women among the trees - bound to trunks, or suspended by their limbs from branches, or stretched between oaks, being whipped - but he's used to his visions. One blink and they're gone. Occasionally two. There's a buzzing in his head and he knows what it is, knows who it is, trying to insinuate herself into his mind, but the morning has cured him of her, hasn't it?

Sure it has. When he's almost returned to the inn, the hare-lipped woman is waiting behind a yew to inform him: 'She is much weakened, and will stay for at least two more nights.'

He squeezes her hand, a reward of coin in her palm. 'Beware,' she says unexpectedly, and hurries off.

Beware, indeed. Back in his room he finishes the report of his last encounter. In short, the elderly couple were, in my view, falsely accused by the people of Clackmannan of holding rituals at the 'clack', or stone of Manau, the old pagan god, probably to cover up the truth of the accusations the couple had made of theivery against the children of two of their tormentors...

A rigorous man. We must not conjure up witches where none are to be found.

But here... He feels it, as soon as he sets down his quill, as the last rays of the afternoon sun disappear from his window, at the onset of night: the presence of a power. His head begins to thud. Usquebah: quickly, quickly.

~​

In any town they can be found. In the night. Women of the night. He's in a stinking tavern, clutching his big leather bag on his lap, forcing another glass of poteen down him, when finally she approaches him. Roisin, she says she's called. An Irishwoman with a poxy face but a lithe-looking body, beneath the dirty shift. When he murmurs what he wants of her, she at first says no; then returns, a few minutes and a glass later, saying she'll do it if her sister can be there too.

'If she doesn't mind the danger of witnessing me.'

'The danger, sir?'

He lets it go. I'm a dangerous man, but I don't want to labour the damned point because of what I want to occur.

The upstairs room she takes him to is fetid and dark. The sister crouches in the shadows. Roisin stands in the shaft of the moonlight from the window-opening, and, without overture, takes off her clothes. He feels a terrible pity sweep over him: her pale body is still beautiful. When he opens his leather bag she shrinks back. 'Kneel in the light,' he says. She must have heard of the brank: an object of beauty too: a metal head-cage, with metal tongue to insert into the mouth.

'I'm no witch,' she says.

She has a way of inserting a word that contains f and k and ing into every sentence that makes him want to strike her. He doesn't answer. He lowers the cage over her head, and moves the two hinged parts together, trapping her head, pushing the gag into her mouth. That'll stop her foul mouth. 'Touch yourself,' he says. She makes some kind of noise. 'Between your legs.'

He is using that word himself: that disgusting word with f and k and ing. She's infected him, the poxy bitch. Witch. He kneels, his hand at his member. Not too quickly. Savour it, savour it. She touches herself. 'Witch,' he says out loud. I'll keep you sleepless and helpless and naked in this, for days, Witch. Yes I will, in God's name. 'Witch,' f and k and ing, yes. 'Witch.' Her face is trapped inside the brank, Fiona's face, moaning, or is that his voice? 'Fucking witch.' Disgusting, yes, beg, yes, confess, yes, plead, yes, you're mine now, yes you are, witch, oh God forgive me, oh God, oh God -