Twelve-sided stories is for mature audiences and often deals with topics that may be difficult for some listeners.
Discretion is advised.
Come, brave the dark woods of folk horror with us in this vason actual play, The Hidden North.
Remember, 12-sided stories are always story heavy, rules light, and full of fright.
Hello and welcome to The Hidden North, episode number 13.
This is one of our solo adventures where we are going to have a one-on-one game with Michelle.
Hey, and I'm Michelle.
And today I am playing Greta Nielsen, your local academic and vason expert, or at least she would like to be.
All right.
So this is a good place for a really short recap.
If you've been listening to the last three shows, we've been doing one-on-one shows with each of the characters to kind of do a more of a deep
dive into their past.
When we left Greta last on the main line show, she was in the woods and there was a troll steam rolling towards her after realizing she was in the bushes
because she's been baptized as Christian and the troll smelt her and is now attacking.
That's a really short version because I've said it like four times on the other stuff.
So and we'll recap it again once we get back to the main line show next week.
Let's get into it.
Greta, you are originally from Oslo, probably working at the university.
What do you think as an academic you'd be doing at the university?
Would you be teaching a specific class?
Would you be working at the library?
What do you think?
I would probably be teaching like folklore and Norse mythology and things like that, but more than likely folklore and local folk legends about
Vason and you know stuff like that.
Okay, so you've been teaching folklore and mythology at Oslo for a while at the university.
Let's say this story is going to take place when you're in your early 30s.
So you've been there for the past like four years.
You've read a lot of stories about obviously about folklore about Vason about trolls and you've heard stories about giants and all of these different things
and it has always been very interesting to you.
You have a lot of students who come in from all over Norway and from beyond who bring more stories from whatever culture they might be from.
But you feel like there's always something missing like one key part of your knowledge that you're just not understanding.
It's been gnawed at you lately in the back of your mind.
Like there's something you're missing one night.
You're walking along the riverbank and for listeners, I'm not going to say the river banks name because I would butcher it.
Just there you go.
You're walking along the riverfront one night.
You don't live very far from here.
You actually live probably 20 or 30 yards from the shoreline and you usually wake up and you know can walk around the city pretty easily
and you hear this haunting sound of a very mournful violin coming from the river.
I turn to look so that I can hear it better.
You feel like your head is a bit fuzzy as the notes are being played.
Almost like the notes have a life that's separate from their actual tone like a soul but not in the normal way musicians would think of soul.
Like each note literally has some sort of divine spark in it as it hits you and you're listening and it's late.
It's probably eight or nine o'clock at night.
At this point, most people have gone to bed.
So there's not a lot of people on the streets and there's a fog that's starting to roll in and you see a pair of large black eyes peeking out of the water
from where you're imagining the sound is coming from.
I stop in my tracks and I just stare and I listen.
Make a fear check for me real quick first so that you're either logic or empathy.
I made it one success.
The fuzziness is still there, but it's not affecting you as badly as it was first was and the eyes in the water that are peeking just above.
You can see kind of the bridge of the nose of this creature.
It's hard to tell in the dark.
You can see the eyes, but the skin is hard to make out and the hair and whatever.
But after a few moments when you don't react the way it probably believes you should be the music dies off.
And the creature walks out of the water.
It's tall in the lamplight.
You can see that it has light blue to gray skin.
These big black eyes.
It's holding its violin and it looks at you and says, you don't seem as enchanted by my song as most humans are.
The song is beautiful.
But am I supposed to fall under a spell with it?
Well, it's supposed to give you the urge to learn how to play.
I'm a teacher of the violin and I find humans that are sensitive to its playing and I teach them how to play.
Well, I guess I'm more of a singer myself.
I see.
Does your song have words?
No, not this particular one.
And it's unfinished.
In fact, I have two pieces of unfinished music that I wish to complete.
But so far I've been unable to do it.
I'm sorry to hear that.
Would you be willing to help me finish these pieces of music?
Forgive me for being skeptical.
But I know that sometimes making arrangements with those of your realm doesn't turn out well for the human.
What do you know of my realm?
Not much.
I mean what I've read in books and what I know from stories.
The two pieces that I'm looking to complete, they got away from me before I could put the music down onto paper.
If you were to help me get the music onto paper, I would then give you a huge boon.
Something most mortals wouldn't even dream of being able to have.
What is the music made of?
When I play my songs, I am improvising.
Whoever's nearby that becomes very intoxicated by my song, they start to become the music.
And they are gifted with immortality in the page.
So in helping you, I would be giving up other humans to the page?
You would be immortalizing a person who only has a finite amount of time into a higher form of being.
That is a lot to ask.
That is why the boon is such a big one.
And what is the boon?
All the information that you seek, you will be granted with the ability to go between our realms if you want.
Though this realm's time moves much quicker.
So if you go into our realm, this world would change even within a few hours.
You'd come back maybe years later.
I would give you riches.
You would be able to never work again.
Or if you wanted to, you could.
I might be able to even give you immortality.
You could see the world develop and study whatever you wanted for the rest of time.
This is something which I would have to give great consideration.
Of course.
Return here in two nights.
Let me know what you decide.
I will.
All right.
So what do you do for the next two days now that you realize you can see Vason?
I'm going to fall back on what I know and that's studying.
And I'm going to find out as much about this particular creature as I can and what exactly it entails to give a human over to them.
All right, so give me an investigation role, which is logic, which you have a plethora of.
Plethora.
I got one success.
So you read about a Norwegian or I guess Scandinavian water spirit who plays music and who entices people in.
And you study that particular vein for gold and you find what ends up happening is he'll play his music for you.
And if you're entranced enough, it doesn't happen to everyone.
But if you really get hypnotized by his music, your body will slowly dissolve into musical notes that then float across to him and land on his staff paper.
So what he's asking is for you to find these people, get them in a position where he is able to play their song and then get them to dissolve into music so that he can put them on the paper, basically.
Any other questions?
I mean, and these people are not willingly doing this.
Most of them don't know what's happening until it's too late.
You know, they get entranced.
Yeah.
They love the music slowly pieces of their body starts to transfer, transform into musical notes.
Almost I said, you know, it's like that vampire puff situation where they get staked and buffy puffed and they, you know, they turn into ash.
It's kind of like that, but it's musical notes instead.
OK, then I've made my decision.
All right.
Couple days pass, you've done your research and you go back to the river and he's waiting for you there at the midnight hour.
This is have you thought about my offer?
I have considered your offer very, very carefully and deeply, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline.
Why?
I think that if it's someone who was willing and knowing what they were getting into before they became the music, that is one thing, but someone is unknowing and possibly unwilling.
I don't think I could do that to another person.
You'd give up all the riches and the immortality and everything else because of that makes no sense.
Well, it makes sense to me because what good is immortality if I have a guilty conscience for the rest of my life?
And he ponders this for a second and you can tell the gears are turning and then he turns to you and goes, OK, well, good night.
And he turns and he walks into the water.
Good night.
And I'm thinking, wow, that was easier than I thought.
So you return to your home and we're going to say a couple of weeks go by.
I don't know if you would go back down to the water and look every once in a while, see if you could capture another glimpse or if you would stay away.
I would probably take the land route, you know, a little away from the water.
Right.
So about a week later at this point, it's pretty late in fall.
So the air has gotten cold and you know that winter will be here soon.
And you enter your house and you sit down and you start to, you know, go through some grading or whatever.
Give me an observation roll.
OK.
That is one success.
OK, cool.
As you're grading some papers and stuff, your house, I would say, is probably pretty messy, probably lots of lots of books everywhere.
And you notice that there is a half dried strange footprint on the floor of your apartment.
I go to investigate it more closely.
You're looking at this and you notice that goes into your bedroom.
I follow it.
So you walk, you know, towards your bedroom and you notice that there's the violin that the creature was holding on your bed.
I say hello.
Make an observation roll for me.
I did not make a six.
All of a sudden, there's something behind you.
You hear like this sound of wind as it swings towards you.
So right.
Beatility.
Yeah, because you're going to try to get out of the way.
I did not make it.
All right.
So you get hit upside the head with a raking of claws against your neck.
You feel blood come out.
So you suffer one condition, a physical condition.
Go ahead and pick which one you want to do.
That would probably be wounded.
This thing's right behind you and it's called your neck pretty bad.
And it is your turn to react.
How do you how do you handle this?
I am not a fighter.
Nope.
Can I use learning to try to like say something that I know would ward off of a sin?
I don't know.
Why don't you make a roll to see if you know a quick ritual that you can use to defuse the situation?
Okay.
Yes, and I got two successes.
You know, there are certain substances basin don't like and you can sometimes especially with the water adjacent basin.
Can you salt to keep them away or keep them at bay?
And you know, you have a large container of salt in your kitchen.
So what I need you to do if that's what you want to try to get to is make an agility roll.
So agility is your physique plus one for die.
Nope.
All right.
So you start running and he's going to take another swipe at you.
So he's swinging for your back.
I'll give you an opportunity to dodge.
Unless I can I can't dodge that one, right?
Okay.
All fives.
And strikes your back.
So what did you take?
You took exhausted last time.
No, I took wounded.
So I'll take okay.
You can stack them.
You can take wounded again.
If you want what happens is after three, then you get broken and that's that's an issue, right?
Yeah, I'll take wounded again.
Okay, or battered.
It's up to you because he may not have broken skin or whatever.
I'll take battered.
Okay.
So you have two conditions you're bleeding out of your neck not like artery or anything, but still.
Yeah, and your back is he's slammed into your back.
Make another agility roll to try to get into actually well, no, we'll do agility.
I guess your character is not not a physical character at all.
That one success.
All right.
So you it basically smacks you in your back and you fall through the threshold of the kitchen and you see the container of salts on the counter.
Tell me what you do.
I grab the container of salts and I grab a handful of it out of the container and throw it at the basin.
It backs up quickly trying to avoid getting hit.
Can you give me a give me another agility because you're just wildly throwing so no, I did not make it.
So you throw it and it starts to hiss at you, but it's not entering the kitchen.
What do you want to do now?
You're kind of in a stalemate in a way, but you have the container of salt.
Can I make my way toward the fireplace?
If you continue to throw salt at it, sure.
Yeah, that's what I want to do.
I'm like throwing little handfuls of salt making my way to the iron fire poker.
Okay, so you do this because I know iron is another thing you continue to assault the neck.
Don't insult my intelligence.
Now you're just getting salty.
All right.
So you make your way over.
Thank you.
And you pick up the iron poker and you've got the salt in one hand of the iron poker in the other.
And he turns to you.
He says in a language, you don't understand some words and moves his hand and he says I curse you.
You will do what I want you to do.
You will lead me to them whether you like it or not.
And then he makes his way out the window.
I'm just muttering under my breath.
Asshole.
Now after he leaves you realize that he left his violin on your bed.
Oh, that's tough to know what to do with it.
Part of me wants to burn it.
It is your call.
Part of me wants to take it to the university.
Which part are you going to listen to?
That's tough because I'm wounded and I'm angry.
I'm wet and I'm hysterical.
I'm in pain.
I'm wet and I'm hysterical.
I think that I'm going to dress my wounds calm down a little bit and I'm going to wrap it in a blanket and take it to the university.
So you take it to Professor Elson who also works in the folklore portion of the university.
He's a much older man probably in his 80s, big beard.
You know, most people think he's a bit quirky and he's almost entombed in a bunch of books.
He says oh and he goes Greta, it is nice to see you.
What can I do for you?
It's good to see you as well.
I'm still a little shaken, but I had an encounter and I explained to him everything.
Well, that sounds amazing.
And terrifying.
Well and terrifying.
You said this happened at your home.
Yes.
Well, I mean I explained everything to him from the river.
Yeah, but the attack happened at your home as well.
And this violin is the creature's violin.
Yes.
May I take a look?
Of course.
And I unwrap it for him.
He looks at it.
He goes I would have to have a musician, maybe one of our music professors take a look at it.
It definitely looks old and it definitely looks interesting.
Are you sure you feel okay?
Physically, I'll heal.
Mentally, I'll be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life, I think.
Have you had any headaches or strange visions at all?
No.
Is there a way to reverse a curse?
Well, I mean there's lots of things in folklore, of course, about curses.
I would have to do some studying on it.
Well, this is specifically a curse from the neck.
I tell you what, I'll look into it and then I will get back to you when I know more.
Thank you.
On my way home, I pick up rock salt and I pick up iron nails.
And when I get home, I put like the iron nails around my window and door frames
and the rock salt I put around my bed so that I can sleep.
You know.
You put all the iron nails out and you spread a dusting of salt at your doors and all over the place.
And I make a little like sachet of salt that I wear around my neck.
The professor shows up at your place later on that night.
He knocks on the door and says, it's me.
I have some information for you.
Okay.
He comes in and says, I see you're taking precautions.
That's good.
I have some bad news for you, unfortunately.
It's very hard to get rid of a curse.
You have to find a some way to break a connection between you and this creature.
And I can't really find what that is.
I do wonder if you might want to move away, go somewhere maybe safer.
I mean, I could maybe take a sabbatical and do some studies somewhere else.
Possibly.
I did get this letter from Upsala.
It is addressed to you.
It was on your desk.
But I figured since you were taking some time off that I would bring it for you.
Thank you.
See what it says.
I open the letter.
It's the letter from Linnea.
This time it kind of strikes you odd that two days after you tell the professor about
your encounter that this letter shows up.
And he says, I contacted Linnea after you told your story.
I used to be a part of a society that studied, but the society is no more.
Linnea is trying to rebuild it in Upsala at this point.
And she said she'd actually had a vision of you already dealing with these types of things.
I think it might be in the environment you need to be in, at least to see whether or
not you can find a way to break the curse.
Well, I'm glad you have such connections because honestly, I was at a loss with where I was
going to go.
Yes, I understand.
I am too old to be studying or fighting with Vason.
It can be dangerous, but also rewarding.
I'm not promising that getting away from the river will lessen the effects of the curse
or not do exactly what he wants you to do, but it will at least give you some time to
do some more studying.
I appreciate your help.
I think you're right.
I think putting some distance between myself and this river might help, at least in the
short term.
And the dangerous part of dealing with Vason, I think I've discovered, but the rewarding
part I have yet to discover.
Okay.
So you have a nice chat and he gives you all the information.
He goes, you know, the best thing to do is just tell the school you're on sabbatical.
That's the easiest way.
So you do that and you get set up to go and you head out.
Before I head out, I take a bunch of the nails that I had bought that are iron and I go to,
I don't know, a jeweler or somebody to have them fashion it into a bracelet.
Okay.
Or it could be just cheaper to buy an iron bracelet.
I'm sure they have some.
Yeah, true.
So I go looking for an iron bracelet, some necklace or something to.
Yeah.
A necklace and a bracelet.
So you do all that and you head to Upsala.
And I think that's where we're going to end the show.
Okay.
Little peak background.
What did you think?
Were you happy with all that?
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Well, thank you very much, Michelle.
Tell people where they can find you.
Well, you can find me on the socials at Michelle, M-I-C-H-U-L-H-U.
And you can find my music and Wes's amazing sound effects if you go to drive through RPG
and look up late mail games.
And I am Wes Otis.
You can find me at plate mail games on all the different socials, including drive through
RPG.
If you like Michelle said, you can also find the show at 12 Sided Stories, the number 12
and then Sided Stories, or you can find us on our website at 12SidedStories.com.
All one word, all spelled out, no numbers.
Thank you so much for listening and we will talk to you soon.
Bye everybody.
Bye-bye.
You