Daphne asks for the story of Mauritius’ duel. Mallow jumps in to embellish it.

All the exiled plains folk are parsing a lot of feelings. Except Daphne, who seems to be just fine…

During the night, Tails goes out into the grass to explore and frolic. In the middle of the night, he takes 20 HP of surprise damage from a barbed tendril. 2 displaced beasts attack the party out of the dark. The party defeats them. Malu makes a big splash taking down one of the beasts.

Calliope tells Venayo he needs to figure out his anger, whomever or whatever it is directed towards.

The party reaches the edge of the forest at dusk. They decide to venture on into the trees since they are close to where Brother Joseph was buried.

They come to a clearing. Plains folk ritual objects are lying about. 

There are strange marks that appear to be burned into the ground, trees, and leaves around the central burial mound. They seem to have emanated from it. The marks appear to be in Celestial, the language of angels.

Brother Joseph appears in the middle of the clearing. There is some talk with him. He claims that the curse spreading from the ruins was what “blessed” him and kept him here. Based on the location of his mound, Mauritius estimates that Titan’s Reach would now be inside the curse radius.

Aiya has had enough of talking with this awful undead person and attacks him. A displacer owl bear joins the fight against the party.

They kill Brother Joseph and he disappears. But he doesn’t stay dead. He reappears, casts chain lightning, and “kills” Aiya. 

Aiya wakes up in the snow in some other place. A young girl who is Patichka leads her on a long walk. Aiya meets a crow Doctor.

The party manages to kill Brother Joseph again. He arrives at the tree on the plain where Aiya is waiting. Aiya manages to force him through The Door. He doesn’t want to go, but it sucks him in.

The crow Doctor gives Aiya a raven feather that is wisdom and knowledge and rituals. She returns to the land of the living.

Several people attempt to use a plains folk ritual dagger to stab Brother Joseph’s skeleton to dissipate the displacer incubator effect of the grove. Tails finally succeeds. The effect of the grove is finally dissipated. 

Aiya passes the Raven feather to Takis. He becomes a crow Doctor before everyone’s eyes. They gather up all the ritual objects and place them in their pouch. He gives each of the PCs a special gift before departing.

Takis, now a new person, heads back to be the crow Doctor for the People of Still Water.

The party plus the other exiles continue on towards Titan’s Reach.