Long Fool's-Errand to the Grave (Location)

Battle Scene, by Samuel Johnson Woolf

 Written in the words of A.E. Housman, at the request of Ms. Screwhead, for Glaugust 2026.

Encounters
1. lads, in love with the grave.
2. new young men/ The sergeant he must see
3. Harnessed angels, hand on sword
4. Leaden Lover, one for women to admire/ in his finery of fire
5. master, right or wrong; make you dance as they desire/ With jail and gallows and hell-fire
6. the dead call the dying/And finger at the doors.


Areas
1. The sergeant
Monster: The sergeant. "'Young man, a soldier will you be, for thirteen pence a day?' He will lie. The desire of his heart? "Her strong enchantments failing. For things will all be over then, between the Queen and me."
Treasure: the sweetheart he chose

2. The Inn of Night
Contains: soldiers from the wars returning, bridles hang in stall. A charger remarks "We for a certainty are not the first have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled heir hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed whatever brute and blackguard made the world."
Treasure: lockbox. Guarded by proud and angry dust (save negates)

3. Pool and Brook
Treasure: flowers among the morning dews— bells, flower of a heart whose troubles must have been worse than mine, a herb of healing (1d6).

4. the desire of his heart
Trick: Oh dark is the chamber and lonely, and lights and companions depart (save negates)
Search: reveals treasure. The heart of maid/ and man together (casts charm, 2 charges)

5. Underground
Treasure: the Pole-Star. He wears the turning globe. Can be placed in a headpiece clever (+1 wisdom)
Searching: beyond a shadow not of night, the eternal masonry of the gates of hell.

6. The Highway Marches
Passes through all the Lovely Lands of Earth
Where clover whitens the dead man's knoll you pass: buried, my sword that will not save. (-1, cursed)

7. Taken Town
Contains: signs of all that croaks for war. Carrion cheap to marketplace and people. Idol to Saturn or Mercury (prayer gives flight 1/day, but echoes list to silence now where gods told lies of old)

8. Beneath the Hawthorn
Monster: the lover and his lass have heard the soldiers pass, and both are sighing.
Clue: from over hill, fife and drum (area 9)

9. Mattress of Loam
Monster: The lancer squadron is riding. "Who would not sleep with the brave?" In love with the grave. They drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air.

10. Her Towers of Fear in Wreck
Obstacle: the house is fallen in the slimepit and the mire.
Monster: Her strong enchantments failing, The Queen of air and darkness begins to shrill and cry, 'To-morrow you shall die.' (stats as banshee)
Treasure: Limbeck, dried poison