The Firehouse. Home sweet home.

[Taaz]

Jason is talking with Roy about TV when he hears Etta's call, and seeks her out. Where are you hearing? To the Mound?

[Rex]

Mac

"I'm coming, just getting my stuff ready."

[Bluehorse]

Going to speak with Ten-Chiefs
Etta
Mac

Maybe
Jason
Lionel

Not said
Roy

[Pulpatoon]

Etta: "Jason, honey, you need to rest. There's till more research to be done for tonight—not to mention our... long term project. That should keep you busy. And I don't want to overwhelm Mr. Ten-Chiefs with a lot of new faces. So, howabout Mac and I head out? Mac, do you want to drive?"

Etta synchs her phone with the car's sound system, and starts playing Sam Cooke. Looking to Mac, she says, "I hope you don't object."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR5sua82dN8

[GreyWolfVT]

Roy follows Jason to see what else is going on. "Now mind you i said I won't go to the mound but I will help from afar however I can. So if you need me in a car I can do that if you need me here making sure Jason is good then so be it. He's good company. Just tell me what you need of me and I'll do it best I can."

[Urson]

Joker
By this time, Joker is either reading the case notes from the last visit to the mound, or has settled down for a nap.

[Taaz]

Ok, Jason says to Etta, but what are you gonna be doing out there? I can stay here and hit the books, I gotta try and figure out this dream. I think it might be important to the mound it was an 8 snake creature all the heads were black but one, and it kept chanting something. Hadiku, Kikah, Kah'ahnáywach'ah, Hakáayu... I'll try to follow up on that for a while.

[GreyWolfVT]

Roy thinks about 8 headed snake creatures two come to mind "Hmm I wonder if that was a hydra or Yamata no Orochi." he says in reply to Jason.

[Bluehorse]

Those going into Oklahoma with Etta will move here:

viewtopic.php?f=628&t=8668

[Taaz]

Yeah I don't know much for sure but I am planning to find out. he heads to the library to begin researching

[Bluehorse]

Yeah I don't know much for sure but I am planning to find out. he heads to the library to begin researching

Mod brains

[GreyWolfVT]

Roy "Oh research mind if I help? I love researching mythology relevant stuff." said to Jason as he tags along to the library. "The two I mentioned are from two different mythologies Greek and Japanese."

[Bluehorse]

Roy "Oh research mind if I help? I love researching mythology relevant stuff." said to Jason as he tags along to the library. "The two I mentioned are from two different mythologies Greek and Japanese."

Mod as well and you have a specialty in occult, right? +5d6

[GreyWolfVT]

Roy "Oh research mind if I help? I love researching mythology relevant stuff." said to Jason as he tags along to the library. "The two I mentioned are from two different mythologies Greek and Japanese."

Mod as well and you have a specialty in occult, right? +5d6

next to brains it says (Occult) so yes i believe I am.

Brains: [4d6] = 16 G: [1d6] = 6
Occult +[5d6] = 18

[Pulpatoon]

Ok, Jason says to Etta, but what are you gonna be doing out there? I can stay here and hit the books, I gotta try and figure out this dream. I think it might be important to the mound it was an 8 snake creature all the heads were black but one, and it kept chanting something. Hadiku, Kikah, Kah'ahnáywach'ah, Hakáayu... I'll try to follow up on that for a while.

Before leaving, Etta tells Jason that she is off to meet a Caddo elder. "I want to hear more about this dream, though. Could you email me a summary? I can ask the Mr. Ten-Chiefs if he recognizes the chant."

[Bluehorse]

Back @ HQ
Caddo Me a Favor?
Aug. 11, 2018, 1pm
Getting Hotter Outside, Humid

Those staying behind at the firehouse are having a quiet time of it. Jason and Roy are hitting the books. Jason is feeling a little better despite the interrupted sleep, but between that and the soup, he can feel a little improvement. (+1 Bp).

Roy is in his element, studying the occult and quickly catching onto the idea of a diety like Yamata no Orochi and soon finds several very similar deities across many cultures, such as:

Japan: Yamata no Orochi:

Oro.JPG (75.95 KiB) Viewed 672 times

China: YamaOro:

Yamataorochi.jpg (37.71 KiB) Viewed 672 times

Thailand (and surrounding): Phno Phen Naga:

Cambodia-Phnom-Penh-Wat-Phnom.jpg (92.29 KiB) Viewed 672 times

Greece: The Hydra: (With other European variants):

Hercules_Killing_the_Lernean_Hydra.jpg (880.99 KiB) Viewed 672 times

And finally:
Mayan: A'ya'hi'ya:

A'ya'hi'ya.jpg (29.22 KiB) Viewed 672 times

All these deities seem to have a similarity in that they all are purveyors of life and death. These serpent spirits are through to have been able to travel back and forth between the spiritual and material world and all are linked to the phases of the moon. They were said to be guardians of the honored dead and able to pass good (or bad) fortune from the nether realms to the material ones depending on if they were appeased or not.
All rituals and celebrations seem to be a variant of giving offerings to the dead and saying prayers to them and the serpent that almost always appeared to have eight heads, those more localized groups would present it differently. More coastal areas seem to depict it by native sea snakes, others as pit vipers, but always it reflected those snakes most familiar to the worshipers... and though there is little known about the Caddo, it is known they had immense respect for... The cottonmouth. The name of which is loosely translated as the black snake with a white mouth.

Jason Since I didn't get a roll, but Ed both guessed it by himself (at least partially) and had such a good lead, I will say you were able to research at least this bit... Jason though a little addled by his condition quickly begins researching the chant as he remembers it, and finds that the words "Tejas" is the Caddo word for "Friend" and is the same word taken from the native Caddo to name the state of Texas.

Once this small bit of information is found, Roy is inspired to check out the Caddo language, and though written records of it are incredibly limited, he finds enough to piece this together:

Hadiku: Black
Kikah: Snake
Kah'ahnáywach'ah: Mouth
Hakáayu: White

Joker is apparently catching so Zzzz's before heading out tonight.

Lionel is getting plenty of pings on social media about the interview. But what is he up to? Anyone's guess
Just let me know what you were and are doing and I will amend it in the next post

Actions? 

Brownie Point Pool  
Dr. Jason O'Roarke:  61/73 (**)
Roy O'Dowd: 37/37
Lionel 'Freight Train' Williams: 123/123
Dzjokar "Joker" Jelal 42/42

* - +1d6 on any one roll. (Xmas)

** - Jason has -1d6 on every roll until Aug 24th as he recovers from Snake Venom.

GM Note: Mac rolled a Ghost Die @ the Cavanaugh Mound

[Taaz]

Sorry Ive been helping a friend move and all over the place lol

Occult(Diminished): [5d6] = 18 Ghost:[1d6] = 6

Jason is back in his element and feeling more himself, reading on the multitudes of cultures, the A'ya'hi'ya, the Hydra, and dozens more. That doesn't even include the snake like beings from dragons to Quetzalcoatl, the Orbours cults and more. The snake motifs almost made his bites itch.

In his downtime he types Etta an email with the pertinent details about his dream and the connections he and Roy have made between it and the mound.

[Bluehorse]

Well, Taaz, the good news is you made more than 20 for a hard roll so you are good to go there, but for the future, remember that rolling specialty means you taken your normal brains, in your case 4, and add the +5d6 for the specialty. So researching occult, Jason could roll" Brains v 20 [8d6] G: [1d6]

Yup! 9d6 total! Minus the current penalty of course. Also, no worries about not being here. Real-life happens! Hope it was an easy move and your buddy bought you lunch or something Be careful in this heat

J & R keep putting their heads together Finding more and more occurrences of snake deities in various cultures, they begin to see more similarities and point to a possibility of it being the same entity at work. Some cultures view him as an incredibly powerful god while others consider him little more than an animal spirit who has qualified for a job. This tends to be coinciding with two things:

1. The older the culture, the more powerful The Serpent becomes.
2. The longer a people kept to their old traditions, the more powerful the deity remains.

So it seems this spirit is dependant on those that believe and worship it to maintain its personal power and influence. In every case, it directly reflects the most prominent species of snake of the area its worshipers are present. A variant that is briefly mentioned of the nearby Osage people, for example, rather than being presented as a Cottonmouth, it is a copperhead. The QuaPaw recognized it as a rattlesnake. The Tunica saw it as a collection of all 6 of the local venomous snakes with emphasis put on the Cottonmouth having 3 heads dedicated to it alone while being flanked by the others.

Everything about this entity saws it is a messenger between worlds and can be anything from benevolent to outright vicious. The later seems to come when the spirit is not being attended to, or worse yet when the dead themselves are being dishonored. The most grievous of these dishonors is the disruption of graves themselves. Ranging from not tending to the graves of honored dead to outright digging them up. There is a tale from Cambodia where this deity is worshipped on home alters to this day in rural areas, where the grave of an elder monk was moved without proper respect to make room for a government building, the construction crew were plagued with snakes for weeks until the company itself put up the money to build a pair of alters, one in apology to the Monk's remains in apology for what had happened as well as a neighboring alter to Phno Phen Naga. Once it was complete and the small festival in honor of the dedication of both shrines. By that evening, the complete infestation of the venomous snakes had disappeared as quickly as it had started, with the exception of one place. There was a naysayer in the village who denounced what he called very publically a waste of money. He was found the next morning dead of multiple snake bites but not a snake could be found in or around his home, other than a freshly shed skin on a neglected home alter space.

On the reverse, there are multiple tales from the far and middle east as well as native American myth that shows it as being a protector of those that show it proper respect by not just keeping venomous snakes at bay, but even sending vipers and constrictors to their enemies (provided they also do not worship him on any level.) This seems to coincide in a surprising way to the stories from Europe. At the time when worship began to shift from animal like spirits and gods to more human like deities, tales such as the one of Hercules fighting the Hydra, come about that same time. When the greek tales came about of fighting against Hydra and later on tales like that of Saint Patrick driving out the serpents, show a time when the deity had greatly weakened in these regions due to no longer being worshiped.

Finally to further make connections of this being a common entity, it spread from North Africa both southward and north where the early practices went to the peoples of Europe and the Middle East, then spread out to Asia and outward, presumably following the nomadic peoples into the pacific islands as well as across the Baring Land Bridge into the Americas when the first humans come in and settled, and continued to become more and more prominent even in the large native empires of the Incans, Azteca, and Mayan, which of course coincided with those branches of the Mississippian tribes.

Okay, so at this point, this is everything I have for you Short of handing you a couple stat blocks that would range from being a god to a snake spirit as mentioned above. I know this is a little meta, but I don't want to waste your time either if you keep rolling
Well done!

Actions?

[GreyWolfVT]

Roy emails Etta the additional information he and Jason uncovered as well as his theory that the mound and snakes are relevant in that the place was desecrated and now needs proper tending to similar to an alter showing respect or perhaps recompense for the transgression of desecrating the burial site.

[Scott308]

Lionel "Freight Train" Williams

Having spent some time on social media, Lionel checks in on the researchers. So, we're dealing with an eight-headed snake god? Who's mad because the graves have been disturbed? That's a bit of a step up in class, huh? Give me a coffee-cup thrower, any day!