Play@YSDC

Alexander's knowledge of the occult is non-existent.

OOC,Occult (5% base skill) in the field: [dice]0[/dice]

"Has this field always been uncultivated?" Percy wonders. "Another superstition perhaps?"

“Oh yes” says Hallifax. “The villagers are very superstitious about this place. They won’t come here if they can help it, which is why Lord Bargrove used the new workers to pull that stone down. So I’m surprised the villagers put it back up again, although no-one will admit to it.”

"It would have taken a lot of men and effort to lift it; why, it must weigh tonnes!" Exclaims Isolde. "Maybe our local historian knows something about this field; superstition must grow from somewhere in the past.
Constable, are you a local man? What are the rumours about this field in particular?" Isolde looks around and tries to get a sense of the place.

occult,(40%) roll 17

"Aye, it looks too heavy to move easily," says Alexander, "but the ancients managed to erect structures like these all over Britain with much less technology than we have today. As Archimedes said, give me a lever and a place to stand, and I can move the world. With the proper equipment, it's not as hard to raise a stone like this as ye might think."

Captain FitzWilliam studied the ground around the stone carefully as he looked for a clue as to what may have happened.

Spot Hidden (25%),[dice]0[/dice]

Hallifax shakes his head. “No, I’m not local. The villagers don’t like talking about this field, they think it should be left alone. But I just don’t see them stooping to murder over it!”

He lets out his breath in a whoosh.

“The whole thing has me flummoxed!” he exclaims.

Although Captain FitzWilliam examines the stone closely, he cannot see anything strange.

Isolde,An idea comes to Isolde. Where does she know the name ‘Hob’ from? Isn’t it another name for a goblin? There was the character in Shakspeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the fairy Robin Goodfellow, who is sometimes referred to as Hob or Hobgoblin. And wasn’t the devil sometimes called Old Hob in medieval times?

A picture is building up in Isolde's mind but it is an outlandish idea to be put to her colleagues later. For now, she decides to be cautious and test the water with the policeman.
"Constable, have you ever come across any rumours of, say, strange midnight parties in the area? Or perhaps certain locals who are not particularly devout attendees of our good church?"

Hallifax’s eyes almost pop out from his skull.

“Midnight parties? Here? This is a farming community, Madam. Hardworking folks. What are you trying to suggest? Really, until the outsiders showed up there was never any trouble here. The odd loose cow maybe.”

"Has there been other trouble than the murder since they arrived?" asks Alexander.

“There are fights sometimes, angry words exchanged. The newcomers are pretty much ostracized. They attempted to mix, but the locals shun them” Hallifax replies.

”Are the men still here, Constable?” asked Captain FitzWilliam. ”If so, do you know where they reside?”

Constable Hallifax

“They occupy some cottages in the village which were previously the homes of some elderly tenants. Lord Bargrove evicted them for not being efficient enough, which explains a lot of the hostility towards him and the newcomers.”

Isolde seems to be in a world of her own; she looks around the horizon to see if any buildings can be seen from this point.
"The finger does seem to point to the newcomers. But would they know about the significance of this field? Possibly but unlikely I'd have thought."
She turns to the policeman. "Was the time of, er, death established as such?"

"Yes, at around 5pm".

OOC:   There are no structures visible.

”So it seems that his Lordship wanted to farm this area but the local people had refused to move the stone, so he brought in some outsiders to do it for him,” said Captain FitzWilliam. ”They moved the stone and he was killed for it... ...” He trailed off in thought.

He paused for a while before he spoke again. ”This will seem implausible, but hear me out. Do you think that the stone could have been some sort of.. barrier? Something to stop some some of creature or demon escaping?” He shook his head as he said it, as if struggling to believe what he said was even possible. ”If it was disturbed - and assuming you give any credence to such a thing existing - could his Lordship’s death be as a result of such a creature being unleashed? Or was he sacrificed by the villagers? To put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak?”

Isolde looks disappointed at this inauspiciously ordinary time, 'unless it's the time of sunset' she thinks. As the captain speaks, she looks back at Fitzwilliam and then the others to see their reaction to this incredible theory.