[Follow them from a distance.]
This is not the first time you have slipped under the notice of your guardians. At strange hours of the day you have peered between loose boards in the orphanage to spy Sister Margrite drawing blood over parchment, Father Velholme offering unfamiliar prayers read from elusive tomes you have only seen in shadows.
Creature of darkness, you have been called. But you have long since embraced that title.
Stealth Check: 19
Success
The Chasseur in the Forest, David Caspar Friedrich, 1814
You keep apace easily as you close the distance between yourself and the group. From rowan tree to rowan tree you make your cover, the sound of your soft, practiced footfalls dampened in the humid air. Soon the copse of rowan trees gives way to primordial pine forest, and those tall, swaying shapes cast the forest floor in near total darkness. Your eyes are accustomed to the dark, but the Father and Sister’s aren’t, and so you keep sixty feet between yourself and a dim lantern bobbing in the near distance.
You follow the lantern as the forest breaks into a small clearing. In the red light of the eclipse, you see Father Velholme and Sister Margrite stand at the stone threshold of a ruined chapel, roofless and exposed to the elements. Engraved upon its facade is the symbol of the God of Rebirth and Renewal, the Morninglord: a radiant sun rising over a road.
The Abbey in the Oakwood, Caspar David Friedrich, 1810
The Father and Sister shepherd the children into the ruins of the chapel. From your vantage point a safe distance away, taking cover behind dense foliage, you are able to appraise the situation.
Insight Check: 18
Success
The children do not seem to be their usual selves. Forced to travel through dark woods after a long night of revelry, you expect some protestation or signs of weariness upon them. Instead, their body language is strangely muted; they do not hang off each other or slouch or show any fearfulness.
Something smolders on the dark chapel floor, glowing hot and red. Sister Margrite takes off her cloak, swaddles the glowing thing in cloth, and lifts it off the ground.
What do you do?
A. Continue to evaluate the situation from a safe distance.
B. Stealthily enter the abbey, preparing to intervene in whatever is about to happen.
C. Reveal yourself and demand an explanation from Father Velholme and Sister Margrite.
D. Don the oni mask and come up with a bluff about impending danger.
E. Rush in and try to bring the children to their senses.
F. Try to cause some of the old stonework to tumble with a ray of frost.