Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-5543592-20190904182217/@comment-5543592-20191014003318

"It's been done before." The bartender said.

The stench became savory, less like rot, more viseral. Coppery for blood, a new, seperate stink for human shit.

Over the next rise, they could see the heads of people.

And just their heads. Dozens, on the ends of stakes. Men, women, children, all propped up in a straight line. The line led  to a village in the distance, at the bottom of the incline. It appeared abandoned, juding by the sunken, collapsed look of it's buildings. They had been burned recently, perhaps throughout the night, when the smoke wouldn't have been visible, or maybe earlier, before their own arrival in Montana.

A crow settled onto the top of the head nearest Harriot and Wilkes. It cawed at them, and then began to pull bloody chunks out of the head's ear. The head looked to be in good condition. The blood was thick and congealed, but the skin was completely miscolored. Death had been recent. The other heads around it were in similar condition, and they wouldn't be amiss to assume all these people had been decapitated recently.

The stakes themselves were recently carved, the wood freshly white, and poorly made, done by someone inexperienced at wood-working.

And the last detail, one they didn't notice immediately, was that ever head was scalped. The hair and flesh from the forehead to the back of the ears had been sawed off and torn away, exposing the runny, thin meat beneath to the sky.