We had tried to resolve a bunch of stuff in email before this session and completely failed to do so due to, among other things, everyone's brains being on fire post-election. Then we had various player issues hit, and decided that the better part of valor was to go dig into the email situation and resolve that and hope that people managed to join in once we got through the bookkeeping. This worked out pretty well!
Dramatis Personae:
Izgil, stuff identifier
Viepuck, trouble manufacturer
Celyn, necromancer irritater
Robin, pretty pretty paladin
When we ended the last session, Celyn had just stabbed Areschera, the fey who had infiltrated the Baroness's court, through the heart, despite her saying that she had information and Viepuck reading that that information included 'the Baroness is a necromancer' out of her mind.
Everyone in the vicinity is profoundly alarmed by the situation. That alarm only deepens when it becomes clear that the dead fey appears to have a perpetually bleeding head wound that continues to bleed even after the party has stopped the whole circulation of blood in her body process. Nobody knows what to do about anything, and "beloved clerk Marguerite was murdered and replaced with a body double fey" causes a great deal of generalized agitation.
In the overall chaos, the people in charge are happy to accept the party's advice on what to do with the bodies, and to allow the party to search the keep for possible additional fey influence. (Everyone is quite alarmed that the top floor of the tower - which should have been servants' quarters - was devoid of servants and their furniture and being used as a torture room for the guy who was accused of hiring assassins to send after us.) This requires the party to actually have advice on what to do with dead evil fey bodies which may exude curses, which falls to Celyn.
Celyn eventually comes up with: burn the bodies. Possibly on the grounds of the temple so the gods can be asked to protect from whatever miasma they produce. If we liked these people at all we might go to the effort of returning them to their court but a) that is a hike, b) that would take long enough for carting corpses around to be unpleasant even in winter, and c) NOPE. Further, with necromancy rampant we do not want such powerful bodies available, so let's get this done before midnight, shall we? I am sure the baroness will appreciate the importance of this action since she cares so much about necromancers.
Because if she is a necromancer, why not be specifically aggravating!
Everyone is very grateful to be given a thing to do and they proceed to cart the corpses off to burn them. Greymalkin the gryphon goes along with to make sure the pyre is done properly and also to gloat. Seeing the bodies of his historical enemies burn is much, much more satisfying than searching a boring old castle.
We proceed to search the Tower of Records, the part of the castle that was the clerk's domain, finding, among other things, a set of three mirrors (labeled 'Dreams', 'Truth', and 'Lies'. Only 'Truth' was magical), a lead box that seemed likely to be intended to hold the magic items we looted off the dead fairy (a blatantly evil wand, a brooch that appears to not be magical, a rose that appears to be lightly smouldering, some rings (some of which belong to the Barony, which we have returned), some bracers inscribed in Elvish and covered with lunar symbolism, a locket), which also had some potions and powders in it. One of the powders presumably matched the one that she dusted the food with to make people more likely to fail saves versus her charms. We also found, tucked into a niche inside the chimney, some papers in a cipher that appear to predate the murder-replacement. Also, five outfits stashed in weird locations, one of which appears to have been Marguerite's (the rest of Marguerite's clothes are in normal locations); the others are, we theorize eventually, trophies from her particular victims. One set is distinctive enough that we can probably track down who it was, but it will take more time than we want to spend in Veltor right now.
Viepuck earns a lot of points with the local officials by casting mending on various dishes that broke in our combat with the fairy, which gets people commenting on how well brought up he was; everyone kept a straight face about this.
Izgil sort of stares at the heap of magical Stuff and decides that the better part of valor is trying to figure out what some of it actually is. He starts on the "Truth" mirror, which reveals a person's true appearance (if they are wearing a disguise) but only if nobody is looking at them. Useful for the shifter fey, perhaps. We theorize that the 'Dreams' mirror may be a spellcasting focus and the 'Lies' mirror may just be normal, because it's funny when dealing with a being capable of illusory magic.
The rest of the party leaves him to study and goes to search the Baroness's tower of the castle. This place is more populated - the fake Marguerite was basically claiming she needed a lot of bed rest to recover from her recent illness to cover for her various nefariousness, where the Baroness has a full staff that she snaps at if they actually bring food to her personal chambers, because she likes her personal space (and may also be a necromancer). The guard on this tower thinks we're the most exciting thing that's happened all week.
We proceed with various searches. A tapestry devoted to the Night Queen (goddess of REST IN PEACE ALREADY) has been removed recently. There is a lot of decorating with dried flowers; this is moderately creepy, because all the flowers are 'the moment after the wilting' or 'the bloom is gone and here is what remains' and the overall effect is actually reasonably morbid for dried flowers. There is a painting of the Baroness's mother in the process of dying of maybe consumption. This is of course extremely normal and cheerful artwork. There does not appear to be anything behind it.
We make it up to the floor shared by the Baroness's niece and nephew. The niece is away with their tutor visiting family; her side of the bedroom is decorated in dried flowers (cheerful, particularly by contrast; clearly 'I am learning the local botany! look at my drawings of these plants and my terrible handwriting!'); the nephew, Rene, is present, and shoves something under his pillow as the party arrives and explains they're searching out fey influence, at which point he gives permission to them to search his part of the room too while sprawling casually on top of his pillow.
Celyn, who is cheerfully certain that this teenager has a pillow book he's embarrassed to show off, compliments him on his artwork. (Celyn's god is the patron of artists, and Celyn is himself not competent to paint a recognizable bird, so he has cheerfully amiable opinions around Better At Art Than Me.) He is hoping to build up a rapport with the teen possible-heir so they can get any relevant information out of him. This slow-approach technique is foiled by Viepuck's failed attempt to sneak the pillow book out from the bed, followed by his failed attempt to look natural about falling over and dropping it when the kid tries to snatch it from him.
The book is not in fact a pillow book; it is a collection of sketches. Many of them are, to be fair, nudes of other teen boys; Celyn manages to pick one up, give it an amiable look, and return it to the rather distressed nephew; Rene did not go for his porn first, but rather for some drawings of a Creepy Ruin, which he wanted to hide from the party. (Viepuck knew these existed from reading his mind, which is why he wanted at the sketch collection.) When pressed on this, Rene says, "You're working for her," clams up, and puts on a haughty manner of proto-heir and tries to make the party fuck off already.
The party responds by throwing the paladin at the situation, as Robin is the most soothing party member in most circumstances and has his lantern of Being Terribly Earnest available as a thing. Viepuck withdraws, with a muttered, delivered in the tone of the curse of someone who realizes he has offended the potential heir to the barony, "He's afraid of the Baroness," said in Sylvan, which is ironically the party's common language. Robin manages to apply charisma and being generally soothing to get the teenager calmed down and eventually gets a story out of him about having found a creepy book in the library that was about necromantic energies that gave him nightmares for weeks and copying the ruin drawings out of it - the location of the ruin in the book is given as west of Veltor which is conveniently where the Baroness was reported to be....
The party resolves to go sort out the search of the Baroness's quarters, and Rene grabs Robin's arm and hisses, "Be careful!" in his ear. Upon gentle enquiry the teen confesses that he found the book in her quarters, not the library as he had previously said. Robin promises to be careful and that he will not tell the Baroness any of what he has learned from Rene. Celyn compliments Robin on his ability to care for people. We all traipse upstairs.
The upstairs is actually the room with the dead flowers and the portrait, we just did that bit first in sequence, heh. We proceed with the search, which includes an apparently empty chest. Celyn does not spot a false bottom, but Celyn is not actually good at systematic searching. Viepuck does not spot one either, but is convinced there must be one. While he's looking for a stick to measure the interior with Robin peers in the chest and points out the secret bottom latch release. The bottom of the chest includes a scroll that appears to be mildly magical, so someone sends a runner to fetch Izgil.
Izgil turns up with the brooch from the fairy in hand, which he decided to investigate because it was weird that the thing that fit in that slot of the magic-suppressing personal items box did not appear to be magical. It turns out that it was magical, and what it does is allow shapeshifted/disguised beings to fake species identification against magic and to foil mindreading effects by having specific thoughts be readable. Which means of course that the Baroness may not be a necromancer; she could have lied. (However, the creepy dead flowers, the portrait of her mother dying, the obsessive pursuit of obliteration of the most anti-necromancy priesthood in the nation, and other things mean that this may not have been a lie, but rather the limited truth the doomed fairy wanted us to have in the hope it was coin enough to not get run through.) Izgil of course explains this to Viepuck as he hands it to him, in front of the various third parties.
Viepuck, grimacing: Thanks.
Izgil settles in to investigate the scroll more thoroughly and determines that while it is a letter written in Sylvan which at one point contained a bomb, the bomb has gone off already and it is safe to read. Thus, he and Celyn read it. (We also determined that Celyn has been teaching Izgil how to read Sylvan, which is hard to learn because 1) to a first approximation, nobody mortal knows how to read it so there are no teachers (most Sylvan-language stuff is written in Elven transliteration), 2) it is an absolute pain in the ass to actually read because it was developed for artistic expression rather than clarity, is ideogramatic, and is inflected all on top of each other, and 3) those who cannot read Sylvan cannot be got by Sylvan texts, so not reading it is a safety measure.)
The letter is a contract between the Baroness and Areschera, granting leave to murder and replace Marguerite, guaranteeing the safety of those in the Baroness's tower in return, and binding the Baroness to not reveal that Areschera is an infiltrator fey.
We stare at this a lot. We also pocket the letter so she can't destroy the evidence when she gets back from whatever she was doing in Creepy Ruinville. Everyone is quite alarmed by Fairy Magic In The Room and after a moment Celyn responds with something to the effect of, "The fairy's influence over the Baroness which we have discovered here cannot last past her death."
(Because, Celyn reasons, Marguerite isn't gonna get any deader, so, welp.)
We go to report our findings to the local authorities, a council of like five people including the head magistrate who Celyn would love to play against in poker if his game were cards, not dice. When Viepuck reveals the information we got from the letter to her telepathically, she goes white and staggers a bit; when he adds that people who know what's going on may be in danger she grumpily sends back, "I wish you hadn't told me."
As the party works on talking through next steps with the council, Izgil lurks in the corner and tries to decipher Marguerite's notes. (He has been sufficiently chastised for lack of subtlety in information distribution that he starts explaining them to the party in Message whispers, until Viepuck gets him to please stop and compile all the information for when we're not in a meeting.) These turn out to be notes on the baroness's weird behavior, starting from wild conspiracy theories (was the previous baron, the one who was executed for financial shenanigans and also causing a major diplomatic incident with the halflings, framed?) and eventually focusing in on some necromancy-adjacent stuff over time. We establish that we are going to go forth immediately to pursue other fey threats, with the blessing of the council, who lend us some spare horses so we can book it even more efficiently.
ETA: Viepuck uses his magic to encourage the alarmed magistrate to forget the stuff he told her telepathically, with a 'when you wake up you will have forgotten this', and encourages her to assist the magic by having a lot of whiskey. The magistrate agrees that whiskey is a fabulous idea in this situation yes.
We have some discussion about whether or not we need to facilitate getting Rene out, since he has his suspicions about the Baroness as a necromancer. We cannot find a useful way of doing so.
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artan: Well, the pretty pretty paladin is leaving.
Everyone: [general hilarity]
arcadinal, deadpan: The pretty pretty paladin is taken.
It is generally agreed that Robin is not remotely the sort of person who would lead on an innocent teenager with an obvious rapidly-developing crush but also that that is not necessarily relevant to choices made by innocent teenagers with obvious crushes. Fortunately we do not accidentally obtain a teenager with an obvious crush, as Rene has probably gone to sleep by the time we leave, as it's very, very late.
NPC: I am sure the baroness will want to reward you.
artan, blandly: Oh, I'm sure.
Matt, deadpan: Yikes.
The ember-glowing rose is identified somewhere in here, as a protection from fire damage, and given to Celyn as the melee fighter who doesn't have preternatural shield defense abilities that let him negate blasts. (We will re-evaluate this distribution when I get evasion.)
Viepuck at this point has skipped two nights of sleep and has achieved "small boy on an insomnia bender" levels of hyperactivity.
Me: Viepuck is absolutely bringing the 'I'm a kid staying up for New Years' energy.
Matt: AND THAT'S WHY COFFEE IS FOR GROWNUPS
We make it to the outskirts of the town that had the complicated murder case, and rest briefly while waiting for people to be up so we can get a damn room. Viepuck magical-telegraph contacts the tremendously high-powered cleric that the paladin told us to meet in a week and a half to notify him of status, and gets told that even magical communication like this might be spied on, do not talk about necromancers, they may notice their existence being referenced.
We get into town, sleep, get the murder case resolved to everyone's satisfaction. The circuit magistrate is very pleased that the headache of this case is better. The relieved couple are happy to have their Amazing Traumatic Romance story come to a happy conclusion. We suggest to the magistrate that young Rene is very interested in statecraft (he had a relevant library in his bedroom, aside from the racy sketches and creepy architecture drawings) and perhaps might benefit from doing a circuit ride with him to develop his awareness of how justice is wrought. This will theoretically get him away from the Baroness and maybe even in less danger! We can hope.
In the ongoing process of identifying the stack of magical things, Izgil makes a study of the creepy fey wand, determining that it requires attunement, has seven charges, recovers a charge a day I think, does damage and a curse if used, does more damage if more charges are used, does some unspecified more potent thing if all seven charges are used, and leaves some sort of curse mark on whoever attunes to it, effects unknown.
Matt: Well I'm definitely not attuning to it. I'm putting it in a—
Me: LEAD BOX?
Matt: Lead box!
We sleep. We ride for Aslain, getting in in the mid-late evening, and get rooms in the nicer inn because that allows for less likelihood of getting shoved into a dormitory with a bunch of random people. (Both in terms of 'reduced gossip', though honestly travelling with a dozen horses for the four of us is going to make waves, and in terms of party comfort given Celyn has issues with sharing sleeping space and has only recently come to be not extremely weird about this with Robin.) Once again we refrain from cashing in our introduction letter to get the political summary of the local stuff due to everything else being more urgent, but we do get the horses we borrowed filed as 'please return to Veltor'.
Then we hit the road.
When we hit the road, Viepuck uses his illusion powers to disguise himself as Areschera. Now, the deal we made with the Hunter fey was that we would not fuck with him until Areschera was exposed, and riding around as herself certainly counts as that. And as we're riding, Celyn spots one of the Hunter's giant vultures watching us from outside of bow range.
Viepuck decides to manufacture some more trouble, casts fly on himself, and tries to chase down the vulture. Which sees that it is being pursued by the fey that the Hunter was worried about in their competition and wheels to fly back to base and report on this. Viepuck pursues as best as he can, and spots several harpies and bears sneaking up on an encampment of about nine people. He tries to warn them with a loud sound, and tells his familiar to ride Noble (Robin's horse, now ridden by Viepuck) at a gallop.
Everyone loves the flying purple eldritch octopus which is New To Reality and has a hard time interpreting requests. In this case the octopus starts using its tentacles as a switch to drive the horse to a gallop. The party, recognizing that there's probably some damn reason for this, matches pace. (Nobody asks Noble what he thinks of being flogged by an eldritch purple octopus. Noble is an innocent bystander in this nonsense, really, and probably can be numbered among the incidentally confused.)
Viepuck must make a choice between pursing the vulture and intervening on the ambush; the ambush has succeeded, and the two bears are lumbering off with captives, the two harpies flying cover with them. Since the vulture is not looking at him he swaps disguises to look like a harpy and starts closing with the raiding party. The rest of the party angles off the road towards this mess.
Viepuck, knowing that the harpies use sound to hit people with charm effects, attempts to protect himself from charm by plugging his ears with the only thing he has handy for that purpose: some of his goodberries.
Me, singing: I think that all grownups have beans in their ears, beans in their ears, beans in their ears....
Celyn manages to pull off shooting from horseback at extreme range, which is probably a bit of trick riding actually given he doesn't have a horsebow, and shoots one of the bears enough it drops its captive and tries to lumber off. The big harpy tries to charm the party - Celyn's god protects him because his five did not. Izgil pulls a crossobw, Robin also shoots, Viepuck closes, we unleash some mayhem. The smaller harpy flies up and charms Viepuck before getting shot to death by Robin. Izgil blasts the hell out of the larger harpy. The larger harpy tries clawing Viepuck, who reacts with reasonable agitation, puts it to sleep with a spell, and it breaks its neck on impact with the ground. Both bears are downed, the captives are recovered, and express their shock ... in Tyrwinghan.
Izgil and Viepuck go to burn the bodies as Robin and Celyn escort the Tyrwinghans - one of whom is panicked because she can't find her baby - back to the rest of the group. (She is reunited with her wife and child safely.) Here, we discover something very odd: these people did not really know each other. They coincidentally met each other on the road, after all receiving messages that they were wanted back home. It seemed good luck to them, but now they know there are hostile fey in the area who are enemies of Ethlenn, Fairy Queen of Tyrwingha, it looks a whole lot more suspicious.
Meanwhile, Izgil discovers that the leader harpy had a low-quality magic necklace with a piece of black glass on it, and when he looked through the glass at various people, some of them flashed bright green. Viepuck does not. Robin and Celyn flash brightly. Izgil himself flashes, but only slightly. And the two abductees? They flash brightly. He determines that it pings off people who are particularly protected by Ethlenn.
The Tyrwinghans are of the opinion that given these events they would like to get somewhere they're actually, practically, protected by Ethlenn, not just hypothetically so. We tell them where the fey are lairing. They are agitated by this, but can make plans to avoid Peydon, and ask us to escort them past the Madour Hills, where the Hunter lurks. This would mean we cannot target the Hunter effectively today, but we will keep those people as safe as we can, and if they are ambushed again we will be able to try to protect them. We get them to let us take a short rest so Viepuck can get back his spell slots and Celyn can get back his divine intervention powers (he used the other one to heal the guy who was hurt) at which point we declared we would get them to a particular village, at least.
And we have a good laugh about the vulture flying off to report that it was being chased by Areschera, who was accompanying the party it was supposed to watch. Confusion to our enemies!
Viepuck prepares to use some of his particularly eldritch magic to interrogate the magic necklace. Izgil, eagerly, would love to take notes.
Fin.
Dramatis Personae:
Izgil, stuff identifier
Viepuck, trouble manufacturer
Celyn, necromancer irritater
Robin, pretty pretty paladin
When we ended the last session, Celyn had just stabbed Areschera, the fey who had infiltrated the Baroness's court, through the heart, despite her saying that she had information and Viepuck reading that that information included 'the Baroness is a necromancer' out of her mind.
Everyone in the vicinity is profoundly alarmed by the situation. That alarm only deepens when it becomes clear that the dead fey appears to have a perpetually bleeding head wound that continues to bleed even after the party has stopped the whole circulation of blood in her body process. Nobody knows what to do about anything, and "beloved clerk Marguerite was murdered and replaced with a body double fey" causes a great deal of generalized agitation.
In the overall chaos, the people in charge are happy to accept the party's advice on what to do with the bodies, and to allow the party to search the keep for possible additional fey influence. (Everyone is quite alarmed that the top floor of the tower - which should have been servants' quarters - was devoid of servants and their furniture and being used as a torture room for the guy who was accused of hiring assassins to send after us.) This requires the party to actually have advice on what to do with dead evil fey bodies which may exude curses, which falls to Celyn.
Celyn eventually comes up with: burn the bodies. Possibly on the grounds of the temple so the gods can be asked to protect from whatever miasma they produce. If we liked these people at all we might go to the effort of returning them to their court but a) that is a hike, b) that would take long enough for carting corpses around to be unpleasant even in winter, and c) NOPE. Further, with necromancy rampant we do not want such powerful bodies available, so let's get this done before midnight, shall we? I am sure the baroness will appreciate the importance of this action since she cares so much about necromancers.
Because if she is a necromancer, why not be specifically aggravating!
Everyone is very grateful to be given a thing to do and they proceed to cart the corpses off to burn them. Greymalkin the gryphon goes along with to make sure the pyre is done properly and also to gloat. Seeing the bodies of his historical enemies burn is much, much more satisfying than searching a boring old castle.
We proceed to search the Tower of Records, the part of the castle that was the clerk's domain, finding, among other things, a set of three mirrors (labeled 'Dreams', 'Truth', and 'Lies'. Only 'Truth' was magical), a lead box that seemed likely to be intended to hold the magic items we looted off the dead fairy (a blatantly evil wand, a brooch that appears to not be magical, a rose that appears to be lightly smouldering, some rings (some of which belong to the Barony, which we have returned), some bracers inscribed in Elvish and covered with lunar symbolism, a locket), which also had some potions and powders in it. One of the powders presumably matched the one that she dusted the food with to make people more likely to fail saves versus her charms. We also found, tucked into a niche inside the chimney, some papers in a cipher that appear to predate the murder-replacement. Also, five outfits stashed in weird locations, one of which appears to have been Marguerite's (the rest of Marguerite's clothes are in normal locations); the others are, we theorize eventually, trophies from her particular victims. One set is distinctive enough that we can probably track down who it was, but it will take more time than we want to spend in Veltor right now.
Viepuck earns a lot of points with the local officials by casting mending on various dishes that broke in our combat with the fairy, which gets people commenting on how well brought up he was; everyone kept a straight face about this.
Izgil sort of stares at the heap of magical Stuff and decides that the better part of valor is trying to figure out what some of it actually is. He starts on the "Truth" mirror, which reveals a person's true appearance (if they are wearing a disguise) but only if nobody is looking at them. Useful for the shifter fey, perhaps. We theorize that the 'Dreams' mirror may be a spellcasting focus and the 'Lies' mirror may just be normal, because it's funny when dealing with a being capable of illusory magic.
The rest of the party leaves him to study and goes to search the Baroness's tower of the castle. This place is more populated - the fake Marguerite was basically claiming she needed a lot of bed rest to recover from her recent illness to cover for her various nefariousness, where the Baroness has a full staff that she snaps at if they actually bring food to her personal chambers, because she likes her personal space (and may also be a necromancer). The guard on this tower thinks we're the most exciting thing that's happened all week.
We proceed with various searches. A tapestry devoted to the Night Queen (goddess of REST IN PEACE ALREADY) has been removed recently. There is a lot of decorating with dried flowers; this is moderately creepy, because all the flowers are 'the moment after the wilting' or 'the bloom is gone and here is what remains' and the overall effect is actually reasonably morbid for dried flowers. There is a painting of the Baroness's mother in the process of dying of maybe consumption. This is of course extremely normal and cheerful artwork. There does not appear to be anything behind it.
We make it up to the floor shared by the Baroness's niece and nephew. The niece is away with their tutor visiting family; her side of the bedroom is decorated in dried flowers (cheerful, particularly by contrast; clearly 'I am learning the local botany! look at my drawings of these plants and my terrible handwriting!'); the nephew, Rene, is present, and shoves something under his pillow as the party arrives and explains they're searching out fey influence, at which point he gives permission to them to search his part of the room too while sprawling casually on top of his pillow.
Celyn, who is cheerfully certain that this teenager has a pillow book he's embarrassed to show off, compliments him on his artwork. (Celyn's god is the patron of artists, and Celyn is himself not competent to paint a recognizable bird, so he has cheerfully amiable opinions around Better At Art Than Me.) He is hoping to build up a rapport with the teen possible-heir so they can get any relevant information out of him. This slow-approach technique is foiled by Viepuck's failed attempt to sneak the pillow book out from the bed, followed by his failed attempt to look natural about falling over and dropping it when the kid tries to snatch it from him.
The book is not in fact a pillow book; it is a collection of sketches. Many of them are, to be fair, nudes of other teen boys; Celyn manages to pick one up, give it an amiable look, and return it to the rather distressed nephew; Rene did not go for his porn first, but rather for some drawings of a Creepy Ruin, which he wanted to hide from the party. (Viepuck knew these existed from reading his mind, which is why he wanted at the sketch collection.) When pressed on this, Rene says, "You're working for her," clams up, and puts on a haughty manner of proto-heir and tries to make the party fuck off already.
The party responds by throwing the paladin at the situation, as Robin is the most soothing party member in most circumstances and has his lantern of Being Terribly Earnest available as a thing. Viepuck withdraws, with a muttered, delivered in the tone of the curse of someone who realizes he has offended the potential heir to the barony, "He's afraid of the Baroness," said in Sylvan, which is ironically the party's common language. Robin manages to apply charisma and being generally soothing to get the teenager calmed down and eventually gets a story out of him about having found a creepy book in the library that was about necromantic energies that gave him nightmares for weeks and copying the ruin drawings out of it - the location of the ruin in the book is given as west of Veltor which is conveniently where the Baroness was reported to be....
The party resolves to go sort out the search of the Baroness's quarters, and Rene grabs Robin's arm and hisses, "Be careful!" in his ear. Upon gentle enquiry the teen confesses that he found the book in her quarters, not the library as he had previously said. Robin promises to be careful and that he will not tell the Baroness any of what he has learned from Rene. Celyn compliments Robin on his ability to care for people. We all traipse upstairs.
The upstairs is actually the room with the dead flowers and the portrait, we just did that bit first in sequence, heh. We proceed with the search, which includes an apparently empty chest. Celyn does not spot a false bottom, but Celyn is not actually good at systematic searching. Viepuck does not spot one either, but is convinced there must be one. While he's looking for a stick to measure the interior with Robin peers in the chest and points out the secret bottom latch release. The bottom of the chest includes a scroll that appears to be mildly magical, so someone sends a runner to fetch Izgil.
Izgil turns up with the brooch from the fairy in hand, which he decided to investigate because it was weird that the thing that fit in that slot of the magic-suppressing personal items box did not appear to be magical. It turns out that it was magical, and what it does is allow shapeshifted/disguised beings to fake species identification against magic and to foil mindreading effects by having specific thoughts be readable. Which means of course that the Baroness may not be a necromancer; she could have lied. (However, the creepy dead flowers, the portrait of her mother dying, the obsessive pursuit of obliteration of the most anti-necromancy priesthood in the nation, and other things mean that this may not have been a lie, but rather the limited truth the doomed fairy wanted us to have in the hope it was coin enough to not get run through.) Izgil of course explains this to Viepuck as he hands it to him, in front of the various third parties.
Viepuck, grimacing: Thanks.
Izgil settles in to investigate the scroll more thoroughly and determines that while it is a letter written in Sylvan which at one point contained a bomb, the bomb has gone off already and it is safe to read. Thus, he and Celyn read it. (We also determined that Celyn has been teaching Izgil how to read Sylvan, which is hard to learn because 1) to a first approximation, nobody mortal knows how to read it so there are no teachers (most Sylvan-language stuff is written in Elven transliteration), 2) it is an absolute pain in the ass to actually read because it was developed for artistic expression rather than clarity, is ideogramatic, and is inflected all on top of each other, and 3) those who cannot read Sylvan cannot be got by Sylvan texts, so not reading it is a safety measure.)
The letter is a contract between the Baroness and Areschera, granting leave to murder and replace Marguerite, guaranteeing the safety of those in the Baroness's tower in return, and binding the Baroness to not reveal that Areschera is an infiltrator fey.
We stare at this a lot. We also pocket the letter so she can't destroy the evidence when she gets back from whatever she was doing in Creepy Ruinville. Everyone is quite alarmed by Fairy Magic In The Room and after a moment Celyn responds with something to the effect of, "The fairy's influence over the Baroness which we have discovered here cannot last past her death."
(Because, Celyn reasons, Marguerite isn't gonna get any deader, so, welp.)
We go to report our findings to the local authorities, a council of like five people including the head magistrate who Celyn would love to play against in poker if his game were cards, not dice. When Viepuck reveals the information we got from the letter to her telepathically, she goes white and staggers a bit; when he adds that people who know what's going on may be in danger she grumpily sends back, "I wish you hadn't told me."
As the party works on talking through next steps with the council, Izgil lurks in the corner and tries to decipher Marguerite's notes. (He has been sufficiently chastised for lack of subtlety in information distribution that he starts explaining them to the party in Message whispers, until Viepuck gets him to please stop and compile all the information for when we're not in a meeting.) These turn out to be notes on the baroness's weird behavior, starting from wild conspiracy theories (was the previous baron, the one who was executed for financial shenanigans and also causing a major diplomatic incident with the halflings, framed?) and eventually focusing in on some necromancy-adjacent stuff over time. We establish that we are going to go forth immediately to pursue other fey threats, with the blessing of the council, who lend us some spare horses so we can book it even more efficiently.
ETA: Viepuck uses his magic to encourage the alarmed magistrate to forget the stuff he told her telepathically, with a 'when you wake up you will have forgotten this', and encourages her to assist the magic by having a lot of whiskey. The magistrate agrees that whiskey is a fabulous idea in this situation yes.
We have some discussion about whether or not we need to facilitate getting Rene out, since he has his suspicions about the Baroness as a necromancer. We cannot find a useful way of doing so.
artan: Well, the pretty pretty paladin is leaving.Everyone: [general hilarity]
arcadinal, deadpan: The pretty pretty paladin is taken.It is generally agreed that Robin is not remotely the sort of person who would lead on an innocent teenager with an obvious rapidly-developing crush but also that that is not necessarily relevant to choices made by innocent teenagers with obvious crushes. Fortunately we do not accidentally obtain a teenager with an obvious crush, as Rene has probably gone to sleep by the time we leave, as it's very, very late.
NPC: I am sure the baroness will want to reward you.
artan, blandly: Oh, I'm sure.Matt, deadpan: Yikes.
The ember-glowing rose is identified somewhere in here, as a protection from fire damage, and given to Celyn as the melee fighter who doesn't have preternatural shield defense abilities that let him negate blasts. (We will re-evaluate this distribution when I get evasion.)
Viepuck at this point has skipped two nights of sleep and has achieved "small boy on an insomnia bender" levels of hyperactivity.
Me: Viepuck is absolutely bringing the 'I'm a kid staying up for New Years' energy.
Matt: AND THAT'S WHY COFFEE IS FOR GROWNUPS
We make it to the outskirts of the town that had the complicated murder case, and rest briefly while waiting for people to be up so we can get a damn room. Viepuck magical-telegraph contacts the tremendously high-powered cleric that the paladin told us to meet in a week and a half to notify him of status, and gets told that even magical communication like this might be spied on, do not talk about necromancers, they may notice their existence being referenced.
We get into town, sleep, get the murder case resolved to everyone's satisfaction. The circuit magistrate is very pleased that the headache of this case is better. The relieved couple are happy to have their Amazing Traumatic Romance story come to a happy conclusion. We suggest to the magistrate that young Rene is very interested in statecraft (he had a relevant library in his bedroom, aside from the racy sketches and creepy architecture drawings) and perhaps might benefit from doing a circuit ride with him to develop his awareness of how justice is wrought. This will theoretically get him away from the Baroness and maybe even in less danger! We can hope.
In the ongoing process of identifying the stack of magical things, Izgil makes a study of the creepy fey wand, determining that it requires attunement, has seven charges, recovers a charge a day I think, does damage and a curse if used, does more damage if more charges are used, does some unspecified more potent thing if all seven charges are used, and leaves some sort of curse mark on whoever attunes to it, effects unknown.
Matt: Well I'm definitely not attuning to it. I'm putting it in a—
Me: LEAD BOX?
Matt: Lead box!
We sleep. We ride for Aslain, getting in in the mid-late evening, and get rooms in the nicer inn because that allows for less likelihood of getting shoved into a dormitory with a bunch of random people. (Both in terms of 'reduced gossip', though honestly travelling with a dozen horses for the four of us is going to make waves, and in terms of party comfort given Celyn has issues with sharing sleeping space and has only recently come to be not extremely weird about this with Robin.) Once again we refrain from cashing in our introduction letter to get the political summary of the local stuff due to everything else being more urgent, but we do get the horses we borrowed filed as 'please return to Veltor'.
Then we hit the road.
When we hit the road, Viepuck uses his illusion powers to disguise himself as Areschera. Now, the deal we made with the Hunter fey was that we would not fuck with him until Areschera was exposed, and riding around as herself certainly counts as that. And as we're riding, Celyn spots one of the Hunter's giant vultures watching us from outside of bow range.
Viepuck decides to manufacture some more trouble, casts fly on himself, and tries to chase down the vulture. Which sees that it is being pursued by the fey that the Hunter was worried about in their competition and wheels to fly back to base and report on this. Viepuck pursues as best as he can, and spots several harpies and bears sneaking up on an encampment of about nine people. He tries to warn them with a loud sound, and tells his familiar to ride Noble (Robin's horse, now ridden by Viepuck) at a gallop.
Everyone loves the flying purple eldritch octopus which is New To Reality and has a hard time interpreting requests. In this case the octopus starts using its tentacles as a switch to drive the horse to a gallop. The party, recognizing that there's probably some damn reason for this, matches pace. (Nobody asks Noble what he thinks of being flogged by an eldritch purple octopus. Noble is an innocent bystander in this nonsense, really, and probably can be numbered among the incidentally confused.)
Viepuck must make a choice between pursing the vulture and intervening on the ambush; the ambush has succeeded, and the two bears are lumbering off with captives, the two harpies flying cover with them. Since the vulture is not looking at him he swaps disguises to look like a harpy and starts closing with the raiding party. The rest of the party angles off the road towards this mess.
Viepuck, knowing that the harpies use sound to hit people with charm effects, attempts to protect himself from charm by plugging his ears with the only thing he has handy for that purpose: some of his goodberries.
Me, singing: I think that all grownups have beans in their ears, beans in their ears, beans in their ears....
Celyn manages to pull off shooting from horseback at extreme range, which is probably a bit of trick riding actually given he doesn't have a horsebow, and shoots one of the bears enough it drops its captive and tries to lumber off. The big harpy tries to charm the party - Celyn's god protects him because his five did not. Izgil pulls a crossobw, Robin also shoots, Viepuck closes, we unleash some mayhem. The smaller harpy flies up and charms Viepuck before getting shot to death by Robin. Izgil blasts the hell out of the larger harpy. The larger harpy tries clawing Viepuck, who reacts with reasonable agitation, puts it to sleep with a spell, and it breaks its neck on impact with the ground. Both bears are downed, the captives are recovered, and express their shock ... in Tyrwinghan.
Izgil and Viepuck go to burn the bodies as Robin and Celyn escort the Tyrwinghans - one of whom is panicked because she can't find her baby - back to the rest of the group. (She is reunited with her wife and child safely.) Here, we discover something very odd: these people did not really know each other. They coincidentally met each other on the road, after all receiving messages that they were wanted back home. It seemed good luck to them, but now they know there are hostile fey in the area who are enemies of Ethlenn, Fairy Queen of Tyrwingha, it looks a whole lot more suspicious.
Meanwhile, Izgil discovers that the leader harpy had a low-quality magic necklace with a piece of black glass on it, and when he looked through the glass at various people, some of them flashed bright green. Viepuck does not. Robin and Celyn flash brightly. Izgil himself flashes, but only slightly. And the two abductees? They flash brightly. He determines that it pings off people who are particularly protected by Ethlenn.
The Tyrwinghans are of the opinion that given these events they would like to get somewhere they're actually, practically, protected by Ethlenn, not just hypothetically so. We tell them where the fey are lairing. They are agitated by this, but can make plans to avoid Peydon, and ask us to escort them past the Madour Hills, where the Hunter lurks. This would mean we cannot target the Hunter effectively today, but we will keep those people as safe as we can, and if they are ambushed again we will be able to try to protect them. We get them to let us take a short rest so Viepuck can get back his spell slots and Celyn can get back his divine intervention powers (he used the other one to heal the guy who was hurt) at which point we declared we would get them to a particular village, at least.
And we have a good laugh about the vulture flying off to report that it was being chased by Areschera, who was accompanying the party it was supposed to watch. Confusion to our enemies!
Viepuck prepares to use some of his particularly eldritch magic to interrogate the magic necklace. Izgil, eagerly, would love to take notes.
Fin.
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This seems like getting a lot done!
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I am not sure how many conspiracies are happening at once but I am pretty sure the answer is "at least more than one" and they are mutating and producing emergent properties.