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Dramatis Personae:
Viepuck: department of illusions and telepathy
Izgil: department of magical analysis and minor questionable decisions
Celyn: department of faith in his god and also major questionable decisions
Robin: extremely upset about these questionable decisions
When we left off we were having a dispute with a Hag about ownership of surveillance technology.
Having determined that we could not harm the bad guy lastingly last session, we were left with the question of what we do with the rest of this fight. Viepuck declared, "I think we should go, the ferry will be shutting down" and walked away from the well the magic mirror was attached to, signalling telepathically to Izgil that he should go to the house the Hag was occupying and investigate while she was distracted. The Hag promptly discarded the state of combat and went to inspect the item to make sure it wasn't damaged; Celyn gestured towards the manor house because we needed to talk with the guy who had invited her to take over the town in the first place.
The Hag, grumbling to herself, finished inspecting the mirror and the well and stomped off presumably to find somewhere else to stash it. It was communicated to Celyn that she had healed herself by drawing from a poppet in the creepy dollhouse, and that was presumably the local lord.
The party split, divided by telepathy. Viepuck is communicating with Celyn, and Viepuck's familiar is also with him, while Viepuck and Izgil go to investigate the house while she's off doing mirror stuff.
Robin and Celyn: go into the manor house, discover the lord has a migraine and fatigue condition that "came on suddenly". Celyn feels moderately bad about this because the condition was caused by, you know, the fallout of trying to stab the Hag. The manor is full of cowed, weary people, all the paintings and things are covered, and there's a big glass sheet on the wall. (Everyone objects to Celyn's query about whether he can cover the glass. Which he more or less expected.) All the dishes are wooden, the bread comes out pre-sliced because a knife might be shiny, and so on.
Inspection of the lord indicates he has been drained, basically, and needs to sleep it off. Celyn gives him a blessing of hope to ease his trauma, but this does not fix the deeper issue, though he does perk up enough that he'll consider eating after all. He presses us to accept his hospitality and stay for dinner, perhaps spend the night? Robin is extremely uncomfortable accepting hospitality from a household so blatantly fey-cursed, but Celyn feels that he has an obligation as a hope cleric to do what he can for these people's morale. Also, given the parking of the gathering in front of the panopticon glass, by hanging out here we are potentially distracting the Hag from noticing what the rest of the party is up to.
In fact, she shows up in the panopticon after we'd been chatting a bit - mostly about things like the lord's worry about the consequences of the boon he accepted on his daughter and very mundane things - and the conversation shifted to very mundane things (not the daughter at all) while she glowered at the party because she was put out over something we'd done. Not sure what! But we are glad enough to have annoyed her sufficiently that she is glaring at us rather than going to figure out where Izgil and Viepuck are.
Where Izgil and Viepuck are is "after ransacking the house she appropriated, we have discovered her underground lair and are staring at the back door of the house to figure out how the magic portal works." Having determined that, Izgil decides that the sensible thing to do is go investigate it while the Hag is busy with the mirror. Viepuck drops his telepathic link to Celyn in order to connect one to Izgil before he vanishes; further, Es*tiaslos, who was with Celyn, went puttering around the manor to see if it could find the creepy dollhouse, particularly in the lord's late husband's rooms, which we had gently been asked to keep our noses out of.
The exciting department of questionable decisions landed Izgil in an underground cave-like-thing, magically constructed stone as an irregular dome over a dirt floor. There were vines affixed to the walls, lamps along the walls that sometimes flickered out and relit in an eerie breeze, a pool in the center that appeared dark and mysterious. There was also no obvious exit, though the pool might have been some sort of teleportation device; there was no way of figuring out where it went to, which meant it could have been a Problem. After doing a reasonable amount of investigation, Izgil started tunneling out and carefully replacing the tunnel dirt so it was not obvious that he had been there.
Meanwhile the awkward dinner party is sort of edging along towards "if we're going to leave town we really need to go find our friends and go" because Celyn is trying to accommodate Robin's discomfort as much as he can while still being a hope gremlin who wants to do something that will give these people something that matters. As we achieved "we need to find our people", who should turn up at the front door but our people, who join us for dinner. We eventually wrangle around to accepting the hospitality of the house, but Robin is very unhappy about it. Viepuck, after getting the message from Celyn that our conversation has been About Not Much, makes telepathic contact with the lord, who carefully excuses himself to go take his migraine and lie down so he doesn't have to try to fake hiding the conversation. Viepuck cheerfully turns to Izgil, says, "It looks like the sky might clear up, don't you think?"
Izgil, who is at this point aware that the party uses him as 'press this button for social diversion into a lengthy ramble about astronomy', but not actually able to resist having his buttons pushed, goes into monologue mode so that Viepuck can nod and smile and chat with the lord. Somewhere in here the lord's daughter comes through and whispers to Robin that she needs to tell the party something but doesn't know how to do so privately.
Viepuck obtains information from the lord, who is much more talkative when he is able to be certain he isn't being spied on. The specific deal he made was giving the Hag sovereignty over "the lands of his blood", which means he is now paranoid that he also accidentally traded away his daughter (and apparent last surviving child). We got some information about the Hag's habits, including a regular Monday* dinner with the lord in which she picks his brain about the state of the town (presumably to supplement her supernatural ability to locate people's deepest desires so that she can exploit them). And a suggestion that Viepuck talk to the rest of the staff.
So Viepuck basically yawns as he lets the lord go to sleep and says, "It's been a veyr long day, why don't I go talk to the staff about getting rooms made up for us?" and that sort of settles where we are. Robin continues uncomfortable. (It was pointed out that if Robin just up and left the whole party would follow him without questions, but that is very much not Robin's style.)
Viepuck collects more information about the Hag's habits, about the fact that the way he acts around his late husband's room is kind of weird (when his father died he was 'storytelling to honor his memory', not 'speak nothing of the matter but treat the room as a preserved museum piece'), a maid had spotted footprints that seemed to go to the wardrobe and mostly just brushed them away and didn't talk about them because such things are scary. The daughter is told about the deal her father made and is rather upset about its specifics.
There is no evidence, for the record, of there being a ruined temple to no god in the woods that anyone can report, let alone one that holds the secret of the town. However, we learn that the lord's late husband loved that kind of old history, was something of a scholar of the old religion of the genius loci, and had a stone with an inscription on it he couldn't read that was reported to be such a thing, which has since gone missing. He is sad about that; he is sad about many things. His grieving is arrested in a way that suggests nefarious influences, in fact.
After compiling information we debate whether we sneak into the late husband's room to figure out what's up with it now or do it later, and eventually ask for divine guidance and get told to wait until morning. Rolling the pair of divinely generated dice generates one suggesting 'wait until morning' and one that just ... spins ... on its corner. Celyn grumphs and says he will do dream incubation to see if his god has anything useful to say about matters. (His god being also the god of dreams.)
Celyn's first dream: of walking along a knife-edge, in which one side there is great danger to the party, and to the other side there is the falling of the town into annihilatory darkness. A gentle breeze blows the balance slightly towards the personal danger, which is represented by Celyn being struck by lightning. Celyn's reaction to this is "I love my god and this contains absolutely no new information for me, what do I actually do."
Celyn's second dream: a conversation with the Hag. Now, Celyn knew the Hag actively wanted the party to have the information about what the Gloomshaper was up to, because she had elected to set herself in opposition to him and that is just smart tactics, so the 'I want something you have, I will give you that information in exchange for it' was not a surprise, particularly. She continued to note that she would stop insisting that the party leave town, for this deal, and grant Celyn a personal boon, as well as the information; also that if we didn't make some kind of deal with her she would stop being patient and probably hunt us down and kill us. (The personal boon in question - a magical transition - is not something that Celyn would actually go for on its own, but the 'information for dealing with the rest of the crisis' and 'potentially gain leverage that can liberate the town' parts? Those weigh a lot in his regard.)
The item she wants? A particularly nasty magical item that we got when we killed Areschera. It creates lightning. (And the winds blow towards personal risk.)
We are informed upon waking that breakfast is in an hour. And that people are expected to appear. When queried, this is clarified to "people are inspected to appear". Ohhhhh.
We thus have some time to argue about what to do next. Robin is adamantly against the wand bargain, of course, and Celyn insists that if taking the deal will help them free the town he can take the consequences. It is not playing her game to make the deal, he argues, but his own. Robin does not believe it will help free the town. Celyn summons the divine guidance dice again, and they are slow to settle but come down on "take the deal" in the yes/no option. Robin is frustrated and hurt; Celyn is frustrated and hurt.
Rather than make a clear decision now, the party goes to do things to prepare: Viepuck takes the wand and goes to clean rats out of the storeroom with it so that it is drained of charges, whatever happens to it. Celyn and Izgil sneak into the late husband's rooms, Celyn first to carefully schmutz up all the glossy surfaces to keep the Hag out, then Izgil to do investigation and find out what can be found. He manages to locate an invisible something next to the wardrobe, cleans the magic off it, and Celyn makes sure there are no mechanisms before they work together to open it and reveal ... the missing rock, which is inscribed in the same language which was in the space the bear fey was using as a lair. Celyn casts to read it and learns that it is a prayer to a particular genius loci for a safe refuge, probably a reality pocket.
The rock is tied into some sort of spell in the floor of the chest that appears to be a portal. We study it for a bit and then hatch a new plan. After the initial breakfast inspection, Izgil returns to the upstairs to inspect the stone and chest more thoroughly, and is replaced with an illusion cast by Viepuck, who is maintained through breakfast through various acts of magic, illusory voice, and sleight of hand. Izgil and Es*tiaslos get to work; Es*tiaslos attempts to sneak through the portal and basically bounces off. Investigations reveal that only those who have an existence on the other side can pass through: the Hag, and those who have made deals with her.
We don't know what sort of manifestation she would have on the other side, or indeed if the whole thing is her manifestation, but a dispel magic will suppress the portal, which means the Hag cannot access it to steal vitality from her people.
Which means we have a new plan: Celyn will trade the (drained) wand to the Hag for the information and, as a backup, the fact of having made a deal which would let him go through the portal if we need that (Robin objects strenuously, so this is relegated to a distinctly distant plan B). While she is busy tinkering with it to try to attune to it, Izgil will try to suppress the portal, and then we will break into her lair, which we already know how to do, and fight her.
Normally the party would split Robin and Celyn one way, Viepuck and Izgil the other. Celyn suspects Robin is sufficiently not okay with this plan that he will not accompany, and is correct; Viepuck comes along instead.
(I think this bit of conversation goes here, best as I remember it:
Celyn, with his blithe fatalism very much forward about the risks of this play: The dice fall where the dice fall.
Robin: Usually I'm okay with that. I'm not this time.
(There were several of these heartwrenching conversations at least one of which ended in a plaintive, "... Robin..." from Celyn and I do not remember if that was this one.)
)
The expectant Hag, observing the breakfast table, is told, "I'm going to go for a walk," and then vanishes. Celyn goes for a walk, with Viepuck tagging along. The Hag asks one question - of Viepuck - for her own curiosity. "How did Areschera die?" Celyn interjects, "I STABBED HER." Which was of course the culmination of rather a lot more chaos. We had a strange little conversation about how Areschera was quite overconfident and did not think well when angry and both Viepuck and Celyn are proficient in deception and can keep a straight face. Celyn deadpans into this conversation that really, Areschera should have had horseradish, which got the Hag going, "Horseradish, of course," in that 'I have no idea what you're on about but I'm going to pretend I understand' tone.
We settle into the house she has appropriated and she asks if we know about the Gloomshaper's exile. Celyn indicates that we know he was exiled, partly to see what information she has unprompted; she says he was exiled for fucking around with mortals too much in ways that Queen Ethlenn found objectionable. The region of Duskmire, where he lives, does not have stable portals to the mortal realm - something he believes is the Queen's doing - and thus he is deprived of his favorite entertainments. Somewhere along the line, he made a deal with a being that claimed it would permanently open the Cleenseau Wood portal; that deal has since fallen through or been broken (my memory is hazy about the specifics, but we know them). Nonetheless, the fellow believes that he can lock open the portal with 'special Tyrwinghans', but she does not know how. Celyn assumes blood. She was basically at "Yeah, one does not expect the special Tyrwinghans to survive." Celyn does not mention that he and Robin are believed to qualify as relevant special Tyrwinghans.
Having obtained the information (and Celyn's personal boon), Viepuck and Celyn leave; Celyn conceals himself nearby to make sure that she goes into the lair via the entrance we are aware of, and then withdraws to the town square to regroup with the party.
As soon as we get word to Izgil that she is in the lair, he casts the dispel magic, successfully suppressing the portal. He, Robin, and Greymalkin (who has manifested again) go pelting down the stairs of the mansion. Izgil bellows, "Take heart!" to the people there, who are bewildered at the sudden charging heroes. We regroup, we hit the door, and the humanoids (and Es*tiaslos, he's tiny) enter the lair and spread out a bit so as not to stumble over each other on the stairs.
We find the place not only contains the Hag, but a couple of oozes and some giant rats. Izgil promptly drops a radiant-damage fireball on the lot of them, clearing out most of the bad things and letting the party move more freely. Celyn summons his illusion double and keeps hilariously setting off the vine-grabs from the lair with it, which can't figure out it's an illusion (and the party is not getting close enough with actual people). The Hag gets some attacks off (failing to turn Viepuck into a frog) and then Viepuck cloaks 2/3 of the lair in devouring shadows that block her line of vision so the party can do some cleanup about the rats and things.
It turns out that the lair basically seems to generate rats and things on its own. Also a shambling mound appeared. She appears to take Celyn's appearance as a personal betrayal but if she did not want to be stabbed like Areschera she should have tried to make a no-stabbing agreement. He already had made clear that he was a stabber. That was in fact a warning of sorts.
(Not that I stabbed her, but, well.)
Greymalkin comes down through the portal. General battle is joined all around. The Hag teleports out of the Hunger of Hadar, dismisses her (very injured) shambling mound and summons a new one between herelf and the party. We learn the oozes do temporary damage to armor class, and that the rats get advantage when fighting with friends, which means they are actually capable of semi-reliably hitting people. Celyn drops under a third health; Robin heals him. There is rather a lot of chaos involving trying to deal with the perpetual adds, maneuvering the Hag into spaces where Viepuck can knock her back into the Hunger of Hadar again with knockback blasts and a flaming sphere, Celyn kills the shambling mound at one point because it might mean she can't dismiss and resummon a healthy one. (No evidence against this.) SHe fails to polymorph anyone, including Celyn, who failed an int save on something that made him lose a d4 on his next save against one of her spells.
Hag: BE A SQUIRREL.
Celyn: [rolls a 19 while standing next to the paladin] I'd rather not.
Hag: [visible fury]
It is genuinely too much for me to remember the details of the combat; there kept being more adds, the melee people kept having to deal with them but fortunately Viepuck (mostly) was continuing to pummel the Hag. He got hit with a spell that meant he had disadvantage on attack rolls, and threw something without an attack roll at her that she desummoned two of her oozes to pass the save on, which honestly was ludicrously effective as those things were extremely annoying.
Eventually we have her hemmed into a corner by the flaming sphere and the hunger of hadar, with Celyn's illusory double basically in her face, deeply injured, and it is Celyn's turn.
"Strike me down if you dare," she snarls at him.
Celyn, in the full awareness that this was certainly going to have horrible consequences for him personally, summons the might of his god to his hands and calls down holy light upon her.**
With her dying breath she revokes the boon and curses him that no fey shall be able to replace it; the shadow of her magic rips through the illusory double and it is as if the Wyrdling shields their cleric from the full force of her wrath.
Robin: What did she do to you and how can we fix it.
Celyn: ... I'll explain later. Robin? ...Don't let me drown.
(This is cryptic to the rest of the party but Celyn clearly expects Robin will understand it.)
There is nothing in particular in the lair, which is unstable now due to loadbearing boss; we recover the empty wand and make our escape.
Celyn is pale and wobbly and has a tense and complex conversation with Robin in which they are both clearly feeling rather hurt, though Robin does let Celyn heal him. Celyn withdraws and asks for his god's blessing to ease his current psychological damage, but goes back to talk some more afterwards.
* Because I am me typing this led to me commenting to Mike about the actual plausible underlying calendar stuff going on because a) I am easily primed to calendar rants b) worldbuilding happens if I leave my brain even mildly unsupervised. He was hilariously still awake sufficiently to check messages and told me that my worldbuilding theory was one of the leading ones he and his brother had considered strongly, but they did not bother to canonize anything because going Tolkien about it and just translating everything into a familiar calendar was much more workable in practical terms.
** There was one thing that I needed, on a Doylian level, to have happen out of this (the dying curse, to be specific), which was why Mike and I had hashed out a chunk of plot together (I think I was right in guesstimating about a fifth of it was mine though it gets way murkier because I threw a handful of 'if this is true, then' worldbuilding theories that turned out to be more or less correct but irrelevant). The fact that I got to do the killing blow with backlash? I could not have plotted that better if I were putting it on the page. Beautiful dramatic arc, with intense undertones of the character's personality actually coming out in the dice.
Viepuck: department of illusions and telepathy
Izgil: department of magical analysis and minor questionable decisions
Celyn: department of faith in his god and also major questionable decisions
Robin: extremely upset about these questionable decisions
When we left off we were having a dispute with a Hag about ownership of surveillance technology.
Having determined that we could not harm the bad guy lastingly last session, we were left with the question of what we do with the rest of this fight. Viepuck declared, "I think we should go, the ferry will be shutting down" and walked away from the well the magic mirror was attached to, signalling telepathically to Izgil that he should go to the house the Hag was occupying and investigate while she was distracted. The Hag promptly discarded the state of combat and went to inspect the item to make sure it wasn't damaged; Celyn gestured towards the manor house because we needed to talk with the guy who had invited her to take over the town in the first place.
The Hag, grumbling to herself, finished inspecting the mirror and the well and stomped off presumably to find somewhere else to stash it. It was communicated to Celyn that she had healed herself by drawing from a poppet in the creepy dollhouse, and that was presumably the local lord.
The party split, divided by telepathy. Viepuck is communicating with Celyn, and Viepuck's familiar is also with him, while Viepuck and Izgil go to investigate the house while she's off doing mirror stuff.
Robin and Celyn: go into the manor house, discover the lord has a migraine and fatigue condition that "came on suddenly". Celyn feels moderately bad about this because the condition was caused by, you know, the fallout of trying to stab the Hag. The manor is full of cowed, weary people, all the paintings and things are covered, and there's a big glass sheet on the wall. (Everyone objects to Celyn's query about whether he can cover the glass. Which he more or less expected.) All the dishes are wooden, the bread comes out pre-sliced because a knife might be shiny, and so on.
Inspection of the lord indicates he has been drained, basically, and needs to sleep it off. Celyn gives him a blessing of hope to ease his trauma, but this does not fix the deeper issue, though he does perk up enough that he'll consider eating after all. He presses us to accept his hospitality and stay for dinner, perhaps spend the night? Robin is extremely uncomfortable accepting hospitality from a household so blatantly fey-cursed, but Celyn feels that he has an obligation as a hope cleric to do what he can for these people's morale. Also, given the parking of the gathering in front of the panopticon glass, by hanging out here we are potentially distracting the Hag from noticing what the rest of the party is up to.
In fact, she shows up in the panopticon after we'd been chatting a bit - mostly about things like the lord's worry about the consequences of the boon he accepted on his daughter and very mundane things - and the conversation shifted to very mundane things (not the daughter at all) while she glowered at the party because she was put out over something we'd done. Not sure what! But we are glad enough to have annoyed her sufficiently that she is glaring at us rather than going to figure out where Izgil and Viepuck are.
Where Izgil and Viepuck are is "after ransacking the house she appropriated, we have discovered her underground lair and are staring at the back door of the house to figure out how the magic portal works." Having determined that, Izgil decides that the sensible thing to do is go investigate it while the Hag is busy with the mirror. Viepuck drops his telepathic link to Celyn in order to connect one to Izgil before he vanishes; further, Es*tiaslos, who was with Celyn, went puttering around the manor to see if it could find the creepy dollhouse, particularly in the lord's late husband's rooms, which we had gently been asked to keep our noses out of.
The exciting department of questionable decisions landed Izgil in an underground cave-like-thing, magically constructed stone as an irregular dome over a dirt floor. There were vines affixed to the walls, lamps along the walls that sometimes flickered out and relit in an eerie breeze, a pool in the center that appeared dark and mysterious. There was also no obvious exit, though the pool might have been some sort of teleportation device; there was no way of figuring out where it went to, which meant it could have been a Problem. After doing a reasonable amount of investigation, Izgil started tunneling out and carefully replacing the tunnel dirt so it was not obvious that he had been there.
Meanwhile the awkward dinner party is sort of edging along towards "if we're going to leave town we really need to go find our friends and go" because Celyn is trying to accommodate Robin's discomfort as much as he can while still being a hope gremlin who wants to do something that will give these people something that matters. As we achieved "we need to find our people", who should turn up at the front door but our people, who join us for dinner. We eventually wrangle around to accepting the hospitality of the house, but Robin is very unhappy about it. Viepuck, after getting the message from Celyn that our conversation has been About Not Much, makes telepathic contact with the lord, who carefully excuses himself to go take his migraine and lie down so he doesn't have to try to fake hiding the conversation. Viepuck cheerfully turns to Izgil, says, "It looks like the sky might clear up, don't you think?"
Izgil, who is at this point aware that the party uses him as 'press this button for social diversion into a lengthy ramble about astronomy', but not actually able to resist having his buttons pushed, goes into monologue mode so that Viepuck can nod and smile and chat with the lord. Somewhere in here the lord's daughter comes through and whispers to Robin that she needs to tell the party something but doesn't know how to do so privately.
Viepuck obtains information from the lord, who is much more talkative when he is able to be certain he isn't being spied on. The specific deal he made was giving the Hag sovereignty over "the lands of his blood", which means he is now paranoid that he also accidentally traded away his daughter (and apparent last surviving child). We got some information about the Hag's habits, including a regular Monday* dinner with the lord in which she picks his brain about the state of the town (presumably to supplement her supernatural ability to locate people's deepest desires so that she can exploit them). And a suggestion that Viepuck talk to the rest of the staff.
So Viepuck basically yawns as he lets the lord go to sleep and says, "It's been a veyr long day, why don't I go talk to the staff about getting rooms made up for us?" and that sort of settles where we are. Robin continues uncomfortable. (It was pointed out that if Robin just up and left the whole party would follow him without questions, but that is very much not Robin's style.)
Viepuck collects more information about the Hag's habits, about the fact that the way he acts around his late husband's room is kind of weird (when his father died he was 'storytelling to honor his memory', not 'speak nothing of the matter but treat the room as a preserved museum piece'), a maid had spotted footprints that seemed to go to the wardrobe and mostly just brushed them away and didn't talk about them because such things are scary. The daughter is told about the deal her father made and is rather upset about its specifics.
There is no evidence, for the record, of there being a ruined temple to no god in the woods that anyone can report, let alone one that holds the secret of the town. However, we learn that the lord's late husband loved that kind of old history, was something of a scholar of the old religion of the genius loci, and had a stone with an inscription on it he couldn't read that was reported to be such a thing, which has since gone missing. He is sad about that; he is sad about many things. His grieving is arrested in a way that suggests nefarious influences, in fact.
After compiling information we debate whether we sneak into the late husband's room to figure out what's up with it now or do it later, and eventually ask for divine guidance and get told to wait until morning. Rolling the pair of divinely generated dice generates one suggesting 'wait until morning' and one that just ... spins ... on its corner. Celyn grumphs and says he will do dream incubation to see if his god has anything useful to say about matters. (His god being also the god of dreams.)
Celyn's first dream: of walking along a knife-edge, in which one side there is great danger to the party, and to the other side there is the falling of the town into annihilatory darkness. A gentle breeze blows the balance slightly towards the personal danger, which is represented by Celyn being struck by lightning. Celyn's reaction to this is "I love my god and this contains absolutely no new information for me, what do I actually do."
Celyn's second dream: a conversation with the Hag. Now, Celyn knew the Hag actively wanted the party to have the information about what the Gloomshaper was up to, because she had elected to set herself in opposition to him and that is just smart tactics, so the 'I want something you have, I will give you that information in exchange for it' was not a surprise, particularly. She continued to note that she would stop insisting that the party leave town, for this deal, and grant Celyn a personal boon, as well as the information; also that if we didn't make some kind of deal with her she would stop being patient and probably hunt us down and kill us. (The personal boon in question - a magical transition - is not something that Celyn would actually go for on its own, but the 'information for dealing with the rest of the crisis' and 'potentially gain leverage that can liberate the town' parts? Those weigh a lot in his regard.)
The item she wants? A particularly nasty magical item that we got when we killed Areschera. It creates lightning. (And the winds blow towards personal risk.)
We are informed upon waking that breakfast is in an hour. And that people are expected to appear. When queried, this is clarified to "people are inspected to appear". Ohhhhh.
We thus have some time to argue about what to do next. Robin is adamantly against the wand bargain, of course, and Celyn insists that if taking the deal will help them free the town he can take the consequences. It is not playing her game to make the deal, he argues, but his own. Robin does not believe it will help free the town. Celyn summons the divine guidance dice again, and they are slow to settle but come down on "take the deal" in the yes/no option. Robin is frustrated and hurt; Celyn is frustrated and hurt.
Rather than make a clear decision now, the party goes to do things to prepare: Viepuck takes the wand and goes to clean rats out of the storeroom with it so that it is drained of charges, whatever happens to it. Celyn and Izgil sneak into the late husband's rooms, Celyn first to carefully schmutz up all the glossy surfaces to keep the Hag out, then Izgil to do investigation and find out what can be found. He manages to locate an invisible something next to the wardrobe, cleans the magic off it, and Celyn makes sure there are no mechanisms before they work together to open it and reveal ... the missing rock, which is inscribed in the same language which was in the space the bear fey was using as a lair. Celyn casts to read it and learns that it is a prayer to a particular genius loci for a safe refuge, probably a reality pocket.
The rock is tied into some sort of spell in the floor of the chest that appears to be a portal. We study it for a bit and then hatch a new plan. After the initial breakfast inspection, Izgil returns to the upstairs to inspect the stone and chest more thoroughly, and is replaced with an illusion cast by Viepuck, who is maintained through breakfast through various acts of magic, illusory voice, and sleight of hand. Izgil and Es*tiaslos get to work; Es*tiaslos attempts to sneak through the portal and basically bounces off. Investigations reveal that only those who have an existence on the other side can pass through: the Hag, and those who have made deals with her.
We don't know what sort of manifestation she would have on the other side, or indeed if the whole thing is her manifestation, but a dispel magic will suppress the portal, which means the Hag cannot access it to steal vitality from her people.
Which means we have a new plan: Celyn will trade the (drained) wand to the Hag for the information and, as a backup, the fact of having made a deal which would let him go through the portal if we need that (Robin objects strenuously, so this is relegated to a distinctly distant plan B). While she is busy tinkering with it to try to attune to it, Izgil will try to suppress the portal, and then we will break into her lair, which we already know how to do, and fight her.
Normally the party would split Robin and Celyn one way, Viepuck and Izgil the other. Celyn suspects Robin is sufficiently not okay with this plan that he will not accompany, and is correct; Viepuck comes along instead.
(I think this bit of conversation goes here, best as I remember it:
Celyn, with his blithe fatalism very much forward about the risks of this play: The dice fall where the dice fall.
Robin: Usually I'm okay with that. I'm not this time.
(There were several of these heartwrenching conversations at least one of which ended in a plaintive, "... Robin..." from Celyn and I do not remember if that was this one.)
)
The expectant Hag, observing the breakfast table, is told, "I'm going to go for a walk," and then vanishes. Celyn goes for a walk, with Viepuck tagging along. The Hag asks one question - of Viepuck - for her own curiosity. "How did Areschera die?" Celyn interjects, "I STABBED HER." Which was of course the culmination of rather a lot more chaos. We had a strange little conversation about how Areschera was quite overconfident and did not think well when angry and both Viepuck and Celyn are proficient in deception and can keep a straight face. Celyn deadpans into this conversation that really, Areschera should have had horseradish, which got the Hag going, "Horseradish, of course," in that 'I have no idea what you're on about but I'm going to pretend I understand' tone.
We settle into the house she has appropriated and she asks if we know about the Gloomshaper's exile. Celyn indicates that we know he was exiled, partly to see what information she has unprompted; she says he was exiled for fucking around with mortals too much in ways that Queen Ethlenn found objectionable. The region of Duskmire, where he lives, does not have stable portals to the mortal realm - something he believes is the Queen's doing - and thus he is deprived of his favorite entertainments. Somewhere along the line, he made a deal with a being that claimed it would permanently open the Cleenseau Wood portal; that deal has since fallen through or been broken (my memory is hazy about the specifics, but we know them). Nonetheless, the fellow believes that he can lock open the portal with 'special Tyrwinghans', but she does not know how. Celyn assumes blood. She was basically at "Yeah, one does not expect the special Tyrwinghans to survive." Celyn does not mention that he and Robin are believed to qualify as relevant special Tyrwinghans.
Having obtained the information (and Celyn's personal boon), Viepuck and Celyn leave; Celyn conceals himself nearby to make sure that she goes into the lair via the entrance we are aware of, and then withdraws to the town square to regroup with the party.
As soon as we get word to Izgil that she is in the lair, he casts the dispel magic, successfully suppressing the portal. He, Robin, and Greymalkin (who has manifested again) go pelting down the stairs of the mansion. Izgil bellows, "Take heart!" to the people there, who are bewildered at the sudden charging heroes. We regroup, we hit the door, and the humanoids (and Es*tiaslos, he's tiny) enter the lair and spread out a bit so as not to stumble over each other on the stairs.
We find the place not only contains the Hag, but a couple of oozes and some giant rats. Izgil promptly drops a radiant-damage fireball on the lot of them, clearing out most of the bad things and letting the party move more freely. Celyn summons his illusion double and keeps hilariously setting off the vine-grabs from the lair with it, which can't figure out it's an illusion (and the party is not getting close enough with actual people). The Hag gets some attacks off (failing to turn Viepuck into a frog) and then Viepuck cloaks 2/3 of the lair in devouring shadows that block her line of vision so the party can do some cleanup about the rats and things.
It turns out that the lair basically seems to generate rats and things on its own. Also a shambling mound appeared. She appears to take Celyn's appearance as a personal betrayal but if she did not want to be stabbed like Areschera she should have tried to make a no-stabbing agreement. He already had made clear that he was a stabber. That was in fact a warning of sorts.
(Not that I stabbed her, but, well.)
Greymalkin comes down through the portal. General battle is joined all around. The Hag teleports out of the Hunger of Hadar, dismisses her (very injured) shambling mound and summons a new one between herelf and the party. We learn the oozes do temporary damage to armor class, and that the rats get advantage when fighting with friends, which means they are actually capable of semi-reliably hitting people. Celyn drops under a third health; Robin heals him. There is rather a lot of chaos involving trying to deal with the perpetual adds, maneuvering the Hag into spaces where Viepuck can knock her back into the Hunger of Hadar again with knockback blasts and a flaming sphere, Celyn kills the shambling mound at one point because it might mean she can't dismiss and resummon a healthy one. (No evidence against this.) SHe fails to polymorph anyone, including Celyn, who failed an int save on something that made him lose a d4 on his next save against one of her spells.
Hag: BE A SQUIRREL.
Celyn: [rolls a 19 while standing next to the paladin] I'd rather not.
Hag: [visible fury]
It is genuinely too much for me to remember the details of the combat; there kept being more adds, the melee people kept having to deal with them but fortunately Viepuck (mostly) was continuing to pummel the Hag. He got hit with a spell that meant he had disadvantage on attack rolls, and threw something without an attack roll at her that she desummoned two of her oozes to pass the save on, which honestly was ludicrously effective as those things were extremely annoying.
Eventually we have her hemmed into a corner by the flaming sphere and the hunger of hadar, with Celyn's illusory double basically in her face, deeply injured, and it is Celyn's turn.
"Strike me down if you dare," she snarls at him.
Celyn, in the full awareness that this was certainly going to have horrible consequences for him personally, summons the might of his god to his hands and calls down holy light upon her.**
With her dying breath she revokes the boon and curses him that no fey shall be able to replace it; the shadow of her magic rips through the illusory double and it is as if the Wyrdling shields their cleric from the full force of her wrath.
Robin: What did she do to you and how can we fix it.
Celyn: ... I'll explain later. Robin? ...Don't let me drown.
(This is cryptic to the rest of the party but Celyn clearly expects Robin will understand it.)
There is nothing in particular in the lair, which is unstable now due to loadbearing boss; we recover the empty wand and make our escape.
Celyn is pale and wobbly and has a tense and complex conversation with Robin in which they are both clearly feeling rather hurt, though Robin does let Celyn heal him. Celyn withdraws and asks for his god's blessing to ease his current psychological damage, but goes back to talk some more afterwards.
* Because I am me typing this led to me commenting to Mike about the actual plausible underlying calendar stuff going on because a) I am easily primed to calendar rants b) worldbuilding happens if I leave my brain even mildly unsupervised. He was hilariously still awake sufficiently to check messages and told me that my worldbuilding theory was one of the leading ones he and his brother had considered strongly, but they did not bother to canonize anything because going Tolkien about it and just translating everything into a familiar calendar was much more workable in practical terms.
** There was one thing that I needed, on a Doylian level, to have happen out of this (the dying curse, to be specific), which was why Mike and I had hashed out a chunk of plot together (I think I was right in guesstimating about a fifth of it was mine though it gets way murkier because I threw a handful of 'if this is true, then' worldbuilding theories that turned out to be more or less correct but irrelevant). The fact that I got to do the killing blow with backlash? I could not have plotted that better if I were putting it on the page. Beautiful dramatic arc, with intense undertones of the character's personality actually coming out in the dice.
