At one point during the slog to Yonbrook, Ambrosius barks, alerting you all that riders are approaching from the road up ahead. Everyone hides, and Dov gets a good look at the travelers as they go by. At the lead is a Paladin of the Pure, looking the part – grim-faced, intent on the road ahead, armored in gleaming plate with multiple medals emblazoned on his chest, trotting confidently on an equally impressive steed. His two other companions are harder to make out, hooded in browns and grays, and much dirtier from travel. One of them is scanning the sides of the road, but doesn’t see any of you. After a while, it seems safe to come out and continue on your trudging way.
You make camp, and the night passes without incident. Feeling a bit more rested, you keep going and approach the halfling village late that afternoon, but are stopped a good mile from it by members of their militia. They’re on high alert. Thanks to Daisy, word of the fall of Willowdale has spread to this community, and since the Stoutoaks and Wellspringers had family lost there, the village is also in mourning. All bows, spears, and shortswords are lowered at the sight of Daisy, however, and she is ushered warmly into a family friends’ home and given all the creature comforts one would expect. Though side-eyed with some suspicion, her two big friends are also provided hospitality. You quickly learn that there is another Big Person in town: a grizzled human carriage driver well known to the halflings named Codger. He came the day before and admits to Dov he was hired to drive another human to Yonbrook, but the mysterious customer disappeared into the night upon arrival, didn’t even stay the night at the inn. Codger is planning to depart Yonbrook the next day and is willing to take you all the way to the border of the Forest of Arsel for 18 gold pieces. This will significantly speed up your travel time.
Feeling that you are friends now and can trust each other, you speak candidly with one another about your pasts. Dov admits he’s seen Daisy’s flower symbol on someone before. Back in Farglad (the capitol) he made a bit of a name for himself finding missing people. He was asked to follow the Pure around to spy on them, but declined. One day someone came to him asking him to kidnap a particular paladin. He turned them down and kicked them out. But he noticed something: this mysterious shrouded person (human-sized) had a dagger at their belt. And on the handle of the dagger was the same flower symbol as the one on Daisy’s sword. Later, the paladin turned up dead, and Dov ended up wrongly accused and thrown in prison. He escaped, made his way to Willowdale. Now that symbol is the only clue he has to track the shrouded stranger down and clear his name.
Pulling the flower seal out on its chain, Daisy says, “These belonged to my Nana. This and the sword. Though I didn’t know about the sword until…until after that night. She used to tell me stories about…where she came from. Axla.”
This name is unfamiliar to Nim and Dov, but Nim admits she’s seen the flower symbol in her visions and it is cosmically significant. Identifying the nature of the sword is beyond Nim’s ken, but the seal is simple enough: It’s a Concealing Seal; any magic item that touches it shows no magic aura when a detect magic spell is cast. This explains how the Overseers didn’t find it nor the sword when they ransacked Willowdale.
After spending a comfortable night in Yonbrook, you pay Codger to take you in his carriage to the eastern edge of the Forest of Arsel. Codger explains that all you have to do is walk into the forest, and very soon, elven scouts will make an appearance to escort you all to the hidden elven city of Tupelu. He pronounces it “TOOpuhLOO”, but since Dov and Nim know Elfish, they know it’s actually pronounced “TuPAYloo”.
Anyways…
You enter the forest. Time passes, you walk ever deeper into the woods, and no scouts appear. The trees gets thicker and thicker, darker and darker, until you can’t see the sky any more. Hours go by. There’s no sign of scouts. You have the feeling of being watched. Strange lights seem to appear in the forest around you. Some are almost figure shaped. They dart away before you can get a good look at them. You make an effort to follow them, but they disappear. Something is obviously wrong. You are hopeless lost. You decide to make camp and sleep on it.
The next morning, Dov is found drugged, forced asleep during his watch by tiny darts at the back of his neck. Most peculiarly (hilariously?), his hair is all in tiny tangles and strange black and blue markings have been drawn all over his skin. They don’t rub off. Since Nim knows north, you start heading west in the hope you’ll find a sign of the city. It’s not long before a mysterious golden furred fox appears (Nim thinks: “Celestial?”) and the strange creature leads you to another wanderer of the woods, then disappears. It’s an elf woman – a bedraggled eccentric druid named Malraali, and she admits she too was led by the fox to your location.
She takes you back to her husband Bofomar’s hut. He’s a human herbalist. Seeing Dov’s condition, Bofomar confirms Malraali’s suspicion: “Ye’ve been marked by the pixies/ piskies/Good Neighbors. Aye.” Bofomar suggests you talk to the Good Neighbor named Weel. He saw the missing scouts two days ago and said they were acting funny. He draws up a map for you of notable landmarks in the forest.
Later, Malraali confides in Nim that she has seen her before in her dreams. The druid saw her hunting an other-worldly, skeletal black stag – one accompanied by a retinue of four ghostly figures. It was a terrifying visage, a nightmare, and she feared for Nim’s life. Malraali reveals with genuine dread in her voice that, in one dream, the Black Stag was hunting Nim.
The next morning you thank the druid and her husband for their hospitality, and using the map, journey to where the Good Neighbors live. It’s two trees, one with red leaves, one with blue, on each side of a beautiful pond, all encircled by a ring of tiny mushrooms. The jubilant and rowdy piskies in the blue tree yell, “Wrong tree, Trickie!” when you try to talk to the ones in the red, who won’t even make an appearance. You discover the blue piskies are the Gliggergin, and they are celebrating and flouting their recent success. “You are our trickie!,” they tell you. Apparently, since they successfully pranked Dov the night before, it means they now have exclusive rights to leading you all astray and making mischief on you. Their rivals, the Pook Fee, lost out on the trickie. Turns out the piskie you seek, Weel, is a Pook Fee, and thus forbidden to speak to you..
You head back to Bofomar’s hut but encounter another Gliggergin lass on the way. She sneaked out of her tree to find you. Her name is Luca, and she says: “I’m sad about Weel. We were once betrothed, but loooong ago (2 days), our clans developed a terrible enmity. I will help you talk to Weel. First, you must be untrickied so that Pook Fee clan will speak to you. Tell Weel I still love him. Please tell NO ONE I betrayed my clan.”
Bofomar says he can find a recipe for an untrickie paste. It does require spidersilk, so you head up to the Ettercap’s lair. You get caught in his web traps but don’t encounter him or his spiders. You grab some spidersilk and get out as quick as you can, then camp for the night as far away as you can.
To Be Continued…
