Nim is chosen as the worthiest among you to summon the golden fox. She performs the ceremony as described by the dryad, and the mysterious animal steps out from behind a tree. It says nothing but nods when asked whether it knows what happened to the scouts. When the missing spiders are mentioned, it takes off into the woods. You follow, and it leads you to a part of the forest where you find a forlorn Ettercap making an effort to hide himself.
When discovered, he tries to run away, but Daisy keeps looping around on her sheepdog to cut him off and make him talk. In fractured Common, he admits he knows nothing of the recent events of the forest, except that his beloved spiders were spooked and ran off around the same time as things starting turning bad (i.e. a certain Gridean wizard arrived in the forest).
You give him an offer: You’ll find his spiders, if he’ll help you. He agrees, and heads back to his lair, but not before shoving a claw-like appendage down his throat to collect a kind of secretion to anoint each of your heads with. Um, there’s a lot of covering things in pastes and fluids in this place, huh?
Sorry about that.
Anyway, acting on a hunch, you head over to the hole at Talon Rock, and descend into its dank, lightless depths. Inside you find a whole gaggle of giant spiders that are eager to follow you home like stray puppy dogs. The Ettercap’s effusions apparently make you fast friends. You lead them back to a grateful Ettercap.
After camping out for the night, you are about to head back to see Lady Eren the next morning when you unexpectedly receive invitations from both Pook Fee and Gliggerginn piskie clans to attend a “Blazzerbuzzle” to occur at noon that day. According to the miniscule script of the wren-delivered invites, a Blazzerbuzzle is “an engagement party” and “a joining of two Neighbors”. Hmm, it sounds like Weel and Luca are finally allowed to get married. Huzzah!
You travel to the piskie pond and wait for noon to arrive. Your pal, the elf druid Malraali arrives, but without her disabled husband Bofomar. She’s come bearing a wagon full of something covered with cloth. Wedding gifts for the lovely piskie couple perhaps? When the sun reaches the midpoint, the two clans, Gliggerginn and Pook Fee, come down from their trees and launch out onto the water on fleets of tiny leaf boats, the sails matching the color of their respective arboreal home-base foliage (naturally). When the two armadas make impact in the pond’s center, they proceed to attack one other. You are surprised to discover a “Blazzerbuzzle” is no wedding at all, but rather an elaborate ceremonial naval battle! While everyone’s distracted by the pond combat, Malraali pulls the blanket off the wagon, revealing the unconcious body of Bofumar. She brings him gently over to the shore of the pond and lays him down. With one ugly green claw, she cuts his neck over the pond and his blood begins to darken the water. Realization hits: it is Maggs in disguise! The ritual death of the kind-hearted, human herbalist is helping the hag-queen reclaim the pond as her own.
As the newly-revealed villain begins to wade in deeper, teeming multitudes of her allies descend from all corners. Strange little beings made of stick bundles wound with thorny vines rush out from the woods beyond, trampling the mushroom circle and spraying you with blasts of jagged splinters. Angry vengeful swarms of ravens blacken the sky, targeting the piskies especially. You find yourself caught in a maelstrom of evil. Thoroughly outnumbered by foes, your fate appears dire.
But all is not lost! The Ettercap and his spiders join the fray to lend support, guided there by the golden fox. As do Malraali’s animal allies from the forest? Most strange of all, you spot what looks like a flying, animate gargoyle in the sky. It is dropping stones to the ground, and when each lands, there is a flash, and a mysterious assassin appears ready for combat. Fortunately for you, these newcomers are confederates and help you defeat Maggs’ minions in short order. They promptly disappear in another flash when your mutual enemies are dispatched.
Green Maggs herself proves difficult to kill. But Dov bravely launches himself into the pond after her, his True Strike permitting him to trip her, providing you all a sizable edge in the fight. With two claws, she rakes him and the strikes sap Dov to such an extent that he feels his strength depleting. And not temporarily. We’re talking like legit, non-temporary attribute drain, y’all.
Uh-ewh.
As you fend off the raven swarms and attacking stick bundle-men, you all do what you can to bring down the horrible hag. Daisy charges her on Ambrosius with her lance. Nim casts her Color Spray, and it once again proves effective on several hundred of the vile black birds, who drop from the sky into the pond, stunned into immobility. Maggs herself is also momentarily made to pause by Nim’s Efficacious Rainbow of Bedazzlement. Unfortunately, the spell can’t help but affect a number of the piskies caught in its blast, many of whom were airborne engaged in the fray. They too fall into the water, incapacitated – their fates put in mortal peril, now subject to potential drowning and rendered defenseless against their raven foes.
Eventually, you are able to fish Maggs out from the pond (Daisy at one point literally hooks her with a fishing-rod lance from under the water), with Dov providing the killing blow with a single rapier thrust.
When the battle is over, you do what you can to help those that survived. Dov heals a half-dozen piskies. As well as Ambrosius, who was blinded by a raven swarm. But some wounds can’t be healed. The piskies are in a state of shock, despondent, mourning the loss of so many of their kin. None offer you thanks. You see Luca weeping over a deceased Weel.
When there is finally nothing more that any of you can do to help, you depart the pond and set out into the forest once more. Not long after, the ravens meet you in the woods, cough up three of their kind, then fly away. The outcasts are a bit raven-pecked themselves and worse for wear, but they begin to lead you through the forest on a secret route, one that only they know. The golden fox does not appear again to you. After a few hours, the trees open up and you are greeted to the view of a wondrous elven city.
You have finally made it to Tupelu!
To Be Continued…