Skyfell - Lost in the Feywild : Sessions 45-50

 

Introduction

A few years ago, I started a regular Dungeons and Dragons campaign in my Skyfell setting that I called The Rise of the Glutton which has since been renamed to Lost in the Feywild. I wanted to provide my players with a log of their adventures and then realized that such a log might make for fun blog. See Rise of the Glutton/Lost in the Feywild in my Session Index for a complete listing.

The cast is:

Tabbi (played by Jeff) - male tabaxi, Sorcerer monk (Divine Soul)
Drekzhar (played by Dan) - male minotaur, Bardic rogue (College of Swords, Swashbuckler)
Tauffae Twofeather Topshelf (played by Rodney) - male orc, Fighter (Champion)
Meribore Softwalker (played by Laura) - female fitbolg, Druid (Circle of the Moon)
Onyx (played by Leslie) - female tabaxi, Rogue (Swashbuckler)

Session 45 to 50 - Test of the Trunk

A Bit of an Explanation

It has admittedly been quite some time since I posted a summary. To be frank, I’ve been incredibly busy at work and these summaries usually take an entire weekend to write. The thought of using what has become incredibly rare spare time writing them was simply too much for me to contemplate. We have been playing, more or less, despite the painfully real trope of scheduling difficulties. We completed an entire arc, actually. But instead of trying to recap the entire arc in the kind of detail I usually do, I'll just provide a quick summary of the overall plot and the main points that will affect the story moving forward. It won't be the usual kind of narrative, but it will be something at least. And then, I'm hoping, from here, I'll be able to return to the usual kinds of summaries (just as soon as we sort out or scheduling difficulties).

General Summary

The second test given by Thel-isara was the test of the roots. For this test, the party was to "calm the frightened stone." The “stone” was a physical manifestation of the raw energy of elemental earth known as Chali. Chali resided in a temple deep in the Forest of Burzee. It was afraid because its caretaker, an orc druid named Graham, had fallen victim to the forest’s enchantments and had completely forgot his duty to keep Chali safe. Awakened foliage in the forest took the opportunity to set about breaking down Chali to use its rich minerals to feed and strengthen themselves. The party eventually figured out what was happening, helped Graham regain his memories, and then, with Graham’s help defeat the awakened foliage and restore Chali to its true form. This involved gathering pieces of Chali that they acquired through various encounters as they wandered the twisted, enchanted paths that criss-crossed the Burzee.

Battling the Awakened Foliage

The party had several encounters as they traveled through the enchanted paths of the Burzee. Aside from the talking Ostriches (see Session 43), they encountered a tinker gnome named Marvelous Mike who was a bit of a con-man and gambler. Through a series of card games, the party acquired one of the pieces of Chali that they needed to restore the elemental. (During Session 44, they had acquired other pieces and understood that the fragments had psychic properties.)

Meribore befriended a faerie dragon named Sparkle Dash who existed outside of time (or perhaps during all times) and so had very little sense of past, present, or future. It was all jumbled together. This was reflected in their speech patterns that seemed to blend tense or leave it out entirely. Their singular duty was to guard a fragment of Chali, allowing no one else to possess it without their permission. Once asked for such permission, Sparkle Dash granted it and so the party acquire another fragment of Chalie and Meribore acquired a slight addiction to the faerie dust that Sparkle Dash shed as they flitted about the trails. The two spent a good part of the adventure together in an altered state.

Sparkle Dash
Source: 5e Monster Manual

The party also encountered a huge assembly of campestri that had gathered around a seemingly bottomless pit. Amid unrestrained celebration and fanfare, individual mushrooms threw themselves into the pit to become one with the omnipotent Great Mycelial Network. The party quickly discovered the bottomless pit was in fact just a mildly deep pit at whose bottom was a sentient black pudding ooze named Armus. He had tricked the mushrooms into jumping into the pit so that he could eat them by dissolving them with his acidic body. He too possessed a fragment of Chali and was using its psychic capabilities to trick the mushrooms into believing they were meeting their maker and not Armus' digestive tract. The party fought the ooze to retrieve the fragment. Before they could kill Armus, however, he escaped, promising to get revenge for the party ending his free meal situation.

Armus, the Black Pudding
Source: 5e Monster Manual

With these pieces, and with Graham's help, the party restored Chali. As a reward, Chali allowed our heroes to take a small sack full of the debris that had been broken from Chali’s body by the awakened foliage. The debris would help restore Dead Island. They were then able to find their way out of the Burzee and return to Misty Mountain Island. Shum, Borba, and their children, were all gathered around the fire pit. They greeted the heroes and welcomed them back from their journey. 

Key Take Aways

The party experienced the day/night cycle for the first time while they explored the Burzee. The alternating nature of light and darkness triggered several realizations for the party. The most shocking was the realization that at some point before The Cataclysm, Skyfell and Shadowfell had been a single realm. More unsettling, they suddenly understood and even empathized with The Necromancer’s plan to reunite the two realms. It seemed that that should be the true state of the world. Our heroes simply disagreed with the methods that The Necromancer had been following.

Through their travels, the party also learned that the Burzee was in a part of the Feywild known as Nonestica. During a long rest, Meribore used her sense of the rhythm of a land and Drekzhar used his newly developed sense of the melody of a land to identify a central will “governing” it with fourth other wills (to the north, south, east, and west) in direct competition of that central will. 

Many of the beings the party encountered immediately assumed Tauffae had an affiliation with the Witch of the West, who apparently ruled over Winkie Country and the tinker gnomes (who called themselves Winkies) that lived there. Marvelous Mike was, in fact, a Winkie.

Many of those beings the party encountered also spoke of Lurline, the divine creator of and protector of Nonestica. In fact, there was a statue of her in the Chali’s temple. Lurline was represented as a beautiful faerie female with butterfly wings.

And speaking of Chali’s temple, there was a bas relieve depicting both elves and orcs coming to some kind of arrangement (perhaps even a cooperative one) over the worship of and maintenance of Chali. As a manifestation of the earth element, Chali was worshipped as an agricultural deity. 

Graham "raised" sentient rocks. This was part of his duty to look after Chali. In Burzee, he was in the process of growing a whole pack of rocks. The sentient rocks living with Shum and Borba (Bit, Nip, Growl, Bark, Howl, Yelp, Sneeze, Scatch, and Fetch) had also been raised by Graham.

The enchantment of forgetfulness that plagued the Burzee had also affected Shum, Borba, and their children. They had completely forgotten about Graham and Chali. After the party restored Chali, their memories returned.

Finally, unlike their journey during the test of the branches, their journey during the test of the trunk was instantaneous. That is, as far as anyone outside of the experience could tell, the party had stepped into the disturbance and then step out of it immediately.

Where We Are Now

After reporting their success to Thel-isara, the Evermore tree explained that the lesson to be learned through this experience was that the one should treasure one’s memories as they will keep one from getting lost. The Thel then asked if the party was ready for the third and final test: the test of the roots.

End Sessions 45-50.

Thel-isara
Source: Digial Image by Me

Experience earned:

Drekzhar - 570 (79,987 total)
Meribore - 570 (80,091 total)
Onyx - 570 (79,944 total)
Tabbi - 570 (80,314 total)
Tauffae - 590 (80,505 total)

Supplemental Materials

References

I did go a little overboard on the pop-culture references on this one, I will admit. Perhaps you noticed some of them. Perhaps you didn't. But, because I (like most dungeon masters) like to entertain myself, I will point them out here.

Graham and Chali

I am a huge Fallout fan and have logged many many hours playing Fallout 76. Graham is a super mutant trader who has a brahmin named Chally. The two are a random encounter in game. They also appear during the Meat Week event in which the players help Graham throw a huge bbq.

Graham and Chally
Source: Fallout 76

Sparkle Dash

Yes, that's right. This is a My Little Pony. I'm not a fan of the ponies per se but my daughter had been big into them when she was little. When I searched for a name for the faerie dragon on the fly, I panicked and went with the first name that popped into my head. This had at first been Rainbow Dash (another pony) but then Laura suggested Sparkle Dash instead. This, I wholeheartedly agreed to.

Armus

Armus was the weird goo monster that killed Tasha Yar in Start Trek: The Next Generation (and was the but of a prank by the Lower Decks team). Armus is kind of the perfect example of an evil, sentient black pudding ooze. So, of course, I had to do it.

Armus
Source: Star Trek: The Next Generation

Oz

I don't think I've hidden the fact that the part of the Feywild that the party has been dipping their toes into is, in fact, Oz. This was brought on, in part, by the release of the 5e Adventures in Oz game. It was also something I'd been toying with for years. And now, with the Wicked movie, I'm even more invested in exploring this aspect of my homebrew game setting.

Burzee

The idea of Burzee from the start was that it must feel random but still conform to a solid set of rules that the players could work out. Every encounter took place in a glade or other break in the forest. Every one of these areas had three paths connected to it. The path from which the characters traveled always led to a random encounter of some kind (and never the same place twice). One path always had a set of tracks that led to a fixed encounter (of which there were four). It was at these fixed encounters that the party would collect a piece of Chali. The final path (and consequently the one that every fragment of Chali telepathically communicated to Tauffae to travel down) led to Chali's temple. The only exception to this rule was a connection between Chali's temple and the sentient rock farm where Graham had forgotten all about Chali. Here's the rough map I used to track this.

My Rough Map

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