Cotton Candy Clouds

Cotton Candy Clouds is the 16th session of the New Dawn Memories campaign. It is the fourth session of the And Miles to Go before I Sleep story arc.
= Synopsis =
The party makes camp in Thur Valley and winds up in the Feywild, where they fight off Vani. Later, they arrive in Brable and meet the townsfolk there.
= Development =
== Part 1 ==
As the party tries to navigate the woods of Thur Valley, they get lost and decide to spend the night in the wilderness. They are attacked by three brown bears and successfully kill them. As they lay to rest, they find themselves suddenly on a concrete bridge in a strange land, which they soon learn is the Feywild.
The devastated bridge leads over a swamp infested part of Hither, a corrupted region in Prismeer. 
The Uninvited decide to climb down the pillar of the bridge and make their way through the swamp. As they do so, they witness a hot-air balloon falling from the sky in the distance and getting stuck on a tower in the far south. As they climb down to the swamp, they witness strange beings flying through the air and in the swamp while the clouds above them look like pinkish cotton candy floating by. 
They all find a trinket on them:
* Weneon, a six-sided die with only four sides depicting a kid playing in the four different seasons;
* Kilijan, a tiny wooden key whose teeth change configuration when touched
* Manasa, an opaljach which emits a dandilon;
* Mycha, a wooden box filled with children's teeth;
* Lorkhan, a candle whose flame is burning in the shape of a dancing fairy.
As they try to orient themselves in the swamp, they hear a brigade of hangeron marching towards them. 5 archers and five guards. With them, a humanoid dandelion in shackles.
The leader Albi of the harengon approaches the party and offers them their protection in exchange for a happy memory of when they've received something. Mycha and Lorkhan oblige and give Albi their memories, but the rest of the party refuses. Albi tells them that he'll have to take them by force. 
The party fights off the harengon and frees the dandelion, who introduces himself as Amidor. On Albi's body, they find The Naked Revolver, a weapon created in Avernus by a dwarven smith named Nassi the Naked.
== Part 2 ==
Amidor is furious with the harengon and tells the party that he was on his way home when they caught him. He then asks the party to make the trip back home with him so he can finally see his family again after three years of serving in the war in Hither.
They get directions from a jingle-jangle bush and arrive after a few hours at a giant river. Amidor suggests spending the night in a nearby forest that isn't corrupted by the swamp infection. 
As they make camp, Amidor shows them in a pond what happened to the realm of Hither. The vision shows Amidor and his family walking among the other creatures in the swamp before it was corrupted. Mycha asks Amidor about his children and his wife. He points to the two small flowers in his vision and introduces them as Alish and Kama, while his wife's name is Bo.
He then tells him how Hither was about to crown Selena as their new Seleei Court queen, and how the queen of the Unseleei Court, Baba Yaga, attacked all of Prismeer in an attempt to gain control of all the happy memories of the population.
Amidor was one of the citizens drafted into the war. He admits that the war has been going on for 10 years before he decided to join, after he saw no other way to protect his family in Brigand's Tollway any longer.
As he reminisces about the past, he tells the party about Klemi, the walking mountain wandering Hither. When asked how he turned into a mountain, Amidor tells them about Elminster, a powerful wizard from the material plane, who came to Hither to raise his daughter Selena there. Elminster was happy, seeing how his daughter never experienced the horrors he did on the material plane, and he died a peaceful man. Only 30 years after his death, Baba Yaga started her attack on Prismeer and Hither, taking most of the peoples' memories and casting Selena from the Palace of Heart's Desire.
He tells them how he was about to go home, but got captured by Albi, who wanted to deliver him to his leader Agdon Shall. He then shows them in the pond the horrors Agdon did during the invasion of hither.
After the conversation with Amidor, the party preparers for a long rest, only to be awakened by the sound of Vani's voice, echoing through their minds. All of a sudden, they see him standing on the pond and flying in the air, attacking them from above.
The party manages to fight him off to the best of their abilities, and Vani retreats by casting a portal onto a tree. But not before summoning a water elemental, to finish the party off. Weneon finally manages to get the hang of the Naked Revolver, and dissolves the water elemental with one final hit.
The water elemental drops the Crimson Cross, a hand crossbow carved from an unknown wood, to the ground.
== Part 3 ==
As the fight ends, the party awakens from the Feywild back in the material plane. They are at the same place where they fought off the bears the night before being transported. As Mycha inspects his alarm around their camp, he realizes that the wires he laid are corroded. Weneon checks is bear traps and notices heavy corrosion on them. Kilijan inspects them and concludes that at least 4–5 months must have been passed for this level of corrosion to happen.
They check their things and realize that thez still have the Feywild trinkets on themselves. Weirded out, they start traveling, hoping to find a way out of the woods.
After traveling for half a day, they finally come across a group of human hunters, who sneak-up on them with their bows and arrows. Manasa starts talking sense to them, after he notices the hunters are afraid of shooting humanoids, as it is unfamiliar territory for them.
One of the hunters, a red-haired male human named Kalvin, defuses the situation by lowering his bow and asking the party if they are with the guards of Thur. When the party explains to the hunters that they are of no association with Thur or any other city-state in the Border Kingdoms, Kalvin decides to ask them for help with a problem his townsfolk in Brable are facing.
Manasa uses a suggestion spell on Kalvin and orders him to tell them, without any unnecessary conflations, what they want from them. Kalvin, in a state of half sleep, tells them that Rahool, the town's elder, was searching for outside help that was not associated with any faction of the Border Kingdoms. A few of the townsfolk went missing recently, and he wants to put a stop to it.
The party agrees to go with the hunters to Brable. Kalvin calls for the rest of his troop, and they swiftly arrive in a carriage tied to a phase spider. The carriage is driven by a gnome named Blink Darkflow.
As they drive on the carriage, they learn that more than six months have passed in the material plane while they were in the Feywild (it is now the 18. 5. 868.).
When asked about a caravan of mythral that went missing, Kalvin tells them that a search troop was sent from Thur in early winter. They did not find any caravan, but retrieved five bodies from the mountains. The snow was too deep for them and they had to abort the mission, saying they would be back in late spring, when the mountain becomes a bit more forthcoming. Kalvin predicts that they could arrive in 2-3 weeks to continue their mission.
As they talk, the carriage suddenly phases out of existence and arrives a few miles down the road from where it disappeared. Kalvin explains to the party that the phase spider enables them to travel the dangerous Thur Valley with ease. Mycha throws up, but at the second phase jump, he manages to keep himself from vomiting.
== Part 4 ==
The party arrives with the hunter in Brable, as small mountain town, where they are greeted by the curious town's folk. Kalvin tells them to follow him to the town center to talk to Rahool.
As the party makes its way through the small town, Mycha is stared at by two young human women. He starts whisteling a song from Felshroun and one of the women, a blue-eyed 25-year old in a sky-blue dress named Anabel, approaches him. She starts asking him about the song he whistled and they start flirting.
Lorkhan is drawn to the local butcher shop and looks at the craftsmanship of skinned bear-meat in the window. The butcher, Medeni, walks up to him and asks him if he wants to try the meat before he buys it.
Weneon and Manasa arrive at a small blacksmith shop and look at the wares. Weneon sees bullets for his revolver, while Manasa is drawn by Gravier's Eldritch Gloves Mk. 2 hanging above the blacksmith's head. The blacksmith is Luna Gravier, a human female and owner of the shop. She tells Manasa that the gloves are not for everyone, and that they were crafted by her grandpa who was a warlock. She then notices Manasa's gaze and realizes he is a warlock too. She offers the gloves to him to test. As he does, he notices some imrpovements to his eldritch blast.
Weneon suggests that she gives the gloves to Manasa so he can beta-test them and provide feedback for the future release of Mk. 3 gloves. Manasa charms her a bit more, and she accepts the deal, and forgoes the 800 gp she was asking for the gloves.
Kilijan follows Kalvin anmd suddenly gets an urge to wash his face in one of the water barrels on the street. As he does so, he hears Mycha's whistling and remembers the same tune being whistled by Garresh's footmen as they were searching for Kilijan in his village.
Kalvin leads Kilijan inside of the townhall and tells him to wait there while he gathers the others. Kilijan looks around the room and inspects the different town memorabilia. A glass showcase in the middle of the room catches his interest, and he looks at the cape inside of it. The cape is hanging on a mannequin and features a pattern of five stitched leaves across it. Kilijan reads the small plaque at the bottom of the showcase that reads: "Cape of Leaves, Malcer"
Rahool, an old male human, approaches Kilijan and tells him how it is one of the town's most priced possessions, retrieved from God's Plateau by their ancestors hundreds of years ago.
The rest of the party joins, and Rahool tells them how delighted he is that they accepted to help. He offers them, however, accommodations and diner first, and leads them to a guest house the prepared for them just across the townhall.
As the uninvited cross the street to the guest house, they see the mountains high above them. On top of one of the peaks, they notice the body of a giant ship being stuck on it, as the sun starts to settle behind it and colors the clouds in an almost candy-like color.
Category:Sessions