The Trial of Tanager Goodfellow

an adventure starring Aaron, Beans, and Olive. 
Tweet length description blurb: Murder on the dancefloor! Tanager is locked up, accused of a crime he didn't commit! It's now up to Aaron, Beans, and Olive to prove his innocence, but how will they rescue their friend from a fate worse than death? 
Setting: Pan's Folly
Non Player Characters: 
* Kuri Vandenpeereboom
* Tanager Goodfellow
*Queen of Autumn
*Owl Telluraves
*Eagle Accipitridae
*Crow Macrorhynchos
*Robin Goodfellow IV
*Raspberry Brightbush
*Robin Goodfellow V
*Albatross Goodfellow
*Finch Goodfellow
*Simmond the Kind
*The Earle
*Pan
Plot Summary: Tanager's employee and best friend Kuri arrives at the guild hall. She says she is sad about Tanager, who told her he was returning to his childhood home, Pan's Folly. Tanager hadn't been to or even visited once in the past thirteen years. He intended to return for a little while to finally study clerical healing magic, something he defiantly never learned growing up, but with the death of his close friend Mendax he has resolved to learn. With the mob recently after him because he won a large some of money from them, this seemed like a good time. Kuri learns that Tanager has instead become engaged to be married to the Queen of Autumn, a powerful fey. But rather than telling her, Kuri only found out because her roommate Nixie got a wedding invitation from the Queen. Kuri explains that she took the invitation to his coworkers and close friends and guild mates, and they all set out to find Tanager and explore this new turn of events. They go to try to find the secret forest village of Pan's Folly. 
They don't find it, but do notice that they're being watched. A blonde satyr greets them and says they've arrived just in time for a wedding and a funeral. He leads them to the village and before they can learn more from him, disappears. It is found that everyone in the dance pit that night witnessed Tanager walk right up to the town priest and stab him through the heart with his hand, killing him, and that the town has decided that marrying the Autumn Queen is Tanager's punishment. A large number of people are dancing and being merry in the dance pit, despite how some of the blood from the priest is still on the altar from the night of the murder. No one in town knows who the blonde satyr could be. Everyone here worships partying, and the party is a bit weirded out by how the town full of attractive people continues to dance and have a good time, despite the brutal murder many of them witnessed. It's odd how no one is sad. 
Talking to his family (parents, and older brother Robyn V and younger brother Finch), Tanager's parents say that this marriage will strengthen the village's bond with the fey (and also get Tanager out of the way and out of their hair). Not believing for a moment that it was actually Tanager who did it, the gang sets out to find out what happened. They argue that eyes can be deceived and Tanager deserves a trial. The party asks to be allowed to to arrange for their impartial friend (and Aaron's boyfriend) Simmond to come to town to be the judge. It's argued that because Simmond the Kind used to date Drusilla, Tanager's ex, that he has no particularly fond feelings for Tanager and will be a good impartial judge for the trial. The family accepts this and warns them they'll need to make a deal with the fey to allow this, too. The party members agree and ask to speak to Tanager, who is being confined to his childhood room in the family home. He has been magically made docile, but using astral projection the party is able to speak to him. It turns out that he was "talking to" his brother's wife at the time of the murder. The wife, Albatross, didn't want to come forward as his alibi because she didn't want to reveal what she was doing and jeopardize her marriage. The party arranges for a trial but the case is shaky: their only evidence in Tanager's defense is Albatross testifying that she was with him at the time. They don't know who the killer was, don't know what motivated the killer to murder the priest, and didn't know why Tanager was framed for the crime. 
The blonde satyr, who the party suspects is the god Pan, reappears and offers to reset time to when they first entered the village to give them a chance to gather more evidence. With time reset, they investigate the family home and learn of a hidden ceremony that purges the satyrs of Pan's Folly of their negative emotions, storing it in crystals. Something has been draining the crystals of their energy. Nervous about what kind of creature could be eating the negative emotions and suspicious it has something to do with the toy doll that childhood Tanager used to carry around with him everywhere, they start the trial. Their theory at this point is that the childhood toy was eating the negative emotions of the crystals. When Tanager visited, the doll perhaps reactivated and, never wanting to let Tanager leave town again, killed the priest who could have taught him healing. But rather than keep Tanager in town, killing the priest resulted in Tanager being arranged to leave town to marry the Queen of Autumn, so that's why the doll is helping the party defend him and resetting time for them. 
The trial happens, and the truth comes out. It turns out that the doll was the god Pan himself, who has always been fond of Tanager, but who carries out his impulses in a twisted fey way that suits his needs, was the one who committed the murder. Pan argues that he was simply carrying out Tanager's impulses, because he was mad at the priest for initially refusing to teach him. As the prophet of Pan, Beans argues that Tanager did not have free will and that both Tanager's impulses and Pan's actions were Pan's own. Pan seizes the opportunity (it turns out he has long been banished from the fey realm), accepts both the blame for the murder and its punishment, and Pan marries the Autumn Queen instead. Now her husband, he technically has to be allowed back into the fey realm. For better or worse, the court is adjourned. Simmond the Kind, the judge of the case, becomes sorrowful. It turns out that he agreed to be the judge on terms that were incredibly unfavorable to himself, and the party now learns he had agreed to sacrifice himself to the fey in order to be able to serve as the judge. As Simmond is turned into a fay slave by a fey god, the Earle, Aaron uses a very precious item, the ring of wishes, to create a copy of Simmond. The copy has a reset version of Simmond's timeline (memory only up to to his early twenties before he even met Drusilla) before whisking everyone off to the guild hall. The party reassures Tanager that they'll find someone to teach him healing magic, and that people who treat him that way aren't his family; they are. Tanager hires Beans as his on-retainer lawyer in case the mob brings up wanting their money back. 
Memorable Quotes: 
Category:Episodes