Session logs from 2024

What will happen to our heroes the Comrades of Hope this year? Will more than three weeks pass in-game? Who knows?

This page contains campaign and one-shot diaries from 2024. Session summaries from adjacent years can be found here: 2023 and 2025.

## Session 140: A Wild Ride Out of the Feywild

January 13, 2024

During the others' fight with Larian, Neeril accompanied a faerie and then heard a voice in her head. The voice spoke to Neeril, affirming her previous words to Larian that he and his family were not safe from Lolth's children. The voice called Neeril her child and showed her a tangle in the web of magic that was Larian's many glyphs and symbols, and urged Neeril to dispel it. She did so, with greatly increased power, and the network of spell untangled. As the voice left, Neeril spotted a black spider with a pink diamond-shape on its abdomen, dangling from an invisible thread. The faerie was scared of the spider, but Neeril allowed the spider to sit on her hand and crawl into a pocket dimension it found or made in her sleeve. [Flashback over]

The comrades collected a bundle of magic items from Larian Coldmoon's corpse: Moonsilver Staff, Ring of Protection, Ring of Water Walking, Robe of Wizardly Accomplishment, Periapt of Proof Against Poison, two different Sending Stones, Boots of Elvenkind, a useless Master's Amulet, an Ammonite Fossil arcane lens, and of course the Silver Tongue of Lady Wintersong. They placed Ssuulth and Larian to make it look like the two had killed each other, the mind flayer appearing to have eaten the mage's head, which the comrades brought along with them. Over a short rest, the group discusses their plans, hearing Seb out and bringing him up to speed on their strategy regarding Rodvincent—agreeing on a nonviolent option if at all possible.

Having decided to look for more information and treasure on the ground floor, the group did a fucking crazy thing. While the wild shapers wild shaped, the others sled down the miles-long staircase on modified shields and a breast-plate. The sleds worked remarkably well (natural 20 + 10) and the adventurers did a decent job at the descent, although not without some of them sustaining damage on the bumpy way down. Beatris and Lo-Tha skipped the last stretch with a *dimension door* spell, while the other sledders risked nearly clumping up in one big disaster. After taking some time to recover from dizziness and casting some rituals, the group started grabbing stuff from the walls. The traps had nearly all gone off, so very few dangers remained. One glyph, however, was still waiting for them, activating upon the first book being taken from the library shelves. In a decisive moment when Seb was nearly the target of the glyph's disintegrate spell, Venir made a split decision, snatching a book and throwing himself between Seb and the shelf. The book in his hands was disintegrated, and the green beam pierced a small, dead, part of Venir's skin on his chest, revealing a presence underneath, like a smooth, lifeless pulse. Venir felt a breath in his lungs he didn't mean to breathe. He felt a hunger building in him, but resisted its urges. With Beatris staring blankly from the far corner, Seb and Venir bonded over their near-deaths and made plans for their retirement from adventuring: Caféwild, a flower-and-book café they would one day run together.

Once they were happy with their amount of loot, both monetarily valuable and of arcane and academic interest, the group teleported to the Hill of the Smoldertrees—the name Candlehat had given to Kernentown's feywild mirror location. They learned the way they had entered the fey realm was no longer open to exit. In search of other exits, the group went into the gear-shaped crater in the middle of town and entered a strange half-buried mausoleum. First, they placed a gold coin each in the hands of a statue depicting the Lady of Gold.

[Neeril's flashback scene was played out]

In the mausoleum, the group found the place to be very unusual, as if twisted by the feywild and/or even stranger forces. Some pink spirit butterflies swarmed around a skeleton and anything rotten. Three doors before the comrades showed different words spelled backwards: coin, sleep, and reward. On each was depicted a scene: A person and their worldly possessions, a group of corpses laying peacefully, and an angel. In the first room, the group found a tempting, pristine feast of delicious meals. Highly sus of this, the group had Akhtin take a bite first. The butterfly immediately swarmed him and devoured his cat form. Beatris resummoned him and they steered clear of the food. Behind the second door was a hallway into a labyrinthine crypt. Oddly, the shelves in the walls seemed to have been emptied of bones. Neeril, Venir, and Beatris walked in carefully and found a large chamber connecting many tunnels and containing piles of skeletons. Some skeletons rose to attack, and a monstrous creature dropped from the ceiling. Each of these creatures had small glowing points of pink in their eye sockets. Venir hid in a pile of bones and blended in with the dead. Beatris was betrayed by bones, as the monster—a crypt defiler—animated more skeletons with a *danse macabre* spell. Once Percy arrived, with some expeditious aid from Ragna, the skeletons were almost all destroyed or turned, simplifying the fight. The defiler was slain, but a rumbling from above continued past its death. Something heavy was walking on the surface. The group found the third door's room from behind and opened a sarcophagus, releasing almost a dozen spectres into the room. A trivial encounter on account of their initiative roll and the existence of *destroy undead*.

While the other rested and healed up a little, Venir scouted outside to see what the big thing outside was. He saw a massive giant made out of bones, grave dirt, and tombstones. The group carefully hid from the tomb giant while Percy made her way to the town well to check it for clues to an exit, flying directly into it. The voice of a water spirit complained about people throwing themselves in it, and urged the halfling to please not drown here. She surfaced and spoke to the spirit. The party had just found a pari of golden sending coins in the sarcophagus, and the spirit agreed to help the comrades if they gave it one of those coins and delivered the other to the water spirit of Bad Frog Swamp. Hoping the spirit would keep its promise and help them leave the feywild, and being in a hurry to escape before risking time distortion, the group used the last high level spell slot for a *wind walk* spell and flew off to the swamp. The spirit of the swamp demanded magic from each of its visitors, but it accepted the coin and their other offerings, so they were allowed to return to the spirit of the well. Back at the Hill of the Smoldertrees, two figures in the crater spotted the flying comrades. The tomb giant had collapsed, but seemingly not because of these figures. They introduced themselves as Celia and Rethic. Rethic, speaking with a pre-echoing child's voice and then his body's adult voice grieved the tomb giant and asked Celia if he was allowed to kill the party, since they were alive. Celia denied the request and asked the party for information and help regarding some Knights of the Purple Dawn—enemies of her and Rethic's faction and their master or deity the Pale Sovereign. She was looking for two knights, one of whom might have been turned to glass. Rethic animated a skeleton and emitted a ghostly child to dance with the skeleton. Celia explained that she and him had both died and been given a second chance by the Pale Sovereign in the Shadowfell, and the Knights of the Purple Dawn were their enemies in the Feywild who had stolen part of the Sovereign's "heart". Celia, a vampiric warrior herself, recognised something in Venir: A vampiric mist—the bloodthirsty remnants of a vampire that failed to return to its resting place—inside him. Celia also gave him a vial of her blood, which she said was infused with the Pale Sovereign's blood back when she was resurrected.

With this knowledge and these new connections, the group said farewell and fared to the well. The water spirit in the well confirmed the sending coin had been delivered, and then it let the comrades through. One by one, they jumped in and appeared at the bottom of the well on the material plane. "Only" 22 hours having passed inside the feywild, there was no time warp. They immediately started wind walk shifting so thy could leave Fort Kernen as soon and as quickly as possible. During their transformation, a town guard name Gerhart came into the ally about to have a piss. He called other guards to the scene, and all guards were confused by the scene in front of them, but they did their best to arrest someone, anyone, while the comrades made their best attempts to convince the guards they were dark spirits or a dangerous spell of teleportation, or summoning, or at least something very dangerous. The guards managed to keep Percy restrained and brought her to a cell in the barracks. Gerhart was sent off to the the baron's mage since the guards themselves didn't understand magic, and Praxidike is a very magical magical girl. In the cell were seven other halfling women, one of which appeared exactly as Praxidike's civil persona and winked at Percy. As soon as the last guard let go of her, she flew out over his head through the door and escaped out of town (with 8 hit points).

A sending to Crocus revealed she and the gang were still safe, but Rosalina Barnspring was dead. They were in Flowerfen but will meet the comrades at the watchtower on the east border of the Divenen grounds. With a very wobbly circadian rhythm, the comrades got a long rest.

## Session 142: Goodbye Kernenvale

??, 2024

This might be the end, friends, of this very long arc. But first, some of you have to make a retroactive DC 10 Wisdom saving throw!

Will the comrades give the silver tongue to Virtue?

What will they learn by studying Larian's notes?

Is Brutus still relevant?

Will they return Buddy to life?

How will Crocus safely continue her endeavour?

And is that a DINNER INVITATION the DM has planned?

Who knows?