Aerois - Episode 130: The Centaur's Tears

Katie Morrison as Aila

 Kim Richards as Nova V'ger

Tom Hazell as Qillek Ad Khollar

**The Centaur's Tears** is the 130th episode of the Aerois Campaign. It was broadcast live on both the Yogscast Twitch channel and highrollersdnd Twitch channel on 14th November 2021 from 5PM to 8PM GMT.

*The Stormchasers and friends are still navigating this soggy swamp...but there's more than just them lurking in the shadows...*

## **Summary**

### **Announcements**

* Mark welcomes everyone and introduces the players.
* Rhiannon is away this week at a wedding.
* Katie’s birthday was yesterday.
* The sponsor this week is D&D Beyond.
* High Rollers will be getting their own studio from December 1 2021! They will be unlikely to be streaming from the new studio until at least January because of the need to do set up, the holidays, commitment to the Jingle Jam, and so on.
* To make future streams as good as possible, they will also need to get a lot of new equipment, and in order to fund some of this, High Rollers will be doing a fundraising stream on Saturday 20th November from 12pm-12am BST. There will be one-shots, battle royale, nail painting, video games, party games and a Q&A. All funds will go towards buying better equipment such as: cameras, audio equipment, a fancy map cam, mood lighting that Trott can control, and cool décor (like a fancy custom-built table, backgrounds, etc.).
* Thanks to the patrons on Patreon who have made this possible in the first place – everyone who wants to support HR to keep growing and doing more with the studio is encouraged to support HR on the Patreon. Mark suggested that to celebrate the Patreon supporters and those who contribute to the fund raiser, they will have a physical book kept in the studio (made to look like an ancient tome) that they may call the Book of Champions: in this book they will write the names of all Patreon supporters and big supporters of the fund raiser so that they will always be remembered and a living part of the studio history.
* The studio should mean that High Rollers can put out more content: board gaming nights, war gaming, cool group chats, more RPG stuff and so on.
* There will be new posts to the Patreon showing goal changes, updates, videos and other special highlights.
* Merch: New dice and dice mat (500 sets, incorrectly showing as sold out on the UK store), new Siaska limited edition pin, re-release of Starbane pin, new and improved High Rollers Christmas jumper.
* Mark used fan art to make custom tokens for today's battle map: Thalia's art was made by aestivalor (from the HR Discord) and Rosemeadow's art was made by Autumn-AL (@EZombieart on Twitter). These were mentioned at the end of the stream.

### **Recap**

*"Our heroes have travelled to the Feywild, AKA Lunaria, to aid their friends, Thalia and Rosemeadow. As Thalia’s curse seems to have time to spare, the party have decided to investigate a tale of a Centaur family trapped in a mysterious forest, haunted by two powerful spirits created by Xarkira, in the hopes that they may be Rosemeadow’s family and may have answers about the strange girl they have come to know. To reach the Black Stallion Woods, the party must cross a large area of swamp called “Yon Fen” by the Feywild locals – an erratic water level, some poor skill checks, and a desire not to get too wet has caused the party a few delays, and not much progress has been made thus far.* *As night falls across Yon Fen, a thick black of night shrouds everything in its malicious gloom. The lazy willows and swamp trees soon look like colossal shades and swaying shadows, whilst the long grasses and reeds that protrude from the water appear submerged skeletons, grasping for all that draws near. Ahead, the party have spied a field of bubbling mucous gas bubbles with a strong odour, and their path lies beyond it."*
### **Part 1**

*The party are haunted by creatures of the night while floating through a swamp at night!*

It is evening, and pitch black in the swamp. The party has been on the move for 16-17 hours including the time that it has taken them to build the raft. Most of the party is fine, despite the long hours spent travelling, but Rosemeadow, Kyrie and Big Cat are somewhat exhausted after their very long day. With a couple of the party not being able to see very far in the darkness, Quill casts *light* on his staff and Lucius summons some *dancing lights* to cut through the gloom. The dancing lights make the swamp seem even more ominous as the coloured lights drift over the water and through the gases rising from the swamp, throwing long, and moving shadows from the tree roots and vines that surround them.

They decide to pop a gas bubble as far away from the raft as possible, with Nova *eldritch blasting* one – there is a release of coloured gas 10 feet around the burst bubble and a sound of creaking wood somewhere from in front of them. Nova is concerned that the noise and light that they are creating will mark them as a target for something, and Thalia agrees, saying that “The nerd is correct”. They believe that they are going to have to try to avoid the bubbles, but because the raft is unwieldy and hard to manoeuvre, they will either have to pop the bubbles well before they get close or try to slip past them without bursting them. Nova bursts the bubble closest to the raft and Quill uses *gust* to blow the toxic gas away before it can affect Aila.

Quill suggests that they use a quieter way of bursting the bubbles than *eldritch blast*, such as with sticks or stones. Lucius starts to scout ahead, using the magical water walking ability granted by the Stormcaller Chain that he wears: he sees a dense layer of fog that is settling on the marsh up ahead. As he is on edge and expecting something, he just manages to hear what sounds like a paddle or something sloshing and being dragged through the water – he rushes back to the safety of the raft and his friends to tell them that there is something skulking in the water. Aila pops a bubble to the north and ahead of the raft using her bow and arrow. As they move forward, more fog begins to appear around the raft and obscures their vision of the area ahead – Quill hears the noise of something moving in the water dead ahead as well as the sucking sound of something being pulled out of the mud; he can also hear the very faint buzzing of insects from the same direction.

The fog seems to drift in behind them, almost as if it is boxing them in. Lucius, a few steps ahead of the raft to assist with its navigation, sees the shape of a creature obscured in the fog: it looks like a giant, hunch-backed, shroud-covered figure with impossibly long limbs and long, haunting cloaked faces (like it is wearing an executioner’s hood that is part of its body and draping down past its shoulders). Lucius tries to remain quiet but moves noisily and the creature starts to move towards the lights, looking in his direction – all he can hear is the noise of the long limbs in the water and the faint droning sound. Lucius is startled and his *dancing lights* disappear – as does the creature, back into the mist: Lucius clambers back up onto the raft, rambling about the horrible creature in the fog.

Lucius summons more *dancing lights*, but the creature has gone, and Quill cannot hear it over a panicked Lucius whispering desperately at him about his concerns. Lucius gets a grip on himself and pops a bubble to the south of them with a *chromatic orb*, hoping to distract any creature that might be looking for them, and they keep moving north on the raft: Lucius sends his *dancing lights* fore and aft of the raft and they illuminate a large shape in the fog. Covering its face is a meshwork of fibres and flying in and out of it are insects: it turns to look at them as Quill hears the movement of another two of the creatures behind them. Nova produces a *wall of light,* doing radiant damage and blinding the creature to the east: the wall illuminates the creature properly for the first time and they see a creature holding stilts in its hands with more attached to its legs, its hunched, muscular body is cloaked with moss and vines, and it wears a wicker beehive on its head.

Aila moves to one of the creatures behind them, rages and hits it twice, eliciting a torrent of foreign speech from it as Aila’s lightning attack catches the creature’s cloak on fire – the creature discards its camouflage cloak, revealing a misshapen, muscular, ochre-skinned body with scraggly white hair falling out from under the beehive covering its head. The creature has powerful-looking arms and yet still looks elderly – it is a strange-looking being. Another moves from in front of them towards the raft – Quill attacks it with *shocking grasp,* and it makes a raspy comment in Sylvan that none of them understands. It manages to scoop Quill up between its giant stilts and pulls Quill into its chest giving him a *crushing hug* damaging and grappling him. Sentry tries to free Quill but fails in the attempt. The stilt walker on Aila speaks a word and a cone of bees fly out to attack her before it tries to hit her twice with its stilts. A fourth, previously hidden stilt walker runs up to Sentry and attacks her with its bees before missing with its stilt attacks. The other stilt walker behind the raft rushes up to Thalia, grabs her in a *crushing hug* and tries to run off with her as its potential meal. Thalia manages to shoot her way out of the grapple and stands her ground.

Lucius attempts to *dominate monster* on the creature attacking Thalia, but its mind is so chaotic, filled with hatred and hunger that he cannot grasp it: he hears back, “No boy, no control for you!” Big Cat, seeing Thalia in danger, flails wildly at the creature but misses. Nova uses some of the *wall of light* against the creature attacking Thalia, breaking part of the beehive off its face revealing a stung, swollen face and a staring giant bug eye. Aila attacks her target, killing it with two mighty blows, then moves to the creature holding Quill who fails to escape the grapple. Quill gets crushed again and the creature attempts to run off with him; Aila and Sentry manage to attack and kill it before it can escape, however, resulting in Quill being thrown into the water of the swamp.

Sentry attacks the second creature in front of the raft, dealing significant damage to it: the creature on Thalia grabs her again, crushing her and runs off with her again into the mist. The other creature grabs Quill and runs off with him. Thalia fails to escape from the grapple on her. Lucius, seeing his friends being taken in two different directions, throws a twinned acidic *chromatic orb,* injuring the creature holding Thalia, and destroys the stilt walker (that is now clearly seen to be a hag) that had Quill. Thalia’s hag continues on, sloshing through the swamp and heading for the protection of the mist.

### **Part 2**

*Thalia has been taken by one of the swamp creatures and the team encounter an almost certainly trapped house!*

An exhausted Big Cat races after the Hag that has Thalia captive, but bogged down by the mud, is not able to get near it. Nova casts *misty step* using the amulet that Thalia has given her then runs desperately towards the kidnapper – she lashes out with Tiangong and *green flame blade* but while the flame burns the cloak away revealing the Hag underneath, it does not kill the creature. The Hag, realising that it has picked a fight with the wrong people, seemingly now just wants to escape with its prey; Nova screams in panic at it to get away from Thalia, but Aila finishes the Hag off by throwing her hammer at it and crushing it with a mighty lightning-infused blow. A sodden Quill makes his way back to the raft while Nova and Thalia, her ribs crushed and possibly broken, deal with a worried and attentive Big Cat.

Quill heals the injured, Thalia is wet shivering in the cold of the evening, while Kyrie, Big Cat and Rosemeadow are barely able to stay awake: they are not in a good way. Aila suggests that the latter three nap while they keep the raft moving; they swap tasks and maintain their momentum while the tide is high. After an hour, however, the water level drops, leaving the raft stuck in the mud and amongst the tree roots once more. Quill and Aila search for dry ground on which they can rest but realising that there is none, they notice that the interlacing tree canopy could be used instead as a dry place to rest. After an hour or so, they manage to get everyone (including Rosemeadow) into the trees and Thalia opines that she should probably get some armour now that she no longer has the tough hide of the Medusa. Quill estimates that they have travelled approximately 17 miles, leaving them 13 miles still to travel to cross the swamp: so far, it has taken them 19 hours, and they are going to have to take a longer rest than usual to recover from their recent encounter (10-11 hours). Thalia suggests that they rid themselves of the raft and just slog through the swamp on foot. Everyone manages to take a long, but uncomfortable, rest.

When they wake in the morning, it is low tide, and the raft is stuck in the mud. Aila drags it free, and then pulls them along for two hours through the sticky, smelly quagmire. After two hours, the tide rises again, and they continue on the raft. After travelling for another 2-3 hours, Quill hears what sounds like an army, hundreds of heavy feet, splashing through the swamp: he can even see ripples in the water from the ground vibrations created by the movement of whatever the thing is. Lucius suggests they hide in the trees, but Rosemeadow thinks that it may be difficult to get her back into the trees in time – Kyrie offers to scout from the trees and promises to stay out of sight. Nova casts *invisibility* on Kyrie, Sentry, Rosemeadow, and herself; the rest climb up into the trees to hide.

Because the trees are so thick, they cannot see anything, but the trees are quivering, and the ground is shaking - they hear what sounds like hundreds of armour-clad feet stomping on the ground. They suddenly hear the flapping of wings – it is Kyrie, and she reports finding a two-storey house on hundreds of legs that is moving in the same direction they are currently, she says it looks like an inn and has a sign out the front. Lucius thinks that they should investigate since Kyrie says that not only is it moving in the same direction they are going, but also that the water and the swamp does not seem to slow it down – Thalia urges caution, suggesting that it could be a Hag or mimic trying to lure travellers in. Thalia has never heard of anything like this inn, but she is automatically distrustful of anything like this in the Feywild – she has heard stories of a witch’s travelling hut, shapeshifters, but says that it also could be legitimate. Rosemeadow is keen to investigate, thinking that they could have a good hot meal and that a warm fire would be welcome given their recent travels through the swamp, and given that they still have six miles to travel: Quill is suspicious of the inn, concerned that it will try to eat him.

Lucius casts *fly* on himself and a still invisible Sentry and with Quill they leave the rest of the party to investigate – they fly 20-30 minutes north of where the raft is and see a wood and stone tavern with 50 legs sticking out the bottom of it, walking the tavern through the swamp. There is a sign out the front of the tavern which depicts a house with lots of legs and the name “The Fifty Feet Inn”. As they watch, the inn stops moving and the legs bend at the knees to lower it to the ground – the front door opens to reveal a male Gnome with a long curly beard and a red pointed hat; he drunkenly comes down the stairs, bows and says something into the inn before pulling out a pipe and heading out into the swamp. Lucius waves him down and he introduces himself as Twiddlesticks of Yon Fen, a frequent visitor to the Fifty Foot Inn – he tells them that the Inn has served the people of Yon Fen for generations, that Sue will let anyone in as a guest, and that they should avail themselves of the delicious swamp hare stew or mushroom soup. He tells them that the inn will stop and stay stationery for 10 minutes and will then be on the move again – while it is possible to enter while it is on the move, it is far more difficult than when it is at a dead stop – the inn stops every hour or so.

They send Kyrie back to gather the others and bring them to the inn while Lucius and Sentry go to investigate the inside – Lucius peers through the glass window in the front door and sees a cozy pub with a fireplace. He pushes open the front door, setting a small bell to ringing and is immediately hit by the smell of stew, fresh bread, and a light floral smell – the pub itself is worn and homely, but is well lit with lanterns and natural light from the windows – it appears to be empty. When he walks in the door, Lucius sees a Human woman with long brown hair tied up and decorated with various carved wooden ornaments, tattoos of flowers travel from her neck up onto her cheeks, and she wears the outfit of an ordinary bar maiden. She is surprised to see Lucius and recognises that he is a new face in the inn and tells him that the inn will be leaving soon. Lucius tells her that he is getting his friends to come to the inn and asks if she can delay their departure until they get there, but the woman says that she has no control over the movement of the inn and guesses that Lucius is not a local, possibly being from off-world.

The woman offers them food and drink, telling them that it is a little more expensive than they might usually find because of the nature of the inn and the difficulty getting supplies. The inn, she says, does not have a planned route, just tends to wander around the fen, and for now at least, it is heading north – if it starts to head in a direction they don’t want to go, they are able to leave the inn at any time. The inn is now empty given that Twiddlesticks was her only customer, so they take a seat at one of the tables and peruse the menu: everything costs about ten times what it would on Aerois (an ale is 1 gold instead of 1 silver piece). The woman retreats to the kitchen and Lucius is left watching the door and fretting over whether his friends will make it to the inn in time.

Kyrie returns to the group, telling them that everything is safe because Quill thinks it unlikely that something would try to tempt them in with dishes that sound less than appealing (like swamp hare soup). Nova is befuddled, wondering if it is swamp hare soup or swamp hair soup, Kyrie says that the rest of the group went into the inn and that they have to leave before the inn gets up and leaves. Nova thinks they need to leave immediately, either to rescue their friends or to take advantage of the opportunity: Rosemeadow is excited, imagining cakes and other lovely things, but Nova asks her to stay quiet while they try to work out what is happening. Quill, meanwhile, is flying around the outside of the tavern trying to look through windows to establish if the inn is what it appears to be – he looks to see if he can still see the Gnome who left the tavern, but he has disappeared.

Lucius and Sentry are sitting in a booth inside the tavern – Lucius realises that Sentry is no longer invisible, although Sentry does not realise it until Lucius points it out: Lucius tries magic, which works, and wonders if there is some security on the door. When he looks around, the barkeep is suddenly behind him and she tells Lucius that she does not allow invisible creatures in the tavern so there is magic on the door to cancel invisibility, illusions and other mischievous magics – she also says that charms and enchantments are not allowed in the tavern. Lucius gets a juice for himself and the rest of the crew while he waits for his friends and orders a bowl of milk or cream for Big Cat when he appears: this sets them back 7 gold. Lucius has forgotten to order Sentry a warm plate, but she says that she will wait until the next round for that.

The raft crew (half invisible and half visible) bicker amongst themselves as they make their way slowly towards the inn. As they get to a clearing, they see what appears to be a house which very quickly starts to stand up on legs that had been folded beneath it and it slowly begins to move and pick up speed – Quill is still outside, waiting for the group and he messages them to hurry. Lucius feels an initial movement of the tavern moving despite the fact that there is no obvious movement of anything inside – he moves to a window and sees Aila desperately poling the raft to try to catch up, gesturing urgently at her and Quill (whom he now sees outside the window) to get inside. Quill urges Nova to cast *dimension door* to get them all to the inn, but she instead casts fly on Big Cat, Thalia, and herself, leaving Aila to fly across using her hammer: Kyrie can already fly. Invisibility drops and they fly over urgently, entering as the tavern starts to pick up the pace: Big Cat is thrilled with his bowl of cream which Nova is concerned may cost them something until it is pointed out that they have paid for it already. Lucius asks them to relax, but the rest of them are sceptical and worried about whether the inn is too good to be true. The barkeep, Sue, tells them a bit about the inn, including that while it has 50 feet, it is also a 50-foot square- she tells them that she runs the inn, but does not own it, that the house does not really speak, but that she knows what it is doing telepathically, and that she inherited it many years ago from the former proprietor.

While they are chatting with Sue, Nova makes the sudden realisation that there are only eight of them present, but that there are nine in the party – they have forgotten Rosemeadow on the raft. Knowing that the inn will not stop, Nova immediately leaves the inn and can see a white figure on a raft in the far distance pushing the raft along. Nova leaves immediately, going back to the raft, and apologises profusely to Rosemeadow – Rosemeadow lifts her head and is sobbing as she poles the raft, thinking that her friends had abandoned her because she had brought them to a horrible swamp. Nova insists that it was her fault, being distracted and rushed and apologising over and over again, promising to buy Rosemeadow “all the cake” if she will stop crying. Rosemeadow is inconsolable: Nova casts fly on Rosemeadow who goes absolutely silent as they make their way back to the inn. Nova babbles unintelligibly as they enter, Rosemeadow enters with her hands over her eyes, goes straight to a corner and sits down faced away from everyone else, hiccupping occasionally through her tears. Sentry immediately goes to her side, starts stroking and soothing her, trying to console her – Rosemeadow thinks that they hate her and abandoned her because she is useless, and she feels awful. Sue comes out, sees what is happening, turns straight around and goes back into her kitchen without a word.

## **YouTube Timestamps**

0:00 - Intro
14:25 - Part 1
 1:24:48 - Break time/donations
1:32:20 - Part 2
 2:40:00 Outro/Donations

## **Featured Characters**

#### **The Stormchasers (Player Characters)**

* Aila
* Nova V'ger
* Lucius Virion-Elluin Elenasto
* Qillek Ad Khollar
* Sentry

#### **New NPCs**

* Twiddlesticks (Gnome visitor from the Fifty Foot Inn, wandering traveller)
* Sue (The Barmaid from The Fifty Foot Inn)

#### **Returning NPCs**

* Thalia
* Rosemeadow
* Kyrie
* Big Cat

## **Featured Locations**

* Lunaria
	+ Yon Fen
	+ The Fifty Foot Inn

## **Trivia**

* Mark describes the stilt walkers in the swamp as looking like “a Dark Souls monster”: Tom imagined that they looked like Gravelord Nito.
* The stilt walker’s crushing hug ability does 9d6+5 damage.
* In the battle with the Hags, Aila intercepted one that had planned to snatch Kyrie and run off. Their plan was to target the weakest people in the group and steal away with them.
* Nova is the “first person to make Rosemeadow cry” says Mark (before he says that she has cried before, but he likes running it in with Kim).
* While Mark may not have noticed that they had left Rosemeadow behind in the moment, he said that he would have realised by next episode, and that it would have been a whole lot worse and would have seen if the Hags came back.