Into the Feywild

and

Justin as the DM

"**Into the Feywild**" is the eighth episode of Rise of the Arcane, the third season of Tales From Del'nasra

With Auntie Gothel's aid the Fonkey Casuals have briefly fled to the Feywild for twenty-four hours to hide from the jabberwock and its ability to track those that it injures.

## Episode Synopsis

#### **Previously on Tales from Del'nasra**

*"Antyr continued to pilot the luminaera to the north, while presumably, Duskreaper Aelinor and his jabberwock mount, Vorpalon, Predator of the Seelie Court were hot on your tails. During the chase Hopper landed a critical hit, determined to kill the one who had slain Lord Oberon.*

*Vorpalon fired its flaming beam from its eyes, engulfing Torger in flames and causing the fey-inclined members of the party to realize that since he had been injured by the jabberwock, it could track him endlessly for twenty four hours on this plane. Roars began to echo from above in the clouds, and moments later a human figure with short brown hair, a brown beard and a blue cloak astride a young silver dragon with greyish-granite like scales slammed into the jabberwock causing both creatures to slam into the ground.*

*The silver dragon then flew upwards and towards the City of Embers, with the jabberwock and its rider following while you all witnessed a shimmering mint-green colored dome of energy encase the whole of the city in the distance.*

*Realizing Torger would be a beacon for the jabberwock, you all decided you needed to find a way to another plane of existence, so Antyr piloted the luminaera towards Auntie Gothel’s abode for an nineteen or so hour flight, with Doe swapping out and flying the vehicle for the last hour.*

*You all landed in a clearing within the Jungle of Lost Primals and Leek led the way towards his home into the jungle and off road passing by numerous, strange jungle plants, one being familiar to both Antyr and Hopper for nearly consuming them nearly a week prior. Eventually, you all arrived at Heartrot Grove, the home of Auntie Gothel. The home was a large manor reaching up to the canopy of the jungle and built atop and inside of a large tree stump and covered in colorful flowers. Surrounding the home was a large garden of exotic plants and numerous vegetables where a strange scarecrow dressed similarly to Willy Wonka kept watch and seemed to watch you all as you moved about.*

*A mossy mass rose from the garden, and you all were introduced to Auntie Gothel as the moss mass was a shawl she was wearing. She was an elderly woman who stood around nine-feet tall, had bulging yellow eyes and mottled grey skin with angular joints. She thanked you all for being friends with Leek and for bringing him home safely and invited you all inside for tea and casually flirted with Vonkar, and introduced her first husband, a strange mass with lopsided eyes, shark teeth and a big tongue that was growing on her back in the form of a hump named Glebosus.*

*Entering the home, you were met with a rustic, earthy interior decorated with straw mats, various herbs and animal skins hanging everywhere, including a chair made from animal skins. Two figures were inside, one being Auntie Gothel’s second husband, an emaciated, bald, pale eladrin with milky eyes who was missing his lower half named Rattle, as well as a plump satyr wearing a jester’s outfit made from dead fish. He seemed to recognize a few members of the party and scurried upstairs out of sight.*

*You were all given gifts for being Leek’s friends and keeping him safe as well as cups of thick gray, clumpy tea called her special tuber tea, which Grin noticed may have been harvested from a being that resembled a human strung up by their ankles outside in the backyard with numerous tubers growing out of their skin. You all mentioned that Torger had been marked by the jabberwock and needed to go to the Feywild for a while to hide out.*

*Auntie Gothel obliged and led you downstairs into the flooded basement, handed you each two handheld pies and led you towards an archway which she sang to and opened a fey crossing into the Feywild. You all stepped through, and entered a large thorny hedge maze, a familiar location to Antyr and Hopper. As you arrived in the Feywild, Auntie Gothel sent Vonkar the directions out of the maze telepathically.*

*Vonkar began leading the way out of the maze down a narrow path that stunk of old cheese, eventually coming to a large open area with a ruined windmill surrounded by unnerving looking scarecrows built around the exterior of the windmill and were placed in strange, horrifying poses.*

*Behind the windmill was a large, painted red prop door built into the walls of the hedge maze which from the directions in his mind, Vonkar realized was the exit. Not wanting to proceed without investigating the windmill, Torger approached the ruins and began looking around, just as the interior of the windmill shifted and a colossal, fifteen foot tall scarecrow emerged from the debris and began to dance a sort of jig, before screaming audibly, collapsing into junk and causing the scarecrows surrounding the windmill to eerily snap to life and sprint at you all in very jerky movements."*

#### The Episode

A fight with the strange scarecrows broke out with them pulling crude sickles from their clothes and wildly slashing away. Torger started the offensive, and fought two of them simultaneously, blocking their blows and pushing them out of his way. One of the scarecrows glared at Leek, paralyzing him with fear while Antyr and Hopper charged forward to engage with a pair of them at the base of the windmill.

During this altercation, The Creep conjured a sphere of darkness atop the two scarecrows, Antyr and Hopper which caused numerous attacks to swing wild, resulting in Antyr losing a good portion of their hair, and with them burning Hopper with their radiant breath from their *Cosmic Fury* spell. Torger continued to engage with the scarecrows and push them around, while Vonkar enlarged himself to fifteen feet tall and pulled the now collapsing windmill down to the ground.

The scarecrows were eventually all dispatched, and the Fonkey Casuals continued through a prop-like painted red door that was revealed to be the exit of this strange hedge maze. On the opposite side, they all met with a strange wolf/spider hybrid creature dwelling within a stump. This figure introduced himself as Hatrick and mentioned that he was a tollkeeper of sorts and for a secret told unto him, he would grant them a lantern filled with glowing worms that would have a chance to keep the King of the woods at bay. Vonkar, Torger, Antyr and Grin each told him a secret and acquired lanterns to help navigate the so-called Verminwood that lay beyond.

Not long into the travel, they could hear something large approaching from the woods with the sounds of rodent like squeaking alongside it. As everyone was concealed by The Creep's Darkness spell, Antyr was able to see the approaching entity through the eyes of Endylus. Approaching from the woods was a colossal, fifteen-foot tall pale, hairless rat covered in tumors and a cloak of writhing, tangled rats similar to a rat king. This cloak was scooping up any small animals along the way and consuming them, leaving behind skeletons. As this entity crawled off, the party theorized that may have been the king that Hatrick was speaking of and quickly continued on their way down the road.

Another hour passed, and the sounds of the rat-being grew closer again, and having arrived at a fork in the road, the group decided to head towards the hamlet of Thistledale and bypass the road leading towards an abandoned carnival that seemed to try and entice them with the smell of kettlecorn on the wind. Eventually, they arrived in the hamlet of Thistledale an hour later and were surprised to see it inhabited entirely by scarecrow-like creatures with jack-o-lanterns for heads. They were approached by the town crier, Griefen who introduced himself and asked if the party were there to celebrate the Immolation, a nightly celebration to honour a figure called 'The Father'. The party mentioned they were just looking for somewhere to relax, like an inn or a tavern, but Griefen mentioned that nobody in the hamlet had need for such things, so there weren't any. He mentioned they could go speak with the Mayor and he could potentially sort them out, and so they all made their way towards the Mayor's home.

#### After the Break

They made their way to the Mayor's house and seemed to interrupt a conversation he was having with some scarecrow children who ran off laughing and screaming. The group asked if the Mayor would be able to provide accommodations and he mentioned there was an abandoned home on the other end of the hamlet that had belonged to one of the elder's who had passed away recently. He inquired if the party were curious in taking part in the immolation, and that he would happily provide them accommodations if they took part since they rarely had guests, and he thought it would provide some "greater experience" for the children to interact and see how people from other realms behave. He also brought up that sometimes the elders of the village choose to offer themselves up during the ceremony to be at peace and be reunited with The Father.

He mentioned that if they didn't have anything they wished to offer up during the ceremony they could visit Dreamwalker Somnius and he would be able to make a tangible object from a dream or a nightmare that each of them have had in the past. Curious about seeing how this worked, the group headed towards Somnius' home while Mayor Harveston began preparations for the ceremony.

As they approached the residence of Somnius, they were beckoned inside and upon entering found themselves in an empty living area aside from a single wooden table. Sat behind this table was a scarecrow with a crimson colored jack-o-lantern for a head and wearing a hooded, dark shawl. The room began to fill with a green mist and screams and yells could be heard before the mist coalesced onto the table as a wicker doll impaled with nails. Somnius mentioned this was an example and was curious who would be first in gaining a tangible trinket from their dreams.

Torger was the first, with his dream manifesting for all to see as him in a third-person perspective standing on a lake of ice and having friendly conversations with cartoon creatures frozen under the ice. During these conversations the figures burst out from the ice and continued to laugh and chat with Torger. As the dream faded, the mists coalesced into a hunk of ice with a cartoon spider on the inside.

Hopper stepped up next, with his dream manifesting as somewhere in the Feywild as they approached a crooked house with a water wheel. The dream seemed to be in the first person and it ended as a young, child harengon rushed towards Hopper. As this dream ended, the mists coalesced into that of a doll house reminiscent of the one in Hopper's dream, including a family of harengon dolls. Grin's dream was next, and was a pretty simple dream that mainly consisted of a disembodied pair of mismatched teeth telling Grin that they were proud of him, before the dream manifested as that pair of teeth.

Excited about his friends having their dreams made real, Leek stepped forward but instead of a dream, a nightmare began to manifest that showed a village in a jungle with similar terrain to Auntie Gothel's on fire. The perspective of the dream seemed to originate from a halfling child tied to a stake looking out over the burning village and seeing these strange individuals obscured by smoke and flames burning the village, as well as a pair of adult halflings who had been bound and gagged and forced to look in the direction of this child. The dream ended with the child being burned at the stake and the nightmare manifested as a melted tin solider toy. As this nightmare ended Leek just stared blankly at the toy, as if they had mentally shut down.

Seeing this, Antyr decided to step forward next and just like Leek, a nightmare had begun to manifest. This nightmare was the inside of a crooked stone tower in the middle of a glacier. A person was staring into an empty, cold stone fireplace before they looked into a small hand mirror and they saw their reflection which appeared to be a very elderly and decrepit Antyr. The nightmare ended and manifested as a clock in the form of the tower, but the clock hands seemed to move much slower than a normal clock should.

Finally, The Creep offered up their dreams and or nightmares, mentally telling Somnius that they took some form of pleasure in both. Something began to manifest, and it was difficult to decipher other than a dark figure in the shadows that seemed to radiate both pain and pleasure at the same time. This dream manifested in the form of an emerald green glass eye, and as this whole ordeal concluded, Somnius thanked them for their patronage and disappeared into the shadows causing everything else inside to vanish as well, leaving the party in an empty building and had realized that much like in dreams, a good chunk of time had passed and that outside the ceremony was beginning.

Stepping outside, the party saw scarecrow children dancing about the base of the wicker statue known as The Father as adults began placing offerings inside the statue as well as weaving flame-like flowers around the exterior and interior. Three of the children approached the group, handing them costumes, before the group made way towards the statue to offer up their belongings, and watched as an elderly scarecrow named Cobblesage offered himself up and bound himself to the statue.

Vonkar offered up his old bedroll explaining that he no longer had a need for it due in part to the Slumber Pod he was given by Antyr. Doe offered up a copper coin, Antyr offered up the book given to him by Arthur Wordweave titled "Vampires & Forgotten Lust". Hopper took one of the adult dolls from the dollhouse that had manifested for them and offered that up. Leek quickly offered up the melted tin soldier, seeming to still be in some sort of state, which Hopper noticed and stood in front of them, albeit being too short to block Leek's vision of the soon to be immolation. Grin, not wanting The Creep to get his hands of the Headcage of Agony gifted to him by Auntie Gothel chose to offer that up, while The Creep offered up the emerald glass eye that had manifested with Dreamwalker Somnius and finally, Torger offered up his offering and with that the ceremony had begun.

Mayor Harveston offered one of the group the chance to light the statue ablaze, which Antyr accepted and as soon as the wicker statue burned people began to dance, laugh and cry with happiness and joy, even Cobblesage who was burning with the statue. However, a figure seemed to manifest within the roaring a flames, a figure with obsidian skin, malevolent green eyes, and a crown of six horns amidst black hair, a figure that Torger seemed to recognize from his brawl in the fighting pit when Brace had died. This figure blew against the wicker statue causing the flames to switch to a malevolent green colour and blow off from the statue and begin catching the surrounding buildings and people on fire.

People in the crowd began shouting with confusion that this wasn't The Father, and the figure spoke aloud to the crowd, "I live for the moment when I can turn something pure into something perverse."

## Featured Characters

### Player Characters

* Antyr Xiloscient
	+ Endylus
* Doe
* Hopper Thimblefoot
* Leek
* The Creep
	+ Grin
* Torger Otrson
* Vonkar Eldsaga

### Returning

* Auntie Gothel (via Sending)
* The Archmaw (via a dream)
* Graz'zt

### New

* Barrel, a scarecrow child costume maker in Thistledale
* Cobblesage, a scarecrow elder who offers himself during the Immolation
* Hatrick, the fey-like wolf/spider hybrid tollkeeper of the Verminwood
* Crier Griefen, the scaretown town crier of Thistledale
* Mayor Harveston, the scarecrow mayor of Thistledale
* Lock, a scarecrow child costume maker in Thistledale
* Shock, a scarecrow child costume maker in Thistledale
* Somnius, the dreamwalking scarecrow of Thistledale

### Mentioned

* Arthur Wordweave
* Beiro Peshan
* Duskreaper Aelinor
* The Father
* Lord Oberon
* Queen Titania