Eldermourne Episode 1: The Reaping Season

**The Reaping Season** is the first episode of campaign 2.

Welcome to Eldermourne! Fia Boginya (Emily Axford) investigates a strange incident in the woods, Zirk Vervain (Caldwell Tanner) has a run-in with a local gang, and Henry Hogfish (Jake Hurwitz) puts his dukes up.

## Plot Synopsis

The first episode of Eldermourne opens on Fia Boginya standing in the woods of Thornkirk outside her train-car house, searching for her lost bestiary, Volk. Since the local faeriefolk often steal her spellbooks, she's used to having to look for them, while her spellbook familiar, Bukvar, is quite nervous. As Fia looks around (smoking a cigar, of course, much to Bukvar's chagrin) she happens upon the footprints of a horse surrounded by dead sprites. Sprites are weakened by horrors, but she's never seen them drop dead simply by being in the presence of one. She finds her bestiary ripped in half and completely deanimated, casting Mending on it to revitalize it. After Volk returns to Fia's book belt, she catches sight of a figure atop a horse ringing a bell, which she knows is used to ward off faeries. A needleblight then jumps out of the bushes, but Fia is able to quickly cut it in half as the figure on the horse disappears. Fia then recalls that her mentor, Bathilda, followed a figure on a dark horse into the woods and begins to speculate what that may mean.

Across town, Zirk Vervain is deep in the basement of Dr. Alouicious Nebble's House of Health assisting his mentor, Dr. Nebble, in an autopsy. Nebble asks Zirk to perform the autopsy by himself as he's preparing to leave to go visit a friend. As Zirk looks at the body on the table, he discovers that it's been cut neatly in half, and the wound looks to be neatly cauterized as if by magic or heat. Zirk immediately theorizes that it was a bear with very hot claws. Nebble asks Zirk for a favor, as two members of the local crime family the Rooks are set to accompany him to the boat so that he can leave to go visit his friend, and Nebble wants Zirk to make sure that whoever the Rooks have to knock out to get him out of town safely are healed and taken care of. Zirk readily agrees, and follows Nebble to the docks.

Also on his way to the docks is Henry Hogfish, who is an extremely sad man. On his way to work the night shift at the docks, he catches sight of a wedding party at the local tavern, the Copper Dagger, and looks on wistfully. As he looks into the tavern, he feels a presence over his shoulder, though it turns out it's just his shadow. He sighs and moves on, heading towards one of the smaller docks for his shift. When Henry works at nights, he's generally assigned a guard to protect him, though tonight his guard is a young man named Willie in crisp, brand-new armor emblazoned with the symbol of a rose. He notices that a boat is arriving when there’s nothing scheduled, but dismisses it, though he goes to talk to the man steering it anyways. Once outside, Henry and the guard are quickly ambushed by two members of the Rooks and both fall asleep under the influence of some sort of sleep magic or gas.

Zirk, who has been following the Rooks, sees this and goes to help the two men who were knocked out. Following a brief chat with the two Rooks (whose names are Syb and Fergus) Zirk tells them his name is Zonk Verbena and a fight ensues, which Zirk promptly loses. A few minutes later, Fia approaches and sees the three men hogtied and hidden within a bush. Zirk has a note on his back reading “We know who you are, doctor boy. You owe us. - Syb” and is clearly beaten up, whereas Henry and the guard are simply sleeping. She heals Zirk and wakes up Henry and the young guard, Willie, who quickly says that they need to go report this to the town watch. Henry isn’t thrilled about this idea, and as Willie runs off, the three of them take off following him and attempting to get him to stop before he can rat them all out for being there.

Once the four of them reach the tower belonging to the town watch, they begin speaking with a guard out front who they quickly realize has been stabbed through with his own sword and is no longer living. Fia clocks that all of the sprites in his gas lamp are dead and notes that it must be the same horror she saw earlier. Willie runs away, but the three others continue up the tower and find another dead body with a wound that looks to be cauterized similarly to the one back in Nebble’s office. They also find a flock of dead ravens with a body nearby that looked like it was trying to hide. The body is carrying a note that reads, “Nebble, do not get on the boat. We have been compromised” and as Fia reads the note aloud, Zirk goes to the window to see a figure down at the docks swinging a large arcane scythe at the sailors down there. The figure looks like a man with a rotting face and carries the bell Fia heard earlier, and as the three of them watch, the figure cuts Dr. Nebble down in one swipe, but not before he’s able to throw something into the water.

As this happens, the ravens suddenly reanimate, as do the bodies in the guard tower, and Fia, Zirk, and Henry are thrown into their first fight together. While they start off battling just zombies and zombified ravens, a malicious shadow soon joins the fray, and it takes a few rounds of combat for the three of them to finally defeat all of the enemies. Henry is revealed to be extremely vascular but with very little muscle, though he’s skilled with a halberd. After the fight, the three of them go to the docks to see that Nebble’s body has disappeared, but recalling that he dropped something into the water, Fia and Henry dive in to go find it, and Fia is able to find a dead sprite floating atop a large tome. The book’s title is written in Sylvan and reads, “Guardians of the Grove” and looks similar to a book Bathilda, Fia’s mentor, once had, meaning that Nebble was either a Blade (horror hunter) or closely associated with them.

## Quotes

* "I light you on fire ONCE!" - Fia Boginya to Bukvar
* "Let's go commit a minor crime!" - Zirk Vervain
* "People like to get tied up for many different reasons, Bukvar." - Fia Boginya
* "If you can make one thing go my way tonight, I will be your friend forever." - Henry Hogfish

## Trivia

* There are only two Bahumia characters referenced in the first episode of Eldermourne: Beverly Toegold V and Yugo.

## Music/Sound Effects

* "Horror Tension Builder" by original\_sound at Freesound.org.
* "Fia" by Emily Axford.
* "Zirk" by Emily Axford.
* "Henry" by Emily Axford.
* "Eldermourne" by Emily Axford.
* "Oh, Melora!" by Emily Axford.
* "The Posse" by Emily Axford.
* "The Purge" by Emily Axford.
* "Unknown Tome" by Emily Axford.
* "Sumpin's a Mess Out West" by Emily Axford.
* "The Whisperwood" by Emily Axford.
* "Langston" by Emily Axford.
* "A Fate Refused" by Emily Axford.

## External Links

* Headgum
* Spotify
* NADDPOD Subreddit Thread