41. The Moonlit Isles

* The party of 5 stand on the isle known as Glassy Four, waiting for the moon to fully form and the three Moonlit Isles to appear in its light on the horizon.
	+ They opt to leave Zaratan the cat on Glassy Four, hoping it doesn't get eaten by the sea cats that are flopping around and going to sleep in the distance.
	+ Aerendyl - now wearing his autumn season in preparation for the fights ahead - casts *Darkvision* on Cormorant and ritual casts *Waterbreathing* on the group plus Pyt's imp, Jolene.
	+ Wilfred cats *Telepathic Bond* on the five of them plus Jolene.
	+ Cormorant distributes a few healing potions he has around the group.
	+ They know they need to claim the piece of shadow on each island before they can access the Night Mother's home beneath her moonlit hill on the central island. They opt to attack the left island first.
* The party sail to the leftmost of the Moonlit Isles, arriving at the shores just as the islands become fully corporeal in the moonlight.
	+ Pyt sends Jolene into the air to scout. There's some sass involved, but she sees that though the island is heavily forested, there's a large clearing in the distance. In spite of the wolf howls in the distance, the group opt to head in that direction.
	+ Clwyd leads the way, her *devil's sight* allowing her to see clearly in the dim light and darkness.
	+ The group make note that there's no wildlife in the forest.
	+ As they pass through thick, dark forest, Clwyd at the front nearly stands on a bear trap. Looking around the area, she finds a host of other traps tucked into the forest, all scaled to be targeting Medium-sized humanoids or things of that size.
	+ They slow their pace to be wary of traps, eventually coming to a small clearing - not the large one Jolene had spotted - about 30 minutes into the night's moonlight.
* In the small clearing, Pyt has Jolene turn invisible and scout the area a little, sending her over a high ridge. She spots a hulking, furred humanoid figure hiding in some brush at the same time it sniffs her out. The werewolf howls into the night and makes to attack.
	+ The fight starts suddenly. Two other werewolves emerge from trees and bushes around the party and offer surprise attacks.
	+ Cormorant is bitten by one and immediately feels an invasive, perverse, hungry force trying to invade his body, but he isn't overcome. The silvered master-forged sword Wilfred bought for him from Brokk and Sindri proves to be very effective against the lycanthropes.
	+ Wilfred is also bitten by the alpha after he leapt from the top of the ridge and crashed into Aerendyl. Again though, the gnome is not overcome by the invasive force that travels with the lycan's bites.
	+ The fight ends almost as quickly as it began. The lycans are immune to damage that isn't magical, but their fighting style proves no match for the party overall. One of the hidden wolves is quickly sent fleeing, with Clwyd leaving to give chase, fighting eldritch blasts off in its wake. After Aerendyl magically induced fear in the alpha through his *fey step* ability, and Cormorant hacked and slashed at the big wolf-man, Pyt finished it off with a *vicious mockery*.
	+ The remaining wolf howled in sorrow or rage and rushed Pyt, clawing and biting him, before being forced to retreat by the storm of attacks that came from Cormorant and Wilfred.
	+ Cormorant gave chase as it ran, eventually killing the werewolf. It tumbled back down the ravine it had been fleeing up, body transforming back into the form of a half-elf man in ragged clothes, now dead. Interestingly, the alpha had not changed from the form of a werewolf, suggesting to Wilfred that he was a True Lycanthrope, one born into the curse.
	+ Pyt started screaming, bones and body popping, form changing. Hair covered his body and his form swelled in size. Quickly, the scream turned into a howl, for Pyt had contracted lycanthropy and was now a werewolf under the light of the moon.
	+ He wasn't feeling particularly violent however. Mostly he just felt very, very hungry all of a sudden.
	+ Clwyd was forced to give up her chase on the first werewolf that had fled before she ended up too far away from the group.
* The party regroup and try to gather their thoughts now that Pyt was a werewolf.
	+ They test the waters and find that he's not likely to attack them immediately. He tells them he's super hungry and they try to get him to eat some of the rations they're carrying, only for it all to turn to ash in his mouth.
	+ Though there's some weariness towards lycan-Pyt, the group concludes that there's nothing they can do other than press on. They were under Sylvan Oath to attack this night.
	+ Aeredyl bundles the corpse of the true lycan into the portable hole.
	+ As they leave the small clearing, lycan-Pyt spares a glance at the dead half-elf and wonders if he believes in omens.
	+ Then he hears familiar music, strings played beautifully. A female voice fills the air:
	+ *My Dearest Pytinel, I’ll be honest about this, which I know will worry you: Living in this state of undeath is pretty shitty. I can’t feel like I used to, can’t enjoy your music like I used to, can’t taste the beer I pretend to drink. I also cannot bring myself to kill you, no matter how hilarious it would be. As such, I've decided to leave instead. I guess I’ll go terrorise some towns, try and entertain myself and whatever brought me back. I hope you will do something similar. Make the most of the life you have.... And if you ever do die, please let it be funny.*
	+ At the edge of the clearing, the group see a comely half-elf woman sat on a rock, lost to the spirit of the viol she was playing with abandon. Lycan-Pyt walked up to her and she quickly dispersed into nothing, as if her form was made of smoke to be carried away by the wind.
	+ Lycan-Pyt concludes that this is an awful night already.
* 15 minutes later, the party arrive at the large clearing near the middle of the left island. Up close, it's clear to see that it isn't a natural formation; the forest had been cleared to make space for a little military fort that now sat atop a hill.
	+ Clwyd casts *fly* on herself, Cormorant, and Lycan-Pyt.
	+ Aerendyl *wildshapes* into a giant spider and Wilfred climbs on his spidery back.
	+ They make to storm the camp, but a scout in one of the trees near its walls spots them crossing the clearing and sounds a horn.
	+ The occupants of the camp turn out to be darklings, nasty, sneaky fey creatures from the Gloaming Court.
	+ Clwyd takes to the sky, flies over the camp walls, and lets off a *synaptic static* into the heart of the large group of darklings that had emerged from their tents. Almost all of them die, giving off little flashes of light before their bodies turn to dust and ash.
	+ Lycan-Pyt flies up to the top of the tree and tries to eat the scouting darkling. He kills the thing, but it leaves no body behind for him to snack on and so he remains famished.
	+ Cormorant flies his way around the wall of the camp, but ends up having to do battle with another scout in a separate tree before he can make his way inside.
	+ Spider-Aerendyl scales the wall of the camp, with Wilfred clinging on tightly with his monstrous strength, relatively speaking.
	+ The camp walls thus proved no protection at all against the party. The darklings retreated to a large tent at the rear of the camp, only for Wilfred to blow it up with a *fireball*.
	+ A few stragglers emerge from the tent, including a darkling elder, near twice the height of the others and possessing greater strength to boot - though he didn't get a chance to show it before Clwyd sniped him from the air.
	+ As the darkling elder died, he left behind a small glob of pure darkness that hung in the air.
	+ Clwyd approached it and tried poking it with mage hand. Nothing happened. So she poked it with her finger and it immediately took to her, stretching thin to cover her whole form, adding depth to all the shadows on her body, darkening her skin tone, and, ever so subtly, changing her demeanour.
	+ The party check how she's feeling and she says she's fine. Still, they're worried about Weird Magic, so they agree that Wilfred would take the next piece, much to Clwyd's disapproval - she thinks they're better off keeping it all in one place where they can watch its effect easily.
* The group make to return to the shore they arrived at, the piece of shadow from the left isle claimed.
	+ As they pass through the large patch of dark forest again, they're attacked by a group of four loose shadows. Their draining touch very nearly robs Cormorant of all his strength, and Wilfred gets targeted a little as well.
	+ The group are ultimately able to persevere against the shadows, but the old pirate very nearly died from the sudden attack. He too concludes that this has been an awful night already.
	+ In the aftermath of the shadow fight, a squawking voice starts mimicking things the group are saying and the sounds they're making. Cormorant looks up and sees a fat raven perched on a tree branch, watching them. He shoots it, turning the bird into a puff of feathers and meat. Pyt tries to eat it, but is again left with lots of ash in his mouth.
	+ Cormorant worries that the Night Mother might know they're coming now.
* They make it back to the shore of the left island, 1 hour 15 minutes into the night's moonlight. They rest before making sail for the right island, with the sapped strength of Cormorant and Wilfred returning as they do so. Wilfred takes the opportunity to read his book on lycanthropy, concluding that Feverfletch might have the means they need to rid Pyt of the curse - but it would likely cost them to get it from her.
* They sail to the rightmost of the moonlit isles, and again its heavily forested.
	+ They land, fold their magic boat up, and press in.
	+ Jolene is sent to scout again, there's more sass, and she hears a large commotion off in the distance.
	+ The group press in, heading towards the sound of the conflict.
	+ They arrive to see a massive fight between a group of death dogs and shadow mastiffs, clearly two rival packs on the island. One of the shadow mastiffs is easily twice the size of all the other dogs in the area.
	+ The party attack from the tree line, with Clwyd blowing up a massive load of the dogs with the *Kiss of Mephistopheles*, centred right on the alpha shadow mastiff. Wilfred throws up a *wall of fire* between the party and the large scrum of dogs - though many were killed outright by Clwyd.
	+ The death dogs flee from the fire while the shadow mastiffs scramble to claim the piece of shadow the alpha, now dead by Clwyd's hand, had left hanging in the air. However, before they or the party can do anything about it, Clwyd charges right through Wilfred's *wall of fire* and claims the second piece of shadow for herself, further deepening the shadows about her person, the darkness of the green of her skin, etc.
	+ The party are able to clean up the remaining shadow mastiffs with little difficulty, especially since almost all of them attempt to target Clwyd but she is now easily able to slip into the darkness about the place and all but disappear.
	+ Lycan-Pyt gets one bite of a shadow mastiff Cormorant knocked out but left alive for him. But after that first mouthful, the beast is dead the next bite again turns to ash in Pyt's mouth. The fur of his jaws and chest are now stained with blood. The single bite did barely anything to sate his hunger.
* The party confront Clwyd on her taking this piece of shadow.
	+ She's defensive, saying she needed to get it before the other dogs did and ran away.
	+ Pyt, enraged, face and body hair matted with blood, makes to grab her with lycan claws, but she's too fast and too easily hides in the darkness now.
	+ Cormorant calms Pyt down, but almost catches a werewolf claw himself for his troubles.
	+ The group believe Clwyd to be lying. Wilfred even says he's more comfortable with Pyt's developments this evening that those of the goblin woman.
	+ Aerendyl, stoic as ever in his autumn season, tells the group that they need to press on - but does agree that Clwyd has complicated their situation. He then adds the corpse of the shadow mastiff alpha to the portable hole, now shrunk to regular size in the absence of the piece of shadow.
* The group make to return to the shore of the rightmost isle that they arrived on.
	+ On the way, they see a distinguished, confident tiefling of graceful middle-age. She's leaning against a thick tree trunk and looking straight at the group. Elise, just as Cormorant remembered her, though its been near a decade since he's seen her.
	+ Cormorant calls out her name as she turns and disappears behind the tree trunk.
	+ He chases after her, shouting her name, but can't find her anywhere.
	+ Just as they'd heard before, a voice fills the air. This time it's the voice of a young girl:
	+ *I'm telling you it's nice. I like it, so don't cut it too much any more. It's all feathery and black, just like one of those fisher birds in the river. I know! By the power vested in me as the ward of August McTavish, I dub you Cormorant, just like the fisher birds, because of your hair. Now that it's your name, you can't mess with it too much.*
	+ Cormorant keeps searching until Aerendyl comes up to him and says that this is just a distraction, that they need to keep moving. He almost makes it sound comforting, in his own way.
	+ The group keeps heading to the shore, and then, on the very path they walked on their way in, they see a humanoid body on the ground, face down. The roll it over and see Aerendyl staring up at them with dead eyes, looking as if he'd been violently killed. It then disappears into smoke and nothing.
	+ The group are taken aback. Aerendyl just walks on, telling them they need to keep going if they're going to finish this job before the moonlight fades.
* They make it back to the shore of the right island. Not everyone feels they need to rest and so some sail while others bandage wounds and catch their breath - heading now for the final, central island.
	+ On the middle isle, they see that this one isn't forested like the others. It's mostly a large plain, and in the distance a large hill rises up. The group make for it.
	+ Along the way, they approach and then pass a dead tree. Swinging from one of its branches is a corpse, hung to death. Its an old man dressed formally, with a powdered wig atop his head. Cormorant recognises his father. Once passed, the tree is gone when the group look back.
	+ Next they see a pair of elves, tall, fair, beautiful - and though their features are largely androgynous, they appear to be a man and woman, and Aerendyl's features can be discerned in both of them. As the party walk past, the two elves turn and kill each other with their bare hands. Again, Aerendyl tells the group to just keep walking.
	+ At the shadow of the hill, Cormorant watches himself kill Derrick again, both forms again disappearing as the party arrive.
* The moonlit hill is wreathed in shadow at its base - the same type of absolute darkness as the pieces of shadow, one that almost looks incorrect to humanoid eyes. A single path leads through the black, snaking up the hill, to the area where the shadows give out to rocks and dirt and dead trees. The path leads all the way to the top and the party walk it.
	+ On the way, they hear echoing child-like giggling around them, but it keeps moving and they can't spot its source.
	+ At the top of the path, Clwyd instinctively knows they're in the right place.
	+ A huge wizened tree rises out the hilltop. It shakes and rumbles, rising out the ground, revealing itself to be a mighty treant.
	+ From the dead trees around them, three giggling spriggans emerge or pop their heads out.
	+ The treant looks directly at Clwyd, sensing the shadows within her and she does to it. It says in a deep baritone elvish: 'You've brought a gift for me, have you, little one?'