Expedition 148: The Last Visit to Ferroc

**Expedition 148:** *The Last Visit to Ferroc*

**Date:** 14th of Monova

**Roster:** Bea'savac, Clarity Callisto, Ranag Uln, Valorie Vayer

##### *Introductions*

*If you comprehend this warning, you are familiar with the Feywardens’ Cipher and are presumably Trustworthy. If you are not Trustworthy or do not know what it means to be so, stop reading at once, or you will be subject to the authority of the Author.*

*For those who are Trustworthy, I am obligated to remind you of the standards for handling all information in this book:*

1. *No sensitive information protected by the Feywardens’ Cipher may be communicated in any public channel.*
2. *No sensitive information may be communicated privately except to serve the interests of the Trustworthy, to maintain the peace of the Fey, or to protect lives or freedoms.*
3. *The Feywardens’ Cipher’s construction may not be disclosed in any way whatsoever without my explicit permission.*

*This text, in addition to being a commercially successful self-help book, provides a general overview of Fey’s nature, powers, and social structures. It offers guidance on how to safely negotiate with or stymie Fey without upsetting them. The Fey are irrational and dangerous when riled, but with focus and clear thinking, they can be dealt with calmly for years or decades without incident.*

*The Fey are subject to byzantine laws and possess variegated powers that defy clean categorization. This book is not a comprehensive guide to what Fey can and cannot do. It does not propose the best solutions for all problems Fey can create. No statement of ‘fact’ in it should be taken as absolutely true, except this one: you will never fully understand the Fey. Thinking that you can will only lead you to make costly mistakes.*

*What this book offers, instead, is a set of strategies taught through true examples. These tactics will not make engaging with Fey risk-free, but they will let you set more of the terms of engagement with Fey. These strategies can be summarized as:*

1. *Search for a Fey’s emotional core*
2. *Manage Fey, don’t change them*
3. *Be patient and let points go*
4. *Keep conscious of your commitments*
5. *Escalate intentionally*
6. *Give away nothing for free*
7. *Ask Fey to explain themselves*
8. *Write out agreements*
9. *Respect the status quo.*

*Ultimately, these strategies will help you identify and feed Fey’s emotional cores to persuade them to serve your goal, while keeping your true motives, plans, and resources hidden from them.*

*A more permanent alliance with Fey is seldom possible. Fey must feed their emotional cores, and therefore always try to feel the same. Folk can feel differently about their friends and their enemies, and this matrix of feeling is the core of a relationship. But Fey must feel the same about all. A Fey with a core of love loves everyone; a Fey with a core of disgust loathes everyone; a Fey with a core of hospitality welcomes madmen and diplomats equally. Fey cannot, therefore, have true friends. At best they are stable if needful business partners, and as you presumably already know, having sought this book, even that is seldom achievable.*

##### *Chapter 5: The Last Journey to Ferroc*

*Let us now turn to a practical example of good negotiations with Fey. On the 14th of Monova, 366 AoP, the Ironwood Compact sent some members to Ferroc in the East. Ranag Uln, Clarity Callisto, Bea’savac, and I boarded a ship in the early morning and sailed through an awful pouring rain to reach the island. We had learned by then that the Fey can distort time and wanted to give ourselves as much as possible in case our quarry wasted it.*

*The purpose of our mission was to meet and converse with as many of the Ferroc Fey as possible. Some had knowledge we wanted; others needed to know things we could tell; some we planned to trick for money (a risky but profitable business venture), and all we sought to learn more about. I had only recently learned about Fey emotional cores at this time, and we hoped to discern as many of Ferroc’s residents’ cores as we could.*

*We arrived without issue and met our guide for the day, an elemental Fey named Obsidian Eyes, on the shores of Ferroc. Readers will recall from Chapter 2 that one always needs a guide to a Fey’s Grove, unless the Fey themselves show you the path. Obsidian Eyes wanted only gems in payment, which we could provide. We quickly settled our contract, negotiated through Might, and set off.*

##### The Ashlord

*The first Fey we met with was the Ashlord. We had requested that Obsidian Eyes inform the Ashlord to expect us; Obsidian Eyes misunderstood. This is an excellent example of why you should write out your contracts. Fortunately, the Ashlord’s emotional core is Hospitality, and he could not refuse us entry to his hall as guests.*

*Our first purpose in meeting with the Ashlord was to give him information so that he could better defend himself and the peace of Ferroc. We told him of Maera’s transmutation of Saphira Goldhammer back into her Fey form (see Chapter 7), of Bal’s ensorcelment of the Ironguard (see Chapter 5), and of the dire threat of the dragon Xovreme, who planned to collapse Hell into the Material Plane. Xovreme’s scheme needs, of course, no introduction.*

*Even telling the Ashlord about these threats rammed us directly into the reasons we try to Manage, not Change, Fey. The Ashlord is Hospitable; he refused no guest entry to his hall, nor did he think ill of his neighbors. He accepted the truth that Bal had enchanted the Ironguard only after cajoling, and with our assurances that we expected him not to do anything about this (a good example of a time when Letting Points Go served us well). He also bluntly asserted that he would do no harm to Xovreme if the Ancient Dragon came to the Ashlord and asked for entrance into his hall to destroy the world.*

*Seeking to Manage, not Change, Fey, we soon proposed a compromise solution: we gave the Ashlord a Sending Stone, and instructed him on how to use it, and asked for his invitation to enter his home if Xovreme came. We planned, of course, to fight Xovreme brutally, but did not advertise this. The Ashlord accepted this Hospitable compromise. Of course, in retrospect, we should have written this agreement out, for reasons that will soon be apparent, but in the end, this deal proved very effective.*

*We also had some business with the Ashlord: a certain Satyr rogue whose body we had found and spoken with using magic requested to be buried in the Feywild, and I traded a fine song, a recitation of hospitable deeds in Sylvan, to the Ashlord for him to transport that body to the Satyr’s lands in the Feywild. My song was of such quality that the Ashlord gifted me a necklace for it (taken, of course, only after we agreed it was given without tricks), which helped defray my expenses for the expedition.*

##### Strengthening the Ashlord

*We had, of course, already planned to strengthen the Ashlord with gifts suited to his emotional core. We felt it necessary, as he maintained the peace of Ferroc, keeping the more aggressive Fey of the Island from waylaying travelers or engaging in elaborate schemes of destruction. His strength was good for us all. The Ashlord’s control of Ferroc is a textbook example of why Respecting the Status Quo is generally good advice when dealing with Fey;  attempting to change a Court’s dynamics will make things worse and not better most of the time.*

*The Ashlord had been weakened by Bal, another of our quarry. Bal was once a Giant, who had become a Fey with an emotional core of Sadism; he took joy from hurting other things. He had learned of the Ashlord’s emotional core by accident, from Ranag Uln, and began trying to torture him to feed his own core.*

*Bal had been forced from the Ashlord’s home only with considerable sacrifice, and we were displeased but unsurprised to find that he had been continuing to attack the Ashlord indirectly in our absence. He had acquired breeding pairs of goldfish, and bred them into lifeforms so weak, helpless, and pained that they had not only invented their own religion, they had perfected an ascetic lifestyle far more complete than any practiced by the current civilizations of Tark. Bal threw these Doomed Goldfish, these Snacks that Want to Die, into the Ashlord’s hall at regular intervals. The Ashlord was understandably bemused and sorrowful, and we offered--though we did not swear, as we Kept Conscious of Our Commitments--to pursue the matter on his behalf.*

##### The Mother

*Our conversation with the Ashlord went on for some time, though in his gratitude for my gift it took no time at all. We took our leave in good spirits and ventured to the Grove of the Mother, the second fey we wished to meet. The Mother’s emotional core is (probably) Defensive Love; a desire to protect and feed her children until they grow greater and stronger than all foreigners. She and the Ashlord balance each other, one keeping potential enemies placated, once killing foes that come to Ferroc. In theory.*

*The Mother’s Grove was guarded by spiderwebs enchanted with traps and many of her children. We avoided both of these without escalating to a violent invasion; with the Mother, more so than other Fey, Escalating Intentionally is key. Determining what threats would invite retribution and what ones would be effective is particularly difficult. Her ability to detect lies also makes conversations tedious.*

*Unsurprisingly, the Mother immediately made our lives difficult. She appeared as a twisted and horrible mirror of the dragonborn I love, and demanded a gift of us when we arrived. Unflappability in such circumstances is the best response. I provided the Mother with a Fractal Snowflake; any item of beauty is a good bet to placate Fey when first meeting them.*

*I also took the opportunity to Ask a Fey to Explain Herself. Why did the Mother pick the form she did? The Mother answered that she thought my loved one was beautiful and powerful and that this was what she wished to be seen as. This was not, of course, the whole truth. But one of the sole advantages the complexities of Fey offers mortals is a perfect excuse to be confused. Asking a Fey why something is what it is--so long as one does not give away that they’re asking with more motives than confusion--is an excellent tactic, in almost any negotiation with Fey, to get breathing room, move the conversation into territory of your choosing, and learn something interesting without giving up much in exchange.*

*For example, the Mother’s response, though it doesn’t reference her core directly, was a point of evidence that helped me confirm my theory of her emotional core. I began the conversation with only a guess that it was Defensive Love, but the Mother’s choice to highlight her form’s power and beauty, both virtues that ward away threats, helped confirm it. Truly, pretending to be a little more confused than you are when dealing with Fey is a brilliant tactic to probe for answers.*

*We had come to the Mother with more than just learning in mine; we planned to defraud her. In exchange for the name of our companion, Uzmir ag Ghanim, who had slain the Mother’s favored child the Mantis Queen, we wanted hard cash. Of course, Uzmir’s name was useless to the Mother, but we felt no need to advertise this.*

*I am very proud of the negotiations I made with the Mother, despite the ultimate outcome of our expedition. One platinum and two gold was the price we shook on for Uzmir’s name, even after we Wrote Down Our Contract and clearly closed all of the loopholes. Never before had I given away nothing at all for that much money.*

*The Mother, of course, also wanted us to bring Uzmir to her, and though I was tempted to continue trying to extract concessions from her in exchange for worthless promises. My companions reminded me to Remember My Commitments, specifically the complexities of trying to get Uzmir onto and off of Ferroc safely while an apocalypse was imminent, and in the end we refused to promise to deliver Uzmir, even in exchange for the Mother’s help against Xovreme. The Mother, of course, threatened to never let us leave if we did not swear to her terms. So I revealed my knowledge of emotional cores and threatened her with wholesale annihilation if she did not let us leave.*

*This was a prime case-in-point of Escalating Intentionally. In the first point, I made a threat I was able to and intended to follow through on--a good rule of thumb anywhere, necessary against a Fey who could detect lies. I really could have Word of Recalled out of the Mother’s Grove, written songs designed to sap her, and forced my way back to her to annihilate her. I also determined that carrying through on this threat would have made the point to all other Fey of Ferroc not to doubt me. I also intended to not do this if she let us go--the Mother was a large fish in a small pond.*

*Defensive Love, ultimately, cannot endure when one’s children are dead, even if they must be threatened for it to be strongest. I convinced the Mother that my threat was to severe for her to end, and thus, she defended her brood by letting us leave, without issue. Two Fey, we had met and successfully negotiated with. The third would, of course, be the one to go wrong.*

##### Bal

*We traveled to the Lair of Bal. To slay him, or otherwise threaten him into refusing to harm the Ashlord. In retrospect, the obvious horror Obsidian Eyes evinced at our discussion about killing Bal should have warned us of the severity of that crime, but we failed to Ask Fey to Explain Themselves. We listened to Obsidian Eyes’ advice enough to conclude in favor of diplomacy as our first tactic, but we did not ask him the consequences of murder.*

*We approached Bal, resolved to try to talk and threaten him out of harming the Ashlord before escalating to violence of any kind. As we approached, the journey alone confirmed my guess that Bal’s core was Sadism; his grove was made up of trees carefully tended to grow into tortured knots; the way was litered with goat bones. We found Bal torturing a goat for his dinner, alongside the ponds he had been breeding goldfish in.*

*Bal, in a mockery of the Ashlord’s edicts of hospitality, invited us to dinner, trying to cause us as much suffering as possible as he could while playing host. Clarity and Ranag were appalled; Bea and I were less affected but still disgusted. Bal was, of course, unwilling to simply stop harming the Ashlord; he said the Ashlord was the most satisfying of Ferroc’s denizens to victimize. He offered to let us each give him an arm to make him stop.*

*Determined to leave as quickly as possible, I escalated less deliberately than with the Mother; I jumped on the first option to harm Bal I could find. I used a Programmed Illusion to create a permanent display of a song chosen to attack his emotional core in his Grove, and threatened to keep it running unless he promised not to harm the Ashlord. But Bal, unlike the Mother, reacts to pain by dealing it out, and he attempted to cast some spell against me. Clarity countered it, and Ranag, who had been openly signaling that they wished to kill Bal, moved to attack.*

*Literally before I could react, Ranag hacked Bal apart. They bore the cursed ax, the soul-eater, that they had taken specifically for threats like the Fey, and Bal was annihilated by it within seconds. The fight was comically one-sided; we suspected Bal to be the mightiest foe on Ferroc, and this battle proved fairly cleanly that Ranag could have destroyed the entire population of Fey alone if they had the chance.*

*They would not get it. Almost as soon as we had decided to try to hide the murder from the Ashlord, and taken Bal’s meager possessions (skulls, coins, and crude tools), we discovered a bizarre transformation had taken hold of Ferroc. The island had shrunk to a spit of land smaller than New Tidelight, with a small woodland and no other interesting features except a long derelict Seagate Submarine crashed on one shore. We were shocked, but soon determined the cause: we had been banished from the Ashlord’s Court on Ferroc, and the Fey enforced that magically.*

##### Conclusions

*The return journey of our company does not need to be lingered on: an uneventful trip full of angry silence. Ranag Uln and I would repair our relationship, eventually, and nobody shed a tear for Bal among the Compact. We would later learn that the Ashlord’s explicit invitation for when Xovreme arrived on Ferroc overruled the banishment, though that was a boon of pure luck rather than any planning on my part. We also learned, from Might, that Bal likely would not have killed the Ashlord, even knowing his emotional core; such deeds are extremely rare among the Fey. This is yet another reason why disrupting the status quo is so perilous (though Might was possibly wrong; Bal, certainly, cannot be asked about his plans anymore). We failed to meet one of our intended quarry, the Coiling Runes, who we strongly suspected to be the transmuted soul of the Archmage Dravandre; he offered what was probably a trap as we left, taking some hair from me for a Dream spell. Dravandre's fate is outside the scope of this story.*

*My last journey to Ferroc was, all in all, a catastrophe, because of Ranag’s actions. The reason is simple: I could no longer talk to Ferroc’s residents after it. Anyone who has interacted with the Fey, and for that matter any diplomat, must recognize this problem: when dialog is closed, the only tool for two powers to compel the other that remains is force. For Ranag and the Ironwood Compact, that was a viable if painful option with Ferroc; but most Feywardens do not have friends with soul-consuming axes.*

*In the end, the Last Journey to Ferroc illustrates, perhaps, an tenth rule for interacting with Fey: be carefully who you bring with you. Like all of these lessons for interacting with Fey, it also a lesson for life, and all social interactions. We Feywardens, diplomats, speakers, and pontificators, often have friends and allies we rely on, more so than others. Our power to make allies is our strength. And it is easy to make the mistake of assuming that having more allies for any mission will make it easier, the outcome better. But we would do well to remember that people, even true friends, can sometimes be quite like Fey: they have preferred tactics, environments, and habits, and they don’t change those to suit the moment. Bring along an ally who swings axes to solve problems, and they’ll solve your problems by swinging axes. And if that makes more problems for you, it’s your fault for inviting the axe swinger.*

*In the end, I should have gone to Ferroc alone, for my negotiations. I had an escape hatch, a plan for every Fey I’d meet, and the resources to get what I needed. But I was scared; I wanted friends to feel safe with. And they caused me to fail, here. Learn from this failure as you learned from my successes.*

**Expedition Result:** Failure

**Expedition Level:** 10

**Expedition Loot:** The Magnolia Platinum, 610 gp in mixed gold, silver, and copper, a beautiful necklace worth 350gp (exclusively given to Valorie), permanent banishment from Ferroc