ARC 4: Feywild

## General Summary

\**The following summary is as described by Coriander Lovelle, a loremonger and witness to the events in question.*

### Arrival

On November 9th, 497 H.F. (two days after the Strike Team returned from its previous mission in Waterdeep), its members (save for Coriander) were reshuffled:

* VVherner departed the team due to his extensive injuries at the hands of Maria Mather;
* Kroa'Goa departed in order to reconnect with his family;
* The Strike Team gained two new members in Idenna/Egon and r'Nahn.

The Strike Team was called upon by Angelica Fairchild for their next task. During the mission in Waterdeep, Slinthe Ra'akthel and a large contingent of Dearth agents slipped into the Feywild to escape the seraphim's wrath over the city. As this could be seen as an invasion into the Feywild, and thus was a dire threat to planar stability, the Strike Team was tasked with returning Slinthe to Watchguard and removing the Dearth army from the fey realm. Additionally, Coriander was given a secondary, direct task from Fairchild: Idenna/Egon and r'Nahn were not yet official members of the Strike Team and this mission was one of their first excursions outside of Watchguard, and so Coriander was to both prioritize his new teammates's safety and ensure they didn't learn more of Fairchild's secrets than they needed to. The team made its preparations before departing.

Idenna/Egon bid their goodbyes to their family as they ready for their first excursion outside of Watchguard. Coriander established contact with Talanthia Three-Coins and Sonder for counsel on how best to remain under the radar while the Strike Team was in the Feywild. R'Nahn, in understanding the danger the party found itself in, researched fey etiquette and learned more about Watchguard's liaisons with the fey courts (in particular, the Feywild's Autumnal Ambassador Nimbly Decisive, and Watchguard's Yetix Erfin). And once the party finished its preparations, they departed for the most appropriate portal to the Feywild: that which lay in Waterdeep, and which Slinthe and his cadre of Dearth used only three days earlier to flee into the realm.

Upon their arrival in the Feywild, the party oriented themselves. They identified their location as somewhere in the realm’s Land of Fall (home of the Autumnal Court), and with the use of Coriander’s Whisper Jar they narrowed their position down even further – to Fall’s southern hemisphere. But when the Strike Team attempted to divine the location of Slinthe Ra’akthel, they found that many of the resources available to them had been suppressed within the Feywild. But the Dearth army had left tracks in their stead, and so traditional tracking was still available to the team. They set out in pursuit of Slinthe and the Dearth immediately, with r’Nahn summoning one of his avian familiars to scout out the surrounding landscape along the way.

Hours into their journey, the party would be come upon by a large pack of strange, non-fey monstrosities stalking them. An encounter ensued, with the party surviving with minimal energy but recognizing the extreme danger of this hemisphere outside the more populated fey territories.

They continued their pursuit of the Dearth’s tracks, and found that it soon diverged from a direct line to Fall’s Middle Wall (a structure that separated the safer northern hemisphere from the more hazardous southern hemisphere). Following this diverging path, the Strike Team came upon an old battleground of Dearth and monstrosity corpses alike. The party investigated the site and rooted through the dead’s supplies for any useable resources. They found disarmed firearms, discarded armor, and wrought-iron weaponry; the team pondered the significance of these iron weapons, and opted to take them for further investigation.

Not long after the party departed from this battleground, Coriander received a call on his Broadband from Sonder: she was aware that Coriander had called her from the Feywild due to some unnamed cataclysm and was curious on why he and the team were now in this realm. The Strike Team exchanged information from Sonder to get a better lay of the land and learn local history – during which they revealed to Sonder their collection of iron tools.

Sonder sported a collection of dire histories around these tools, too. Iron, or “iisenstone” as the fey called it, was the cursed remnants of a long-lost monstrosity, called Iisen. The corruptive influence of Iisen still ran through its remains and subsumed the will of all those who used it, and even in the modern day iisenstone was a deadly poison to any fey who beheld it. Hearing this, the Strike Team was urged to discard the iron they held. They complied, and after their conversation with Sonder the party moved on.

They continued to follow the Dearth’s trail until the early evening, where they caught distant signs of a lakeside outpost or encampment. But as the moon began to rise, and strange beasts arose to stalk the autumnal woods, the Strike Team elected to hide and camp for the night instead. They would investigate this outpost in the morning.

### Uncle Whiskers

That night, as the Strike Team settled in to rest, they shared their pasts. They discussed their exploits and histories with Watchguard (with Coriander maintaining a degree of distance, to preserve Fairchild’s more delicate secrets) before camping for the evening.

The next day, as the Strike Team prepared to continue their search, Idenna detected someone nearby the group and investigated. She stepped away from the team briefly to discuss with this unseen presence, which sowed distrust against the team in Idenna: according to the unseen presence, the party was Idenna's chaperones and jailors. Troubled by this information, Egon returned to the team before they all departed. The Strike Team opted to fly over the forest to reach the lakeside outpost they had seen the night before.

In their flight, r’Nahn spotted a ramshackle (and recently fled) encampment; the party descended to investigate. And though they found little here, Coriander planted a seed here from his Bag of Beans – summoning an evil treant which immediately descended into a frenzy. The party fled from the treant but noted that it seemed able to animate other, nearby trees. The threat Coriander created was growing, and relations between him and r'Nahn soured even further.

Outside of this encounter, however, the Strike Team found very few hostile flora/fauna in the area; it seemed to them that the armed Dearth may have been clearing a "safe" path through the “native” fauna. This afforded the party a measure of leisure in their hunt, with which they continued to bond over shared stories and histories. It was during this conversation that Idenna would learn the true nature of her imprisonment within Watchguard: though she had been told that staff could not leave the company's premises for leisure, this was a gross exaggeration of the truth - a lie fed to her to keep her locked within Watchguard's confines. Idenna was shattered greatly by this revelation.

Eventually, the Strike Team landed from their flight to the edge of the lake, where the smell of ocean water was now all-pervasive. They found themselves landed in a kind of berm, a flooded valley in the area. The party set themselves to investigating the area across the lake in the morning – but in the meantime, Coriander conjured a **Magnificent Mansion** to house the team for the night.

While in this mansion, the team bonded and sparred with each other (with Idenna/Egon as the ultimate victors), before settling in for the night. That night, Idenna thanked Coriander for helping to revealing the truth to her, about her confinement at Watchguard. And the next day, r’Nahn likewise apologized to Idenna for their conversation yesterday, by having his summoned familiar join Idenna in a prayer to Lathander. At the conclusion of this ritual, r’Nahn received a disturbing vision: one of Idenna and Egon, standing in a misty wasteland and illuminated by the last ray of golden light streaming out of the sun, as an undulating shadow stretched up from the horizon and smothered the sun in its inky coils. Stranger still, he saw a manifestation of Idenna separate from the body she and Egon shared: as a shimmering half-seen form in the sunlight. In gratitude for helping in this ceremony, Idenna ensured that r'Nahn was the first person non-family member she had ever hugged.

The party reunited and set out, where they spotted a newly formed island in the middle of the lake (adorned with a treasure chest and doubloons). They avoided this island, and instead **Teleported** to the forest outside the camp they spied the day before. R’Nahn traveled ahead of the Strike Team to parlay with the Dearth, while Coriander and Idenna hung back invisibly to surveil the process; r’Nahn found the camp seemingly abandoned, with the smoldering campfires dressed by the spatchcocked corpses of drow victims.

R'Nahn also spotted an old hut at the lakeside, adorned with a horde of healthily fed rabbits – and there, someone sitting outside the cabin and roasting a rabbit. R’Nahn startled the shaken drow he encountered, but was able to de-escalate the situation to a small degree. The two set up a rapport: they would each ask and answer a question of the other in-turn. From this discussion, r’Nahn learned that the Dearth were offered the chance to return to the Prime Material, in exchange for 50 bodies from their number. They were offered this escape by a now-dead creature near the Dearth’s hut, but information on the previous altercation was sparing. From r'Nahn, the drow learned the general location of the portal the Dearth had taken to enter the Feywild.

This conversation turned suspicious as the “Dearth” continued to offer little but ask much of r’Nahn and where he came from, and eventually the “Dearth” revealed itself as a strange monster disguised in the former-drow’s skin. This “Uncle Whiskers” revealed it sent a number of the Dearth to “deep water” at their request for Waterdeep, creating a lake from the former valley by making a portal at its bottom as it sent its victims to the depths. For the half of the drow who refused his offer, Uncle Whiskers dispersed all drow with iisenstone across the Feywild – to Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.

Stunned at this revelation and its implications, the Strike Team failed to act as Uncle Whiskers made his escape from the lakeside, bound for the Prime-Feywild Portal.

### The Reach Wall

The Strike Team recovered from this revelation. Their priorities had changed: now, they would need to warn Watchguard-Proper of the enigmatic Uncle Whiskers and his journey for the Prime-Feywild Portal. Idenna attempted to reach the Waterdeep branch of the organization (as it was in the most immediate danger), but due to the insecurity of communications in the Feywild her warnings were noted and discarded. The party scoured Uncle Whiskers' abandoned hut for supplies before moving on; there, they found an old, magical cauldron - often used by hagga for their more fell rituals.

In the party's resumed flight for the Reach Wall, they needed a plan now that all of their targets had been scattered across the Feywild. The task was too wide for a small party to handle on their own; it was in the Strike Team's best interests to work with fey of power and influence to locate all of their displaced Dearth, while using discretion to make sure this intrusion into the realm was kept under wraps.

As they made their way to the wall, the team encountered a wounded creature under attack from a swarm of Caligari's more avian brood. A three-way encounter erupted when the party attempted to rescue the wounded creature: it attempted relentlessly to slay everything around it (including the party) and the avian swarm picked at the team from above. Ultimately, the Strike Team arose victorious as the only survivors of the scene, but by then they'd weakened so much that they could no longer fly to their destination. Instead, they trekked on foot through these dangerous woods, ambushed by more of Caligari's brood until, at last, they came upon a welcome sight in the waning sunlight.

A twilit field, scattered with Unseelie fey in the form of pixies. The Strike Team took this as a good sign that they were nearing the Reach Wall, and thus the rest of Fall's fey civilization. They pressed on until the wall was within eyesight, and then the Strike Team settled in for the night. There, Idenna attuned to the hagga cauldron and used it to feed the party, and the Strike Team bonded and readied themselves for the next day's tasks. Coriander prepared his teammates for dealing with the fey by sharing his experiences of the Fey Intrusion.

The next morning, the Strike Team departed immediately for the Reach Wall. They arrived in due order but found a peculiar situation there: scores upon scores of Caligari's brood stood, waiting, at the base of the wall. And for its own part the wall vexed the party too, as it seemed impassible through conventional means. The party instead needed to speak with a guardsman of the wall, who (once each Strike Team agent swore to abide the laws of the land) granted them access to the town of Vandssurg below, tucked at the base of the Reach Wall and overlooking Fall's northern hemisphere.

### Vandssurg

Upon their arrival at Vandssurg, the Strike Team immediately set off to find equipment and clothing to blend in with the locals. They found what they needed at the owlkin Eelis's shop, where they were also given the lay of the land: "Hunjern" was another settlement in the area, and "Jurschied" seemed to be a coastal metropolis, and Vandssurg itself was headed by the just judge and Autumnal Baron, Exactingly Specific. The Strike Team made off with this new information, intent on speaking with the town's baron for aid - and unaware that they were being pursued.

It didn't take long for the Strike Team to find a secluded area in the town to settle down and plot their next moves. But as they did so, they were come upon by an armored badgerkin, a "Derrig". In Vandssurg, these citizens were tasked with guarding the city, and this particular Derrig smelled "hagga" on the Strike Team. It didn't realize it was smelling Uncle Whiskers' cauldron that the party had pilfered which was held by Idenna, and tensions began to come to a boil. An altercation might have erupted in the middle of town if the team hadn't informed the Derrig of their encounter with the hagga. The team dripfed (mostly true) information to the guard; enough to exonerate the Strike Team and give the Derrig a new target to focus on, but not enough to reveal the team's purpose in the Feywild. This was enough to get the Derrig to depart and inform his superiors.

The Strike Team attempted to follow him to the baron's manor, where they hoped to speak with the town's higher-ups for assistance with their mission, but they were barred entry by the town guard. Before the Strike Team could do much else, Caligari's brood began to flood over the Reach Wall into Vandssurg.

The Wild Hunt had begun.

### The Wild Hunt

Chaos unfolded. Insectoid marwoleth rained from the sky as airborne missiles, shredding any unfortunate souls caught in their landing crash. Vulpine shucks prowled the battlefield in pursuit of arcanists to devour. The porcine on'mochyn savaged through the fey's defensive lines, and the serpentine lind preyed on the stragglers who remained. And as the bloodshed reached its zenith, avian kith flitted through the air to feed on the wounded. The streets of Vandssurg became awash with the dead and dying on both sides of the conflict.

Here, however, the Strike Team rose to the occasion. Coriander took to the rooftops and skies to deal with the airborne assailants; Idenna and r'Nahn (along with r'Nahn's summoned guardian) remained down on the town roads to protect their fey comrades directly and match against the brood's masses in a melee. By gaining control of their portion of the battlefield, the party was able to push Caligari's brood onto the defensive. It didn't take long, then, for the town's fey warriors to clean up what remained of Caligari's forces in the streets.

It lasted mere minutes, but the Wild Hunt had claimed hundreds of lives - low and high fey alike. But as Vandssurg stilled to tend to its dead and dying, the Strike Team noted the arrival of the Autumnal Baron Exactingly Specific in the streets. In the fey lord's wake, all slain high fey were restored to life, and all of Caligari's brood were disposed of summarily. And in short order, the town's workings resumed as though the Wild Hunt had never occurred. The Strike Team departed Vandssurg's walls to rest within Coriander's **Magnificent Mansion** for the night. They had ingratiated themselves to the town for their service in the Wild Hunt, and they would need those good graces in the morning when they attempted to seek counsel with Exactingly Specific.

The next morning, the Strike Team re-entered Vandssurg to seek out supplies and further information on the nature of the Feywild; as they planned to depart into the lands outside the town, they would need to be prepared. They found the supplies and information they sought from an eladrin seamstress, where they learned of the layout of the Land of Fall and the territory's relations with the other fey lands. They learned of the territory's capital city of Touf’lain (to which they would need to be granted access due to their non-native status), and of the distant Land of Spring's storied and troubled history wherein their own sovereign had been sealed away for his hubris against the other three territories long ago. And after departing the sewing shop, the Strike Team split up to cover more ground quickly: Idenna and r'Nahn would seek out the Fah-Derrig they had spoken with the day prior, and Coriander would seek out a means of transport at the farmlands to Vandssurg's north.

R’Nahn and Idenna found the Fah-Derrig they were looking for, and entreated him for aid in getting their letter of recommendation. Autumnal Servant Even Thorned, the Fah-Derrig, pushed the team into an audience with the Autumnal Baron as penance for failing to do so the day prior, and the party opted to collect Coriander for this meeting. Coriander, for his part, had made acquaintances with a farmer to the town's north - one who seemed willing to part with the travel supplies the Strike Team needed, in exchange for a favor rendered.

The nature of this favor, however, would need to wait.

The party was taken to the autumnal baron’s manor-house, where they were permitted to speak with Exactingly Specific, the Wall-Keeping Judge, Bearer of the Residence EXILE, and Lord of the Fourth Stalwart Autumnal City of the Great Reach Wall, Vandssurg. Idenna revealed a part of the Strike Team’s experience to the baron in a bid to seek their aid, and in turn Exactingly Specific found the party's “quest” intriguing. They offered free reign for the Strike Team to seek out aid from the local citizenry. They also offered a writ of recommendation to grant access to Touf’lain; while the party would journey on their own, they would be watched closely by the baron.

### Lunathil

The Strike Team would return to Vacantly Sedate's farmstead to earn a sable and carriage from him; to do so, they would need to do a kindness for the farmer in turn. Vacantly Sedate was convinced that the sables in his field had recently come under nightly attack by lunathil - "moon giants" - and so removing these lunathil from the area would be a fair payment for the Strike Team's request. The party agreed to set up a vigil on Vacantly Sedate's farmland and watch overnight for the lunathil.

The first night would prove uneventful.

In their preparations for the second night's vigil, the Strike Team provided a mission update to Watchguard-Proper on the Prime Material Plane. It was during this debrief that Coriander would come to two revelations: due to the placement of his demesne in the Prime Material Coriander's Feywild **Scrying** efforts extended across both planes at once; consequently, Slinthe Ra'akthel could not be detected with **Scrying** on either the Feywild or the Prime Material. Troubled by the latter revelation, the party settled in for their second night's vigil expecting it to be much the same as their first.

On this night, however, the Strike Team would indeed encounter a juvenile lunathil in the fields of Vacantly Sedate's farmstead. It appeared that the farmer's suspicions were true, as the lunathil immediately set to hunting the sables in the field. The Strike Team repelled the juvenile by force, though with its retreat they expected a lunathil return in greater numbers. This proved apt, as only briefly later a family of four lunathil descended from the skies to investigate.

The party learned that the lunathil they had attacked was the child of the other three in this group. And that each of these adult lunathil was adorned with a bust to represent their favored prey: "Vuyo" appeared to hunt harrengon, "Dumisa" appeared to hunt humans, and "Gijimani" appeared to hunt an as-yet-unknown insectoid race. Their child, "Mmeli", had not yet claimed their favored prey and so was considered a juvenile in lunathil society; Mmeli hunted simpler prey like Vacantly Sedate's sables to hone their skills until they were ready to hunt sapient prey.

But the lunathil elders offered an opportunity to the Strike Team. They would depart Vacantly Sedate's land either way, but the Strike Team could also participate in a hunting game with the lunathil for the chance to earn riches and prized tools. Each Strike Team agent would be hunted in turn by one of the lunathil elders in an opportunity to give Mmeli critical experience with hunting powerful prey; if each Strike Team agent survived their respective hunts, the party's reward would become greater. The Strike Team accepted this offer.

Coriander was the first to be hunted. And due to his spell exhaustion from the day's investigations, he opted to take an evasive tact rather than an offensive one. This proved enough to throw the lunathil off his trail and avoid capture when the hunt (led by Vuyo) devolved to a scuffle; Coriander would successfully survive his hunt.

Idenna/Egon were the next to be hunted. They, unlike Coriander, took on a directly offensive stance against their hunter (Dumisa) - throwing powerful spellwork and close-quarters combat alike into the fray. And with the Strike Team's combined efforts the hunt proved unsuccessful once more.

R'Nahn was the last to be hunted. His methods proved most unorthodox: he secreted himself away in a burrow beneath his adamantine fortress, and used trickery to mislead and "defang" his hunters (led by Gigimani). So when the encounter did devolve into combat, the hunting party was a leader short and Mmeli was left to fend for himself; quick work was made of the lunathil, and r'Nahn was successful in surviving his hunt.

With all three hunts outplayed, the Strike Team was rewarded with a host of gifts and goodwill from the lunathil family. They were given pounds upon pounds of pure silver - which Idenna/Egon and r'Nahn used to have their barbed bat and dagger, respectively, silvered. They were also given Mmeli's juvenile calling chime in reward. With this, the lunathil family departed Vacantly Sedate's fields, and the Strike Team made to return to the farmer.

They were interrupted on the road by a strange figure, however. One who offered specially prepared gifts to each Strike Team member (though these gifts were received with varying degrees of wary reluctance by each member): an Arcane Cleansing Improbability Engine for Egon, a magically indestructible symbol of Lathander (worth approximately 25,000 gold pieces) for Idenna, a somniglass-edged Originality scimitar for Coriander, and a Spirit Projector for r'Nahn. With their gifts delivered, the eccentric-yet-familiar stranger quickly departed the realm.

Reeling from this encounter, the Strike Team returned to Vacantly Sedate and reported their mission for him complete. In thanks, Vacantly Sedate gave the party a very belligerent sable and a carriage to help them on their journey. The party then collected the last of the supplies they would need in the next leg of their journey, and then they departed Vandssurg for the north - for Touf'lain.