Session 11 - Druids & Dryads
After waking from a long rest, Shinzu contacted Ceronde again telepathically via the Scrap of Ceronde's Mantle. Ceronde told Shinzu that she found Orchestra to be a subdued forest in contrast to her native Feywild, despite the birdsong. Ceronde felt that the high elves may have deliberately shaped their forest, but it has resulted in it becoming over-tame. It was a nice enough place, but while there was noise from the animals, the forest itself was quiet. The party worried about whether they were making the right choice in persuading the dryad to move to Orchestra.
When asked why the Orchestra elves specifically wanted Faeror, Ceronde said that they had asked some of the other dryads, but they had all refused. The party wondered how they had contacted Faeror, since the arcane-trained members of the group know that message spells require some knowledge of the recipient. This means that the sender must have been to Lockbox at some point. Shinzu asked if Ceronde felt like the high elves had been pressuring Faeror, and Ceronde felt that the elves has been persistent but not really pressuring her into saying yes.
Ceronde did notice that one of the elves wasn't like the others, and described him as having red hair and a full beard, which is not common in full blood elves. Ceronde didn't have their name. This person might have been a half elf.
After the conversation with Ceronde, Tera and Shinzu crossed the Tora camp to find Lauka as the party were becoming more convinced that Faeror didn't want to leave of her own choice. Lauka knew Faeror, and felt that she did in fact want to leave, but was frightened as she'd only ever known Lockbox. Lauka agreed to take them to the dryad grove to help them speak to Faeror directly.
Before heading to the grove, the party asked Lauka about a clearing or space that could be safely used to leave the forest using the scroll of Sending. Lauka mentioned a bear cave nearby and that she would ask the bear to leave his cave for a few hours.
Shinzu, Tera, Kyto and Lun, as the quietest members of the group, followed Lauka to the dryad grove using their stealth abilities; Yunhu and Sekket, being inherently unstealthy, stayed a short distance behind to keep the path clear to the cave should the worst happen, like the forest going berserk. Lauka then headed out to ask the bear to leave his cave.
After infiltrating the dryad grove, Shinzu spotted Faeror standing in a cage-like pod made of what appeared to be plant material. Tera used a cantrip to communicate silently over a distance to speak to Faeror without anyone else hearing. She managed to ascertain that Faeror wanted to leave the forest to help Orchestra, but that she was nervous. Tera reassured Faeror that the group were there to help her and only wanted to help her achieve her goal. She explained that if the denizens of Orchestra endangered her at all, the group would come and help her and keep her safe.
The pod surrounding Faeror opened and she stepped out (the party were left with the impression that even though Faeror was in a pod 'prison' of sorts, she could really leave at any time. it was more of a deterrent). The party, with Faeror in tow, then ran back towards Sekket and Yunhu and on to the bear cave. The forest predictably didn't want Faeror to leave and sent two plant creatures, dog-like but with rose buds where the face would usually be. These creatures caught up to the party and attempted to bar their way. During the fight, Shinzu utilised her magic bow to cast Druidcraft at one of the creatures, causing the rosebud to bloom. This freaked the creature out and it fled back into the forest, hitting everything in his path. Kyto blinded the remaining creature and it also ran off into the forest.
The party arrived at the cave and as promised the bear had left. The party decided that, as the most fragile member of the party, Tera should read the scroll while the rest defended the cave (for information, the scroll can be used even by non spellcasters, but takes a minute to cast as a drawback). Tera moved towards the back of the cave for safety. The casting took a long time, so the rest of the party, excluding Yunhu who stayed back to protect Tera, formed up at the mouth of the cave with Lauka to attempt to stop anything from disrupting the spell.
Just as Tera started the spell, a Forest Guardian arrived at the mouth of the cave, along with two more rose-face creatures. The party's weapons were not doing much damage to the creatures. Shinzu again used Druidcraft to open a rose-face and again it retreated back into the forest. One of the rose-creatures was killed in the battle and Lun managed to harmlessly subdue the Forest Guardian using Tasha's Hideous Laughter.
Only the Forest Guardian was left and once he recovered from Lun's spell, Faeror walked over to him and spoke to him. She explained that she wanted to go and why she needed to go to help wake up Orchestra and protect it. Rather than becoming angry, the Forest Guardian seems to reluctantly accept that it was her desire to go. The spell opened the portal back to Green Spires and Faeror headed towards. The Forest Guardian reached out to her, but dropped his hand at the last minute, allowing her to leave.
The party got ready to step though the portal, sending Faeror through first for safety. Lauka said goodbye to the party as her responsibilities remain in and to Lockbox. Shinzu asked her to tell the clan that she sends her love and that she would not give up looking for the Rekishi.
The party safely stepped through the portal back to Green Spires and were met by Gisita and Anastri. Anastri provided the team with their reward and allowed them to keep the unused Scroll of Sending. During the conversation, Tera and Shinzu spoke to Faeror, reassuring her that she would be safe in Orchestra and telling her to seek out Ceronde. That way Faeror would always have a friend nearby and they could contact Shinzu if ever they needed anything, and the group would come to help them.
As part of the thank you, Shinzu was given an outfit for the ball at the end of the month with the Blue Orchids; blue and green elven armour, beautiful but still practical should the need arise to fight (House Zhao is a mercenary house after all). Gisita, asking whether Shinzu was attending the ball, confirmed that he would also be there as well.
The party left Green Spires and head to the Emporium district in Umbral Key territory. Tera collected her dress from Hosun, a deep blue gown covered with tiny shimmering silver stars. This just left Yunhu, Sekket and Kyto to find suitable attire for the ball. Nishigi appeared unexpectedly as they left, commenting that they were difficult to find. She tracked the party down to pass them information gleaned from the book that Shinzu stole from Meimi. She has discovered that the "C" in the ATAC scales recorded in the scale count stands for Crematorium but that the guard were looking into it. She suggested that the group visit House Haruhel, the dragon hunters, as they have been known to capture lesser dragons. Nishigi also theorised that something was changing the laws of magic to make the spells in the transmutation/necromancy book found at the burned-down lab work. The spells that were in the book shouldn't work at all. Lun reminded the group that they had all been invited to see his theatre troupe's play, The Madness of the Moon and so the team set off to visit the troupe. Lun arrived first and decided to play a trick on his rival Toma and convince the man that Professor Nebuchadnezzar wanted to give him a raise!
After going to see the Professor, Lun realised that something wasn't right with him, and convinced the Professor to show the party what was wrong. He took the group inside his animal tent and showed them a cage containing a large, wild wolf. The Professor had been trying to tame the animal, as he has successfully done in the past, but nothing was working. The wolf wasn't even eating. Shinzu used Speak With Animals to speak to the wolf and learned that the wolf thinks it used to be a human, but that they could not remember anything about being human, and that they were always, always hungry, only wanting to eat live, screaming people. The party soon realised that this was a form of werewolf, but a lesser werewolf who was unable to change back into human form. It was clear that someone did this to her, and the wolf recalled others like her, somehow stuck in wolf form. The Professor asked the group to try to find a cure for lycanthropy, but sadly revealed that the cure was not for her but for him - he had been bitten after getting too close to the wolf. Shinzu recounted to the party everything that the wolf said, and in explaining how dangerous werewolves are she revealed that a whole clan of wood elves were once slaughtered because they became infected by lycanthropy. This left the party wary about leaving the Professor as he could also transform at the next full moon and be unable to transform back. Lun suggested caging the Professor as no other theatre members would enter this tent without the Professor's express permission. Sekket used cages in the tent and silver to create a strong enough cage to hold a healthy werewolf. Tera considered using her aasimar magic, on the basis that it was relatively close to radiant magic, but Lun and the Professor refused to let her damage the wolf even to see if the protection would work. There was a discussion (and a huge row) about how best to cure the Professor and the wild wolf, and it seemed there were two options. 1) Find a cleric willing to try or 2) seek out Setsuna again to strike a deal. The party were significantly split on how to best approach the problem. Sekket and Yunhu felt that a cleric was the only way; Lun was worried about whether help could be found in time, and the Professor stated he had already been rejected by clerics in the city. Tera, burned by Sekket's distrust of her and his threat to kill the possessed child that they met earlier, felt that if they told the clerics about the problem they would hurt the Professor. The session ended with the group still in disagreement on how to proceed...
The party left Green Spires and head to the Emporium district in Umbral Key territory. Tera collected her dress from Hosun, a deep blue gown covered with tiny shimmering silver stars. This just left Yunhu, Sekket and Kyto to find suitable attire for the ball. Nishigi appeared unexpectedly as they left, commenting that they were difficult to find. She tracked the party down to pass them information gleaned from the book that Shinzu stole from Meimi. She has discovered that the "C" in the ATAC scales recorded in the scale count stands for Crematorium but that the guard were looking into it. She suggested that the group visit House Haruhel, the dragon hunters, as they have been known to capture lesser dragons. Nishigi also theorised that something was changing the laws of magic to make the spells in the transmutation/necromancy book found at the burned-down lab work. The spells that were in the book shouldn't work at all. Lun reminded the group that they had all been invited to see his theatre troupe's play, The Madness of the Moon and so the team set off to visit the troupe. Lun arrived first and decided to play a trick on his rival Toma and convince the man that Professor Nebuchadnezzar wanted to give him a raise!
After going to see the Professor, Lun realised that something wasn't right with him, and convinced the Professor to show the party what was wrong. He took the group inside his animal tent and showed them a cage containing a large, wild wolf. The Professor had been trying to tame the animal, as he has successfully done in the past, but nothing was working. The wolf wasn't even eating. Shinzu used Speak With Animals to speak to the wolf and learned that the wolf thinks it used to be a human, but that they could not remember anything about being human, and that they were always, always hungry, only wanting to eat live, screaming people. The party soon realised that this was a form of werewolf, but a lesser werewolf who was unable to change back into human form. It was clear that someone did this to her, and the wolf recalled others like her, somehow stuck in wolf form. The Professor asked the group to try to find a cure for lycanthropy, but sadly revealed that the cure was not for her but for him - he had been bitten after getting too close to the wolf. Shinzu recounted to the party everything that the wolf said, and in explaining how dangerous werewolves are she revealed that a whole clan of wood elves were once slaughtered because they became infected by lycanthropy. This left the party wary about leaving the Professor as he could also transform at the next full moon and be unable to transform back. Lun suggested caging the Professor as no other theatre members would enter this tent without the Professor's express permission. Sekket used cages in the tent and silver to create a strong enough cage to hold a healthy werewolf. Tera considered using her aasimar magic, on the basis that it was relatively close to radiant magic, but Lun and the Professor refused to let her damage the wolf even to see if the protection would work. There was a discussion (and a huge row) about how best to cure the Professor and the wild wolf, and it seemed there were two options. 1) Find a cleric willing to try or 2) seek out Setsuna again to strike a deal. The party were significantly split on how to best approach the problem. Sekket and Yunhu felt that a cleric was the only way; Lun was worried about whether help could be found in time, and the Professor stated he had already been rejected by clerics in the city. Tera, burned by Sekket's distrust of her and his threat to kill the possessed child that they met earlier, felt that if they told the clerics about the problem they would hurt the Professor. The session ended with the group still in disagreement on how to proceed...
Dryad grove
Faeror the dryad
Rose-face creature
Forest guardian
Green Spires
Professor Nebuchadnezzar
The lesser werewolf
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