Session notes 25-7-2020

5th day in the feywild - continued
 
 
At the upper platform, Liya had created one of those little houses which you can enter via the rope again. All apart from Thalmiir and Ferrum had climbed inside. Thalmiir was still working on the emerald, while Ferrum was eyeing down the great club that the giantess had dropped. Sadly, it seemed to be far too heavy, even for him. I took a look at the rope and decided to climb up as well. almost inside we realised that it was quite weird that none had entered this room yet. So I decided to ask Mina to pry loose from Thalmiir beard and took her on a flight to the other entrance, to see what was up. Here, we heard and saw two other giants call out to Kayalithica -probably the priestess- asking her if everything is alright. Naturally, no answer is given, but the room has gone quiet. As Mina flew over, I could see the two standing there just outside the room, not showing any movement of eagerness to enter. Behind them, there was a somewhat larger room, similar to the one in which we left the one stone giant in meditation. Letting Mina fly back, I could see that Thalmiir was finished with his spell and was holding a large chunk of emerald, as well as some smaller ones. With a short break in Mina vision switching back to mine, I told the rest what I had seen and let Mina swoop down, to the entrance we had entered through. There, one single stone giant stood, also waiting just outside the room.
 
With this information, we thought of a plan. If we wanted to get out, the one giant and a route we knew sounded much more appealing than the other. But how would we go past him without a full-on fight? Thalmiir then had an idea. Animate the great club, and have it be sentient? I was a little confused at first I must say if I am being honest. Still, with the great club hovering upright, and another short lesson in Giant and their culture, Thalmiir let the great club fly towards and through the hallway we had come through. As we heard a sort of gasp from the giant standing there, I took that as my cue to start. Using a spell I made a booming voice emanating from the club and speaking in Giant, I tried to say the following: "My mistress has fallen, she is no longer worthy. Find me a new master so I may be of use again. The only one chosen by the All-Father himself may wield me. A few, somewhat awkward questions and answers from both sides later, the giant was on his way to find others. (almost forgot he had the note we had left the sleeping giant, saying we were sorry about his companions, also he just looked kind of spooked by the whole thing, which is understandable.) But with the giant out of the way, we just made a run for it. Ferrum in the front and Thalmiir in the back were the ones that we bombarded with rocks, which eventually caused Thalmiir to lack behind a little. But we all made it out safely. Panting, we ran out of the caves, and towards the ship where Baradox stood waiting for us. Some rocks were still hurled upwards as we lifted off into the sky.
 
And that is where we are now. Currently, Thalmiir is sitting focussed, moulding the emerald pieces and shaping gold to his needs. It is honestly quite fascinating to watch how he sits there transforming the materials. Baradox is curious about what we were actually doing there and poses some questions.
After we had caught our breaths a little bit, we sat down to tell Baradox a bit more about our adventure down the mines, and what we had taken. He in return tells us the ship is a little better, but also a little slower than before. During this talk, we also decided to make a stop at the Saphire mountain, to sleep there for a night to recover and plan our next set of moves.
 
During our conversation, we discovered something very cool and somewhat strange. Baradox asked us about where we came from, not wanting to give a lot of info, most of us just answered with, Jurtal, the north, the south. But Baradox was a bit more giving with his information. He told us he is from Hethea, from a wizards family. He left everything behind to come here and has not been back for 40 or 400 years. He is not certain, for time works strangely around these parts. (ps he also warned us about the effects the feywild can have on memories, and that we must beware) But he told more, about his past. As an elf, he knew that his family, a couple of generations before him, were hunted and killed in the south of Eluïn, and that they had created a Gate, to flee to the feywild, and to the future. This naturally sparked Ferrums curiosity, as that is also part of his past. A couple of stories and semi-awkward moments later, we realised that Ferrum is Baradox grandmother, well in a way. Reincarnation is so weird. Naturally, we cracked a few jokes about that. How he should give candy before the next trip and if he should start knitting.
 
Apart from the jokes and all, there was some more serious talk. About the war, the undead king and how that was all those years and reincarnations ago, and now. As well as some more things from Ferrums past. How he took great value in the 'dreams' elves have in the first +- 100 years of their life and how he spent a lot of time writing down those visions. If I understood correctly, these visions are of their past lives? This habit of prioritizing his visions and writing them down was not very good for his academics, which his mother, in turn, did not like.
 
During our talks of family, the past, future and now, Thalmiir had finished the staff. It is marvellous! We took some time to admire it just now. It is emerald with gold spiralling around it. Some smaller gems are worked into the gold and there are some elvish texts formed into the emerald. (its a bit too sweet for my taste, the text, but I hope it falls into good graces with the queen.) Thalmiir also proudly showed us his signature in the staff, which, after some things about true names and deals, he covered tightly with a cap of gold. But we know it is there!
 
The journey was long, Not sure how long exactly, but I would guess an hour or 6-7. We saw a strange circular cloud over the sea far off, which Baradox knew to be an air temple. I noted the location in my other journal, hoping it does not change location. The rest of the time I spend chatting with William about what will happen to us if we die. Will reincarnate, or not.? Being half elvish, we are not sure what the rules are. Perhaps if we die at the same time one of us may reincarnate? To be fair, we were a little unsure about it and a small existential crisis later we decided to just wait and see what happens.
To lighten the mood, and just because Thalmiir started, we also played some music, Liya, Thalmiir and I. We sounded surprisingly good actually. That reminds me, I asked Thalmiir if I could have the flute he had gotten from the lady long ago in the forest, the one I had seen in my dream. He was curious, but it was not an issue. I did tell him all about it, but I wish I had more information. If all of this about the concentration crystal, undead king and the army is done, I would love to go and look for these artefacts.
 
Arriving in the Saphire mountain, we embraced the silence of the place and made our way back to the room where we had stayed earlier. Tired, we retired to sleep.
 
Well, Thalmiir (?) decided to go ahead and keep watch? William woke me somewhere during the night and now I am just sitting here, in a dark room keeping watch. It is quite relaxing, the silence makes it easier to hear the tones floating around in my head. I took some time to admire the flute and cleaned it up a little bit, as well as my own. But I think that I will wake Liya if need be and catch some more dream time before we go to this emerald queen in the morning.
 
 
6th day in the Feywild
 
We are back on the road, well in the air. Baradox is driving us again, this time towards the Emerald Queen's domain. Thalmiir has tightly packed the staff in the bag of holding and we sit tight for yet another long flight. We have no response from Roberta yet (A letter was sent yesterday, but for Roberta that must have been +- 20 minutes ago). Oh! Weird stuff, Ferrum's head feels hot. This morning when we woke up, he told us about it. I reached out to Oranje to see what was going on, and he is not feeling well. It is extremely hot and he is hurting. Unsure of what to do, Thalmiir cast a spell to get some answers while we were still in our room in the silent mountain. He learned that Oranje is being punished, that Thalmiir cannot help, and that it will not affect Ferrum negatively. Useful information, but sadly nothing to help Oranje.
 
Our plan for the next part of our quest, includes Thalmiir taking off all his armour. We have learned that Dwarves are not well-liked around these parts, and therefore we are going to pretend that he is our prisoner or slave of some sorts. With Liya's old armour on, we hope to keep him semi-safe, but it is weird to not hear him approach as he walks.
 
We try to prepare for what is to come. We now must be really wary of using names and that is slightly frightening me, we are really bad at it. But, for the first time we are here, we are going to be actually honest: We do have a gift, we do want to give it to the queen, no we do not want to harm her. So, maybe, we will be okay. To be frank, I am a bit tired of the mind games of this place. It feels like we cannot trust anyone, except for Baradox and the Saphire mountain maybe, but the Feywild is large, and we still have quite some things to find...
 
+- 6 hours have passed, and Baradox has started the descent. He said he will drop us off at the edge of the queen's domain, and that we must walk from there.
 
We have walked for a bit. The forest looks relatively normal, though it smells sweet. Liya says there must be a lot of dryads around looking at the forest. I am not sure how she knows, but I trust her on knowledge about forests and follow her wherever she leads. Ferrum found a strange sticky tree -and stuck a torch to it- and Liya the source of the sweet smell: A flower. These flowers are, as she says, used to make sweet tea. She and Ferrum pick a few leaves, but it had some sort of effect on Liya for a short second, which ended their gathering. After that, we also passed some centaurs. They were playing this game with us when we approached them. Saying thing like: you need an invitation to go to the queen, but you cannot get one without seeing her personally, but you cannot go see her because you have no invitation from the queen. You get it, a stupid loop talk. I tried to stay somewhat friendly, actually explained what we were intending, even used minor image to actually show the gift, while Ferrum showed a small piece of the actual staff. They then, finally, let us pass. I am realising that I am already losing my patience for this place, perhaps walking next to William for a bit will calm me a little.
 
 
Walking through the tunnels formed by vines we slowly made our way through the queen's kingdom. It is beautiful, I have to admit that, but by Selûne are the people here annoying.
 
I will write.
 
What happened was, after we had passed the centaurs, we heard a strange creaking voice. It said something like "you are not going to spoil this for me" and then a couple of small trees started attacking us. Well, the trees did not stay small for long, and some other small vine-like creatures also joined the fight. Thalmiir was nearly hit unconscious, as he had taken my place in front of one of these giant trees. William and Ferrum stood back to back fighting off a tree and vines. Liya used her new bow and basically incinerated the final tree by herself, using some kind of glowing runes on the bow. I did sense the magic but I could not quite place it. It were some nice shots of her! With Thalmiir barely on his feet again after Williams healing hands, we walked on, hoping to find the actual origin of this creaking voice, and perhaps taking a rest. For we would not have fought their trees if they had simply let us pass?
A little later, we found a canyon filled with spined vines. With his head still in the game, while looking bloodied, Thalmiir used the slain trees from before to form a bridge to the other side, where we met the source of the voice: A dryad.
She stops us in our tracks and states that she does not trust us. What a surprise. Once again, we do our talk, explain that, honestly, we have no intention of harming anything -unless it attacks us-. Show the gift in illusion and in person because she thought it might be a sword. And then finally, she allows us to pass, but she is going to keep an eye on us. Sure we say, we had already expected that someone would be watching. (Which had caused Thalmiir to perform a nice show in the battle with the trees, he did not cast any offensive spells, but pretended to want to hit and harm us while giving us boons in the forms of spiritual shield and such. It was quite a show, not sure how convincing though) Returning to the dryad. We continued our journey. I had wanted to rest after building the bridge, but with the dryad found and semi-convinced, we decided to make our way deeper into the forest.
It was not even 10 minutes later that our distrusting woody dryad betrayed us. We walked through a set of doors set in spined walls, and found ourselves in a round room, in a temple-like setting. The doors were slammed shut behind us by the dryad as inside a strange clump of organic material started moving in the middle of the place. It looked like some sort of ball of plants, vines and leaves. And water. That last thing we found out as William carved through it with a shining strike of his halbert, and it sort of slushed out with a smell of rotting plant life. I could almost hear the different gods cheer at his beautiful hit, and powerful smite, had I not been nearly raging and running after this stupid dryad. With a single blast, I could see through the door, where she was weaving vines to lock us in. In the short time I had, I simply shouted a lot of things while looking at her intently. After getting no reaction, I decided to go for her instead. Casting eldritch blast through the small hole in the door and peering at her through the growing vines. A good hit. A few moments, blasts and curses later, half of the door was gone, and I climbed through to get after her. Ferrum followed suit and finished the job, with some very colourful elvish language (To be fair I had not expected to hear that kind of language from Ferrum)
 
Now, that we are sitting here for a little bit I have finally regained my temper. I can now see a little better how it may be hard to trust a group like us, still does not quite justify trying to kill us, but makes it a bit more understandable. Perhaps after we have all patched ourselves up a bit we can continue. Look through this temple for a little bit, I spotted some artwork representing the moon which looked intriguing.