Preparing to Cross the River--Barovia
General Summary
You were in rough shape after the fight, especially Vanya, so you decided to rest and wait until the next day to confront Madadh-Ruadh. Rose healed Vanya, but didn't have lesser restoration to restore his lost Charisma, so she just cast hide campsite and let him sleep. Early in the night, she saw a disheveled and confused-looking Emyr standing at the edge of the illusion and fretting about how this growth hadn't been there before. Rose didn't want to leave Vanya, but Emyr didn't look like he was going to murder her and this might be her only chance to talk to him, so she went out of the campsite. Emyr said that he was sated from feeding on Vanya, although he wasn't sure how much time he had, and babbled a formal greeting and apology. Rose took advantage of what might be her last chance to give him an enormous hug, which he returned even though he had never been much of a hugger. Rose asked him what he wanted her to do, and he begged her to kill him, leave, and never look back. She said she would if there were no other choices, but asked if there was any way at all she could convince Madadh-Ruadh to break the curse. Emyr said that Madadh-Ruadh was spiteful and not likely to let Emyr go now that it had him. He then explained the basic circumstances that had led to the curse.
The Mists had brought Emyr to Ravenloft from another world, one in which there were specific rules governing how druids and fey were to interact. When Emyr came to the forest, Madadh-Ruadh wanted him gone and began to play a series of increasingly malicious pranks on him to drive him away, culminating in harming some of the animals under Emyr's care and setting traps that would have killed Emyr if he hadn't noticed them in time. Emyr, at the end of his rope at this flagrant violation of hospitality and etiquette, threatened to accuse Madadh-Ruadh before his court, and Madadh-Ruadh went into full "please don't throw me into the briar patch" mode. The court ruled in Madadh-Ruadh's favor, and Emyr was cursed. If he was ever less than anything but a perfect host to anyone who came to the forest, he would become everything he hated about Madadh-Ruadh. Madadh-Ruadh had tricked the people into the forest into asking Emyr to do truly terrible things; he didn't want to elaborate on what they were, only that he now felt he had always been a predator and an animal desperate to save its own skin.
Rose asked if there was anything they could do to stop Madadh-Ruadh. Emyr said he didn't know, but he gave her his cold iron scimitar and said that Madadh-Ruadh hated fire. He also said that the creature didn't seem to be capable of harming Rose, and he begged Rose not to enter into any sort of bargain with it. Rose asked if he would be willing to cede the forest in order to break the curse, and Emyr said that he would do it in a heartbeat. Rose asked if he thought she'd be safe from his day self, and Emyr said that his day self wanted her to cross the river and get herself killed; when he saw her, he felt shame, and he wanted to obliterate her so as to never feel it again.
The next morning, Rose lesser restorationed Vanya back up to normal and told him what had happened. Vanya brainstormed the bardic lore he'd heard about fox fey (which the pixie-like fey later told you were called the teg they were vicious and bestial, eschewing the baroque politics of the fey courts for the pleasures of the wilderness and the hunt. You all brainstormed some possibilities, then went and talked to the pixie-like shadow fey, then brainstormed more possibilities, so I'm just going to put all the brainstorming at the end.
When you talked to the other fey, they told you that Madadh-Ruadh was bored and that Emyr had given him a pleasant way to while away a century. You asked if they would leave him alone if he became boring, but they said that he would be more likely to break his toy in a fit of pique than to leave it lying on the floor to gather dust. They said that he had a hatred for mortals, and wished to see nothing in the world but the wild and the fey; druids actually earned more of his ire than most mortals, because they arrogantly believed themselves true friends of nature but were still mortal under the skin. You asked if they would be happy to see him gone, since he'd messed up their plants, and they seemed surprised and said they wouldn't; he was unseelie, and he valued his little jokes more than he valued the forest, but he was still a "child of Arak," and the fact that he cared more for the wilderness than for the machinations of the sluagh and the other members of the Unseelie Court meant that he was a better friend to the Seelie than most unseelie fey. You got the sense that they saw him the way a human would see an obnoxious cousin--he got on their nerves, and they didn't like him very much, but he was family.
When you brainstormed, you came up with the possibilities of either trying to fight or intimidate Madadh-Ruadh in some way, or of challenging it to some kind of game; it was motivated by boredom, so it would want to do something to entertain itself, and it would have to have some semblance of fairness in order to be interesting. A few possibilities you tossed around as a wager:
1) Try to find some way to Charisma-drain Emyr the way he had drained Vanya, because that left Vanya dull, unmotivated, and utterly boring. Alternately, find some way to put him to sleep or make him boring in some other way. Actually doing this would probably just cause Madadh-Ruadh to kill him, as the pixies pointed out, but being able to threaten it somehow might give you leverage.
2) Have Rose threaten to stay in the forest so that Madadh-Ruadh won't get it back unless he plays against you, although you'd need to come up with a reason Madadh-Ruadh would have to get involved rather than simply letting Emyr kill her.
3) Use Rose as bait for the win/lose conditions of the game. She was the thing that Emyr cared about enough to break his oath, and no matter how mad he became at night, his only coherent thought seemed to be getting her away from everything and keeping her safe. If Madadh-Ruadh hurt her, or especially if it got Emyr to hurt her, it would destroy Emyr, and that seemed like the faerie's idea of a good time; dangling that in front of him as a win condition.
I remember you talked about something that played into the logic of the conflict between civilization and savagery, but I don't remember what it was--do either of you? It was a "this is a collection of half-baked ideas that we might be able to turn into something" situation, but I don't remember if there was anything to the half-baked ideas other than "he hates civilization, maybe we can use that, TBD."
Vanya said he wished Rose would just kill Emyr, but he understood why she didn't, and he wouldn't want her to give up on hope if there was any, and he clearly wasn't projecting at all. Rose said that she would kill him if it was necessary; ending life when there was still hope was a travesty, but allowing it to continue when all hope was lost was also a travesty. But she didn't think you were there yet.
And with that, you crossed the river...
Rewards Granted
Cold iron scimitar +1
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Report Date
04 Feb 2022
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