The Hunt Begins--Barovia
General Summary
(I'm going to be doing "it" for Madadh-Ruadh even though it's just as happy with "he/him," because otherwise the pronouns got confusing if it and Emyr or Vanya were mentioned in the same sentence. Madadh-Ruadh is the only one of the three who ever uses a pronoun other than "he/him," since his gender identity is "male fox.")
When you crossed the river, the canopy was so heavy that the forest seemed almost as dark as night, and something about the forest felt older and wilder than the one you'd just left. Rose knew that a good way to get a fey's attention without outright declaring war was to use magic in its territory, so she cast faerie fire. A few minutes later, a pair of bright golden eyes appeared in a hollow in the roots of a tree, and a foxlike fey prowled out on all fours.
(Reposting the picture here because I don't know how well you saw it when I held it up in front of the camera. Van Richten's Guide to the Shadow Fey may be horribly edited, but the art is gorgeous.)
It sniffed at Rose and remarked that the "pretty little rosebud" was in full flower now; her desires were still pure, but her fears were those of a woman, not a child. Rose flat-out refused to take the Hannibal Lecture bait (good for you, Rose!) and said that they weren't there to talk about her fears, they were there to talk about Emyr. Madadh-Ruadh said that if she'd really wanted to save Emyr, she would have done it months ago; if she'd stayed with him willingly, purely because she loved him and not because he would grant her selfish requests, the curse would have been broken. It tried playing the "see, all this is your fault" card, but Rose was having none of it (good for you again, Rose!).
It took a few sniffs at Vanya and asked if Rose had brought Emyr a sweetmeat, and Vanya gave it a much more diplomatic version of "honey, I'm a sweetmeat for someone so much worse than Emyr or you." Madadh-Ruadh said that Emyr was worse than they suspected and always had been; it mentioned a tortoise that lived by the river and said it used to be a human woman who had gotten into her head (without any help from Madadh-Ruadh, naturally) that the long lives of elves came from some kind of secret knowledge rather than from their blood. She'd asked Emyr to help her live for hundreds of years, and Emyr had done it the only way he could: by baleful polymorphing her into a tortoise. Even before now, Madadh-Ruadh claimed, he'd been an animal trying to save his own skin, and the damnable thing about druids was that he would surely see that statement as an insult even as he proclaimed himself a great friend to animals. Rose was still having none of it, saying that Emyr had only harmed his guests because he'd sworn an oath to give them what they wanted and he would never break an oath. She said that Madadh-Ruadh had broken him (which got a chuckle out of it) and that she knew that as a hunter, it would eventually want to finish off its prey. She told it that it was playing Emyr's game rather than its own by trying to bind him up in oaths and rules (which decidedly did not get a chuckle out of it) and that she knew it would rather win by being a hunter. Madadh-Ruadh spat that it was nothing like Emyr and that he liked to hide behind all his unnatural rules while acting like a friend to nature, and Rose said she wasn't boudn by rules in the same way that Emyr was and that if Madadh-Ruadh didn't believe her, it could "do your little sniff-sniff" to find out. (I love sassy Rose.) She'd play a game with it for Emyr; all she asked was for prey's chance to escape. Madadh-Ruadh asked Vanya if she spoke for him as well, and he said that where she went, he went, and I ship those two so hard. Madadh-Ruadh said that one day, he'd go where she wouldn't follow, and Vanya agreed that he might--but he had a prey's chance.
Madadh-Ruadh told them that in its forest, there was a tree whose leaves always looked as green as they did in midsummer, and on that tree were red berries. If they plucked the berries, took them across the river, and fed them to Emyr, the curse would be broken--but only if Madadh-Ruadh didn't catch them first. He said that for the game to have proper spice, Rose would have to relinquish the protection her innocence gave her, and asked if she agreed to do so; with obvious trepidation, she did. Madadh-Ruadh said that it would give them until sunset as a head start. If it caught them, it would rend the flesh from Rose's bones, then crack them open to eat the marrow, then take her, still living, to Emyr--in the day.
You didn't waste any time after that. You ran.
When you got a good distance from Madadh-Ruadh, Rose wild shaped into a hawk and flew up to get the lay of the land and see if she could spot a still-green deciduous tree. I'm retconning this because I realized that the description I gave of the woods contradicted some stuff I'd said before. Emyr allowed Rose to cross the river a few miles upstream or downstream, which doesn't make sense if the woods are mostly stretched out lengthwise along the river. I could either retcon it so that he didn't actually say that, or retcon it that Madadh-Ruadh's forest stretches north and east rather than north and south; it's more dramatically interesting to do latter, because then making a wrong turn means that you just get delayed an hour or two, whereas in the former it's "no, fuck you, you have to completely retrace your steps and then go just as far south as you did north, neener neener," no fun at all. (Who has two thumbs and planned the encounter with Madadh-Ruadh and the meet-cute with Constance but put mapping the forest on her "let's do this next session" list? This gal!)
So, retconned description: You know you don't need to go west, because the river is there. South (not east) there's a bit of forest, but the Balinoks rise pretty steeply and it gives way to bare rock, shrubs, and meadows in short order, which looks way too sunny for shadow fey comfort. Several miles almost due north is what looks like the wrong shade of green for evergreens but the right shade for deciduous trees in summer. East is nondescript autumn forest. (So south and east are just swapped here.)
You set out north, and as you did, you heard crashing and inhuman shrieking coming closer. A toad the size of a horse, seriously injured, came stumbling toward you through the undergrowth, with a pair of jeering goblin-like creatures biting and tearing at her sides. (But there are no goblins in Ravenloft. These were goblyns. The "y" makes them gothic, you know. There are actually several other differences that make goblyns more of a horror monster than a fantasy one, but...goblyns, TSR? Really? That's what you're calling these critters?)
The goblyns were pretty clearly just torturing this poor toad for sport, so you decided to step in. Between Hideous Laughter and a truly impressive critical hit, Vanya decapitated one and scared the other away. Rose healed the toad and made soothing toad noises at it, and it started following you. With a new animal companion in tow, you made your way deeper into the forest.
Rewards Granted
Does an animal companion count as a reward? You met Constance!
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Report Date
09 Feb 2022
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