The Kirsi tell Ord about Prosper's origin and the Kirsi exodus from Hollin. They ask Ord to install the changeling Bruhl as the rightful heir of Raven House and as Kirsi high priest. The party travels to the lost city Balibana, where Ord and Aeris put down the Raven House usurper Inkling and his fairy gang, River Jack, Bandy-Bandy, and Moonboots.
At the end of Game 15, the Kirsi told the party that their guide Bruhl was a changeling, a fairy they'd secretly exchanged for a human baby in Hollin many years ago. Now they said that Bruhl's return will provoke a potentially deadly crisis in Renhannes, and they asked the party to join them at the nightly revels so they could discuss it more.
At the revels, Aurelien and Mirabel told the party about Prosper first.
Aurelien and Mirabel take the party to another enclave with waterfalls nearby, where there are fairies dancing, making music, and lighting candles. Aurelien asks the party to sit with him, and a fairy named Mustard Seed brings the party water and nectar to drink. As Mustard Seed is bringing you the drinks, your eyes fall on some of the fairies dancing. Aurelien notices their gaze and says who these girls are:
Aurelien suggests that they talk about Prosper first. He says that many ages ago the Kirsi were free spirits, traveling between different arcane sites throughout the year. An ancient woodland stretched across northern Anhault, and in the wood on the Dusa River, there was a site of great power - High Hill. Many creatures were drawn to High Hill: the sea monster Aachen made his sometimes home in a flooded cavern nearby, and souls from the restful plane Hereward opened a portal nearby. So, the Kirsi decided to make their home there, communing with the sea monster Aachen and the Hereward souls. The Kirsi clan Raven House was the priestly house, and Raven House set up the Kirsi god Boreas - who takes the form of a stone idol - on High Hill. Over time the god Boreas drew great power from the hill.
The Kirsi continued to live near the hill as free spirits, except for Raven House. Now settled in one place, Raven House became fascinated with building and crafting. Soon this extended to the martial arts, and they become fell warriors. They built an arcane forge for weaponsmithing across the river from High Hill, near Aachen's flooded cavern. Of course, all of these things - High Hill, Aachen's cavern, the Hereward Portal, the Raven Forge - are where Hollin is now.
After an age there, a human clan arrived in the wood and discovered the Hereward portal. Of course they wanted to go to the restful plane, so they became determined to drive the Kirsi out and claim the portal, but Raven House stood against the human warriors on High Hill. The humans fought cruelly, but they were just mortals, and Raven House routed them. But on the verge of breaking, the humans called on their god Gradska, and Gradska sent his angel of death Kidu against the Ravens. That day Kidu's coming was heralded by a white burst that outshone the sun and seared my vision; a ringing sound spread across the whole wood like a shock wave and lingered in my ears. When the ringing subsided, Kidu appeared in midair surrounded by a nimbus and floated to the ground. He surveyed the scene, and it seemed to me that he took to wiping out Raven House with sadness. But he did wipe them out, or nearly so. Just a few Raven survivors came back to the main Kirsi camp near the Raven forge.
There seemed to be nothing the Kirsi could do to stop Kidu from crossing the river and wiping out the entire camp. The camp was breaking up and scattering in horror when a figure appeared on the edge of the camp. He looked human, and at first the Kirsi assumed he was from the human clan. But, he had our god Boreas wrapped in a cloth, and he marshaled the Kirsi, moving them out west along the shore. He protected the Kirsi rearguard from a human attack until they could find the cover of the larger wood.
Over the next few months the figure - who we called Huldremose and you call Prosper - led the Kirsi west, through many dangers in the wood. We reached Shear Pass, and Prosper held off the necaratu swarm there while we hurried one-by-one over the Murnen portal bridge and the vacuum of space below it. We came into the valley here and settled. Over time we extended our fairy domain to include the abandoned human cities we call Balibana and Gaillard.
Prosper stayed with the Kirsi until we were established safely in Renhannes, then took up the life of a wanderer, but always keeping an eye on our valley. However, at one point we noticed that he had stopped returning, and we started to ask each other what had happened to him. Since then, we've looked for him everywhere our fairy eyes and ears can go, and only recently have we started to see fresh instances of his rune - one on the Tolland Stone and several in Hollin. We are very interested in finding Prosper and can aid you in many ways.
But, they soon learned about Bruhl as well.
At this point, a human-looking girlish fairy, wearing a white slip of a dress and barefoot, comes running into the revel festivities. She steps anxiously from fairy to fairy at the revel looking for someone. After a few moments, she sees the party sitting aside with Aurelien and Mirabel and comes over, breathless. She looks from face to face among the party and then her gaze locks on Bruhl. Uncertainly she says, "Bruhl?" When he nods, she jumps on him, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him, saying that she is his mother, Primrose. She says she came as soon as she heard he was here.
She begins to cry with happiness. She asks if he's healthy, if he's married, where does he live in Hollin, and is he going to stay in Renhannes, all without really giving Bruhl time to answer. They talk for a while and then Primrose becomes concerned and says that Renhannes is unsafe for him, why did he come? Her initial happiness turns into a kind of frantic worry.
Aurelien says, now we come to the deadly crisis I mentioned. When Bruhl was born, he became the rightful heir of Raven House. But we knew that the current head of Raven House, a dangerous warrior named Inkling, would kill the child rather than acknowledge him as heir. So, we took Bruhl to Hollin and exchanged him for the human baby Barley, allowing Bruhl to be raised by an unknowing human mother. Inkling has been hunting Bruhl for the last 20 years, and doubtless news of Bruhl's arrival has already reached Inkling.
Primrose, Mirabel, and Aurelien first recruited Ord to help Bruhl.
At this point, Mirabel comes close to Ord and asks if Ord will be Primrose's champion in this matter, by traveling to the Raven capitol in Balibana, killing Inkling, and establishing Bruhl in his rightful place. Mirabel says that although Primrose looks girlish, she is a venerable fairy of great power, and could bestow considerable gifts in thanks. And, Aurelien says more to the point, if Inkling is defeated, the party can despoil him of powerful Raven Forge artifacts that can be used in rescuing Prosper.
Aurelien also plied Kasskar with promises, saying:
At the temple, Raven House has long had a nefarious spell, called Word Without Warning. Word Without Warning is described by a snippet of an old verse, which goes:
"A violence upon the air and no trace afterward, a Word, spoken with no warning into your ear, and then silence forever."
Aurelien says Word Without Warning kills instantly when used as a Sneak Attack. But, it can only be used once, meaning once ever. Aurelien urges Kasskar to take Word Without Warning for himself, as a thank you for installing Bruhl.
Similarly, Aurelien recruited Beowolf with fantastic promises.
The king Aurelien kind of takes Beowolf aside. He looks in wonder at Beowolf's barbarian garb - the wolf head helm and the troll hide armor. Looking at Beowolf's halberd, he says that it looks like a formidable weapon, but not necessarily a regal or stately weapon.
He asks where Beowolf got the halberd. On Hilde? Ah - he asks if on Hilde Beowolf heard of the Nord black whale pod? Aurelien says that the Nord pod migrates north to Hilde each year, and Hilde's whalers have had many amazing encounters with the pod. The whalers tell of the whales turning on and destroying harpoon boats that lowered for them, or dragging them under the water, and some stories even describe the beasts turning on the larger whale ships proper, battering or sinking them. The stories are so extraordinary, and almost supernatural, that sailors believe the Nord to be the same whales that attacked sailors and ships in legend. The leader of the pod is the bull whale Huhner, and sailors believe him to also be the legendary whale Irrhaus and many other whales since.
The ancient Naumkaeg poem the Lay of Dambach describes how Dambach hunted Irrhaus, barbing him with his harpoon Hosingen and then being pulled by Irrhaus into the maelstrom and losing the whale; and so the harpoon Hosingen was lost. If Huhner is this legendary whale, possibly the harpoon Hosingen is still in Huhner's side.
Each year the Kirsi travel west to meet the Nord pod on its migration up the west coast of Anhault and commune with them. That time of year is near. If Beowolf comes with the Kirsi, they can have Beowolf check Huhner's hide for the great harpoon Hosingen.
The party agreed to kill Inkling and install Bruhl as the head of Raven House. But before letting the party go, the Kirsi told Aeris they were concerned about the lich Ishild.
Aurelien and Mirabel thank Aeris again for freeing Ivy from Ishild. They ask what they can do to best thank him?
They ask if the party knew that Ishild was a lich? If so, do they know that Ishild can come back, or possibly already has, unless Ishild's soul focus is destroyed?
Also, they say over the hundreds of years that Ishild held Ivy captive, Ishild wrested many secrets about the Kirsi from Ivy through cruel mind games, alternately using threats and the promise of freedom if she'd give him information. Aurelien and Mirabel are concerned that unless Ishild is destroyed permanently, he'll use that information to recapture Ivy or other fairies in Hollin, or to do some wider hurt to the Kirsi.
He asks if Aeris would seek out and destroy Ishild once and for all?
Confronted with the Kirsis' questions about Ishild, Aeris didn't admit that he'd actually allied with Ishild, but he didn't lie. Instead, he repeatedly assured the Kirsi that Ishild was under control and that they didn't have to worry about him.
As the revels came to an end, Noreste appeared.
As the night progresses and clouds clear, they notice that Beowolf's green star Noreste has developed a spectacular green tail that goes part of the way across the sky. The Kirsi say they've celebrated that star for many ages and the tail is a good omen on their meeting.
Aurelien and Mirabel make a motion and the girls come over - they ask if the party would like to celebrate the new green tail by dancing with the girls they'd seen before, Silverbell, Wiles, Crabapple, and Sugarplum.
The party set out, first to confront Inkling in Balibana, then to install Bruhl as the Kirsi high priest in Tulun. The human that Bruhl had replaced as a baby, Barley, now wanted to return to Hollin. Since the party would return there eventually, he joined them.
They followed the Renhannes River to the end of the valley, where it ran over a high granite cliff. From the clifftop, they could see Balibana far below, an abandoned, overgrown city on an isthmus between two lakes. Fairies seeing them out of Renhannes said Balibana had been a great human capitol like Hollin or Blackwells. But now Kirsi lived in the ruins and overgrowth there, and it was the heart of Raven House's duchy.
They climbed down the cliffside, followed the river to the nearer of the two lakes, and followed the lake shore to the isthmus. They didn't have any leads on finding Inkling, so they went into the most conspicuous building there, which had a giant marble dome. Inside, they soon found themselves lost in a small cluster of just four rooms, repeatedly entering the same rooms again and unable to find their way out. The same thing had happened to them in the Lofton Castle caverns, and now recognizing that they were beguiled by fairies, were able to quickly find their way out.
Exiting the four room "maze," they found themselves under the dome. A circular balcony ran around the inside of the dome above them. Inkling and his henchmen were on the balcony, and called down to the party, taunting them. Not seeing any way up, Aeris and Ord bandied with Inkling at length, trying to lure him down. The Kirsi are fascinated by human trinkets, and Aeris suggested trading something for Inkling's Origami Armor. Inkling initially refused, saying that the armor was a Raven House heirloom, but Aeris persisted and overcame Inkling's better judgment.
When Inkling came down to trade, the party attacked, and Inkling's henchmen came to his defense. They were:
The four fairies also had the power Doppelganger.
The party found a tactic for working around Doppelganger within a turn or two, and beat the fairies.
Searching the dome building afterwards, they found another niche door safe, similar to the ones they'd seen at the Gramercy Book Store and in the lich Ishild's apartment, but this time with nine holes instead of two or three as before. Rolling Insight, Ord and Aeris came to believe two things: (1) the safe probably contained the killing word spell that Aurelien had told Kasskar about, Word Without Warning; and (2) lockpicking a nine-hole niche door safe incorrectly would kill the lockpick.
Since Kasskar was the party's lockpick, but Keith wasn't actually at the game, we stopped here so Kasskar could look at the safe in the next game.
The players said that the party needed more punch and that they'd like to add an non-player character fighter to the party. So I had Barley, the human raised in Renhannes in Bruhl's place, join them. But, Derek had made a character sheet for the fighter, and we renamed Barley Gregg, the name Derek had chosen. Although Gregg saw some action, we weren't used to having non-player characters travel with the party and he was mostly forgotten in later games.
