The fairy changeling Barley tells the party the kidnapped babies are changelings. In Lofton Forest, the party outruns the seventeen-year silvermote brood and Modalye saves Admiralty lumberjacks from angry dryads. At the fairy Circle, Aurora orders Faile to rescue the babies from the harpy Eyrie, and describes the Hollin Coven, the Drussilan Maven Astrid, and Laurel, a Coven witch who doesn’t know she's a fairy. At the Eyrie, the party rescues the babies from a woman - another disguised harpy - and devils wooing her.
Modalye and Vesper claimed the Talisman of Ajana and the Amulet of Ajana's Asylum from Game 1. The players confirmed their characters were wearing the items they found, not just carrying them.
We discussed Vesper's family, the Cottons. Rob said the Cottons historically had grazing land and their retainers would raise cotton, livestock, and wool, but they invested in different trading interests over time and they now trade spices and metals. Rob said his older brother was named Christopher.
At the beginning of Game 1, Karen said Gwynneth was making a Winter Wolf delivery in Dunham. Karen said Gwynneth still had the item, a ceremonial dagger, which she'd deliver during the long rest.
The party finished Game 1 at the Chapel of Ajana, and Vesper now asked the Keeper Merrick some questions before they left. How did the Chapel get the Penance Stone, and was there any event that explained how they got it? Merrick said that it was maybe meteoric iron and maybe it had been brought to the Chapel when it first landed. Vesper asked, had the stone ever done anything strange? No. Was it known to have any actual power? No. Vesper asked what shape it was, and Merrick said it was about the size of a bowling ball and was pitted like something that had come through the atmosphere.
Not satisfied, Rob thought aloud that Merrick was stonewalling Vesper, but Vesper didn't have any other questions.
Roland now noticed:
When the party first came into the Chapel of Ajana in Game 1, they saw the keeper Merrick sitting at the altar using it as a dinner table. Now after taking the electrum Talisman of Ajana and the electrum Ward of Ajana from two of the women they fought, they notice a reliquary on the altar, which is also made of electrum and glass. Merrick says the reliquary contains the femur of an early maintainer of the Chapel, Kira, or maybe it’s a humerus or a shinbone, who really knows.
Merrick told Roland that the femur was ancient, but that the reliquary was new, and was made by a jeweler in Rankin, Hodges.
The party decided to take a long rest and go to Gregor the Naturalist's in the morning. Roland went home to his rickety apartment/office to rest, while the others laid out on the Chapel's pews.
Karen had said at the beginning of the game that Gwynneth wanted to finish her Winter Wolf delivery as part of the long rest. When she looked at the delivery slip again for the exact address, she realized the dagger was for Christopher Cotton, Vesper’s brother. Gwynneth and Vesper went to the Cotton house together, went in a back door, and went up to Christopher's room.
They knocked at Christopher's door, and noticed a delay before Christopher loudly answered “Come in!” Inside Christopher was busy at his desk, and a busy maid was dusting and rearranging nicknacks nearby. Christopher and the maid seemed...a little too busy, and maybe a little flush in the face. Vesper and Christopher small talked briefly before they gave Christopher the dagger and took their leave.
In game 1, Faile, Modalye, and Roland had sent their familiars to track the harpy after it flew away from the Volstead house. Now with the sun coming up:
As the party exits the Chapel back onto Ballard Street, Faile’s sprite (Aardist), Modalye’s owl, and Roland’s owl Oz come back. They report that the harpy flew around different random Hollin rooftops for a few hours, then flew north across the river to Lofton. Lofton is bordered on the north by two cliffs, Brice Hill and Durning Hill, and the harpy flew into an opening in the Durning Hill cliffside.
The familiars also said that many voices inside the opening were singing some kind of piercing religious chorale. The party speculated again that the harpy must have been directed by someone.
They met as planned at Gregor the Naturalist's house/lab.
Gregor the Naturalist's lab/house is on Quay Street in Braddock. The river and commercial docks are on the north side of Quay here and tall narrow houses line the south side. When Roland came through here with the errand boy yesterday, he saw two men in a horse costume carrying a stretcher of food to a party somewhere; today you notice a very manly man hauling an upright piano somewhere, on his back.
Gregor's house is a narrow three-story house with a tall lightning rod on the roof, and a big brick is holding the front door open while busy folks carry crates in and out. You poke your head in, and you see that the first floor is the kitchen, but has crates stacked floor to ceiling, with shipping labels from every corner of the earth. There are hundreds of small potted plants with tags saying what experiment they're part of, and many cages full of rats and small foxes, similarly tagged. Books and unwashed beakers are everywhere.
Two men are making a chalk drawing of a strange animal specimen at the kitchen table, and they stop to look up at you. One is a white-haired man with goggles pushed up on his forehead, while the other seems to be in the prime of life.
The man with goggles quickly locked onto Modalye as the most Nature-y character, and introduced himself as Gregor the Naturalist and his friend as Barley. Modalye introduced himself and asked Gregor about harpies from Lofton, working for "Astrid," who were kidnapping Company Board members' children, and Roland gave Gregor the feather to look at.
Gregor didn’t know anything about harpies or Astrid, but his friend Barley became very concerned. Barley asked if the party was all together and they said yes, but he re-asked Faile specifically. Faile said they had only known each other for a few hours but they were very close. Satisfied, Barley told the party that the children weren’t just the children of Board members, but all three were also fairy changelings, and that he himself was a changeling. He told them to take their other questions to the Circle, the fairy court in Lofton Castle.
Gwynneth asked if Faile knew Barley, but Faile said no. Gwnnith asked if Faile was a changeling and Faile said no, but she was human but raised by fairies, and had met the Circle a few times.
Gregor asked to keep the feather (yes) and asked if they had a harpy specimen (no). Gregor said he would be very happy if they could bring him a harpy specimen to catalog.
The players thought that Gregor's lab would be full of helpful items, and indeed it was. Gregor gave Modalye his Naturalis Historia, Abridged:
Naturalis Historia, Abridged
Gregor also gave Modalye and Roland some other curious items that they noticed, the Piece of Fulgurite and the Naturalis Historia, Edible and Inedible Fungi of the Tolland Wood, respectively.
Piece of Fulgurite
Naturalis Historia, Edible and Inedible Fungi of the Tolland Wood
The party planned to go to the Circle next, and Gregor asked to go with them as far as Lofton Forest. He showed them some little red insect exoskeletons and said he wanted to find the bugs that moulted them in the forest, which alarmed and grossed out Roland.
The party headed for the Circle as Barley suggested.
As you cross the river on Lofton Bridge, you can look down from the bridge's high center and see that Lofton is an abandoned medieval town. It has long been reclaimed by forest and most of its streets and buildings are hidden by overgrowth. You can see that Market Street continues north from the bridge into Lofton to Oak Street, which goes west to the abandoned Lofton Castle and east to the abandoned Lofton Cathedral. You can see the Castle has a hexagonal central tower, surrounded by inner and outer curtain walls. Further out, Lofton is bordered on the north by two high granite cliffs, Brice Hill on the left and Durning Hill on the right.
Lofton Castle is about two miles from the bridge.
They went into the forest, with Greg the Owl and Oz the Owl scouting ahead for danger. About a quarter mile from the castle:
On the ground off the road but nearby, you see a red insect about an inch long crawling out of the ground, struggling to do so. It has a narrow forebody with six black legs, and a more bulbous rear section. It climbs a few feet up a tree's trunk, then seems to attach itself there, and then moult. Its skin breaks apart and a silver bug emerges. The red shell left behind is kind of creepy, it's a skin shell that looks like a complete dead insect, with its own legs and everything.
Roland had a particular disgust or phobia about fighting bugs, which he expressed repeatedly. The first bug landed on one party member, who made a DEX save to crush it; then three more appeared and attacked three more party members, and Roland took 5 damage. They then looked back east along Oak Street and saw that actually the entire forest, and then the entire sky above the forest canopy were filling with the bugs.
They ran for the castle, and ran through the gate in the outer curtain wall, which was ajar. Inside, they saw:
Lofton Castle's outer courtyard is sparsely forested. You see an inner gate across the courtyard from the outer gate you just came in. Very near that inner gate, there’s a giant oak bigger than all of the other trees here. The big oak is just the kind the Admiralty likes for ships' keels, and in fact an Admiralty lumberjack party is near it and their whipsaw is embedded in its trunk.
But, several spirits are attacking the lumberjacks - feminine forms who have treeish features suggestive of bark, branches, and leaves.
Vesper recognized one of the lumberjacks, Sturgis, and the lumberjacks called out to Vesper for help. Vesper tried to warn the lumberjacks to break off the fight and run from the silvermotes, but the lumberjacks were in the heat of battle. Modalye went to the whipsaw in the tree, and cast Mend on the trunk cut there, healing the tree. The dryads immediately stopped fighting, and most dematerialized after the giving the lumberjacks the finger. The dryad bound to the cut oak, Parvati, gave Modalye ten goodberries in thanks and then dematerialized. Modalye received an inspiration point for resolving the battle peacefully.
Still running from the silvermote brood, the party ran into the inner courtyard along with the lumberjacks, through the gate in the inner curtain wall. There they saw:
The inner gate is open and you go into the inner courtyard, where the hexagonal castle tower is. There, you see a bright yellow light flying or meandering in the air, like a firefly, and it leads you to a broad circle of unnaturally large mushrooms. The yellow light resolves into a little Tinkerbell-size fairy, and then a series of about twenty fairies materialize out of the air, some Tinkerbell size, some child size, some human size.
Two of the human size fairies - the fairy queen Aurora and king Aurelian - greet you. Aurora bows slightly to Faile.
They seemed to be safe from the silvermotes there. Faile and the party told Aurora that harpies were taking changelings, which led to a long discussion in which Aurora told them:
The party asked how changelings and the Company Board were connected, and Aurora explained that the Circle was infiltrating the Board with changelings, playing a long game. Aurora pointed to Lofton Forest around them and said that Lofton was once the Gradskan capital, the original Hollin, but that the Circle brought the Gradskans down by infiltrating the Gradskan royal line; now they were going to do the same to the Company Board and possibly extend the fairy domain from Lofton into the rest of Hollin over time.
Roland suggested that if the party helped with the changelings, the fairies could lay off the Company, but Modalye pulled Roland into a side discussion about it. Roland didn't want Hollin destroyed, but Modalye didn’t have any love for the Company, which drove his family out of the docks long ago. Roland conceded, saying he just wanted to rescue the babies and deal with the harpies. For her part, Aurora said the Circle’s infiltration of the Board wasn’t going to be violent, it would be more like a financial overthrow of the Company. Also, she reiterated it was a long game and might not happen within the characters’ lifetimes.
Faile asked how the Coven might know about the changelings, and Aurora suggested if the Coven/harpies found three secret changelings, maybe the Coven has finally discovered a "Detect Fey" spell, which would be a grim turning point in the Circle's struggle with the Coven.
Aurora ordered Faile, as her servant, to rescue the two kidnapped changelings from the harpies. Aurora told the party that she could think of three ways to get to the Eyrie (the cliffside openings): fly, which is what fairies would do; rappel down the cliff from the top of the hill; or find the opening at the bottom of the cliffside and take the difficult internal climb up.
Before wrapping up at the Circle, Modalie told the lumberjacks that the dyrads and fairies had not forgiven them, but had only given them a twenty-four hour reprieve before starting to brutally murder and hunt them. Modalye suggested they get rid of their uniforms and appear as anything but lumberjacks in the city. Modalye’s Deception roll failed, but the lumberjacks still left the forest as quickly as they could.
The party decided rappelling down the cliffside was the easiest way to get into the cliffside openings. They discussed using Roland’s Featherfall but decided to keep his two uses for emergencies.
Faile sent Aardist into the opening to scout ahead, invisible. He saw:
The party rappelled down the cliffside and snuck into the tunnel, past the balcony, and up to the throne room entrance. They talked at length there about how they could best attack the woman, who they took to be a harpy queen. But while they discussed it, the harpy from Game 1 came hopping up the tunnel behind them, and they were rushed into attacking.
They targeted the apparent queen and almost brought her down in a surprise round; Roland finished her off early in the first regular round before she could act. Gwynneth’s Smite caused exactly enough damage to finish off one of the devils, while Vesper killed another with Wrath of the Storm. The ephemeral-looking man dematerialized on his first turn. Faile and later Roland brought down the harpy from Game 1 before she could escape and warn the harpy chorus.
They found the electrum Necklace of the Cool Appraising Stare on the woman. When they took it off, the woman transformed into a harpy, just as the woman in Game 1 had transformed when the party took the Ring of Greater Pulchritude. The Necklace was similar to the Ring except that it cast Suggestion instead of Charm Person.
Necklace of the Cool Appraising Stare
They snuck out with the two children, the two harpies' bodies, and the three devils' bodies, and Roland Featherfall'ed them down to the foot of the cliff.
For Game 3, the players said they would visit the electrum jeweler Hodges and then the Black Cabaret. The said they would return the two children to their parents without telling the parents they were changelings; they would not take the children to Aurora first.
At the beginning of this game I said that the Penance Stone was meteoric iron that was pitted from coming through the atmosphere, but in Game 3 I backtracked and said that it was just obsidian.
Nick continued roleplaying Modalye's compulsive lying this game, when he told the lumberjacks that the fairies would hunt them after twenty-four hours, and when he told Roland that the Company drove his family out of the docks.
The harpy with the Necklace of the Cool Appraising Stare was the second harpy Duchess of the Wake, Hecate. The "ethereal-looking, nature-spirit-looking man" in the throne room was Zephyr, the West Wind, who the three Duchesses had long wanted and fought over. The Coven bought the duchesses' services by giving them each electrum jewelry they could use to better woo Zephyr.
The characters went to level 4 after this game.