Elfame Session 1 – Actual Play – Quest for the Sacred Cauldron

The characters in this session were:

XP Awarded: 200 XP

Once upon a time, in the land of Elfhame, a group of would-be heroes journeyed to the Glass Fortress of Glistermarch, heeding summons of Lady Una, a Seelie princess of the Royal Blood. They were eight in number, the sardonic shade bard Blue-Eyed Molly, the mad pixie sorcerer Fennrix, the tragicomic fungoig barbarian Fun Guy, the chef and woodwose druid Mud, the aforementioned Petalu Morriden, Knight of Harts, the irascible pixie sorcerer Sparks, the hard-bitten goblin mercenary Weevil Stench, and the enigmatic firbolg rogue Wick. Two others followed Petalu, the squire Tiesel and servant Bellaquick.

The party briefly tarried with Rhiannon, the lady in the moon, a Tatzelwrum guarding the borders fof Glistermarch in the Realm of Tír na nÓg, and the merchant Hawthorn (whose broken cart the druid Mud fixed), and acquired some magical candles in the village of Wick, where enormous beehives produced wax which fey chandlers then animated, directing the semi-sentient waxkin to pour themselves into moulds.

At the fortress, Petalu convinced the guards of the party’s good intentions, and they were led into the heart of the keep to meet with the princess.

“You have come here having heard of my need for heroes,” the princess said. “The truth is that the Quest beforeyou is in the service of all Elfhame. Look now upon Her Highness, Queen of Tír na nÓg, Titania.”

With a gesture, one wall of the chamber shimmered, and they saw the Queen Titania herself, ruler of Tír na nÓg; she appears to be asleep, her face pale and drawn, her hair not its famed gold but streaked with white and grey.

“Some weeks past, my mother fell into this slumber,” Lady Una said. “What manner of poison, curse, or illness has afflicted her, we do not know, though it is beyond all magic or remedy we have attempted. But it is affecting the realm.” She gestured again, and the view shifted, replaced with a vision of a decaying woodland, the trees twisted and riddled with fungi, some dead and leafless. “As Monarch of Spring, Queen Titania sustains the Everlasting youth of Tír na nÓg,” the princess explains. “As she fades, the land itself is beginning to sicken. Should she die, all of Elfhame will plunge into chaos – the natural order will be disrupted. The borders of our realms will be fatally breached.

“Some believe this to be the work of the Unseelie Court. Though suspicions naturally fall to Queen Mab, even she knows that Elfhame requires a balance between forces. Should Tír na nÓg lose its vitality, Mab’s own realm would suffer as well. Even dark Lord Arawn would not threaten the stability of the Wheel of Seasons.

“Whatever the cause, Elfhame must act if we are to save Queen Titania. I believe our best hope is an artefact of great power, one of the Thirteen Treasures of Elfhame – the Sacred Cauldron of Rebirth. It is said that any who drinks of the Cauldron will be cured of all illness and purged of all poison, restored to the first blush of youth.

“Like all Thirteen Treasures, the Cauldron is fated to pass from one hand to the next, never to be possessed by any single owner for long. As such, I cannot tell of its whereabouts with any certainty – rumour and legend are our only guides. The last known location of the Cauldron was in the hands of King Finvarra, husband of High Queen Nicneven, father of both Queen Titania and Queen Mab. It is believed that the Cauldron was one of many treasures interred with King Finvarra when he died. As such, I suggest you begin by seeking his tomb, which lies on the border of Tír na nÓg and Annwn, deep in the Gloamwood at the hill of Cnoc Ma.

“As for a reward – beyond ensuring an eternal place in song, should you return with the Sacred Cauldron, each of you shall be granted one of the precious Royal Wishes – anything it is in my power to grant, you will be given.”

After a heart heroic feast – complete with psychic dessert – the party set out at twilight through the Gloamwood.

The party’s first encounter was with a pair of monstrous slugs in the depths of the woods, devouring what appeared to be decomposing leaves – anathema in Tír na nÓg! Fennrix and Mud made quick work of one with a mixture of fire and salt, while Fun Guy and Weevil butrchered a second. Attempts to befriend additional slugs looked dicey, so the party pressed on.

They next assisted the treefolk bard Susurrus Psithurisma with a band of errant torch-bearing pixies. The treefolk, from Oberon’s court in Mag Mell, gladly joined the party’s quest. Petalu also spotted a red-eyed owl and asked it to help put out some of the fires of the pixies.

After an uneventful watch, the paryt pressed on along the Greenroad, lingering briefly by an overturned carriage from which protruded a black-fletched arrow, somewht reminiscent of those famously used by the followers of the Erlking, who wanted to return Elfhame to its “primal” nature – but the Erlkin has been dead for nearly a thousand years. Coincidence? Mud also found a magical emereld.

Weevil found a cold iron dagger, dropped by a petrified goblin.

The party had another encounter with a flock of randy cockatrices, after the mischievous Fennrix immitated the mating call. of the basilisk With spells and blades they quickly dispatched the ferocious birds – and found themselves dinner.

Grateful for liberation from the cockatrice and drawn by the entrancing smells of roast fowl, various beasts of the woodlands joined the party for a jamboree that night. In conversation with some bears, Wick heard tell of witch-like spirits in the deep woods, dwelling in a dead tree – gwyllion, souls of the dead who did not pass into Annwn but lingered by its northern border.

Resting that morning the party enduring some… strange dreams as a result of eating the meat of cockatrices preparing to mate…

Travelling that afternoon, the party discovered a series of severed goblin body-parts on the fog-swathed trail that led like gruesome breadcrumbs into the woods. Sparks removed a hexing ward from one of the trees.

At the dead tree, the party attacked the lurking spirits that skulked in the fog, lured out by a clever illusion. A fortuitous shaft of sunlight caused the gwyllion to flee into their tree, which Blue-Eyed Molly then uprooted with Thunderwave. Cast out into the light, several of the ghosts were easily dispatched, their apparent leader slain by Weevil with the cold iron knife.

Amidst the bones of the dead the party discovered the Drudehorn, a nightmare-conjuring hunting horn. The tomb was set on a hill that rose up out of the forest, looming like the head of some terrible beast. Snow fell softly, a cold wind blowing in from Annwn, distantly visible to the north – a bleak vastness of jagged mountains and windswept moorland, shrouded in a perpetual brume. The mound was marked by a ring of menhirs, like some ancient crown.

The gates of the Tomb of King Finvarra must once have been resplendent, being intricately carved with elaborate bas-reliefs showing the deeds of the former co-ruler of Elfhame – his war with Hell, and the peace that led to the Tithe; the tricking of the red and white dragon that once wreaked havoc over Elfhame, when he poisoned a pit full of mead with a sleeping draught, then filled in the pit over their slumbering bodies; his victory of the cyclopean Fachan, former ruler of Avalon and wielder of a terrible flail with heads like spiked apples, dripping poison; his marriage to Nicnevan, which brought peace to Faerie; his glorious death in the battle against the rebellious Gwyn ap Nudd, the cambion son of Arawn.

Now, however, the gates had been pried open, one ripped entirely from its hinge, marred with chisel marks. What’s more, the carvings had been defaced, with a ridiculous moustache and even-more ridiculous priapic cock and swollen testicles added to Finvarra, and enormous heaving tits scrawled over the carving of Nicnevan, with a puff of air indicating the High Queen of Elfhame was farting.

The adventurers crept inside and found a long, dim hall; mutilated forms loomed amidst a sea of dust. Shrouded in cobwebs, the broken remains of half a dozen statues stood, their heads and arms broken off, their bodies adorned with crude graffiti, severed heads chipped and disfigured with scrawled-on faces. Weevil pasued, admiring the craftsmanship of the graffiti. The way forward was blocked by a collapse.

Exploring the Upper Tombs, they passed by a door where something scratched and clawed, trying to get free of its tomb; this they passed by, entering another chamber and discovering an enormous Cat Sith, drinking wine from a bottomless goblet. The crept further into the tombs, hearing laughter and shrieks up ahead, and soon discovered a group of goblins betting on a fight between a squirrel and a wingless pixie. Despite Weevil’s boisterous charms and attempts to befriend the goblin gamblers, the appearance of the rest of the party and the rage of Sparks at the sight of pixie-torture seemed to make a fight inevitable…