[[Day 3|<< Day 3]] | [[Day 5|Day 5 >>]] ## Day 4 We saved about a dozen children today from the Nightshade's workshop, and we also took care of her and Bavlorna in one go. Found Elidon and some guy named Elkhorn, too. It was a pretty productive day. I woke up this "morning" to make my poultices and to hunt for Juniper. I found an elk with enough meat to last us a month — with the rate we're going, though, I'm hoping that we won't need more than a few day's worth. We headed southwest of Little Oak and in the direction of Loomlurch. Nothing gave us trouble along the way, and soon we were talking to a particularly distressed goblin at the candy market outside of Nightshade's workshop. The goblin had a candy apple for a head and was named Chucklehead. Poor guy. After we made sure he wasn't complicit in kidnapping kids or anything, we asked him what his problem was. He told us that he has a maggot eating his brain and that he would probably die soon if it wasn't taken care of. Despite this, he wasn't quick to accept Skoll's help. He had apparently developed something of a conscience after the maggot made home in his brain. He was afraid that killing the thing would have him reverting back to his old ways. It turned out that Chucklehead was right. Once Skoll dealt with the maggot, he became exponentially more of a shithead. But he didn't give us trouble, and he let us deal with the hags, so I didn't really care much. We found some fucked up toys inside the workshop itself; there was a stuffed animal with needles for teeth, for example. This place just loves to remind me of Barovia. Skoll took a couple toys — presumably for Pidlwick. We found a sleeping zombie-looking girl in a pig mask locked away in a cupboard. We had seen her before back at the Witchlight Carnival — specifically, she was in the reflection of a mirror at the Hall of Illusions and had been attempting to lure away a halfling. We woke her up, thinking that we would save her. However, once we got to talking to her, we realized pretty quickly that she is primarily the one who kidnaps kids for Nightshade. She's not being forced to do it either. Not great, basically. We weren't sure what to do, so we kind of just left her in the cupboard. I'm pretty sure she's still there. While snooping around, we found something interesting among some portraits of the hags: a portrait of Tasha. Even more interesting was that the pictured Tasha had a mark like a chicken's foot below her eye — just like Zybilna. Given the mark, and given that we know that Zybilna is related to the hags, it's probably safe to assume that Zybilna and Tasha are one and the same. So I guess I was right about Tasha being somewhere in Prismeer. We also found Elidon while we were looking through the workshop. He had been transformed into a rocking horse — we would've missed him entirely if we hadn't noticed the unicorn horn-sized groove on his head. Once we put Elidon's horn in the groove, the rocking horse transformed back into a unicorn. Elidon teleported away after a quick chat. We'll definitely need to catch up with Elidon later, though, because we still need a unicorn horn for the palace. But we decided that we could worry about that later. In the meantime, we came across Nightshade's kitchen and found ourselves in the middle of a bit of a scene: a small green dragon was asleep on the stove, a little girl was chained to a table, and an armored dwarven man was locked behind a grate. Nia freed the girl and the dwarf. We were all quiet enough that the dragon remained asleep. The dwarf's name is Elkhorn. He's part of an adventuring party called Valor's Call, which is currently in Prismeer hunting the League of Assholes. I feel like it's a bit vain to name your own adventuring party, but whatever. Elkhorn was pretty keen to help us in any case. We asked the girl — Mishka — if she was aware of any other kids in the workshop. We had sneaked past three on our way through the place, and Mishka let us know that there was at least five more kids on top of that. Mishka also informed us of trouble we might run into other than Nightshade herself: redcaps, boggles, tin soldiers, Cradlefall (the dragon), and Bavlorna. It seemed like we had our work cut out for us. In addition to Mishka and the three kids we had seen before, we were able to grab two kids from Nightshade's sewing room. The kids in the sewing room were being harassed by a living child-sized doll and an animated carpet. Nia and I took care of the things. Nia's fighting style has gotten a lot more up close and personal since Barovia, so she takes a lot more hits these days. It's strange having someone other than Ezmerelda fight directly beside me. But I suppose that's neither here nor there. We led the children from the sewing room outside. The three kids near the front of the workshop came with us, but one girl refused to leave without her pet pig, which was being held in the garden — the same place that we knew Nightshade to be. We had Elkhorn stay outside and hide with the kids while we set off to deal with Nightshade. We could've just tried to grab the pig without Nightshade seeing, but we knew that we had to deal with the hag at some point — otherwise, Nightshade might just kidnap replacement children to fill her workforce. The three of us quickly hatched a plan before entering the garden: Skoll would polymorph Nightshade into a seahorse — a favorite of his, I guess — and I would fly her far up into the air before dropping her. Easy. Except it wasn't easy. When we entered the garden, Nightshade was accompanied by two tin soldiers and four redcaps. I didn't like leaving Nia and Skoll on the ground to deal with the soldiers and redcaps, but we stuck to the plan — Skoll turned her into a seahorse, and I grabbed her and flew up. I did what I could while I was still in range with my crossbow; it was mostly up to Skoll and Nia, though. I was maybe 200 feet up when I heard Nia's slightly-panicked voice in my head: Bavlorna had showed up. So I dropped Nightshade before letting myself fall too. Nightshade survived the fall somehow. She certainly wasn't happy, but we didn't give her much time to complain; Skoll had turned into a big crocodile — another favorite of his — and snapped his jaws closed around her. Skoll didn't stay a crocodile for long, though, and when he was back to his normal form, Bavlorna swallowed him whole. I ignored Nightshade in favor of Bavlorna, because what the actual fuck. Thankfully, Skoll ended up okay — once I ran "windershins" around Bavlorna, she sneezed, and he came flying out. He was covered in stomach acid; pretty grisly, but he was alive. I killed Nightshade. Then, I killed Bavlorna. And then the dragon showed up, along with two more tin soldiers. We took care of the tin soldiers without issue. The dragon did some pretty hefty damage, but we managed to kill it too. We were left along with the corpses and the animals in the garden. After making sure that the hags were actually dead, Skoll healed Nia and I healed Skoll. Skoll looked a little worse for wear; I asked him if he was okay, but he just ignored me. He probably just needs a little time. Still, I worry about him — he keeps a lot to himself, and I feel like it's not the mostly healthy way to deal with things. But I'm kind of a huge hypocrite, so. Skoll was at least feeling well enough to take Bavlorna's flying lily pad. For my part, I grabbed the pig. The girl was happy to receive it. Outside, Elkhorn gave us some cloth to clean the blood of ourselves before retrieving the rest of the kids. While we were making ourselves a little more presentable, I asked the kids who were present where they were from — most of them are from places that I've never even heard of. I'm hoping that Zybilna can help us sort it out once we free her. We didn't run into any more trouble back inside the workshop. While we were looking for the rest of the kids, we came across a mirror swirling with magical energy. Nia studied it for a while; according to her, it can teleport us to the Witchlight Carnival. So that's two potential escape routes, now. We found five more kids throughout the workshop, which made eleven in total. One of them was in bad shape thanks to an illness, but he was all better once Skoll healed him. We headed back outside. Skoll also grabbed the animals from the garden along the way. It made the most sense to take the kids to Little Oak, so that's where we went. Five kids went on the lily pad with Elkhorn, five kids went on Skoll's back after he transformed into a giant boar, and Mishka rode in the chariot with me and Chucklehead. Nia flew on her broom. None of us wanted Chucklehead to come with, but he has an attachment to Mishka and refused to leave her side. Mishka didn't seem to mind, at least, even though the other kids clearly didn't like him. On the way to Little Oak, we heard a distant chittering noise. While it didn't sound aggressive, we still took another way back, because we were responsible for the lives of eleven kids. Better safe than sorry. Will was happy to see us. He even seemed impressed that we managed to get all the kids in one go. Once all the kids left for the treehouse, Will dropped a bombshell on us. It turns out that he's not actually an eleven year-old human child; he's an oni named Mugan. The kids need someone to take care of them and to look up to, so he fulfills that role for them. It was a relief to hear, honestly, because I had been more than a little worried about leaving a ton of kids in the care of another young child. Will is a lot more pleasant to speak to when he's not busy pretending to be a shitty kid. He apologized for "roughing us up" while keeping up appearances. I told him that we could take it. He offered to let us rest at the treehouse if we wanted, but we decided to go back to the Wayward Pool, figuring that it'd be safer for the kids now that we've made ourselves enemies of the hags. We got stopped by a Centaur named Winterbow on the way back to the pool. He was looking for us specifically; apparently, he had heard about us from Sir Talavar. He wanted to warn us that Prismeer is falling apart and that we should get out while we still can. But by the time he found us, we had already killed two hags. Prismeer is already beginning to visibly recover. So instead of trying to convince us to leave, he just thanked us and gave us each a pendant with a charm on it. The charms might wear off after we get out of the feywild, but they'll allow us to cast specific spells in the meantime. Skoll's allows him to summon a draconic familiar, Nia's allows her to create a tiny shelter, and mine allows me to…create water. Helpful, if a bit underwhelming compared to Skoll's dragon. He also gave me a glowing scimitar that I'm sure that I'll never use. I did a fine enough job seeming appreciative. It's the thought that counts, or whatever. Skoll used his pendant to summon a tiny little dragon; the spirit turned out to be none other than Hati himself. Winterbow refered to Hati as "Managarmr"; from what I could gather from the ensuing conversation, Hati's actual form is a large dragon, not a wolf. Skoll didn't seem that surprised — he didn't seem to care much, either. After Hati freaked out a little bit, Skoll dismissed him. The one thing that *did* bother Skoll was Nia referring to Hati as his dad; his objection was that he's an adult. I made fun of him a little for acting like adults don't have fathers. When I pointed out that Hati does kind of have a fatherly role in Skoll's life, Skoll objected. He asked me what I would say if he referred to Rictavio as my dad. And Nia — who suddenly has a joke for every other thing — said that Rictavio's obviously my father-in-law, not my father. So that was fun. Back at the Wayward Pool, we found Lamorna, along with new signs of plant life in the water. Lamorna is feeling much better; she was very appreciative of what we have done for her and Prismeer so far. As much as I hate this place, it was nice to hear that we've been doing good work here. When we brought up the fact that we might still need Elidon's help, she volunteered his services. I'm hoping that Elidon doesn't mind too much. I guess we'll see when we talk to him tomorrow. Now we rest. Elkhorn's with us — Winterbow is too, though he'll probably stay at the Wayward Pool once we leave. Yon next. Hopefully we pass it by as quickly as we did Hither and Thither. ~~I have a wife to return to, apparently.~~ --- ## Page Tags/Properties **Tags:** #Journal **Category:** [[Journals and Writings.base|Journals and Writings]] **Character:** [[Krue d'Avenir|Krue]] **Campaign:** [[Wild Beyond the Witchlight]] **Date ([[Calendar of Harptos|Harptos]]):** 12/28/1492