Year One: The Enchanted Forest Job

• Begins 1 month later at Heroes’ Guild Tavern, following a training session with Tancred of Stonewall; he gives them a Job to travel to Chopwood to assist the Shariff, Coffur Oldmoney in hunting the down the Laughing Bandit who has seemingly taken to now abducting children!
• While prepping, Dustan encounters Magister Mintôr, his instructor, who gives him an iron key when he learns that the Company are venturing into the King’s Wood. In case of Faeries.
• Arrive at Chopwood ahead of shariff and meet with some of the locals, including Patron Morrell, the reeve, and the local senior hunter, Hewe Farwood. Learn a bit about the situation from the local perspective.
• Following day, the shariff arrives and has a meeting with locals at church. Locals want shariff to “do something”, but he thinks this is a trap by “Laughing Bandit” who he suspects locals to have been assisting. A local druid named Oddmar enters the meeting and claims that faeries took the children, though no one believes him. Shariff announces intent to enter Wildwood to find Laughing Bandit and, oh yeah, retrieve the missing girls.
• Druid to lead expedition at Company’s suggestion (even though shariff doesn’t trust him) with Hewe Farwood backing him up to keep him honest. Once past the small wall denoting border of King’s Wood and Wildwood, things start to get weird. Encounter several strange magical traps that claim some of shariff’s men: a basket of fruit that puts one man catatonic when he bites into an apple; a ring of mushrooms that result in another dancing like a crazy person until Dustan blasts him out of it with an air jet; pixies that attack like rain; vines coming alive to drag some men away.
• Brother Getwelle asks Oddmar the druid if something has changed lately, and the druid says (ominously) that yes, everything has changed. He’s a traitor to whom great fame and wealth unimaginable has been promised. Goblins attack from a sinister-looking tree. A wild melee ensues where both the druid and many of his goblins are felled.
• Inside the tree, the Company discover a golden magic mirror, as well as baby goblins growing out of the tree roots! They further discover the catatonic girls. Dustan uses the key Mintôr gave him against the mirror (while ignoring ominous whispers), which breaks the glass; later, Murdok will gather up the gold parts of the mirror to assuage his Greed.
• The sinister tree is burned at the Company’s suggestion and the weirdness seems to recede. The shariff is pleased with their aid, happy that they’ve rescued the missing girls, but confused at the druid’s sudden by inevitable betrayal.
• Mission successful!

Player Notes:

• Two times in this session we had a spell-casting critical fail. The first one was admittedly more entertaining, with Getwelle essentially buffing his foe.
• This is thrice that we’ve run afoul of someone using the ‘great fame and wealth unimaginable’ line has been used. As a player, I recognize that Gigermann is ripping off the (vastly underrated) “Middleman” TV show (which I think I need to rewatch) bad guys’ line of “my plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity”, but I think the the players (or at least Kenrick) is starting to suspect a greater Foe at work behind them. He’s going to include that as part of his report to the Heroes’ Guild.
• The trip through the actual enchanted forest part with the traps didn’t work quite as well as it should have from a player’s perspective. I think, in retrospect, it would have made slightly more sense to randomly roll which PC was closest to the action and ask that player what he’s doing to try and prevent the loss of the men-at-arms. Still, I definitely liked the tone of the traps – they were very faerie-like.
• No game next week as it is the Independence Day weekend and at least two of the players are unavailable.

See the Daniverse Blog for the GM’s post-game debrief.