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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Particle_Man" data-source="post: 1845072" data-attributes="member: 892">So today there was a bit of “court” stuff to do before a hag hunt could get under way.  Prince Hammoton’s father was recovering under the care of priests, and his (possibly last remaining) son, transformed, went in to see him.  The son and father were reconciled, and Hammoton’s status as a friend of Prince Caius eased negotiations between Caius’s father King Anguish (nominally King of Ireland) and Hammoton’s dad.  Other party members made preparations (Lady Christine bought a crossbow!). <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> It was during this time that they found out that they had somehow lost 7 months of time since they disappeared from Baron Ivo’s fountain room!  (Its funny, I did this, and then started reading “The Knight” by Gene Wolfe, where similar time losses occurred.  Great minds think alike!)  Then there was a disturbance outside, as a mob of angry peasants claimed to have captured a hag!  Actually it was an elf, stunned and too scared to talk, and then knocked unconscious by a rock.  Lady Leanne managed to finagle her healing and questioning, but it seemed like her mind was almost gone.  She remembered her and other elves being captured and tortured by horrible strong ugly women, and a terrifying box, and that her ring (untarnished brass, with three oak leaf shapes) was important and never to be taken off.  But then Prince Hammoton’s father wanted to question her, and she wouldn’t speak to him (or anyone except when Lady Leanne (another elf, but a secret elf) was alone with her).  So the king naturally sent for a priest to see if he could ease her mind.  The priest returned, but happened to have a large crucifix of cold iron (which freaks out fey in general).  Thus the elf panicked, and touched her ring, and disappeared!  Thus rumours spread of the “demon/enchantress/witch/hag/etc.” in the castle.Later, at night, Lady Leanne was “recruited” by Queen Titania as an agent, to replace one that was damaged.  Lady Leanne got a similar ring (maybe even the same one) and was told that with it she could contact her queen, or even ask to visit her realm.  Leanne was also given a map of the swamp, and was told to make sure the hags were all dead, so that the secret of what happened when elves die did not get out.[oh, and I have decided that, as an elf, Lady Leanne’s nobility will be permanently fixed, barring certain magical means of changing it.  This solves some of the problems her player was facing, since he was going for Lady of the Lake as a prestige class].Ok, monsters on the way included: 1) an ettin (Tough! Especially since the characters fought him one at a time!) which led Sir Andrew to discover that his shield could heal him even when he didn’t command it to, 2) Cath Palug (basically big mean swamp cats), 3) Wolf Men (and wolves) (NOT werewolves, more like “men raised since childhood by wolves”), and 4) Ghouls (well, we stopped just before rolling init. for the ghoul combat.The Wolf Men combat was interesting, since one of the Wolf Men was one of Prince Caius’s long-lost older brothers!  He has no memory (or even language!) and did not recognize Caius at all.  So now the party is towing around tied up Wolf Men.  Lady Leanne, with a detect thoughts, found out that the older Brother (Lucius) only remembered images, such as being tortured by hags, and that big, scary box.[Oh, one moment of comedy: one of the wolves had tripped Sir Anton, and so Lady Christine came to the rescue and finished it off with a morningstar.  Quite Xenaesque, our Lady Christine].  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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