I'm going to sum up my last session in a picture and hopefully a lot less than a thousand words.
So in my
Masks of the Imperium game, the party is attempting a speed run across the Feywild to get back to the material plane because they found out that their liege, the Child-Empress Olixia, has had her uncle installed as a regent over her due to corruption in the Council of Nobles.
They've gone through various illusions and not-like-the-material planes part in the Gloaming Court (a/k/a Dreaming Court). They recently had been told where someone who could unlock a portal to the Winter Court, and their Eladrin knew how to get home from there. Unfortunately it involved waking up someone who had been cursed to slumber for a thousand years for rudeness. Which they had accomplished last session, but unfortunately an alarm had been sounded and the end of last session was them regrouping and hearing the horns of a Wild Hunt after them racing through the sky.
They use some of their last spell slots for Pass without Trace, and the druid wildshapes into a giant elk which is ... not quite stealthy at Huge size. But kept rolling in the high 20s.
They vacated the area at speed, searching for a flower neeeded to open the portal according to their guide, a charming dandy of an Eladrin named Jelaween, as a male tribute to the Dolly Parton song Jolene. (Though he'd go after their husband or wife. The paladin turned him down with "too male" and got called provincial.) [Side note - we have multiple married couples in the groups and the RL wife of the paladin's player was laughing her head off and encouraging this. Normally we don't end up in the ribald.]
The flowers weren't there, the druid established that the river had shifted in the 80-someodd years he'd actually been asleep and it was too wet. Most of the party took off again on giant elk-back, while the ranger - who could move full speed stealthily because were in their favored terrain - went hunting for the flower. She found some, negotiated with a dryad for them, and caught back up. In the meantime the party had attracted some attention of flyers who were above but hadn't located anyone - but were close.
The party went on, came across a bridge across a small chasm and river guarded by four archers and a few tiny faeries. The bard is an Eladrin of some fame, and the alarm was for "outsiders". So the paladin lent his armor to the dandy to hide his face, and half the group riding the giant elk druid tried to bluff their way across. This lead to a performance, during which the rest of the party snuck down below - which was patrolled by water weirds. Long story short, the Order of the Paladin watcher managed to turn all three, and do so stealthily enough not to be heard over the impromptu concert above, and make it across.
They continued, and had their first bad luck with stealth. The giant elk druid rolled a 1. "Good thing I'm a halfling". Reroll. Another 1. Oh no.
They book it out of there, the ranger casting longstrider for 70ft of Giant Elk movement. They had alerted those in the sky, but the Yeth Hounds only had a fly speed of 40' and were left behind to go get their masters.
After a chase/stealth skill challenge was resolved, at the edge of the verdant forest they found what they called The Lion Tree, who wanted their names to know whom it talked to and then gave them a riddle. The party was able to figure it out, and so didn't have to fight the sphynx to get into the winter realm.
Technically note - this group uses Zoom for audio/visual, and google draw for images and maps with all the players having edit access so they can move their image tokens. We just trust each other's rolls. I went to paste the riddle in a text box after reading it in a suitable tree lion vioce, and one of my players showed me he could do a voice bubble. So that's where the picture came from.
Tree gathered in all the light, split into an aurora, and opened a portal to the realms of the winter court. I had pictures for all - I picture the Feywild as very saturated, very vibrant. So I made sure form a DMign perspective that I had tons of gorgeous pictures for everything they saw.
In the winter realm they met a noble with an entourage, alerted by the Verdant Prince who they can rescued the slumberer from. She say to call her Gilli of the Frost, and allowed that she was known in the mortal realm as Frosty Jill. She was a lover of Jelaween whom he had broken a promise of "I'll be back soon". Various RP went on, but they left him to his fate (though that wasn't a popular decision among everyone), and left. They had a long discussion about which portal to take back - there were three possible with various degress of distance fromt he capital and obviousness that someone was coming through. They settled ont he one three days upriver from the capital, but at a very public location. They went through, three in disguise and two hidden by invisibility, only to have they days of effort in the Feywild that they did not feel int eh timelessness hit them all at once.
We left with them near the capital, with two levels of exhaustion each, and being approached. We'll find out more next week as they figure out how to rescue the Child-Empress, and what to do after that.
