Drink Talk Roll Extended #16: Truth or Darius

Session Recap

After crossing into the Feywild at the end of the last session and meeting the standoffish Darius, the party ventured into the city of Khanya. There they found a vibrant nightlife full of every species of person known to them and many more partying, gambling and feasting.  

Knowing that the still unresponsive Jedah would want to take part in all of this food, Khorr decided to order an order of ramen off of a little fox man’s cart with Ulrich playing the role of interpreter since he was the only member of the party that spoke Sylvan. It was splendid but any attempt to feed Jedah anything other than water just caused him to cough it up.

Moving on through the vibrant night, Darius showed the party to a nearby tavern and inn. Walking up to the bar, he asked the bartender if the owner was in and was told she was. The bartender also took some time to prank Khorr by serving him a drink known as Warm Piss. It tastes exactly like it sounds. Khorr only agreed to drink it if the bartender drank the same thing. He would later learn that this is a prank played on unsuspecting tourists and the bartender uses magic to change the flavor of the drink without the target noticing.  

As Khorr was being pranked, the proprietress of the establishment appeared and talked with Darius in Sylvan. Ulrich listened in and heard them discussing not only the rooms but also some special arrangement the two apparently had.  

Khorr then took a suggestion from the bartender to check out a place called the Maybell while the rest stayed behind and Amra tried out gambling while also keeping a paranoid eye out for any Fey shenanigans. At the Maybell, Khorr found a slightly more friendly bartender who served him cheap ale and perfectly scorched centipede skewers. Khorr enjoyed it so much that he even grabbed a few takeout sets for the rest of the group. He headed back and after a little more gambling from Amra, the party went to bed with Khorr, Ulrich and Talliyah in one room and Amra and Jedah in the other.

After a few hours, Jedah, who as mentioned earlier has been unresponsive since killing his old captain Joe Blacktooth, felt something starting to break the barrier between his mind and the outside world. When it finally broke, he found himself in a strange location without his weapons and armor, a stranger (Darius) in front of him and Amra knocked out on the floor. He immediately attempted to grapple Darius asking what was going on. Darius told him that he and Amra were “property of the Winter Court.” The rest of the party woke up from the noise and quickly came to check on their allies. Darius was able to slip out of the grapple, grabbed Amra and started teleporting out. Ulrich tried to counterspell the magic but felt another magic pushing back until they exploded in a burst of wild magic that turned Ulrich invisible. With that, Darius and Amra disappeared.

The party took a short rest and caught Jedah up on the events he had missed before they went off to find Amra. After putting everything they knew together, they realized that Darius was working for the Winter Court of Fey and decided to go looking for that. In the lobby, they found the owner of the place awake despite the late hour. They asked if she knew anything that could help them and Ulrich caught a very weird inconsistency in what she said: She had mentioned that the four of them would be fine but as far as she should have known, Amra was still with them making them a party of five. Putting that together with the mention of a special arrangement with Darius, Ulrich realized that she had assisted Darius in his abduction of Amra.  

Before he could get anything else out of her, she cackled and the nice old lady transformed into a hideous figure and summoned two flying assistants. Without Amra to tank for them, Khorr took a decent amount of damage. The first Nat 20 of the night was an attack from the hag against Khorr and he only avoided becoming a makeshift football due to a few good rolls. Jedah was ultimately able to finish off the hag. 

The party took another short rest before setting off for the Winter Court. Time on the Feywild is always hard to pin down but they had to travel for what felt like a few days following the ever increasing cold until they finally arrived at an ice castle. Inside the castle, they found two Fey women sitting on their thrones and one knight standing beside them: Darius. And that’s where the session ended.

Oh Yeah, It’s All Coming Together

If you’ve been following the previous episodes of the campaign, you may remember the previous instances of Fey Court shenanigans from Ulrich’s patron. When he met another court servant Kara in Shunil, she asked Ulrich why was he was travelling around with two Elves affiliated with the Winter Court. Darius revealed this week that the court considers them property. What exactly that means will probably be revealed in the next episode.

Manuel has made Amra’s backstory of having been a Fey Hostage no secret even if he’s been blissfully unaware of all the Fey machinations going on around him. (That extended to apparently Manuel not realizing that Ulrich was an Archfey Warlock. I blame it on the alcohol.) He even had a flashback a few episodes ago to his time in captivity where he was being tortured by a cloaked female figure and a man with a white hair and a sword. Wait, why does that sound familiar? Too bad he failed his Intelligence check to remember that.

Finally, Jedah was the hardest one to wrap into this. Originally, Amra was supposed to be the only Shadar-Kai on the Material Plane after escaping captivity but during character creation, Warren was obstinate about playing the same species as Manuel. This sent me back to the drawing board to figure out where he had come from since his backstory was essentially being a doorstop baby left somewhere until he became a pirate didn’t give me much to work on how he traveled to a different plane. I eventually came up with the reason he saw in a dream/flashback a few sessions ago of two female Elves sending him through a teleportation circle from a hidden location that it is now safe to assume is somewhere on the Feywild.

And I didn’t think of that part until a few sessions in. I hope it will all come together in a satisfying way in the sessions to come. Until then, keep on rolling.

-J.D.