DND Blog

A place to keep DND session recaps, from various campaigns.

The Hundred and Twenty-Seventh Session

September 13, 2025, Campaign: As the ground quakes, evil wakes

Mer-fey backstory! Embersia's divine intervention returns the fey realm to its origin, and the Fey to their original forms. A pact is made, boons granted, and the story of the Fey Seeds told. The Party returns to the Material Plane, and is met by Shadow Belladonna.

Table of Contents

  1. Last session
  2. Ongoing discussion
  3. The Play within the Play
  4. Returning the realm to the Feywild
    1. Gifts and lore
  5. Back to the Material Plane
  6. To do

Last session

Belladonna met with the clan and gave them a seed; they planted it and it grew, and then they were transported to the bottom of a pit, and then it got flooded. Lord Aquarius took it on himself to protect his realm.

That tree was ripped asunder as part of the plane transfer.

Ongoing discussion

We promised to help them return to the Fey realm.

Why are they here, though?

More Q&A with Lord Aquarius:

Percival suggests using his bracer to interact with the stump, and Lord Aquarius' "Seat of Power", which is built on the stump. We go down to look at the stump, and a flock of krill run away. Percival looks at the rings, and without counting, sees that it's a countable number. He counts, and it's 75 years.

He doesn't feel anything up until he touches the roots, and so he casts Speak with Plants and touches.

It doesn't say anything intelligible. Screaming.

He says, "Have no fear! We have come for your retribution, and, if possible, your healing!"

Through the screams, he hears, "I am broken."

"Where is the rest of you?"

"I am broken."

Percival returns, and discusses possibilities. "Try as you may," says the Fey Lord, "but do not fear disappointment."

We discuss stuff, but don't have any real paths forward.

The Play within the Play

There's a thrum in the water, and one of the courtiers says to us, "The only benefit of this form is that the theatre is just a swim away." The court swims off.

We swim after them. The sounds of the theater are well audible even at a distance; Ryltar is charmed by them. He swims harder, bewitched by its sounds. Percival notices. The theater is the most-dangerous thing here; it's bewitching. Jerry casts Silence and a moment later Ryltar disappears; he's subtly cast Dimension Door and is now within the theater.

Percival decides to start playing Countercharm on his instruments, and we enter the theater.

Ryltar is pulled/invited onto the stage in an improve performance, as the hero against a hydra. It bites him, and he takes 16 damage.

Percival and Jerry teleport in, describing him as a stupid student. Another Fey jumps on stage and begins to berate the "hydra".

Jerry says, "no, this is how you fight a hydra!" She shoots a Lightning Arrow and deals enough damage to pop one of the eelfolk who play the Hydra. The crowd goes wild. The stage manager hauls up three more eelfolk to play more heads.

Ryltar Shadow Steps out of his bindings, and flourishes his longsword, and crits with his unfamiliar weapon. 2d10 - 1 = 7. The eelfolk hit will dramatically writhe and retreat. Then Ryltar slides in under the hydra and makes another dramatic slices.

The hydra's trainer is coaching it, patting it down with a towel.

Percival casts Hold Monster on Percival, and Ryltar Counterspells with another natural 20, and Percival Counterspells that. Ryltar freezes anyways, and slides, and slides, and slides, and slides off stage. "But hark! The monster's paralyzing gaze has harmed our hero!" The crowd gasps in horror.

Jerry gasps, and holds up a finger, and pulls a mirror from her pocket. She flourishes it to the crowd, and Percival narrates: "Perhaps a mirror will stop the beast!"

The hydra rears up as if to attack, and Jerry presents the mirror at it. It freezes and falls back, drifting in the water. Jerry and Percival make short bows, and follow Ryltar out of the theater.

With a Greater Restoration, Ryltar comes back to his senses and health.

Returning the realm to the Feywild

We return to the tree stump, and discuss what sort of divine intervention might be worth using here. We're not sure whether it would work.

But we could use the Fey plane tuning fork, and then use Wish to return.

Or we'll use Divine Intervention, a class feature of our Cleric.

Lord Aquarius comes over, and we talk about how the theater was. Some snarking.

We discuss what options we may have to help them; the one which seems best is Embersia's Divine Intervention. We try that, to ask for Bahamut to return this place to its plane.

1d100 = 26 it fails

We get accommodation from the Fey Lord to help us breathe. Percival pops open the Mansion and sets it up for our water-breathing guests.

In the morning, there's a cluster of amulets waiting for us: gifts to let us water-breathe for a day.

We exit the mansion, and Lord Aquarius is waiting for us, with two pistol shrimp, and two seahorses. We decide we'll try Embersia first, and if that fails, then Ryltar will use his more-limited power to return some few people to the Fey Wild.

1d100 = 12 it works.

Embersia feels a deep reverberation within herself. She hears, "Gather the people, within the seat."

She relays the message, and the Fey Lord gestures to his pistol shrimp, and they're gone, off to relay the message.

Embersia feels a pressure within her, starting to grow and filling her. A growl builds within her throat.

The walls of the Seat are lined with Fey Folk: eels, seals, shrimp, seahorses, all glowing with bioluminescence. "We're packed in here like sardines," mutters Ryltar. Miles and miles of Fey pack the walls of the Seat. The water around them starts to bubble slightly.

Embersia shakes with power; she is but a conduit now.

Lord Aquarius watches, and speaks, as the final Fey enter the hall.

She slams her weapon into the ground, and white light washes across the floor and walls and ceiling, brighter than anything anyone has seen while we were down here. The water rushes out of the area, and all that color fades into browns, greens, oranges, reds, and crashes and spills out. Water floods out of the Seat and that takes with it all the aquatic adaptations.

"We are home," says Lord Aquarius, and exhales.

The pistol shrimp have turned into little blue-cap green-tunic pixies, actual quicklings.

Ryltar pats Embersia on the shoulder, saying, "That is how you earn forgiveness."

Percival pats her on the other shoulder and says, "You did good today, kid," and gives her whatever was in one pocket.

"What should we call you now?" asks Ryltar.

"My title before was Okone the Venerated, of the Eclipse Throne."

"And what should we call you now?" asks Jerry.

"That is not up for me to decide. Titles are given."

The tree is restored, and is rooted amongst a small forest. It will take time to rebuild their civilization. It's a mix of pinks, like cotton candy. A pastel mesh of colors.

Jerry asks, "If it is not presumptuous to ask, may we have the gift of a day, to better know your realm, so that we may gift you with a fitting name?"

"A day you may have. And this shall be known as the Day of the Returned."

Gifts and lore

Percival goes to Speak with Plants with the tree, which expresses a profound sort of relief. The tree is still just a stump, though, but it hasn't regrown. "I am home," it says.

Percival tries to envision what the tree might look like whole, and tries to communicate that to the tree as a question.

Ryltar asks if there would be any benefit to increasing the growth of the plants in the area. He says, "If the plants consent." We're not going to get that.

We ask him about boons; he cups his hands over our ears, and says that as her words are poison, this will let us fend off her words.

Ryltar observes the sky, and sees no sign of the familiar constellations of home. "But I guess we don't even know what the 'Fey Seeds' are," says Ryltar, and pulls out the Ice Heart of Winter.

For the first time, we see surprise on the Fey Lord's face. He says that it isn't his, and he would not take it, but that Ryltar should return it to the Snow Queen, the Lady of Winter.

Ryltar promises to return it, once he's done. He asks if it was stolen; the Fey Lord says that the Snow Queen willingly gave it to Wint. But Wint left it to him, says Ryltar.

"Crim, Wint, Lily. You're missing the Twins: Aurora and Nero. Aurora was light, and Nero was dark." These Fey Seeds were all gifts from Fey, and the Fey Lord tells us about all their gifts, including that Belladonna got a gift.

  1. Red: Crim's Burning Blood, from Oberon
  2. Blue: Wint's Ice Heart of Winter, from the Snow Queen
  3. Green: Lily's bracer, from the Grandmother of The Wood
  4. White: Aurora's ???, from Titania (the sun)
  5. Fading to Black: Nero's ???, from the Bear King
  6. Missing: Belladonna's gift, from "something darker"

We open the Mansion to all, and Percival's servants perform some performances for the Fey.

We deliver to the Fey Lord his new name, and then we go off.

Back to the Material Plane

Ryltar Wishes for Plane Shift, and goes to the Teleportation Sigil at the Quadroads.

There's some sort of lingering influence. Ryltar's trying to account for it mid-cast, and then it's gone. Something was influencing his spellcasting. Then the influence is gone, and we shatter out of the ice dome. We're in the Quadroads, right? Nope, we're in an open area, and the lapping of water. There's a great tree.

This is where Degrazil was defeated.

That's the pyramid — that would've been the crater. The ring of dark purple mushrooms that surround it now ring a churning darkness that rises from the center of the Hallow spell. Dripping up, like a veil, over a female form.

The veil retracts, and the basin is filled with white flowers. The female form, barely any facial features, then …. it's Belladonna, in her shadow form. She plucks a mushroom. She looks at it, holding a bone-handled obsidian blade, the one that Salris had seen in his vision.

A bead of tear runs down Belladonna's face, and another white flower sprouts.

Ryltar subtly casts Detect Magic. That blade reeks of necromancy. And the Hallow is dispelled.

"Attachment. Why do we hold these things? To lend ourselves to another? So that we can break and burn along with them?"

Salris is pale.

"I suspect this is by your hand. Something of my attachment. Curious," she says, and leans back her head, back and back. The shadows writhe around her. "There was once a time, with my other selves, that you would have joined us in what we are aimed to do. We evne sent one of our trused devotees to collect you. laughs. I was not as optimistic as the others. Nor am I Forgiving."

Roll initiative.

To do