Lost in the Feywild: Episode 05

The party links the prisoner to the fungal infection, rescues Menestheus from two mushroom men, and reaches the final room before the prisoner’s door.

Audio Highlights

Kaito reads and hears the prisoner’s looping words, then realizes they describe Hulda and the five party members approaching its door.:

Timeline

• Oct 06, 1740 DR, still evening: The party uncovers the prisoner’s connection to the fungal infection, survives an ambush by two mushroom men, and reaches the room beside its prison.

Narrative

We begin with the party still in the fungal greenhouse, discussing the journal entries they have read. After some discussion of their meaning, the party reviews the choices left by Hulda, Lord Endless Ending, and the prison at the center of the shifting house. Menestheus explains what little he knows about the order and its absent leadership while Kallipseis returns to work on her fungal golem.

The party remains reluctant to help either Hulda or Lord Endless Ending, but the glass key still offers their clearest route out. They decide to retrieve it, whether that means opening the prisoner’s door or not.

They follow Menestheus out of Kallipseis’s fungal greenhouse, cross a parlor, and come into a lecture hall whose chalkboard diagrams the life cycles of dandelions and other wind-dispersed plants. An enormous black painting conceals a field of stars, a tear in the universe, and the textured form of a seed sprouting through the gap. Menestheus recognizes the image as exactly the kind of uncontrolled breech between worlds that Arithrimos Lamperum was created to stop.

Tarek also finds a book called “The Shape of Discovery,” a brief treatise arguing that curiosity shapes possibility through the same irrational unpredictability as greed and games of chance. The party connects Kallipseis’s description of infected people to Alden’s pale, round appearance, surprising strength, and fear of fire.

In the next room, a clockworks workshop, Tarek finds and wraps an unfinished but functional desk-sized clock. Like the grandfather clocks in Dandylion House and the estate of Lord Endlessly Ending, its numbers change as the party moves, apparently tracking the central prison room’s position in space and time. Carrying the clock, the party reaches another mechanical listening room.

The notebook at the new listening station is titled Thirst. Its entries describe the speaker filling bodies emptied of dreaming souls with its children, while those children search for the person who can set it free. The party identifies the children with the fungal infection and suspects that the prisoner manipulated Alden and the suspicious deed that brought them to Dandelion House.

When Kaito takes the listener’s place, he hears the prisoner say that it is full of dreams, can read the party, and knows they are helping it. It can see both the moving exit and a hole large enough for its children to pass through. The party resolves not to free it and continues onward.

The next room is an animal experimentation laboratory filled with cages, restraint devices, dead specimens, an infected ant colony, and humanoid remains. As Menestheus approaches the far exit, a hand reaches from a side passage and drags him out of sight.

The party begins to fight among the laboratory tables and specimen containers, with Menestheus already grappled by a mushroom man. Edric rages and charges the captor, Kaito attacks with Dissonant Whispers, and Tarek’s approach awakens a second infected corpse that looks almost identical to Alden.

The creatures retaliate with elongated fingers and mouths opening across their chests. One briefly catches Tarek while the other pulls Menestheus inward, wounding him badly as he falls unconcious. Ayveen’s Silvery Barbs blunts the attack, Txarro becomes a tiger, and the party focuses its attacks on the two infected bodies.

Txarro restores Menestheus with Cure Wounds before Edric crushes the final mushroom man’s head. Its death releases a cloud of seeds that Txarro breathes in. The party burns both bodies, which flare like dry straw.

After the fight, further healing closes Menestheus’s external wounds, but Tarek’s examination reveals white filaments growing inside his mouth. Tarek quietly warns Txarro, and they decide not to tell Menestheus until they know whether anything can be done.

The party moves through a dead plant greenhouse, a picked-over armory, and an unfinished orrery that models the planes as connected, interlocking spheres. They then reach a corridor of offices belonging to Arithrimos Lamperum, including a prominent office labeled for Thalestria which withstands all attempts to open. Weakened after raging and trying to smash his way through, Edric accepts the failure as a warning from the gods, and the party moves on.

In the map library, Menestheus recalls other Arithrimos Lamperum facilities and a captive creature that experienced its entire life simultaneously. The order could ask it questions about events that others would call the future, although Menestheus remains uneasy about whether it was a prisoner or a pet.

Beyond a fabrication lab, the party finds another listening station. The prisoner’s looping voice in the transcriptions addresses Hulda directly: the dragon-killer is bringing five friends, those friends are outside its room now, and they can hear it. The party realizes that the prisoner is describing them in the present.

One door short of the prisoner, the party enters a vast library with books chained to its shelves. A human-sized porcelain and clockwork torso is anchored to a desk just inside. As the party enters, it raises its head, opens its eyes, and studies them.

Cast of Characters

• Kallipseis (she/her, Drankorian dwarf): ancient dwarven gardener, fungal researcher, and self-described head of Arithrimos Lamperum.
• Menestheus (he/him, Drankorian human): displaced Drankorian mathematician and mapmaker from Arithrimos Lamperum, now showing signs of fungal infection.
• the prisoner: voice behind the listening windows, connected to the fungal children and aware that Hulda’s five friends are approaching.
• mushroom men: fungus-colonized humanoid bodies with elongated hands and multiple mouths in their chests.
• clockwork library figure: human-sized, porcelain-faced construct anchored to a desk in room 26.
• Lord Endless Ending (they/them, fae): fey lord who wants the glass key returned or destroyed.
• Hulda (he/him, Sembaran human): original employer whom the prisoner identifies as the dragon-killer bringing five friends.
• Alden (he/him, alien fungal entity): Hulda’s servant, whose appearance and behavior match signs of fungal infection.
• Thalestria (she/her, Drankorian human): former head of Arithrimos Lamperum whose sealed office remains inaccessible.

Places

• 27th Room (manor in the Twilight Kingdom, the Feywild): a shifting Drankorian complex built around a locked central prison room, with laboratories, archives, listening stations, and machinery that move the prisoner through space and time. Session context includes: room 18 and Kallipseis’s fungal greenhouse and laboratory.