Lost in the Feywild: Episode 06

The party recruits Aurae, rejects Arithrimos Lamperum’s soul bindery, and enters the central prison as Menestheus succumbs to the fungal transformation.

Audio Highlights

The party discovers three superimposed prison doors showing the captive as a child, a joyful young adult, and a frightened prematurely aged figure.:

Timeline

• Oct 06, 1740 DR, evening still: The party explores the library, meets the research assistant automaton, and enters the central prison.

Narrative

We begin in the library outside the central prison. After reconsidering their tangled obligations to Hulda, Lord Endless Ending, and the prisoner, the party turns to the limbless clockwork figure watching over the library. It explains that it has read every volume, measures the passage of centuries by listening to their paper age, and out of boredom, has taken to writing stories about everyone it meets.

Although forbidden to answer direct questions about the prisoner, it remembers an unnamed human member of Arithrimos Lamperum who consulted Allegories for the Initiated before entering the central room. The assistant confirms that the glass key could open the complex’s front door, but warns that 112 of the prison’s visitors – roughly two thirds of everyone who entered – returned as mushroom men while the rest never emerged.

Meanwhile, Txarro consults his lizardfolk ancestors, who suggest that returning the glass key to Lord Endless Ending could bring both good and ill, but there is no obvious evil path here. Seeking to learn more from the library, the party asks the automaton for information, who directs them to On the Science and Possibilities of Soul Bindery. Its unnamed Arithrimos Lamperum author enthusiastically proposes using captive souls to power liches, golems, and other devices.

The party begins to suspect that the central prisoner is being exploited for power. Menestheus, feverish and fading, denies knowing of such work but continues to defend the order’s mission. Edric then senses that both the tome and the assistant violate the proper order of life and death, convincing the group to enter the prison and perhaps free the prisoner, though before they do Txarro restores himself from the fungal infection and burns the book on soul bindery.

As the party prepares to enter the prison, they ask the assistant if it wants a name. It accepts the name Aurae and tells each party member an allegorical tale: Edric must decide how to help a stolen sun and its grieving godmother, Kaito is a wandering seed searching for a place to grow, Ayveen is a forester seeking where a displaced sapling belongs, and Txarro is a protector confronting the forgotten monster beneath a healer’s house.

After hearing these tales, the party straps Aurae into a backpack on Edric’s back, and steps towards the prison door, passes many shelves, noting a copy of The Journey of the Souls, along with a commentary and refutation, as well as The Riven Veil and several other works of Marcion of Iridel.

At the prison door, they find three doors occupying the same space, showing the captive as a child, a joyful young adult, and a frightened, prematurely aged figure deep in the grip of some addiction. They choose the child, but as they prepare to step through the door, Menestheus completes his transformation and reaches for Txarro with impossibly long limbs. Txarro becomes a tiny anole lizard, evades him, and follows the others through the door. This leaves the glass key engaged in the lock behind them, and the door swings closed leaving them in impenetrable darkness with Menestheus still outside.

Cast of Characters

• Aurae (OUR-ray or ARR-ray; they/them, construct): clockwork research assistant who takes a name and joins the party.
• Menestheus (he/him, Drankorian human): idisplaced Drankorian mathematician and mapmaker who completes his fungal transformation and attacks at the prison door.
• the prisoner: captive seen in three superimposed states through the prison doors.
• Lord Endless Ending (they/them, fae): fey lord who asked for the glass key.
• Hulda (he/him, Sembaran human): the party’s original employer.
• unnamed human order member: last visitor Aurae remembers before the party.
• Marcion of Iridel (he/him, Drankorian human): Drankorian cosmologist whose works, including The Riven Veil, fill a library shelf.

Places

• 27th Room (manor in the Twilight Kingdom, the Feywild): vast shifting complex built around a central prison and used by Arithrimos Lamperum to keep its captive displaced across space and time. Session context includes: room 26 library immediately outside the central prison.
• central prison: lightless chamber reached through superimposed doors that show its captive at different ages. Session context includes: through the three superimposed prison doors.