18 Kythorn 1491
Guided by Molliver, the core party, along with Morgort and Gleam, head into the tunnel that connects to Motherhorn.
After a time, red light shines through cracks in the stone wall and they hear shouting and hammering. The air is stale. Perhaps set design, people building and at work.
Phee sends Fie through a small hole to investigate the room ahead. A small marionette about Phee’s size tries to get the attention of the party as it senses movement. Yndrus peeks out and spies a goblin running past a nearby door from time to time, with a second one rummaging through boxes. Yndrus sneaks up to the little marionette. It asks for help as it’s tangled up in its own lines. It seems quite glad to be untangled (Yndrus aids them).
The marionette introduces itself as Break-a-leg. Mell shifts into a generic looking goblin for blending purposes.
Yndrus hints at looking for Glister, and Break-a-leg, while keen to help, doesn’t seem to know much about where Glister is located. Yndrus sends them off down the tunnel, after Phee gives him a note so they’re not slaughtered at the other end.
Mell slips out into the next room as her goblin self, discovers Skylla being tended to by a terrified looking goblin. She’s got Golmo on a chain next to her. Mell asks where the actors (aka Yndrus, Gleam, Morgort, and Phee, who are still hidden away at this time) are meant to be headed.
And asks for a guide (Golmo). Mell is greeted with a backhand, told where the actors are meant to be going, and insists that Golmo stays with her.
While Mell distracts Skylla, Phee casts detect thoughts to interact with Golmo, letting him know the party is there to rescue them.
Mell not knowing there was a psychic conversation happening, shoos the party toward the exit that Skylla indicated. They reach the top of the stairs and enter into an open amphitheatre.
Upon leaving the storage area, the party discovers a sound eliminating curtain that separates it from the rest of the building. So it’s decided to go back and kill off Skylla.
Phee convinces the goblins in the downstairs to head out to the amphitheatre. The only creatures left in the room are Skylla and the goblin tending her (a goblin who is backing away).
Throw down time! Skylla goes down fairly quick, but had ensorcelled many objects in the room to attack the party.
The party barely survives the encounter, with both Phee and Mellow being knocked out at different times.
Mellow is not thrilled at having to add to the annals of their adventures that she was taken out by an animated stove pipe.
Once all baddies have been dispatched, Phee runs up to Golmo and notices that Skylla is still alive. Mell protests at allowing her to live, but Yndrus wants to question her, so Mell grumpily binds her instead. Meanwhile, Phee comforts Golmo and releases him. She then seeks out any other hidden scaredy cats (in the form of three goblins hiding out). One of them offers info, after being bribed with food. Apparently the goblin friends have mates who have been turned into masks. One of them, Kizz, is the chatty one and tells Phee that she’s hidden a key under a cushion of a chair upstairs. Doesn’t know what it goes to, but it’s there, and there’s a tower that’s boarded up. They haven’t seen anyone who looks like Gleam.
Things in the theatre are broken, due to the Korred’s destroying the lightning towers, and she isn’t expected anywhere soon.
Yggwliv, an alias of Zybilna, the adopted daughter of Baba Yaga, unlike the hags who are biological daughters. The hags used Zybilna’s cauldron to trap her in time.
Phee, whose patron is Zybilna, is rather shocked.
Mell has been eyeing the staff that Skylla had dropped, and pointed it out to Yndrus. Might be something he’d be keen to use after all.
Phee grills Skylla for more info about the history behind Zybilna her family origins.
Other than a bit physically worse for wear, the party isn’t too bad off. They take a short rest whilst listening to the dulcet tones of Mell and Peke Peke.
At some point during the rest, Skylla escapes. Goblins also are rushing in and out and Mell gets the distinct impression that it’s common for strangers to be around.
The Party grab a few prop items and head upstairs. They scoot across to a set of stairs up to another storage area. Phee and Mell search for costumes and Mell morphs into Skylla to slip a dress over her robes. They head on through another door and find a bugbear slumped in a chair, partially dressed as a dragon. The bugbear casts no shadow.
Phee knows that fey creatures that lose their shadows (either taken by force or sent away) are considered akin to pariahs. Yndrus pads through the curtain and tries to engage with the bugbear. It’s Hurly!
They try to get info out of him but he’s preoccupied with mirrors in the room. Phee takes a look at a mirror and sees herself a skeleton. She says to Hurly “it matters not what I see in a mirror of lies, I am a being of flesh in my heart.” Mell chimes in as well. Eventually they convince Hurly for info, the shadows are in the theatre (through the curtain). He tells all, was tricked into making a deal with a hag to be better liked, in exchange for his shadow - thus ensuring that he would not be.
In the spare room, some people who it turns out have come to ingratiate themselves with Endelyn reside. The Party asks their feelings around the situation and tries to coax info out of them, with moderate success.
After more placations, the person they’re speaking to identifies themselves as Puff. Seems they’re on their side.
Pilfering the lost and found, Mell in the form of Skylla dumps a wand at the feet of Phee, as well as a fancy mirror. Phee is gifted with a mysterious wand, and nobody seems to know what it does.
Yndrus picks up the mirror in the new area. Returning to Hurly, Yndrus tries to supply him with the mirror he found.
The curtain that was unexplored holds a sort of library that has as of yet to be explored. What they find is what seems to be a library, and Phee approaches some resident Darklings and asks for information. They disdainfully direct her elsewhere. Yndrus notices that a book that a Darkling is carrying has a potion peeking out of it. Also, several books in the area bearing a images of an hourglass and chicken’s foot.
Phee is suspicious and seeks out potential traps. She finds one!
Yndrus proceeds to explore the area, and leads the party upstairs to a door. The door opens to a small chamber. the surface of the door on the other side assumes the likeness of a hag and looks around to Yndrus, and hacks out “The moon maiden is not welcome here.’m referring to Gleam who is with the party. Yndrus proposes to Mell to try to fake Gleam leaving the building.
She then returns as a random goblin in a dress.
The Party keeps exploring. Another room involves an area that includes a thirone, which Phee checks and finds a small iron key under a cushion. Phee collects the key.
The Party investigates a corridor, with Phee in the lead, finding the pressure plate trap whose general location was revealed earlier.
The party winds up exploring a curtain that looks like a small theatre, with tiered seating and a stage. The stone stage is flanked by prop fir trees, with a sphere of glass hanging above. Phee flies up to the sphere and moves it. This causes the shadows in the room to shift, however some do not move immediately, are independent of the light source, and are shown to be some sort of shadow creatures.
Combat ensues as the shadows swarm The Party, Mell experiences two near death experiences, as per usual, and the party scrapes through the battle a little worse for wear.
After having a moment to breathe, the party realises that the shadows looked very familiar. One looked a lot like Hurly, and another was an elf looking an awful lot like Gleam.
They hobble off back to Hurly to see if their theory makes sense and sure enough, he’s got his shadow back. He’s doing better, more coherent and less dissociated. He wishes to be liked still and is still “stuck”. So Yndrus magnanimously gives him his amulet which boosts charisma and gives the power of flight for an hour. Hurly is stunned and deeply grateful, and agrees to be a lookout while the party takes a long rest.