Cinders, Clockwork, and Crones
Amrynn
The silence that follows a battle is rarely peaceful; it is merely the absence of immediate violence. Standing amidst the culinary chaos of Loomlurch’s kitchen, the scent of copper blood mingling with stale flour and ozone, I found myself contemplating the sudden, profound stillness of Skabatha Nightshade.
The hag and her redcap sycophants lay defeated, but the room still held prisoners. Underneath a sturdy wooden table, a young girl named Mischka cowered, bound by iron chains. Barnabus made quick work of her restraints before turning his attention to a locked grate set into the floorboards. From the dank, compost-filled pit below, we hoisted a rather bedraggled dwarf. While they managed the rescues, I sought out Will of the Feywild, who offered the reassuring news that the children were entirely accounted for. Meanwhile, PB took it upon himself to verify Skabatha’s demise. His thoroughness yielded a rather grotesque discovery: one of the hag’s eyes had popped free, revealing itself to be an unnatural, artificial thing.
The rescued dwarf introduced himself as Elkhorn, a stalwart of a group known as Valor’s Call. A search of the kitchen’s shelves yielded his confiscated sword and shield, which we promptly returned. In a display of pragmatic gratitude, he offered us his enchanted blade in exchange for a simpler weapon, simply wishing to remain armed. My own perusal of the room uncovered a potion-crafting ledger, several brass egg-shaped cups, and a cookbook. The latter was marked by a foot-long, gnarled root. It pulsed with a faint, undeniable magic.
Curiosity proved a demanding mistress. I turned my attention to the massive clay oven dominating the center of the room. Upon opening its heavy iron door, I was met not with baking bread, but with two voids of absolute black belonging to a surging, volatile fire elemental. As the entity flared, threatening to engulf the room and filling the air with thick smoke. My mind raced through our past encounters and I recalled the sentient flame we had spoken with in Downfall. Taking a calculated risk, I uttered the word “spittlespew.” To my profound relief, the elemental ceased its aggressive posturing, calmly vacating the oven and wandering off into the Feywild.
Before leaving the lower level, PB engaged in a bit of macabre experimentation. Taking Skabatha’s severed head, he pressed it against the thorny vines holding the canvases we had found earlier in the hall. The magic reacted instantly, revealing portraits of the hag coven alongside a skeletal, nightmarish entity unknown to me, and a svelte, dark-haired woman whose identity remains a tantalizing mystery.
Ascending the stairs, we entered a room filled with looms and a rather valuable sketchbook. My attention, however, was drawn to dark, viscous puddles on the floorboards. Squirt, our loquacious oil can, excitedly identified the nearby lurking creatures as boggles, coveting their natural excretions. Barnabus attempted to negotiate for the oil, gesturing with Squirt, but the creatures took offense and attacked. They were swiftly dispatched, and Squirt greedily siphoned the remains until he declared himself satiated. A messy affair, but an efficient one. That holds up our end of the bargain for Squirt’s offer to lead us to Yon.
We pressed on through a storage hall of mundane trinkets into a well-appointed study. The room housed a large mirror (strikingly similar to the one in Bavlorna’s cottage), a clockwork toad, and a fascinating magical quill that requires no ink. Further up, we discovered a surprisingly tidy bedroom, a stark contrast to the rest of Loomlurch. Here, Barnabus was inexplicably drawn to a repulsive dollhouse. Within its miniature basement, he uncovered a small metal screwdriver. In a moment of bizarre intuition, he mimed loosening screws beneath his arms. The magic took hold, restoring his lost ability to fly.
While Barnabus secured a few valuables, PB investigated a cradle adorned with green dragons, likely the resting place of the beast we had fought below. An adjoining room, filled with clockwork sparrows in cages, yielded a trove of Skabatha’s personal letters. PB also took to opening several jack-in-the-boxes scattered about; though empty, one of the rescued children informed us the dragon favored them as hiding spots.
Our foray concluded with a reunion between the goblin leader, Chucklehead, and Yvelda. Elkhorn and Will have agreed to safeguard the children, leaving us unburdened for the monumental task ahead. Skabatha is dead, but the coven remains unbroken. We must now synthesize the clues we have gathered and decide our next steps in this realm on our quest to return our other lost items and restore Zybilna to the throne.