Saturday, February 04, 2023

Post-time loop beach vacation!

• We're out of the time loop, so time for a break!
• In the middle of the night goin from Friday to Saturday, we go through the palm wood door (thanks Agnes for identifying the wood) that we previously checked and found to lead to a tropical location that had at least a 6 hour time difference from Atlanta
• We come out into bright daylight on a tropical beach with many palm trees
  • And are approached by a dodo bird, so maybe we're in the Dreaming?
    • It's definitely a freehold
  • It's a little overcast, because it's the rainy season in Mauritius, which is where dodo birds were native to
• There are so many dodos here and giant coconuts, the size of my head
  • I grab and carry one of the coconuts
• Moira, Blaze, and Aoife go swimming
• Agnes and I go looking around and down a path
  • We find what looks like a Roman-style little shrine
    • It appears disused and abandoned, and probably some dodos roost here
  • We find another Romanesque amphitheater with a giant statue of a dodo that's been erected in the center of it
    • The dodo statue is still quite old, but looks to have been added later and is of a different type of stone
  • There is a giant papaya tree nearby
• Moira checks the other, normal door of the little cabana our door opened out of
  • There is a sign "for VIP guests"
  • She gets some towels from there
• We regroup and start down one of the other paths and run into a male Eshu who asks us if we're guests, and then if we called ahead
  • We tell him we came through the big, locked door
  • He tells us we are the Mauritius Dodo Preserve
  • His name is Celestine, and we can call him Cel

The Mauritius Dodo Preserve

• Cel tells us that they're short staffed and when we ask why, he says because several have gone missing
• We ask about cold weather and moving statues
  • He says in the morning and evening there have been colder winds all over Mauritius
  • And that the statues have been moving somehow to different places
  • He also says they've seen ghosts, which we think are probably the not-ghosts we've experienced
• He shows us around
  • There are hot spring baths that also look like they're Roman
• He introduces us to Mireille, a boggan who tells us someone named Gaston Beauchamp had an old key
  • Gaston is one of the staff that's gone missing
• Mireille shows us to a giant, creepy, white tree festooned with spider webs
  • This white-barked tree is of some species unknown in the waking world, some forty feet high and with many branches twisting at weird angles that suggests an intense, planned geometry, though it looks treelike enough at a distance. The topmost branches feature sparse almost-black leaves to soak up light, but the majority of the tree is covered in vast amounts of white spidersilk, and potentially millions of tiny silver spiders that weave it.
  • We're pretty sure it's some sort of ancient, Fomorian chimerical tree
    • It's been here much longer than the recent activity with the Fomorians
  • There are definitely creepy spiders in there and they (or the tree) whispers to us about showing us things or telling us things
  • She mentions a "Brother Luc Moreau" who was/is their archivist and his theories on the tree
    • He has also gone missing
    • He is a sluagh
• We meet a burly satyr called Uncle Kavi
  • He's one of the groundskeepers and says the missing people clearly were taken by the spiders
  • He tells us some of the dodos could be 500 years old, though are probably too stupid to have been dreamstruck
• I go and use beast speech to talk to one of the dodos
  • It thinks humans can't talk, and I'm the only one that can
    • I explain they just don't know how to talk to him
    • He tells me to tell them to give him a papaya
  • I give it my papaya
  • He tells me the spiders took the missing people
    • They lured them, probably with promises of secrets
    • The spiders also try to lure the other dodos with the offer of secrets, but they don't know what those are
• Agnes goes through the notes of Brother Moreau
  • He writes about the tree talking to him and that he needs to go to it

Into the tree

• We all decide to go into the tree; we feel like it's definitely a bad idea, but don't know what else to do
• We pass 4 human sized web sacks that all look a little deflated
• The spiders tell us they're surprised 5 of us came in at once, and that it'll be easier if we stay still
• Agnes cuts open one of the cocoons open and some bones clatter out and she finds some oiled cloth and a journal
  • Definitely the remains of Brother Luc
• Blaze casts Cuicksilver on all of us
• Aoife casts Grandeur on all of us so the spiders won't attack
• I cast Elder-Form to make us all watery so we can escape
• We cut open the other cocoons and collect the remains of the other missing people, including Gaston's
  • He has a key ring and seemed to collect a bunch of random keys, including the key to the courtyard door
• We return the remains to the other changelings and explain that the spiders probably started going after people recently because the whole Fomorian's declaring war on us
• We stay at the resort for the rest of the weekend and enjoy an actual vacation
  • We take a trip into a nearby town to check it out, but otherwise spend our time at the freehold resort

Monday, February 06, 2023

Back home

• We get a delivery from Sir Samuel of a copy of a book from the library at Willow's Heart titled Tessarakonta, Triumph, and Time - Whence the Casque of Sorrows that someone thought we might be interested in