Witchlight Part 12: Adventures in a Giant Log

The group had just finished off Skabatha Nightshade in an epic battle.

Date: August 15, 2026

Characters present

• Farvex Dusk: human warlock
• Lionidas: leonin monk
• Shadow Claw: tabaxi cleric
• Philomena Gainsborough: centaur wizard
• Eiri: spiritling barbarian

Character level: 5

Post-Victory Looting Party

Eiri was in a hurry to get whatever she’d lost at the carnival back. She felt its presence nearby, and wasted no time catching her breath. Vex could feel it too—his creative spirit of magic was somewhere deeper inside the giant log-house. Eiri pressed on through the doors and walked right into the workshop—the room where Skabatha forced her kidnapped kids to make awful toys.

It was a large room carved all the way out to the edges of the log, with toys displayed in shop windows on each side. Long wooden tables took up most of the floor space, along with various tools and materials for crafting the worst toys a child could possibly imagine. The only thing missing was the workers—just three kids were inside, and they weren’t working.

“Skabatha Nightshade is dead!” announced Vex. “Ee he hee¹.”

Due to a series of failed charisma checks when trying to introduce themselves, the group ended up frightening the kids. One of them, a young girl, ran away screaming and crying, pulling on the locked door to the garden.

Philomena was the one to try and calm down the child, who was, funnily enough, also named Philomena. She said she couldn’t leave without her pet piglet, Oink. Philomena (adult) said she would make sure to get her the pig before it was time to leave Loomlurch behind.

Exploring the workshop, the Beatles found a few toys of note that they decided to bring. Philomena found a family of finger puppets who looked like they were in the middle of a heated argument. Shadow took a working toy guillotine, which he used to cut a carrot in half. Vex took a deck of cards with all the face cards depicting crying children. A fine, if a bit bizarre, addition to his collection. He also found a hammer and chisel, though I forgot to ask the DM if there was anything special about them. But hey, free stone carving tools!

As they were looking around, two dreadfully ugly goblin-like creatures entered the workshop. Their grey skin secreted a black ichor which pooled below them. The group deduced that they must be boggles, the greasy creatures whose oil Squirt—the talking oil pot—was eager to get their hands on, metaphorically speaking. But the boggles, doing little standing there with their drooping dumb faces and lifeless staring eyes, wanted something in return. The finger puppets weren’t enough. After all, Philomena had just grabbed them right off a shelf in the very same room. Eiri’s eight-inch glass ant that she’d found somewhere and carried around the entire time was more interesting, and the boggles allowed Squirt to fill up on oil from the floor in return.

The next room was where Skabatha’s squad of three-foot tin soldiers were. With Skabatha gone, they had no purpose, and seemed to be malfunctioning. Some of them were fighting, others were walking in circles or just standing still, and one was repeatedly walking into a wall. Vex told them that they were free now and could do whatever they wanted, but they didn’t seem to understand. He suggested they try stand-up comedy, like the mushrooms, but the tin soldiers didn’t have any sense of humor, so the party continued their invasion of the dead hag’s privacy and went upstairs.

Upstairs was the bedroom of the child laborers. There were two kids inside, one sick in bed, and one by its side. The child in the bed was barely lucid, and the other didn’t want to speak to the party, because two tin soldiers were standing guard on the balcony.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about those anymore,” said Vex and opened the balcony door. “Hey guys! You have free will now—you can jump off the balcony if you want!”

The tin soldiers looked at one another, shrugged, and jumped off the balcony.

With the guards out of the way, the kid was happy to talk to the party—not that he knew much of value, other than the fact that Skabatha kept all her valuables in her doll house. He didn’t seem very enthusiastic about Skabatha’s demise, and even seemed to have liked her. That couldn’t stand, of course, and while Shadow and Philomena headed out into the garden to look for the right kind of mushroom to cure the sick kid, Lionidas and Vex stayed behind to lecture the ignorant kid on child labor and fascism. Eiri, meanwhile, went back downstairs to ask the humorless tin soldiers if they’d seen Will. They gave conflicting answers and barely seemed to understand the question.

Philomena and Shadow returned, with Philomena having picked up a tin soldier as a rider, as well as Oink the pig. Shadow had picked up some hummingbrella mushrooms, which were pink and shaped like umbrellas. He sliced them up and soaked them in a glass of the purest alcohol he could find, which was Vex’s Witchlight Wine. Uncorking the bottle once again caused carnival music to fill the room, which the group didn’t find appropriate at all. Shadow told the child to drink the mushroom wine in an hour, and then they all went back downstairs to keep looking through Skabatha’s home.

In another room, they came across some of the kids from the Getaway Gang kicking a downed giant straw doll. Apparently the doll was called Pin Cushion. It was Skabatha’s body guard who had been a real jerk to the kids when they were kept captive. The kids seemed to have the situation under control, so the party didn’t interfere. They did ask the children if they knew how to open Skabatha’s doll house. The kids didn’t know, but Pin Cushion’s button eyes betrayed hidden knowledge.

Eiri drew her greatsword and held it high above the doll. “Tell us how to get in!” she roared.

“Rumpleclump! Rumpleclump!” was the only response.

“Well,” said Vex. “Either that’s a safe word, or it’s the magic word for opening Skabatha’s doll house.”

“Which is it?” said Eiri, sword still raised.

“The second one,” said Pin Cushion. “What’s a safe word?”

With that new knowledge, the party pressed on into a hallway. There was a flock of moths converging on a gas lamp in the ceiling. Vex turned it off and cast Light on his wand, giving him a little moth army.

In a closet, they found a face familiar to all but Eiri: the pig-mask–wearing child they’d seen in the Hall of Illusions at the carnival. Looking closer, Shadow recognized it as an undead ghoul. The ghoul, when asked, said that its job was to bring children to Skabatha’s factory. With Shadow and Eiri objecting to undead creatures for religious reasons, and the rest of the party objecting to child labor for moral reasons, the group decided to take the “un” out of “undead”. Shadow’s holy magic blew the creature up, and the resulting grey ghoul goo splattered all over the walls of the closet.

The Lions, the Witches, the Humans, the Centaurs, and the… Spiritlings?

The next room was a circular hall with thorny bramble vines slithering across the walls. Untouched by the vines were five paintings depicting Bavlorna; Skabatha; a skeletal hag in a dress; an unknown, ancient-looking hag; and a woman, appearing younger than the dreadful hags, with dark hair.

Vex suspected the dark-haired woman might be the famous witch Tasha. She somewhat resembled the Tasha puppet from the carnival, and could reasonably know the hags since they’d apparently used her cauldron to bring about the spell that imprisoned Zybilna. That left the ancient hag and the skeletal one. One had to be Endelyn Moongrave, the third sister, and unless she was much older than the others, she was probably the skeleton hag.

Lionidas, not getting a great look with his distracted shoulder eye, went closer and tried to touch one of the paintings. He accidentally pricked his finger on one of the bramble thorns, and suddenly the pictures began to change. The center painting, depicting Skabatha, morphed into a painting of Lionidas. The other paintings turned into pictures of other leonin and lions. Once Lionidas’ eye turned the right way, he could see that they were his parents and two of his grandparents. Pleased with the portrait of himself, he tried to take it off the wall. But just as he was about to lift it, it began to change again, and turned into a portrait of Philomena.

Philomena had, of course, pricked her finger on on of the thorns, and now the group was looking at five paintings of majestic centaurs. They deduced that if the paintings showed people’s families, then the three hag sisters must be related to the dark-haired woman who might be Tasha, and whoever the ancient-looking hag was.

With that brilliant bit of deduction, it was Shadow’s turn to prick his finger and turn the paintings into his family’s portraits. “There’s my mom,” he said. “And who the hell is that guy?”

“Must be your father,” said Philomena. “You have his whiskers.”

“So that’s what he looks like,” said Shadow.

Then Eiri pricked her armor on a thorn, which was somehow enough for the paintings to change again. Though the group knew that the paintings now depicted Eiri’s family, they weren’t quite sure what they were looking at. The painting all showed translucent blobs of color, each one with vaguely humanoid upper bodies and heads, and lower bodies tapering into ghostly tails. All of them had different colors, and were holding different kitchen tools. One was blue and wore a chef’s hat, another orange and holding a rolling pin. In the middle was Eiri, who looked the same as always—a humanoid suit of black metal armor.

“Eiri, what exactly are you?” asked Vex.

“I’m a spiritling²,” said Eiri. She went on to explain that spiritlings were a type of ghostly fey spirit that bond to an object, which becomes part of their identity.

“And you’re bonded to your armor,” realized Philomena.

They all stood in silence for a moment to ponder this. They also pondered why Eiri had been so reluctant to share this before. No matter, they finally knew, and all eyes turned to Vex, the only one yet to change the paintings. He did so, and the paintings turned to a bunch of humans whom I will describe in detail once they become relevant³.

Continuing further, they found a kitchen where Will and several other kids were hiding out. Among them was an adult dwarf, trapped in a hole under a grate in the floor. The party brought him out, and he introduced himself as Elkhorn. He said he was part of an adventuring party called The Valor’s Call. They had followed their arch nemeses—The League of Malevolence—to the Palace of Heart’s Desire. Elkhorn had been knocked out and woken up trapped right there in Loomlurch. He was greatly pleased to hear that the Beatles had killed Zarak from the Malevolence gang, and he swore to protect the kids with his life.

The party ran right past Skabatha’s library, which was full of interesting stuff, to her bedroom on the floor above it. There they found the doll house, just as Shadow had described it. With the magic word “rumpleclump” they were able to get the lid off. Vex, thinking he’d magically shrink, jumped right at the doll house and crashed into it. While the group were debating if the spell Enlarge/Reduce would help them (and whether they indeed had a way to cast it), Shadow found a desk drawer with a cookie and a bottle labeled “eat me” and “drink me” respectively. Several of the party members had read about that sort of thing in a book once, and tried munching on the cookie. They all turned very small.

The party had been rather excited about stepping into a doll house. However, once you’re small enough to fit in one, you’ll find that the doll house, from your shrunken perspective, looks just like a regular house. And going inside a regular house isn’t exciting at all, now is it? Especially not when it’s filled with mold. And so it was with great disappointment and squeaky voices that the party searched through Skabatha’s diminutive residence.

The house was mostly empty, except for the mold and the attic, which is where everything interesting happened. Immediately upon setting foot in the attic, Eiri felt herself drawn to an amulet she spotted. She picked it up, and from it swirled a cloud of red fog which flowed into the armor through its cracks and eye holes. Once it was done, Eiri found herself able to take her helmet off, and revealed a translucent red blob for a head, similar to the portraits of her family members.

Eight years ago, at the Witchlight Carnival, she had lost her body.

At the same time, Vex discovered a deck of cards, and he knew they were for him. He picked them up, and as he fanned through them, he found his mind brimming with new ideas for magic tricks.

“Oh, I have a great idea for my next performance!” he said. “And another one! And another!”

“You better write them down before you forget them,” said Philomena.

“Right!” said Vex and hurried to produce a quill and a piece of parchment from his backpack. “Oh no, I’ve forgotten them already! Wait, I have a new idea!” He filled the parchment with hastily scribbled ideas. Then he took out a deck of cards, and asked Philomena to pick one. “Is this your card?” he asked, holding up a card.

“No⁴,” said Philomena.

“Oh no, I need better ideas,” he said. “Wait, I got one!” Vex took off his hat and reached into it. He pulled out a card, which wasn’t what he had been looking for. “Is… this your card…?”

“Yes! That’s amazing!” Philomena exclaimed in surprise, but she wasn’t as surprised as Vex. He discretely gave his hat a thumbs up and put it back on his head.

The final room was the library below. It contained books with frogs on the spines, which had to be kissed in order to reveal their texts⁵. There was also a mirror which functioned as a portal to the Hall of Illusions at the Witchlight Carnival. Skabatha had used it for her child kidnappings, and now the party used it to send all the children back, along with Elkhorn, who would tell Mr. Witch and Mr. Light of the party’s progress. They also found a magical eye which they believed the hags could see through. They put it in one of Philomena’s saddle bags.

And with that, Johan, Philomena, Vex, and Eiri had gotten their lost things back. Only Shadow and Lionidas remained. They would find their things in the possession of Endelyn Moongrave, whom they’d now seen depicted. Her lair awaited them in Yon, which was their next destination.