Witchlight Part 13: Now Arriving in Yon

Having thoroughly looted Skabatha’s log, it was time for the party to leave for Yon where the final hag awaited.

Date: August 22, 2026

Characters present

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

Character level: 6

Once More into the Fog

After resting up in Vex’s house of cards, the gang was ready to set their metaphorical sails for Yon. With his sense of magical creativity renewed, Vex decided to try out a new magic trick, which entailed nothing more than floating away into the sky like a balloon. Fortunately, he came back after a while.

Squirt, the talking bottle of oil, was pretty sure which way it was, but also said that it was more about a feeling than a specific direction. With some doubts, the group followed Squirt into the woods, which quickly grew too foggy for them to see anything. Before long, they began to hear the sound of rain and thunder, and the air grew cold. Once the fog dispersed, they found themselves on a stone bridge in a gray mountainous landscape. It was dark, and the rain was pouring down. Every now and then, lightning would flash and illuminate the barren landscape, offering the group glimpses of Yon’s points of interest, and terrifying Philomena. So much, in fact, that Lionidas let her borrow his teddy bear. Vex brought out a paper bag for her to breathe into, which wasn’t very effective in the rain, and his Hat of Holding was generous enough to also provide an umbrella and a cookie, which he ate.

In the brief flashes of lightning, they saw that there was a looming stone tower far to the north, and a plateau with some kind of stone monument not far west. There were also a group of stone spires encircling a lake. One of them had a beacon lit on top of it. All over the mountain summits, they saw massive lightning rods sticking up and catching the lightning.

As they walked along the bridge, the group came across a woman wearing a crescent moon mask on her face, just like the one Candlefoot had talked about seeing in the Hall of Illusions, and that Johan had briefly spotted at the carnival. By her side was a three-foot humanoid plant creature with the head of a dandelion, wielding a rapier. A bee the size of a guinea pig buzzed around in the air next to it. The dandelion pointed its rapier toward the approaching party.

“Evil plant!” said Lionidas, raising his fists and taking a step closer to the plant. Eiri held him back. As lightning struck once more, they saw that the masked woman, much like Shadow, cast no shadow.

Eschewing Lionidas’ violent approach, Vex and Philomena chose the diplomatic option of striking up a conversation with the strangers. They followed a pattern that should be familiar by now—they introduced themselves, asked the strangers who they were and, once it became clear that the strangers hated the hags as much as they did, spilled the beans on their plot to murder the local hag. After all, why change a winning strategy?

Impressed by the party’s accomplishments in killing Bavlorna and Skabatha, and relieved at their intentions of giving Endelyn Moongrave the same treatment, the masked woman introduced herself as Gleam. Shadow remembered Mr. Witch mentioning a Gleam during the Big Top Extravaganza. He’d said something (that I didn’t write down) about two acrobats, Gleam and Glister, who hadn’t been able to make it to the circus. That’s why their backup performers had to go on instead, which explained why one of them had fallen off their trapeze.

This was the very same Gleam, and Glister was her twin sister whom Endelyn Moongrave had kidnapped. While she was at it, she had taken Gleam’s shadow and brought her to Yon. Gleam explained that Endelyn wished to keep the twins apart. Apparently, she believed that the prophecy predicting that she would die during an eclipse was metaphorical (lucky for the party, since there was no sun nor moon visible in Yon) and that it would involve Glister and Gleam, who wore sun and moon masks respectively.

The dandelion person also wanted attention, and told them that its name was Amidor. Endelyn had kidnapped a bunch of bees, and Amidor had managed to rescue one of them—the queen Pollenella. The dandelion also mentioned knowing the way to the Palace of Heart’s Desire. Now they knew three guides of the feywild—the scarecrow, the oil pot (not a tin man, but close enough), and the dandelion (not a lion, but close enough). The only thing missing was a human girl named Dorothy, but Amidor didn’t know anyone like that.

Once it became clear that the flower wasn’t a threat, Lionidas introduced himself, stuttering and calling himself “Liononidas”.

The party followed Gleam, Amidor, and Pollenella to a cave to escape the rain. There, Gleam shared what she knew about Yon to help the party. She said that Endelyn’s lived in the villainous-looking castle up north, and it was called Motherhorn. The Stonehenge-looking place was called Lockbury Henge, and that’s where the creatures known as korreds would gather to dance. The korreds were short and stout fey creatures, just like little teapots, and their hair was strong as iron.

She also mentioned the ring of tall rock spires surrounding the nearby lake. They all had beacons, occasionally lit up by an elven prince named Alagarthas. He had struck a bad deal with Endelyn, and was told that the only way to get home had something to do with the beacons. With that info, the party decided that the first place to explore was the beacon lake. They wanted to talk to Alagarthas.

On the way, they came across a massive stone throne with maps of the stars carved into it. It had an Elvish inscription saying something about inheriting the knowledge of an ancient astronomer. Philomena was eager to sit down on it, and hurried to do so before anyone else could. As soon as she had sat down, she fell asleep.

Unable to wake Philomena, the party spent the next entire hour debating what to do with her. Lionidas suggested they throw her off a nearby cliff, and the others trying to figure out how to move a massive centaur. Eiri used her mind-reading magic to see what Philomena was thinking. In her mind, Philomena was spinning through outer space like Dr. Strange in that one scene. After what felt like only a few minutes to her, and an hour to the people outside her mind, she slammed into a massive, dark star, and promptly woke up. She had gained a sliver of the ancient astronomer’s psyche, and was now proficient in the survival skill.

Much too late, Vex realized that he could’ve used his house of cards to create a whole house around Philomena and the throne. Better late than never, he thought, and threw the cards on the ground to summon the house. Then he too sat down on the throne, but its magic had faded. The gang continued on to the stone spires.

The elven prince Alagarthas was just climbing down one of the spires when the party approached. He had lit the brazier at the top, but a peryton—a stag with eagle wings—was flapping at it, and managed to put it out. Then it laughed like a seagull. There were a total of eight of them flying over the lake. Alagarthas sighed when one of them put the fire out. He walked up to the party and introduced himself. The Beatles already knew he didn’t like Endelyn, so they opened with the part about coming to kill her. They’d guessed that Alagarthas was trying to light all the braziers at once, which he also told them. Only then would the way home reveal itself.

He told them of his bad deal with Endelyn. She had once been in his kingdom, the Misty Forest, while it was being ravaged by a terrible dragon. She told Alagarthas that she’d seen the future, and that the dragon would kill him. But she also saw another possible future in which he lived, and the dragon died. She’d tell him how to reach that future for the small price of him spending a year in her realm. With the way time works in the Feywild, he was now stuck there pretty much indefinitely.

The group couldn’t help but notice that he was dressed in a very old-fashioned way, and asked what year he thought it was. Apparently, he was from several hundred years back, though it had felt much shorter to him.

With Alagarthas being an elf with a long lifespan, he took the news pretty well. But the good in the hearts of the Beatles still compelled them to help him, and offered to deal with the perytons while he lit the beacons. Looking up at the screeching bird/stag hybrids, Lionidas, against all odds, spotted a crucial detail with his weird parasite prosthetic eye tentacle thing. One of the perytons was flying about with something on a chain around its neck. It was white, pearlescent, and conical. A unicorn horn. Just what they needed to get into the Palace of Heart’s Desire. They’d have to get a hold of it somehow.

The party climbed up one of the spires to attract the attention of the perytons. Gleam had told them that the creatures used to be people—specifically a troupe of actors—who had also made a bad deal with Endelyn and were now trapped in their current form. They didn’t seem too upset about that, as long as they could mess around and sabotage the elf’s attempts to go home. The party waved them over. When they had landed, Vex tried to convince them to let them start the fires, employing the usual spiel about killing Endelyn and helping them regain their old forms. For whatever reason, they didn’t seem interested, and were instead making jokes to each other in the language of bird noises.

Philomena instead suggested that, since they were actors, they could show off their acting skills. The perytons loved the idea, and put on a pantomime show that was absolute garbage. All the while, Alagarthas was going around lighting the other beacons.

After the performance, the perytons gestured with their heads at the party with motions that seemed to say “your turn,” so the party decided that putting on an improvised performance would be a good way to distract them further.

It began with Philomena miming being trapped in a box. It was highly metaphorical. Then, Eiri and Lionidas recreated the cliff scene from the Lion King. Vex then invited their audience to participate in a dance. He made sure the unicorn horn-wearing peryton got to dance with Shadow, whom Vex had given one of his candy unicorn horns from the carnival. Shadow had no trouble switching out the horns without anyone, including the party, noticing.

In the performance’s grand finale, everyone held hands and did a moonwalk. The perytons loved it and would probably have applauded for several minutes straight if they had hands. They loved the ending so much, in fact, that when Alagarthas climbed up the spire to light the final fire, they were too busy trying to moonwalk to notice. When he did, the water in the lake began to swirl and turn into a portal to a forest full of mist. The elf jumped right in and disappeared, after which the portal turned back into a lake.

With the perytons and the prince dealt with, the gang was feeling pretty tired and went back to the house of cards to rest. On the way, they met some giant goats who gave them prophecies about “Creeping Lyn” and something about shadows, warning them about sticking to the script, and something called the fool’s spire. The party didn’t know what to make of it. They headed back to the house of cards and had a cozy evening by the fireplace with a delicious meal cooked by Clapperclaw. They played some cards, and Shadow won a favor from all of them.

The next day, the party wanted to investigate Lockbury Henge, so that’s where they went. On the way there, they met a train of goblins tolling bells. They said they were doing it for the dead spirits beneath them, and that they could talk to the dead for the cost of a trinket. The party had plenty of useless trinkets, and were happy to give them away to talk to a random dead person. They’d be allowed to ask three questions before the dead went back to being just that.

The goblins chanted and waved, bells chiming all the while. Suddenly, a short and stout spectral creature, with a round body and huge nose and feet, appeared. Its hair was long and iron-colored, and its skin looked almost as if it were made of stone. It was a korred.

What followed was pretty much that one scene in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. The party asked for the creature’s name, and then asked each other what to ask next, and whether that counted as one of their questions. Then the ghostly korred vanished. The party tried again, getting the goblins to summon another korred, and repeated the exact same process. Before they tried again, the goblins gave them a few minutes to make up their minds about what to ask. The party eventually settled on what they could ask the next korred to learn more about it. However, when the third creature appeared, it wasn’t a korred at all. It was an enormous humanoid with a white beard and icy blue skin. A frost giant.

The party found themselves without a plan, seeing as all their questions had been about korreds. Phrasing all their questions to one another as statements, they were eventually able to agree on what to ask the giant. They asked general questions about the giant’s knowledge of Endelyn Moongrave and the various points of interest in Yon. The giant knew pretty much nothing, and went back to being dead. So much for that.

Finally arriving at Lockbury Henge, which, in my mind, looked exactly like Stonehenge, the party stood in awe at the workmanship of the standing stones. They wondered how the korreds had managed to get the stones on top of the other stones. They must be really strong.

Unlike Stonehenge, there was a large game board in the center of the stone formation. It was for a game called crowns, similar to chess, and the pieces were arranged in such a way that one side was a single move away from winning. Vex noticed this, and played the winning move. As he did, two creatures jumped out from somewhere or other. They looked much like the stony creatures the goblins had summoned, only without the spectral aura of someone whose bucket has been kicked. One of the creatures introduced itself as Argantle, queen of the korreds, and that she had just won the game¹. The party also introduced themselves, although Lionidas called himself Lennonidas².

Queen Argantle was, like most people the party met, not on the side of the hags. Which makes a lot of sense because the hags suck. She was pleased to have more allies against Endelyn, and told the party that the korreds didn’t do their cool dance rituals anymore out of fear of Endelyn. She also shared the important information that Endelyn can see into the future using her so-called Orrery of Tragedies, which was powered by the lightnings caught by the massive lightning rods scattered about Yon. She was also just about to tell the party of the feud between the korreds and the creatures called brigganocks when the session ended.

What is a brigganock? What is their problem with the korreds? Or is it the other way around? Will the party even care? Find out next time on Wild Beyond the Witchlight!