Witchlight Part 17: Philomena and Vex Go to the Palace

With the last hag defeated, there wasn’t much left to do but travel on to the journey’s final destination.

Date: September 19, 2026

Characters present

• Farvex Dusk: human warlock
• Philomena Gainsborough: centaur wizard

Character level: 6 (really 7, I forgot to level up. Luckily, it didn’t matter too much this session.)

Moving on from Yon

Once Rick Astley finally stopped singing in Philomena’s ear, the quite literal earworm slithered back into its box. Trinket and Bauble revealed that they had a few more things in stock that the party might take interest in: a die of fate, a hot dog, a box of matches, a cloak of invisibility that was most visible at night, dad pills, and a mushroom. Vex bought the hot dog, trading it for his expired stone of good luck. He thought that a useless stone seemed like the kind of thing Trinket and Bauble would sell.

The hot dog appeared to be on fire. Fortunately, it wasn’t entirely as warm as it appeared, and Vex felt nice and warm inside after eating it. But he also grew a tail and felt a sudden urge to fetch sticks.

Philomena, meanwhile, very much wanted to know what the dad pills did. In exchange for them, the next joke she told would bomb. She got a jar with a single pill in it, which she ate. Immediately, she felt a desperate need to tell a bad joke, and so she did:

“Do you guys want to hear a joke about research, or not et al.?”

Due to the price she paid for the pill, everyone collectively groaned. They probably would have anyway, but they groaned a little extra.

Next, Vex offered the darklings his Frog of the Dark, which he had picked up in Downfall. It could create darkness or something, but Vex would rather know what all the weird shop items did. Trinket and Bauble were happy to accept the frog in exchange for the rest of the items, so Vex took the die of fate which let him add a d10 to any roll—potentially with some kind of consequence—and Philomena took the cloak of invisibility. As advertised, it turned her invisible, but it also created a magical pink glow all around her, reducing its usefulness rather drastically. They decided to move on and try the matchbox and mushroom later.

Before heading onward, the gang also discovered that the golden key they’d found led to Endelyn’s chest, containing some fine wine and a play about the misery of Alagarthas, which turned out to be entirely incomplete other than the title. Also, they sent Kirian home the same way they’d done with Alagarthas. No point in keeping him around—he probably had like four hit points.

Making their way to the unexplored towers of Motherhorn, the group ran into an angry mob of about twenty-five darklings. They seemed pretty upset about the party killing their leader, and wanted revenge. As you can probably expect, they didn’t get any. The party sent their brigganock and korred friends to beat the crap out of the darklings¹. They themselves had more important things to deal with, like finding the secret belfry.

In a room high up in a tower, the Beatles found a shelf full of bottled lightning bolts, a cage with paper birds in it, and a desk. The desk had a stack of blank papers held down by a frog paperweight, which Philomena removed. As she did, all the papers flew into the air at once. Vex, with his new dog instincts, tried to catch them with his mouth.

Once the chaos had settled, the group checked out the paper birds which, unlike the desk papers, were full of writing. The birds tried to fly away when the group opened the cage, but Vex caught two in his hands, and one in his mouth. They turned out to be unsent letters from Endelyn. The first one was for Bavlorna, saying that Skabatha had lost the horn they needed. The second was for Skabatha. It said that mom’s warlock spy had betrayed them, and that the League of Malevolence was plotting against them. But apparently, an outside force was going to deal with them, and the important thing was to keep the cauldron safe. The third and final letter was addressed to the leader of the League of Malevolence, mentioning that Endelyn had written a play about Alagarthas (blatant lies, as discovered earlier. Endelyn must’ve been a chronic procrastinator.), and they were all invited to see it. Their warlock, Skylla, was already there, and Endelyn was hoping they’d take her off her hands.

There was also a balcony with a cool mechanical bird² that Vex rode on. Philomena would’ve gotten a ride too, but she was way too large. Vex tried to do a barrel roll and fell of, fortunately landing right back on the balcony, where he had the perfect view of the bird crashing straight into a group of darklings.

Then, Philomena and Vex checked out the shelf full of bottled lightnings, which turned out to give them cool magical lightning powers. Playing around with this, they accidentally destroyed the ceiling, revealing the secret belfry to be right above their heads. How ‘bout that, eh?

A massive silk rope hanging from the bell had fallen down when the ceiling collapsed, and Vex pulled it to ring the bell. Not long after he did, a group of enormous cranes appeared out of the fog in the far distance, flying in the stormy twilight to the castle. Once they arrived, they seemed willing to give the party a ride, so the party hopped on.

The cranes took to the skies once more, rising up above the clouds and the rain, and away from the crackling thunder. Stars gleamed above, and far ahead, they could see the looming silhouette of a palace among the clouds. As the flew closer, the air got warmer, the clouds grew fluffier—almost like cotton candy, and the skies brightened up.

The enormous marble palace had towers topped with purple spires. Huge green vines climbed up the walls, with one of them having ripped a tower right from its foundation and was holding it in the air. Just as they were about to land, a flock of birds came flying up from the clouds below, scattering as if disturbed by something. That something quickly followed—a huge, green, dragon-like creature with long, sharp teeth in its gaping maw, and bulging white eyes. It was the jabberwock that destroyed their balloon in Thither. It roared, flew up above the castle, and set down behind the palace spires where the party couldn’t see.

The cranes, largely unbothered by the dragon, put the group down on the grass right before the gate to the gigantic marble palace. The party thanked them as they left.

Now Arriving at the Palace of Heart’s Desire

Beyond the golden gate before them stretched a vast, beautiful garden encircled by marble walls. There were fountains, lakes, and brooks; and flowers of all colors. The smell of roses was almost overbearing, especially to Vex who had a dog’s sense of smell. On the gate was a plaque mentioning that a deer or lion must wear a crown. The party noted this, correctly assuming it would be important later, and opened the gate and stepped inside.

As they had been told, the whole place was frozen in time. The grass didn’t sway. The water didn’t flow. The bees hung still in the air. It was eerie and entirely quiet, except for the sound of people arguing in the pavilion, and the string quartet of badgers playing.

The party approached the pavilion with more curiosity than caution, and discovered a most unusual group of folks eating waffles while debating whether jam or cream goes on the waffle first. Seven they were, including a talking bear and a headless dwarf, as well as a halfling and an orc who were frozen like the rest of the garden. The others were elves and humans. Vex had to use Thaumaturgy to make his voice loud enough for them to notice him.

With Philomena and Vex being only marginally interested in contributing to the discussion about cream and jam, they instead opted to ask what in the world was going on. The people in the pavilion said they had come to Zybilna for help with various things, and had been told to wait in the garden. While waiting, they enjoyed the food that was magically refilled every hour. None of them could remember how long they’d been there, but when thinking about it, they realized it had probably been quite a while.

With the waffle eaters not knowing a damn thing about the situation at hand, the party decided to speak to the badgers instead. Turns out they weren’t the brightest. They had been animated by the hags, much like the mushrooms of Thither, and believed the hags to be good. When told that the hags were all dead, they were devastated, and started playing sad music to express the misery. Vex and Philomena explained that the hags were actually bad, and Zybilna was much nicer. That made them feel a little better.

The badgers did know one useful thing: they recognized the party’s names, and said they had seen them on a package that had been delivered quite recently. It was right there in the pavilion, so the gang took a look. It was from Sir Talavar³. Inside was a wind chime that played a pleasant f#maj7 when stirred. It was a Chime of Opening, and would let them unlock all kinds of doors. Hell yeah.

In a box in the pavilion, Vex discovered something he’d wanted to get his hands on ever since he first set foot in the Witchlight Carnival: blueberry muffins. He and Philomena ate a whole bunch. Now that Vex had found his wish in the palace garden, perhaps Philomena would too? But looking around, she saw no trace of “her family realizing how mean they’d been to her mother” in the garden. Oh well.

Feeling done with the people (and badgers) of the pavilion, they continued to explore the garden, taking the box of blueberry muffins with them. The muffins aged rapidly when taken out of the pavilion, and turned moldy immediately. Philomena wondered if the same would happen to the people in there if they were to step outside. The group didn’t want to find out.

Philomena and Vex pulled a huge axe out of a tree stump, which they kept in case they needed to cut anything down. They picked some colorful flowers that made them resistant to various elements when held, though Vex couldn’t tell them apart because his dog senses had made him colorblind. They also saw a suspiciously realistic statue of a satyr playing a flute. Vex remarked that turning people into statues didn’t seem very in-character for Zybilna, and it was probably something the hags had done.

Next, Vex suggested they go up the stairs to one of the towers in the garden. Philomena wanted to throw a stick up the stairs to see if Vex would fetch it, but missed by a wide margin and threw the stick into a lake. Well, onto the lake, since it was frozen in time. That didn’t stop Vex from diving after it, bouncing off the surface of the water like a trampoline. But there was something glimmering in the water, just beneath the surface. It was a crown of silver thorns. When Vex reached for it, a hand made of black water held it aloft above the surface. As Vex grabbed the crown, a voice whispered a riddle that the party solved pretty much immediately. The answer was “wrath.”

Making their way up the stairs to the tower, they entered and found an living iron lion statue. It said its name was Envy and that it, along with its deer counterpart in the other tower, were the palace’s guardians in Zybilna’s absence. The crown was the key to the castle, but it had to be placed on the correct guardian to activate. The party quickly deduced that the other guardian must be called Wrath, and that that was the right one, so they left. Vex noted that names like Wrath and Envy didn’t seem very on-brand for what he knew of Zybilna.

On the way to the other tower, they both drank from a fountain, because that’s what curious and/or thirsty adventurers do when they see fountains. But the water was enchanted and reduced Vex’s intelligence from nine to three. It also gave him “the disposition of a wild animal,” so he was now fully dog.

Philomena didn’t know what to do, so she carried on with the task at hand, hoping the Wrath guardian would be able to return Dog Vex to normal. There were no stairs to the second tower, and the only way in was from the top of the outer wall around the garden. There were vines to climb on, which would’ve been useful if she hadn’t been a centaur. She tried to get Dog Vex to climb up, but he just tilted his head sideways at her and made a confused whining noise. Eventually, she tied him to her back and tried to climb up anyway, unsuccessfully. After a few attempts, Boris the bird, who had been in her saddle bag the entire time, flew out and telepathically suggested she jump up, seeing as the wall was only ten feet high, and she was an enormous centaur. That did the trick.

Untying Dog Vex and stepping inside, she encountered an iron deer statue whose name was indeed Wrath. It was angry, but still helpful enough to give her some golden berries that returned Vex to his usual self. They agreed not to speak of the whole dog thing ever again. Vex placed the crown on Wrath’s head, and it turned into a crown of golden roses. Wrath explained that they could now place the crown on him or Envy, and whom it was on would determine which doors opened inside the palace. With that knowledge, they thanked Wrath and walked through the palace’s front door.

Inside the Palace

The doors led to a hall. The group paid little attention to what it looked like, because they were distracted by the beautiful ceiling. It looked like no ceiling at all, but rather a beautiful night sky sprinkled with stars. Exploring the castle, the found some balconies looking out over the garden, some spooky relief carvings depicting demons (again, incongruent with their knowledge of Zybilna), and one frightfully tall room with a marble tower inside it. The room had no floor, just clouds, and stretched far down and up, like the tower inside it. The tower was encircled by several smaller towers, holding up walkways leading to the one in the center. The balcony from which they saw the room wasn’t connected to any of it, being quite far below the walkways.

The group briefly debated using flight spells or teleportation, but eventually figured they’d find their way up if they just kept exploring the castle, so that’s what they did. They explored the servants’ quarters, where they found a completely flat man hiding in the space between a wall and a closet. He said he was hiding from them and refused to cooperate, so the party eventually left him.

They also found the kitchen, where a bunch of frozen fairies were in the middle of preparing a massive birthday cake decorated with hundreds of candles. A nice reward for when they’d saved Zybilna, they thought. They also found the tower that a massive beanstalk had ripped right loose and raised into the sky. Vex flew up to the tower, and Philomena climbed up somehow. Inside the tower, they found a toad. He said he was Igrik, Zybilna’s familiar. He’d been in the library—which was in a pocket dimension—when the hags had frozen the place. That’s why he wasn’t frozen like the others. Then, he’d used a potion to grow the giant beanstalk to escape the hags.

He probably had lots more to say, but that was all we had time for.