Witchlight Part 9: Woodlands & Wonder

After crashing their balloon in the forests of Thither, the party met an old man in a cave.

Date: July 11, 2026

Characters present

• Farvex Dusk: human warlock
• Lionidas: leonin monk
• Shadow Claw: tabaxi cleric¹

Character level: 4

Evil Santa Claus

The blindfolded man, somehow turning piles of gold coins into thread with his spinning wheel, was called Nib. He told the party that he used to be a landlord, which was bad enough as it is, but to make things worse, he’d charged awfully high prices and made a fortune off his tenants. He’d come to Skabatha Nightshade asking how he could redeem himself. As hags usually do, she’d taken advantage of him and given him a crappy deal. She had cursed his gold, and now he had to sit in his miserable cave, spin the gold into thread and use it to knit items for people passing by. He had to do this until his vast fortune ran out, while also being haunted by the ghostly shadows of his former tenants on the wall.

The good news was, of course, that he wanted to make cool items for the party. He knitted Vex a deck of cards that could turn into a cabin-sized card house for the party to take shelter in. Lionidas wanted something to help him see better, so Nib knitted him a tentacle with an eye at the end. He used his golden thread and a frog to do this. The tentacle burrowed into Lionidas’ shoulder, and the eye looked around with a will of its own, occasionally beaming grainy black and white images into Lionidas’ brain. It mostly looked at squirrels.

Shadow got a magical staff that produced healing grapes, Philomena got some kind of magical hat, and Eiri got a thingy that detects traps or something². The party thanked him, and asked if he knew anything more about the evil witch Skabatha Nightshade. He most certainly did.

Skabatha, or Granny Nightshade, was evil. That much was clear. One could arrive at this conclusion easily enough—she and her sisters had done a lot of bad things—but the main thing that made Skabatha evil was probably all those children kidnappings. Skabatha would kidnap kids and put them to work in her factory making horrible toys. Then, she’d ride around in the sky on a flying rocking horse and hand out the frightful toys to sleeping kids, so they’d be scared of them and get lots of nightmares.

This seemed like an awful lot of trouble just to spread fear. Skabatha was effectively a nightmare industrialist, creating evil on an assembly line and making every step of it as miserable as possible. The party was almost impressed by the extent of her anti-utilitarianism. Someone willing to put so much effort into wickedness and fear would no doubt prove a more cunning and dangerous foe than Bavlorna, the swampy frog hag. Bavlorna, despite allegedly having eyes and ears everywhere, and despite the party announcing their intention to kill her to everyone they met, hadn’t realized they were coming to kill her until Vex quite literally spelled it out for her. But Skabatha would be a different story, the group suspected.

Nib told the gang that Skabatha lived in a giant tree trunk called Loomlurch. Other than the hag, the trunk hosted a goblin candy market, which excited both Lionidas and Vex. Nib also knew that the child on the wanted poster was called Will, and he had incurred the wrath of Granny Nightshade by escaping her factory and making it his mission to free the rest of the children. He lived in a treehouse in a living tree named Little Oak. Little Oak would wander Thither with Will and his ragtag group of kids called the Getaway Gang, but they generally stuck to the northern part of the woods. The party decided to head there. Morgort wanted to stay behind, so they said their goodbyes to her.

Close Encounters of the Fey Kind

On the way, the group saved a singing mushroom from becoming a goblin’s dinner, taking it with them as company to the one they’d found in Bavlorna’s hut. The goblin wasn’t too pleased about it and probably would’ve fought the party over it if it hadn’t been fatally outnumbered. Vex offered it some Witchlight Wine and it gave the group some candy in return. Not because it wanted to, but because it had to according to the rule of reciprocity.

Next, they came across a wide ring of about eighty talking mushrooms. The mushrooms initially trash talked the party and said that only Skabatha was allowed to use the ring’s magic, but Vex made a compelling speech about how evil she was, and how her gift of sapience to the mushrooms really wasn’t so great at all. The group all got into the mushroom ring, ran in circles and chanted a rhyme as per the mushrooms’ instructions, and teleported away.

They arrived in a dark place with wind howling so loud that they had to shout to hear each other. It didn’t seem like a nice place to be, so they tried the running and chanting again. This teleported them to a new place—a massive sheet of transparent ice with an enormous frightful creature swimming in the water beneath. They didn’t like that either, so they teleported³ once more, arriving back in Thither, in the exact same spot they’d left.

One mushroom had become so depressed by Vex’s speech that it asked Lionidas to eat it, which he did, and the others decided to follow Vex on his quest to slay Skabatha. This was incredibly annoying, and so he sent the seventy-nine mushrooms ahead to Loomlurch while he and the party went and talked to the Getaway Gang.

They soon came across a trail of massive footprints in the woods. They matched that of the dragon that had burnt down their balloon. The group followed it for a few minutes, and came to an empty cart pulled by an owlbear. It seemed as though the dragon had chased after whoever was in the cart and snatched them right out of it. But now the owlbear was here all alone, and the party decided to bring it with them. According to its harness, it was called Juniper, and Lionidas managed to get it to cooperate. It pulled him and the group’s backpacks while the others walked beside it.

To keep Juniper happy, Shadow hunted down a goat and fed it to the owlbear. During the hunt, he and the group spotted a trio of pixies arguing about an item they’d discovered during a trip to the material plane. One pixie thought it was a slice of cake, another thought it was a workout bench for mice, and the third thought it was a toothpick for giants.

It was a doorstop. Vex told them so, and they found the answer incredibly boring and kept arguing what it might be.

“It might be cheese,” suggested Lionidas. Still, they were unsatisfied with the answer.

“Yeah, that looks like moon cheese,” continued Vex. “It gives you clairvoyance if you eat it. My uncle ate some once and said he was going to die, and then he did.”

This was a much better answer, the pixies thought, and they gave him a small whistle as thanks. If he used it, they would come and help him with whatever he wanted.

Children of the (Uni)corn

A few miles further into the woods, the group found the tree with the kids. They were suspicious at first, but when the party described what they’d done to Bavlorna and what they were planning for Skabatha, the kids were happy to talk to them. The kids had a displacer beast kitten with them. It was named Star. They remembered Dirla, the displacer beast from the carnival who had lost her kitten. Lionidas brought out the disco ball Dirla had given them, and Star recognized it immediately and began playing with it. The kids weren’t too stoked about the idea of parting with their kitten friend, but they understood that she’d have to be reunited with her mother eventually. But for now, Star could stay. It wasn’t exactly safe to leave with all those hags running things.

In the treehouse, Will—the boy from the missing poster—and the party discussed their plans of approach. Will had a whole plan laid out about how they could turn him in and free all the children while Skabatha was distracted. It was sketchy at best, but it was a start. One of the kids mentioned that they should speak to the unicorn in the lake called Wayward Pool. The unicorn knew a lot more about the hags and Zybilna. But there was a catch: only a unicorn could approach the pool. The party weren’t unicorns, not even Philomena. But apparently the lake was easily fooled, and disguising themselves as unicorns would be enough to trick it. The kids had made a unicorn costume for two, but Vex also had his unicorn horns full of candy that he’d won at the Witchlight Carnival. The kids said that’d be good enough.

The kids also had a living pot of oil called Squirt. The kids introduced the party to her when they mentioned that they’d need to get to Yon after beating Skabatha. Apparently, Squirt knew the way. In return, Squirt wanted to be refilled with boggle oil. Boggles were some kind of nasty prankster creatures that hung out in Loomlurch and secreted a slippery oil. The party agreed.

The party was tired. It wasn’t night—night never fell in the Feywild—but it had been a long day (though actually dusk), and it was time to call it a night (though actually also dusk). Vex tried out his new house of cards by throwing the deck on the ground, turning it into a little castle. He opened the door and discovered Kevin Spacey a cozy interior built entirely from cards with bedrooms themed after card suits. The beds even had card blankets.

Vex showed a magic trick to Clapperclaw, who had been with them the whole time, and Squirt, who was quickly becoming friends with Clapperclaw. They were very impressed. Vex had shown them his magical hat, which was in an ominous and prophetic mood today (todusk?) and spit out a tarot card: the hermit. It indicated wisdom in Vex’s future, and the wisdom came immediately—Vex suddenly realized that the dragon they’d encountered wasn’t a dragon at all. It resembled a creature he’d read about called a jabberwock. It was very dangerous, and with no vorpal sword to snicker-snack its head off, they’d probably have to avoid it.

Lionidas also wanted to try pulling something from the hat to see what would happen. He pulled out a card—one he’d chosen when Vex asked him to pick a card several days ago but never got to finish the trick. With the card also came a note with a prophecy from the hat. It said “beware of assassins”.

After Shadow had beaten everyone at poker, they went to bed.

The next day, the Beatles set off for the Wayward Pool. On the way, they came across a group of blink dogs having a funeral. They were all placing sticks and other dog toys into the grave of their fallen friend. Lionidas placed some tea leaves he’d won at the carnival on the dead dog, and the leader dog thanked him with a blessing that would allow him to teleport a few times, like a blink dog. Then the gang went on and fed Juniper seven voles.

With their costumes, everyone except Eiri, who stayed behind and waited, made their way to the lake. They swam across to a little island in the center, where they lit a brazier to summon the unicorn. It appeared by the shore, so they had to swim back. Shadow was greatly dismayed at this.

The unicorn’s name was Lamorna. Nothing could please her more than learning about the party’s quest. She had plenty of information, and was happy to share. She told them that the hags of the Hourglass Coven were Zybilna’s evil stepsisters, and they’d trapped her in the Palace of Heart’s Desire. They could get there from Yon with the help of one called Anidor the dandelion. In order to capture Zybilna, they had captured Lamorna’s unicorn partner Elidon and stolen his horn. She didn’t know where he was, but she suspected and hoped he was still alive. She said they may need his horn to undo the spell trapping Zybilna outside of time.

She also explained that when Zybilna was in charge, the Palace of Heart’s Desire could only be accessed by those personally invited there by Zybilna. With the hags in charge, that spell was likely broken, and there was no telling what kind of creatures might have made it into the palace. When the party would get there, she told them to visit the library on the second floor if they wanted information, because it held plenty. Finally, she mentioned that the jabberwock flying around over the woods really wants to eat her, but can’t get near the lake because it’s not disguised as a unicorn.

Then, much like Vex’s hat had warned, a shadowy assassin jumped out of the bushes holding shining daggers, and lunged toward the unicorn.