This one is one long DM’s Note. Reading it should give an idea why....

The party got a lot of solid information this session. It came to my attention that the players were getting a bit frustrated with the current progress of the game. This sort of culminated in their characters charging headlong into a messy encounter with an irrational faye and her oversized bear companions. So let me cover that little misunderstanding first.

This whole snowball started rolling in session 22. The party avoided some ogres who were chopping down trees. Also because of a growing sense of paranoia, some of the party assumed the incident with Cinn Oir’s Dire Weasel was perpetrated by an evil being of some sort. It was in fact a nymph who was keeping tabs on everything strange that passed through the forest since she the ogres came in and started tearing the place up.

The nymph had been fine and happy in her woods for decades until this little group of ogres came through. They started chopping trees and very carelessly at that. For weeks she had been tending to the fallout created by these beasts. Not being at all confrontational, she avoided the ogres directly. She prayed daily to the Earth Mother that someone would come by and help her remove these beasts.

Not long after, the party comes wandering through the woods. Suspicious at first, but hopeful, the Nymph got Cinn Oir’s Dire Weasel’s attention and talked to it for a bit. She surmised that Cinn Oir was a druid and merrily sent the Dire Weasel on its way to rejoin the party. The group nearly caught up with the Nymph but never met her that day (and in fact, given their recent experience with being spied on, they were assuming the worst anyway.)

Well, the nymph decided everything was all right (the only druid she had ever met was Rale, a man she trusts and knows would give his own life for the woods) and so she went about her business while hoping this druid and her friends went about protecting the Woods.

The party had other ideas. They avoided the ogres and headed west, bunkering in at Cu Roi’s for several weeks while Cian gained some spells to replace those lost in his spellbook. Well, after that several week period, they decide to head out to take care of those ogres they had seen. Its no surprise that by the time they find them, the ogres have a full fledged fort built (see session 23). Dierdre and Cinn Oir even discover an enormous oak tree has been cut down at the logging site. Later, they find much of its trunk in the center of the fort holding up a gibbet. Inside is the partially decayed and mutilated corpse of a female humanoid.

This is where the stuff really hit the fan. As DM, I had decided that on first meeting the ogres, the party would be able to gain the trust of a nearby Dryad whose tree the ogres were getting uncomfortably close to. The Nymph would also be happy to see them gone and, knowing her friend the Dryad might be in danger, be even more happy. The party left it alone for weeks (a few months nearly.)

Hmmmm. Ok, so I as DM start looking at a Dryad’s stats. Not good, especially since her main abilities technically have no effect on ogres. She’s pretty well toast. I imagine the Ogres get closer, the Dryad gets desperate but, bound to her tree can’t really up and leave. The dumb ogres see a great tree to use for portions of their fort (the bar for the front gate most specifically) and go to cut it down. The Dryad, desperately tries to fight them off and the ogres finish off the tree and take her along where she spends her last 24 hours or so in their err…custody.

The nymph, who has been more and more anxiously sitting on her hands and tending to injured animals/plants, hears about this and is crushed. She spends several days in this guilt ridden agony. By about this time the PCs show up again to deal with the ogres. The nymph, wracked by guilt flies into a murderous rage and demands Cinn Oir and Dierdre leave when she discovers them in the woods. Cinn Oir and Dierdre basically tell her to buzz off and end up heading north to regroup with the party. This leaves the impression that they have complied and left the woods.

The next day, the party enters the woods again and takes the exact same route (I asked several times if it was the same….) and lo and behold, they encounter an emotionally unstable and angry nymph who Dominates Cinn Oir’s Dire Weasel. The Dire Weasel growls at Cinn Oir then backs away into the woods. The Nymph then, staying hidden, demands that they leave the woods. The party again tells her to buzz off and she grows even more angry. 

The party meets the Nymph again and she is not happy. While she remains hidden, her woodland friends, three black bears and a brown, ambush the party at a pre-arranged site. A bloody battle breaks loose (though the Nymph did ask a third time for them to leave before Liam rode up to a Black Bear with his sword out to demand they step aside....). As it gets very near certain death for someone on either side, the Nymph calls off the bears. (She is very emotionally distraught but still adverse enough to violence she can’t bring herself to allow either her animal friends or the party to die. As DM, I was also trying to not let this misunderstanding lead to a less than heroic death for anyone on either side. The party put up a great fight and it was a toss up in the end who might have won. I don't think the party realized the true danger of Animal Growth on a brown bear!!)

The Nymph demands the party leave or says they will be dead by morning. Dierdre taunts her into showing herself which gets her and Archu blinded for her trouble (the rest of the party was looking at their shoes…really killed the barbarian’s own attempts to Intimidate. Hard to do when you are staring at your feet for fear of what will happenif you look your enemy in the eye!!) The "diplomacy" ends abruptly when the barbarian stalks off. Near the end of all this Cian tries to offer some sort of actual diplomacy but after spending her time being berated by the party and accused of using animals as her playthings (while Cinn Oir ignores the entire discussion so she can Animal Friendship one of the black bears!) the Nymph is less than interested.

At this point, I take the hint that there is something else boiling under the surface here with the campaign. I’ve played with many of these players for literally years and they normally don’t misread situations or go out of their way to come to blows with someone that should be an ally! The whole above debacle was basically just the culmination of several things I believe. Players have had less time than I’d hoped to look at the information on the website (we’ve all been swamped with things lately!) and much of the information I have presented in game has been vague and sometimes presupposes a good knowledge of some of the details available on the website. That actually was my intention, so there would be some fun in putting the pieces of the puzzle together. However, there are too many pieces and too little time. So there has been a certain bubbling frustration level that came to a boil.

So, enter Rale. Rale is the Druid of the Wood Between. He is rumored to be the very same Rale that hundreds of years ago was so influential to the founder of High Clan Faough. He knows something of the party through a few channels and even has a little more knowledge of the events the party is embroiled in than the adventurers do themselves. As DM, I’ve always wondered if they were going to meet him and this seemed like as good a time as any.

Rale shows up at the party’s camp the next morning and explains several things to the group: (Players, print this out if need be! It will assist in my moments of vagueness! Most of it is new information that will erase some questions and let people get started on formulating a plan for their characters in the campaign...)

He explains the Nymph’s anger and that he has spoken to her. She won’t give them trouble but they should stay clear from her.

He tells them what he knows of their "predicament".

Their earlier visit to the woods and their agreement to carry the Faye Marks (and the activation of Liam’s latent mark) has awakened ancient Eyrian powers. In some sense they are now an instrument of that ancient power. By adhering to their geis, by seeing to the "old ways" they are awakening it.

These ancient Eyrian powers were placed into a sort of stasis by certain evil forces.

The evil forces are from the east, the very land where the one true High King disappeared to so long ago

These evil forces had a hand in the disappearance of the High King which essentially broke the back of the Eyrians and threw everyone into civil war. The fractured society that resulted (the four High Clans, Steairn, Tairan, Faough and Erinin) has served these evil forces well.

These evil forces have also been the ones to give some momentum to the giants who are now coming out of the mountains to the north.

There are some in the south who are sympathetic to the adventurers "predicament". A few of the higher druids (those who haven’t been too secularized) have noted the strange happenings and the awakenings of ancient powers, like Rale.

Rale also mentions that these evil forces have been to Eyru once before. They posed such a dire threat, the druids of the time founded the Gynfakin (The Unseen) to help battle this foe. They used hit and run tactics to delay this enemy while the druids prepared a means to defeat them.

The Gynfakin are still around today. They are loosely organized and small in number but they are well aware of the current happenings. Some of them, in fact, are now keeping an eye on Dun Brees. Because of this, Rale can also tell them that he has heard that if they travel to Dun Brees, they will meet this evil force face to face and see things they have never seen before.

In response to one of Cian’s questions, the Fomorians are not this evil force specifically, though are perhaps or were perhaps involved.

Rale then stays and speaks with them for a bit. He is fairly forthcoming with information and through a vast knowledge of history and events, explains a lot to the group. This in turn gives them insight as to the events that have been occurring around them. He is very reluctant to speculate or give more than facts which are most likely either a part of history or already related to the individual characters. He seems to have a preoccupation with keeping a sort of balance with fate and not influencing that balance with his words.

Alright, consider this the ever-so-late orientation session. Welcome to Eyru ; )

Stay tuned for next session wherein our adventurers have enough info to *gasp* develop a plan!