shifty louts

Tiny Fables Session 2: The Warden Tree Festival & The “Joke” of the Jabberwocky

tinyfables

Players

Cherry Summerholme (Greenie), Bill Pipp (ChaosKnight), Crocus Grant (DD), Cornelius Dunhall (hireling)

Summary

The Month of Star. The Second Fair of the Fifth Week. The Warden Tree Festival

The day arrives overcast. The festival mood dour after news of Clare’s death. Mirabelle, the mayor, stands upon a podium and welcomes everyone. A sense of community and solidarity in the face of the tough winter season and the passing of a community member. The Warden Tree will provide as she welcomes Friar Hans and the Brothers of the Branch to utter their prayers and chant for the Warden Tree’s blessing of fruits, seed, and berries.

The monks lead the prayer with obligatory community involvement. Sudden leaf, fruit, and berry bloom. The crowd waits upon bated breath. Suddenly, the Warden Tree’s blessing begins to wither and rot. The villagers of Thimblewood gasp! Calamity has struck a third time!

The crowd surges, angered, towards the monks, as Mirabelle slips away. Our brave mice attempt to pass through the surging crowd. Bill and Cornelius see Mayor Mirabelle slip away to her log house upon the hill overlooking Thimblewood. They decide to follow her.

Meanwhile, the Cajun sewer guide, Crocus Grant, sees their neighbor Rupert fall and begin to get trampled. Jumping into action, Crocus drags him to safety and earns 3p for his involvement.

As the chaotic crowd demands answers from the retreating Brothers of the Branch, the worm wrangler, Cherry, attempts to coax out the worms to see if they have answers regarding the Warden Tree. She is met with silence. She sees Bill and Cornelius at Mayor Mirabelle's house and decides to sneak around to avoid the angry mob forming.

Bill and Cornelius see a mob forming, while Crocus joins in, and Cherry attempts to knock on the back door to no answer. The mob arrives out front, demanding answers. Bill promises that cooler heads will prevail and will speak to Mirabelle directly. A scarred mouse, Daphne, approaches from the mob and tells Bill he has two hours to get a satisfactory answer.

The crowd disperses as Cherry and Crocus join Bill and Cornelius to speak to Mayor Mirabelle, who sheepishly answers the door and hurriedly ushers them in.

After some back and forth, Mirabelle speaks of the legend of Konrad and the Jabberwocky and how the rot that has festered in the Warden Tree is a sure sign of forthcoming disaster.

She urges them to speak to the Fae King Sylvester at the Lake, while Cherry wishes to speak to the Brothers of the Branch to see if they witnessed anything regarding the soil. Mirabelle promises to research more as the group heads out.

The group decides to head to the Warden Tree and the Abbot itself. In the town square, there is upturned stalls, trash, rotten fruit, and more mess. Someone has thrown red paint upon the door of the Abbot. The town of Thimblewood teeters on a knife-edge.

The group knocks and is met by the cagey Brother Jasper, the tonsured hair novice. He tells the group that Friar Hans is weakened due to the chaotic early morning and is recuperating. The group tells of the Jabberwocky, and Brother Jasper ushers them into the darkened halls that are illuminated by the light harvested from fireflies.

Brother Jasper serves them cool water and honeycrisp porridge, a simple meal, and listens to what they plan to ask Friar Hans. Their questions are deemed appropriate and reasonable, and he takes them to the Friar’s cell to speak with him.

Cherry asks her questions regarding the soil and worms, to which Friar Hans says they witness no such thing, although worms do bury themselves deeper in the winter. Bill speaks of the Jabberwocky as Friar Hans says not speak of such an evil. Even uttering the name invites it in. Friar Hans tells Brother Jasper to fetch a book and recalls the stories of the Maus Ritter Konrad.

Bill asks if there is some way to fight against the Jabberwocky, and Friar Hans recounts that, as a young pup, he was told stories of where Konrad was buried. Hans says that he thought he found his tomb, which was covered in a rose bush, some way past the forest in the northeast, only to be chased by a ghost visage. They should attempt to find Konrad’s tomb to see if there is anything that could be of help.

As the group leaves, Brother Jasper tells Cherry that Percival, a salesman, may have items that could assist in testing the soil. The group then heads over to the Squeak Stein to announce their plans. A group of four mice harasses them as Cherry eggs them on. A thrown bowl of soup nearly hit Crocus, and the two groups nearly came to blows before Mabel and Horace, the proprietors break up the fracas. Bill apologizes and gives 3p to Mabel for the trouble as they depart to meet Boris the Mole.

Cherry speaks of her idea to pay Boris to test the soil, as she has employed moles before for her worm farm. The group braves the overcast day and hears many hooting owls and the strong smell of algae upon leaving Thimblewood. Crocus thinks that the Warden Tree has some “voodoo curse,” and there is some bad “gris-gris” afoot, as Cherry believes the story of the Jabberwocky is nonsense, only for a screeching roar to crack through the woods.

The group finally makes it to the hole in the tree where they camped last time, and after a simple meal and a warm fire bed for the evening.

The Month of Star. The Third Fair of the Fifth Week.

Cornelius and Cherry awake in a cold sweat, apparently having the same dream of a ghost turning into a shadowy lizard thing and eating them alive. Crocus again warns of high strangeness afoot, as the weather has worsened and a heavy sleet on the road has turned into a muddy quagmire.

After some time, they reach the bridge to find Boris’ toll box out, and the river is clogged full of stinking algae, a strange portent. The group is on edge as the light pitter-patter of the rain hits the cobblestones of the bridge. Bill and Crocus decide to brave the slick stones to Boris’s warren, this time assisted by Crocus’s thread and Cornelius and Cherry assisting in helping.

Crocus and Bill enter the warren and speak to Boris, who is roasting mushrooms. Meanwhile, Cornelius swears he hears something to the east and promises to be back, leaving Cherry alone, much to her dismay. Back in the warren, Bill tells of the Warden Tree Festival and the idea to check the soil. Promising his last 20p IOU to him. Bill asks about plans of digging a direct tunnel from Boris’s place to Thimblewood to increase trade, a feat of monumental proportions.

Boris agrees to help dig the soil, but later, as the weather is awful. Bill is elated and says theyll be back to grab Cornelius and Cherry to get them out of the sleet. Bill and Crocus arrive only to find Cherry telling them that Cornelius left some twenty minutes ago and hasn’t come back. Bill is dismayed and hears faint sounds of clanging metal and cheering over the sounds of the rain, to the east, where Cornelius went, and begins dashing eastward as the Cherry and Crocus follow close behind.

Aftermath

Treasure Found:

Foes Encountered:

Rumors:

Deaths:

XP Awarded:

Notes