1240, Winter 3

We are in faerie, where the locals are referring to all of us as pets. We now believe that the lord and lady were killed or at least ‘badly treated’ back in the cave, possibly by an alchemist or a magus. There is also Snaptooth, a giant Redcap who has been attacking people.

If we are going to encounter Snaptooth, then he may cause problems for our magic. Many of our spells that can affect Corpus, are limited in affecting something up to the size of a pony. Looking at his footprints, Snaptooth is possibly larger than this. I may be able to still affect him, with my skill at modifying my spells on the fly. Maedbh may have a harder time.

I take a careful look at the painting of the Lady. My plan was to be able to make an illusion to look like the Lady if Snaptooth turned up, so that we could maybe convince him to behave without having to use magic directly against him.

A voice in my head, similar to that of my old Master, tells me to get on with it.

We head out of the house and up towards the cave, with the music of Greysen accompanying us. 

At the cave, Knox takes a look at the sled marks. Knox reckons it’s probably a wheeled handcart. They lead some way from the cave into the mundane world, then stop. There are footprints pushing the cart, which match the small (probably a woman’s) footprints that we found earlier leading out of the human village.

Knox does such a good job, he finds some bird prints next to the footprints, and thinks some shapechanging magic was used. 

I use the silver hair from the house to try and find the Lady on the map we have of the local area. I spend the next hour hovering my hand over the map and letting the magic guide it. Meanwhile, Greysen and Maedbh head down to the human village.

They find out that an old woman came through the village, peddling her wares. She was asking about the local fey.

My spell finishes, and find that her body appears to be in multiple places – at the cave and also all around the village. I think that the body has probably been effectively destroyed.

The others came back up to the cave, and want to try and find an arcane connection to the magus. Maedbh gets down on her hands and knees, sniffing around in the cave for anything, using magic to detect any connections. Due to the difficulty of the spell, she is limited to using the sense of smell, rather than sight.

Eventually, she thinks that she has bits from three individuals, two of them fey. I try to get the image of the non-faerie one using a spontaneous attempt at The Whole From the Part, and get no result. It may be that they are in another regio, which the magic cannot penetrate. Though it’s a difficult spell to cast spontaneously, it doesn’t need to get through the magic resistance of the target, so that won’t be the reason for the failure.

So I go into faerie and try again. Once more, in the strong faerie aura, I lose control of the magic, and my clothes fall off again. However, the Twilight lasts mere moments and I’m left standing there blinking and a bit stunned.

Filling my head though is the structure of the spell that I tried to make up on the spot. It is now fully formed in my mind. Now, after getting dressed, I try again. This time the spell comes easily to me, and I no longer have to spontaneously cast it. However, once again, it fails.

This is unusual.

We discuss where the source of the arcane connection could be. Maedbh worries that Snaggletooth might be around. “It’s Snaptooth!” bellows a voice from behind us. A rather large, oldish man with elongated arms and big feet with big boots on with metal toe caps and a pike staff in his hands turns up behind us. He has a bright red hat.

Behind us, are half a dozen smaller versions of him.

Maedbh says “I’ve heard of you, you’re famous”.

Greysen starts singing a song about how awesome his red hat is. Momentarily, Snaptooth looks like he is going to smash Greysen, but then calms down and he starts listening. At the end, he is impressed.

The other Redcaps look like they want to attack, but are waiting to be told to do so by their boss. Snaptooth says he likes Maedbh’s bard, and will let us go if he can have the bard.

Maedbh says that she is seeking someone great like him to try and find the lord and lady. But he doesn’t care about them, he had nothing to do with them going missing. He isn’t bothered that they are gone however, since they are no longer around to spoil his fun. However, he doesn’t look entirely innocent.

She tries to convince him to defeat whoever defeated the lord and lady, since that would allow him to become a lord himself. She is quite convincing, explaining how the witch has deceived him, so he would be seen as being easily duped if he doesn’t go something about it.

“She was quite rude” he mutters.

Greysen changes his song, to talk about how great a lord he is. His clothing and cap seems to be changing as Maedbh and Greysen talk him up, becoming grander and better quality.

“Well, sounds like there’s stuff I needs to be doing”. He tries to bow to Maedbh, though isn’t quite sure how to do that. Then calls for his gang to go hunting, and they bound off into the darkness.

We are all happy that we didn’t need to fight.

We decide that our job here is done, so we head home. Maedbh thinks that our Tytalus maga friend Dierdre is responsible for the killing of the fey. She is an alchemist, and can shape change. She might also be able to sever arcane connections to her. We don’t have sufficient proof though.

A few days later… a side effect of my Twilight seems to be that my body hair no longer functions as an arcane link back to me.