Courts of the Shadow Fey Session 11 – The Eyes Have It

Courts of the Shadow Fey was the third 4th Edition Open Design project from Kobold Press. I ran the adventure in 2011 as part of the same Parsantium campaign as Wrath of the River King and Halls of the Mountain King. This is the penultimate episode.

This is a really fun but tricky adventure to run so hopefully these write-ups will prove useful to other GMs. 

Begin here with Session 1 – A Chill in the Air.

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27th December (contd.)

Leaving the Hedge Maze of the duskthorn dryad, the character head in the direction of the Tower of the Moon after Mal’uk teleports to the top of the maze walls to check they are going the right way.

Ahead, the party hear sobbing and soon afterwards a blind half-elf woman appears. She is improbably named Ardevallissen Thiomoire and is searching for her lost daughter Helliboshe. To find her, she needs to perform the Ritual of Reunion, which requires the largest eye of the dangerous eye golem. The characters agree to help her and continue onward.

The party enter the clearing where the eye golem stands guard, surrounded by pathetic, fearful eyeless beggars, some elves, some shadow fey and some goblins. As soon as it sees the adventurers, the golem closes to attack Mal’uk and Ella in melee.

Ella backs away but Khuma and his bear step forward into the breach. Mal’uk proves very hard to hit but when he teleports further into the clearing in an effort to lure the construct after him, his plan fails. Instead the golem destroys the spirit bear and pounds Khuma unconscious. Saethus, meanwhile, is firing magic missiles at the monster repeatedly, and Ella is also launching arrow after arrow. Mal’uk returns to melee and is blinded, then Ella finally brings down the eye golem with her bow.

When the creature dies, there is a blinding flash and dozens of eyeballs scatter everywhere. The characters pick these up carefully and return as many as they can to the blind beggars, before scooping the rest (including Lord Suvid’s) into their bag of holding. Saethus is very excited to get hold of the golem’s largest eye (which once belonged to a primordial) thinking it will impress the Esoteric Order of the Blue Lotus back in Parsantium.

The characters return to find Ardevallissen. Saethus doesn’t want to give up his prize so the party agree to shed some of their own blood for the Ritual of Finding. Helliboshe and her mother are reunited, and Ardevallissen’s sight is restored.

Returning to the clearing, the characters decide to investigate the dark cave they saw at the top of the ramp. Inside a pit, trapped by magical wards, are a number of angels, demons and devils. They beg to be released but the characters refuse to let them out. Many are wingless – their wings are in a small building on top of the hill above the cave. Mal’uk takes all these wings, putting them into the bag of holding. He talks to the angels and demons for a while but only manages to confuse them.

To reach the Tower of the Moon, the characters need to pass through the glass wall which blocks their path. Mal’uk and Saethus both teleport to the other side, losing a healing surge each in the process. Meanwhile, a shadow demon has appeared and attacked the other party members.

To take down the wall, Saethus is forced to destroy his newly-found primordial eye. Reunited, the two halves of the party attack the demon, but it is insubstantial and hard to damage. Passing Ella’s radiant longsword back and forth between herself and Mal’uk doesn’t help much as neither can hit the demon hard enough to get it to solidify. Eventually, the characters just grind it down and slay it.

The way ahead to the Tower of the Moon is now open….

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