by Kevin Hassall
A one-session Story with numerous repercussions
On the summit of the island, a woman sings each midsummer's night, a hymn of sadness in a forgotten language. Her voice ceases if anyone starts to climb the hill towards the summit, and no one has ever seen her, but any mage (with a little Rego Vim or Rego Imagonem) can trap her song in a bottle. Each year's song is worth three pawns of Mentem vis.
The singing is heard from near to the mouth of a cave on the island's wooded summit. The cave overlooks the only small settlement on the island: a cluster of six fishermens' huts around a natural harbour, with their little chapel on a small mound just up the hill from the houses - and the song cannot be heard from the chapel or village as these have a dominion aura. Characters with True Faith, demonic taints, and other non-faerie connections likewise cannot hear the song.
The wooded summit of the hill has a faerie aura of 3, with an upper level of Regio accessible only on midsummer's night. The chapel usually has a Dominion of 4 (dropping to 1 on midsummer's night), and the village has a Dominion of 2 (in the houses) or 1 (in the gardens and harbour).
For centuries, Llawen lived happily in her cave on the hill, hosting a great party every midsummers beneath the boughs of her sons Gobaith and Tostouri. The Seelie of the sea came out to join in the party, along with other woodland fae who travelled here from their own forests. But the sea fae are fewer now, and most of the forests felled. The guests ceased to come. Then, several decades ago, men came to the island and built their village. They felled Llawen's sons, sawing their boughs and trunks to build a church on the mound where they had stood. And so now, each midsummer's Llawen sings her lament.
(Llawen means joy, Gobaith means hope, and Tosturi means compassion.)
A companion, or grog, during a visit to a market, comes across a strange bottle on a peddler's stall. Whoever touches the bottle - which seems to be empty - feels a great sadness. If the bottle is uncorked and "shaken out", the song escapes and the bottle no longer has this effect.
Let the grog/companion bargain with the peddler, but eventually buy the bottle. If the grog/companion leaves to get someone else, the characters return to the stall to found a large crowd and a larger argument: a knight returning from the crusades has found the bottle, and exclaiming that it is cursed, has smashed it. The peddler wants recompense; the knight is refusing to pay for a "diabolical" object; if the authorities are called in, justice will serve the pious noble, not the pragmatic peasant.
One way or another (e.g. paying the asking price for the bottle in return for information), the magi should learn that the peddler bough the bottle from a poor merchant in the nearest port. Travelling there (the SG may add any side encounters in the city), the magi should be able to bribe or persuade the merchant to reveal the name of the dubious fellow (thief) who sold him the bottle: make his name X of Y (e.g. Aerlic of Loxley) so that the characters can try to follow him to his home town.
The thief who procured the bottle has indeed returned home. And he's done a bit more thieving - and been caught. When the characters arrive it is common knowledge that the thief is spending his last night on earth praying, in his gaol cell, with a local priest. He is to be hung at dawn. The characters must either get in to talk to him (what about the priest?), or break him out, or look into his mind, or (Whisper's Through the Black Gate) steal the corpse after it has been hung and before it is buried.
The thief had encountered a drunken youth in an Inn (an apprentice, sent on an errand to collect vis, and making the most of a night of freedom away from his master) who boasted that he had collected a bottle "full of power" just the night before. Intrigued, the thief had got him drunker still, and liberated both the bottle from his pouch and his purse from his belt. When was this? The night after midsummer's night. Where had the bottle come from? The drunken fool (apprentice) had said that it came from an island (and there is only one within a day's easy travel of the Inn specified). Anyway, disappointed with the patently empty bottle, and disturbed by the feeling it gave him, the thief had sold it on at the next opportunity.
How the characters persuade the thief to talk is up to them.
The characters will find an insular community on the island - tho' the folk are welcoming to storytellers and entertainers, or travelling traders. Such welcomed folk will be given lodging in the fishermens' homes; others will be given a store-shed to sleep in.
The community's leaders are a gruff and intelligent fisherman (head of the largest family on the island), and the charismatic friar who runs the local chapel on behalf of an abbey which (by mundane law) owns the island. SGs should feel free to give one Strong Willed and the other a few Faith Points if this stops the characters from just Rego Menteming their way around the last section of the story.
There are a few rumours about the wooded summit of the hill being haunted (one or two locals report having head a ghostly "chant" or song from the woods sometimes on midsummer's night, if they stray from the village), and so all stay indoors at midsummers. Characters who search the wood, except on midsummer's night, just find a shallow cave and lots of trees.
The player characters will find nothing unless they return at midsummer's. At dusk on midsummer's the Regio in the woods becomes accessible, and Llawen starts to sing. Following her voice as it echoes around the woods is the surest way to enter the Regio.
The locals try to persuade the characters not to go into the woods. There is no logic to this - just the fear of the unknown.
If characters start walking up the hill (in human form) Llawen senses their approach and stops singing: she is frightened of mortals (look what they did to her sons!) and her fear closes the Regio. For her to sense the characters, they must either: be entirely human or have the Gift. Non-Gifted characters who either have faerie blood or can take an animal form can approach. (If none of the characters can manage this, the SG may change this requirement - but the idea is that only one of the characters should get to meet her at this stage.
When a character reaches the cave, they see a beautiful woman. Should they speak to her, touch her, or otherwise attract her attention, she wheels around, and they see the most beautiful eyes that they have ever seen - eyes like peace, like love, like joy... but at the same time, eyes full of sadness. As soon as she realises that she has been disturbed, she is terrified; she stops singing, closes the Regio, and vanishes. (Actually, the interloper is ejected from the Regio, but it will look as if she vanished.) Note, if a mage uses InIm or similar magics to see into the grove, then the mage will see into her eyes - and at that moment, when she intuitively realises that she is being spied on, she closes the Regio and vanishes from his sight. Basically, one character makes eye contact, and then she disappears: rationalise it however you need to.
Thereafter, the character who looked into her eyes cannot shake the image. Whenever another character is met, the SG should add to his/her description "but of course, his/her eyes are nothing like as beautiful as the woman in the woods'"; and every time s/he thinks of the eyes, s/he feels a profound sense of loss, pain, pity, sorrow. The character suffers -3 penalties to any task requiring prolonged attention (including lab activities, Awareness rolls when standing guard, Scribe skills, etc., etc.) The SG might also impose Short Attention Span or Lost Love on the character, as the unfortunate keeps thinking about Llawen's eyes and feeling this deep pity.
The characters may leave the island for now but, eventually the one who made eye contact will want to return to put his mind at rest.
In the meantime, a magus will doubtless be returning to the island each midsummer's to collect the song for vis. But consider this complication: the apprentice who gathered vis here before will be back, and if he is sent packing his master will come here the year after. Magi should have to engage in a couple of bouts of Certamen in order to keep this vis site.
In Llawen's Regio, the shallow cave is the entrance to a beautiful cottage (intricate furniture of living wood, plush cushions of moss, candles which never burn down but which shine like moonlight, etc.). From here she watches over the whole island.
For a character to get close to her, she must be persuaded that he is (a) harmless (not like the humans who cut her sons down!) and (b) worthy. Characters who just blunder into the woods again next midsummer will find the same problem as before: as soon as they get close to her, she "vanishes" (hurls them out of the Regio). Characters who actually kill her just prevent a solution: the unfortunate who made eye contact will have those flaws/penalties for ever if she is slain.
How does a character persuade her to talk to him? The character must do something dramatic, romantic, stirring, striking, cool - whatever. Play it for drama. A bard character might sit outside the wood every night for a year, singing of the pain he has felt since seeing her eyes. A mage may Creo Herbam a red rose to appear outside the cave every dawn for a year. Another character might create a garden in her honour just outside the wood. Etc.
It might take years, but when the character finally impresses Llawen enough for her to let him/her talk to her, she will explain the source of her sorrow. She will tell how her children were killed, and the church built over their homes. What can be done? Nothing, as far as she knows. But she would deeply love the chapel to be removed. Perhaps, with time, her children might be born again? There is no reason, of course, why this shouldn't be the start of a love affair between the character and Llawen.
It is now up to the characters. Magi might fear for their vis source. (If she stops singing - no more vis.) Without their help, the character may not be able to persuade the villagers to move their chapel - and characters who resort to arson against the church might find that there are angelic powers who frown on that sort of thing.
Good ways to get the villagers to move the chapel would include: faking an angel appearing and telling them to move it (Imagonem); making the current chapel site seem to be haunted; simply offering to pay for a nice stone church to be erected on another part of the island... but all of these options will likely involve the cursed character persuading others (e.g. magi) to help him/her. Let the players bicker about this.
If the chapel is removed, then, the very next day, two oak shoots are visible on the top of the hill - the children being reborn. The next midsummer's, Llawen walks down to the hill and sings her song there - this time a hymn of joy. If magi are on hand to capture this in a bottle, it yields 10 pawns of Mentem vis. The next time that the character who has seen her eyes looks at her, s/he sees her eyes full only of joy: his/her memories of Llawen are thereafter only positive (no more flaws or penalties) and, if it seems to fit his/her usual demeanour, the SG and player may consider giving the character the virtue Carefree.
After this Llawen doesn't sing again, so the magi have lost their vis source. But she owes them a favour, for sure, and she should have magical powers which allow her to dispel any magics which cause despair, pain, etc., which makes her a useful ally. She is deeply grateful to any who helped her children be reborn.
And after a few decades, when her sons have started to grow, they will bear acorns with magical powers. (If your Saga won't run that long, you could always accelerate their growth.) If just one of Gobaith's acorns are eaten, they dispel all magics and curses which cause despair and misery, and generally perk people up. Tosturi's acorns likewise ease physical (rather than mental) pain. The locals, however, will realise that these acorns have fine powers; they will not want strangers turning up and stealing all of the acorns, and the Abbey which technically owns the village and lands (including the mound) are likely to see the acorns as wonders of nature or even divine miracles, and will want access to them. And the apprentice (by now a full mage?) and his master both know of the island. The characters will have to cut deals to get access to the acorns, but might find them both useful objects to own and a nice little source of extra income.
And if the player whose character first saw Llawen's eyes wants to pursue the romantic potentials here, there is no reason why the character could not begin a long relationship with the faerie, perhaps "marrying" her eventually.