Release the Hounds

A story where Godwyn and Thomas evade capture from Norman huntsmen, Hywl and Randolph recover the Bishop of Salisbury's ward - the brash bastard son of some duke, and then together at the Lady of the Woods bequest volunteer to rescue her Lord who was wrongly imprisoned by wizards long ago.

Date

1195, late Summer.

Player Characters

• Hywel Mawr
• Godwyn
• Thomas the Poacher
• Randolph

Non-Player Characters

• Lady of the Woods
• The Hunt
• Mericas
• Some Normans

Synopsis

The story started out with Thomas finding a purse in the forest. It seemed empty but was heavier than usual: coins were sewn into the lining. Godwyn removed the coins and added them to his hoard of cash and considered burning the purse (lest someone come hunting for it) but decided to wait.

Sooner or later a group of Normans came into the wood. Thomas and Godwyn hid because they thought they'd be punished as poachers under the harsh Norman forest laws. It turns out the Normans were looking for a lost, high-born boy. Hywel was involved in the search as well for some reason.

Godwyn decided to help Hywel find the lost boy. With Thomas's help they tracked him to Mericas's hut, where the hedge wizard had been keeping the boy bound with ropes as a captive. Mericas gave an unconvincing story about finding the lost boy and keeping him for his own protection or some such nonsense. With a few words of lecture about what "interfering with mundanes" means, the two magi released the boy and dragged him off from under his captor's nose. Mericas was probably furious but there wasn't much he could do about it.

The magi had their grogs turn the boy over to Bishop of Salisbury, from whom he'd run away. This yielded a modest reward and, of course, a hard time from the bishop's penny-pinching purse-bearer. He only wanted to give Hywel half the reward because the boy had been found without the purse he had stolen.

Hywel and Godwyn went back to Godwyn's place to discuss whether to return the purse or not, when they were interrupted by an unexpected visit from the faerie Lady of the Forest. She entreated Hywel to help her release her consort from captivity. Without asking too many questions or really thinking, the magi agreed. They and their grogs found themselves whisked along a faerie trod to the mountains of southern Wales.

The magi had a couple of odd encounters along the way. An intelligent-seeming raven harassed us a bit -- I think it tried to steal something -- and Hywel obliterated it with The Crystal Dart. A faerie jester dressed in motely tried to cast some kind of spell them as they approached the cave where the captive was imprisoned, but the grogs and magi drove him off with spells and arrows. This left no one to warn the magi of what they were about to do.

The cave mouth looked artificial: it was a Roman mine tunnel. Around the entrance was a powerful ward that kept humans out. Godwyn assumed wolf form and was able to go right in and break the ward. This was when we found out the trapped faerie was none other than The Hunt. It was well known in the Tribunal that the magus Flumen of Blackthorn had trapped The Hunt in an iron mine some fifty or sixty years before. Now it was free again.

The Lord of the Hunt gave to Hywel a very old letter, addressed to Ozerk. It read:

the hunter is now the hunted
beware the thorn of the black rose
seek the light and return at dawn

True to the Lady's promise, the Mast of the Hunt has enchanted Godwyn's Woods so it now has the magical trait 'Foreboding Wood' and a person must make a personality check of 9 to enter it. It also has a Faerie Aura of 1 however this does not affect the magical aura around Godwyn's sanctum.