Fabula Ultima - The Romance of Ys - Session 13

21 Jan, 2026

The party reached the fairy kingdom the sage-under-the-hill pointed them toward today, meet a very rude dwarf, and debate whether a king is a horse or a man.

Episode 3, "Hunters X Horses: Showdown at the Stallion's Roost." Session 13

Cast

• Aurelia, she/her, Ex-Inventor Turned Spy (Absent this session)
• Hemlocke, any, Loyal Servant Looking for Answers
• Mio, she/her, Headstrong Pugilist with a Heart of Gold
• Rhiannon the Blue, she/her, Academic Ghost Bride Looking for Answers
• Seren, she/her, Kindhearted Princess on the Run

Wild Hunt

We open with the party a half-day's travel away from the fairy kingdom they are searching for. But before they reach it, they hear the distant sound of hounds barking. Hemlocke recognizes the yapping of cwn annwn - fairy hunting hounds - and alerts the group to the likelihood of a Wild Hunt finding them and deciding they are prey. Not wanting to get into a fight, Seren opens another hole into the Stream of Souls and transports the group away from the fey threat.

Tree Questions

The rest of the trip is uneventful and the party arrives at two trees entwined in an arch. One tree has a human-sized woman's handprint embedded in it and broken bits of crystal and wire are stomped into the ground by footprints. Cautious, the party begin a lengthy investigation of the presumed entrance to the fairy kingdom.

Mio pulls on her gift of language to ask the trees questions about recent visitors. The left tree conveys a sense of cold pain from the handprint embedded in it, and both relay images and sensations that suggest a ghost-like woman and several armored humans opened the gate not long ago.

The party in-turn inspect the crystals, wires, and footprints, reaching a conclusion that the detritus belongs to broken Lecandan magitechnology while the footprints suggest there were two parties recently here - a set of dwarves and a set of humans. The inspection pauses as they meet a familiar face - the large magpie they rescued in Caer Ys is picking through things, collecting the shiniest pits of crystal and wire for his nest. Mio helps him out and agrees to watch over the debris while he moves a piece of it back to his nest.

As Mio waits, Seren magically inspects the portal. Consulting notes given to her at the shrine, she determines that the portal is trapped - entropic magic radiating from the handprint will cause anyone entering to be deposited at a random point in the fairy kingdom. There is a very real risk the party will be split-up!

With no experts in entropic magics in the party, the group gets clever. With Seren leading them, the whole group collectively perform a ritual that allows them to see the bonds they have formed over the busy couple weeks since they met each other. If they will be split-up, then they shall be able to find each other by tracing the bonds to each other! As prepared as possible, they step through the portal.

A Rude Dwarf

As anticipated, the group are split-up. Seren and Rhiannon appear in-front of a giant horse and a floating fairy woman. Mio and Thistle arrive inside an ancient great hall. And Hemlocke by her lonesome appears in a wooded copse, where he startles a dwarf with the head of a horse.

After some quick convincing that the seneschal isn't associated with the lord of the kingdom, the two strike-up an awkward conversation. The dwarf cannot talk with his horse head, so Hemlocke provides him with a notebook and pen. As Hemlocke asks about the dwarf, the man writes a reply, tearing a page out each time. Hemlocke gets increasingly frustrated at the terse, wasteful dwarf, and ends the conversation after the dwarf gives him a shopping list of magical components to either help him flee the kingdom or break the curse. Hemlocke departs frustrated, following the bond-strings toward a great hall.

Strange Hall, Strange Noises

Mio tries to orient herself in the otherwise empty great hall. Comforting fires surrounded by benches stretch up-and-down the grandly decorated building, ending at a pair of human-sized thrones. She hears noises of furniture being moved around in a side-room, but unnerved by the empty hall and possibly upsetting any fey, she collects Thistle and ushers him out the front door, following a bond-thread toward Hemlocke.

Outside she is greeted by a tall, lanky armored knight. The man bangs out a noisy salute with his sword and shield and introduces himself as Sir. Bernard, servant of Baroness Niamh Butter. The two briefly converse, with Sir. Bernard explaining a group of dwarf thieves broke into the kingdom. The king captured the group, but one got away after blinding him with some loud device. The King has now set his servants to find the thief, and the Baroness in-turn has tasked her coterie of soldiers to assist.

Sir. Bernard asks Mio to consider bringing the dwarf to him if they should meet. His lady fears the thief will be unjustly punished and believes she can safely and surreptitiously escort him out of the kingdom. Mio politely makes no commitment and gracefully excuses herself, leaving the tall knight behind and heading toward a nearby wooded copse.

Horse Royalty

Seren and Rhiannon appear in an idyllic, grassy field, next to a beautiful gazebo decorated in blooming flowers. They are confronted by a giant, startled horse and a whimsically dressed fairy woman, who welcome them to Rhiannon's Steading before the horse demands in common tongue to know who they are... and what Seren is. The Princess quickly realizes they are in-front of royalty and stammers her way through polite introductions. She deflects the question of what she is while explaining her companions were separated by an enchantment on the entrance to the kingdom. The horse, introduced by the fairy woman as King Manawydan, angrily declares this must be the work of the terrible dwarves. He leaves to run and burn-off some of his anger while the fairy woman remains behind.

The fey introduces herself as a fellow visitor, the Baroness Niamh Butter. She brings the two up-to-speed, providing the same story Sir. Bernard gave Mio and asking the two to bring the thief to her as well. A skeptical Seren agrees to keep an eye out for the dwarf, then politely excuses herself and Rhiannon so they can search for their friends. As they leave, they take note of the Baroness quizzically studying Rhiannon.

Presented with the choice of visiting a great house or beautiful stables, they follow their threads toward the house. As they go, the two raise the possibility of the Baroness placing the handprint on the tree. Their conversation is derailed, though, as the two debate whether King Manawydan is a human who can turn into a horse or a giant horse who can talk. Seren is flabbergasted that Rhiannon has never imagined how wonderful it must be to be a horse running free through grassy plains.

The Band Gets Back Together

Seren and Rhiannon wind their way around the house, and eventually all three groups converge midway between the wooded copse and the great hall. The session ends with the party updating each other and debating what to do next.

Referee Thoughts

This was a challenging session to prepare for. I knew I wanted to have a mystery for the players to work through when they reached the kingdom, and overtime that morphed into them running into several factions who hadn't had much screen time - undead in-service to the greedy King Pwyll, Lecandan agents and researchers deployed within Ysbridia, and a powerful fairy king who is ruling a land while his even more powerful wife is missing. Most of my prep became notes on who represented the factions, what they want, and what they will do to get what they want.

Then, to make it even more challenging to prepare for, a week before the session I developed the worst bout of tendonitis that I have ever had in my dominant hand. Even as I type this a week-and-a-half later it still hasn't fully healed. Unable to write or draw, I had to scale-back what I could prepare so as not to stress my hand. The end-result was thinner notes than I normally prepare and no art for the potential fights the party might encounter.

It all worked out, though! None of the players had anything bad to say about the session and are interested in untangling exactly what is happening in the Steading.

During actual play the thing that stood out was the party's use of rituals and a conversation as a group about how Seren's planet oracle abilities work. The later took-up a good chunk of time, as we collectively discussed how to apply a snippit of Seren's backstory to the party opening the fairy door. We established that Seren searched for and found The Seelie Court, even managing to enter it. Seren's player viewed this as her planet oracle status potentially conveying a "gate crasher" ability to open the doors to fairy kingdoms. Mindful that Seren already has a huge array of powers tied-up in her backstory and trait, though, she presented it to the table. We discussed it and (I think!) settled on the idea that she can see fairy doors and have a vague sense of what is needed to open them, but is reliant on good ol' research and footwork to get leads on where doors might be.

With this in-mind, I decided Seren could see the scrambled-entry enchantment on the door, no check necessary, and that she could tell the magic was powerful. I explained to the group that any attempt to circumnavigate the enchantment would need to be clever because I was using my ret-conned opportunity from a couple sessions ago to establish the the problem. The party were fine with this, and got creative with the bond ritual.

Which brings us to ritual use! The party used two rituals this session, and both carry some implications I am weary of as a referee. First-up, when the party were presented with a detrimental travel encounter - a Wild Hunt approaching them - they immediately turned to Seren's ritual Esper teleportation abilities to get them out of trouble. I suspect they weren't against having a travel encounter, but just didn't want to have a conflict scene then. But the fact they immeidately leapt to using a power that circumvents travel all together makes me worried. If they keep using it I will either have to change what travel encounters look like or have a conversation with them about why they keep using it.

The decision to literalize and visualize their bonds in-game was a lot more fun! I am absolutely delighted that they took fiction and made it "real" within the story. The only thing that gave me pause was mechanical - we discovered we were treating ritual checks incorrectly. Up to this point, we only allowed folks who have access to rituals to assist with the group check to perform the ritual. In practice, that meant Mio, Rhiannon, and Seren could participate while Hemlocke and Aurelia were sidelined, much to Hemlocke's chagrin - their player expressed multiple times they were bummed to not have ritual magic.¹

I forget who discovered it, but it turns out it doesn't matter if you have the ritual feature, anyone can roll to assist the group check. This makes sense - there are very few checks that are locked to a given class skill or ability. It does make me worried, though. We went from one person making a check and two more potentially providing a +1 bonus to said check to four people potentially providing a +1 bonus to the check. That kind of numerical bonus is immense in Fabula. I am uncertain if the party will realistically fail a ritual check going forward. At that point, the only limit on the very flexible tool is the ritual leader's mind point pool.

So it goes. This is just one more point of data supporting my theory that Fabula is not intended to be run for groups of five-or-more player characters. Hopefully I am just worried over nothing here.

#fabula ultima #rpg #the romance of ys #ttrpg