Fabula Ultima - The Romance of Ys - Session 15

02 Mar, 2026

This week pivots from mystery and thefts toward minor intrigue and the closest our anime and video game inspired game has gotten to a beach episode as the party wind-down their time in Rhiannon's Steading.

Episode 3, "Hunters X Horses: Showdown at the Stallion's Roost." Session 15

Cast

• Aurelia, she/her, Ex-Inventor Turned Spy
• 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

Enchantments and Wards

The session picks-up with the party and King Manawydan heading back into Rhiannon's secret vault to investigate the remains of the fight. There the party confirm the knight-thieves were indeed undead, despite Rhiannon believing them to be humanoids when she studied them in battle. The group wonder if the Baroness wove a disguise over the group. As they ponder, King Manawydan accounts for the treasure, including locked-away relics in the rear.

Content that things are in-place, the party breaches the matter of the Lecandan prisoners. Manawydan, while not exactly regretful, agrees it is an injustice that the Lecandans are ponies and leads the party to the stables in-order to reverse his enchantment on them. He reverts to a giant horse as he leaves the great hall and issues forth a loud whinny to call back his servants and wards before escorting the group to the enchanted Lecandans.

The group arrive at the stable as the first of the Steading's residents return from the search. The king introduces the party to his and Rhiannon's fosterlings - Princess Gyneth of the Northern Vale and Prince Oiwin, Prince of Boarlings. Gyneth, a bespectacled young woman in armor, cheerfully and eagerly introduces herself to her fellow princess, Seren. Meanwhile, Mio wearily eyes Oiwin, a cross, bolting boarling with a tusk broken on the same side as that of the boarling she punched the tusk off of not too many days earlier.¹

Mio's hunch is confirmed immediately as the Prince trundles over and talks to her. Her fears are allayed, though, as he declares that the battle was just and glorious, and that the laws of the wild mean her might makes right. Realizing he is just a kid, she offers back his broken tusk, but he instead bites a bit off the point and instructs her to use it as a horn to call her the next time she battles for glory. She cheerfully agrees, immediately daydreaming of riding him into battle at a joust.

Content she will not be attacked and has not made a grave mistake with Prince Oiwin, Mio turns to the transformed Lecandans. She strikes-up a conversation with one to see how the group is doing and to explain they will shortly be turned back. The dwarf-turned-horse is perturbingly fine with being a horse, seeming to take it a vaguely dreamlike stride. As the group processes how deep the fairy enchantment goes, Manawydan steps forth and undoes it. As the ponies turn back into dwarves, they immediately are on-edge and wary of the King. Aurelia, a kinswoman, steps forward and informs them it is fine, and in the process gives a small signal that the dwarf Mio was talking to, testing to see if he is also a secret agent. He signals back that he is.

Manawydan and the group ask for an explanation of why the Baroness and her undead were after the dwarves. Philipus, the erstwhile leader, presents that the group were dispatched as a research team from Lecanda to investigate the new magical veil that runs the border of Cymry and Nova Sinfonia. As they were, they were attacked by the undead and fled. After relentless pursuit, they risked breaching into an anomalous supernal realm, unaware of who the residents were. He apologizes, and Manawydan accepts. He invites the Lecandans to a feast tonight, where he will properly host all his new guests and reward the party. With a signal from Aurelia to stay, Philipus accepts on behalf of the dwarves. Manawydan gives them free reign, but warns that he still intends to capture their missing leader, Darius, who did assault him.

Friendly Chats All Around

With the Lecandans freed, the party turn their attention to other matters. Seren engages with Gyneth, Mio and Thistle take a fascination in something near the stable, and Philipus pulls Aurelia aside into private conversation after Manawydan leaves to oversee preparations for the feast. Quietly and carefully, the dwarf agent provides Aurelia with more details of their expedition - when they investigated the energy veil, they discovered it was generated by an exceptional magical sword floating in the air. While studying, the undead arrived and briefly detained them before Darius engineered an escape. While captured it became clear the undead were there to try and seize the sword by inundating the space with necromantic energies, creating a spiritual sinkhole that would create an anomalous cthonic realm to trap the sword in for retrieval by their undead liege, the covetous King Pwyll. Aurelia thanks him for the update and promises to relay it to their superiors if neither Philipus or Darius escape.

Seren takes a moment to relax, as much as she allows herself to, and happily chats with Princess Gyneth, who plies her with all sorts of questions. As she does, Seren recognizes that while Gyneth asks all about the party, she is careful to only volunteer vague generalities about herself. Even so, Seren learns she was sent to study governance and knighthood at the Steading, and that it will be coming to an end very shortly. And despite the practiced concealment of information, Seren finds herself enjoying the young woman's presence.

Their conversation comes to a pause as the two become distracted by Mio and Thistle, who are engrossed in a piece of horse crap. Mio cheerfully explains that Thistle is quite intelligent and found something important in the poo. When pressed by Gyneth, Mio admits she doesn't fully understand it, but her genuine faith in the fairy hound convinces Gyneth this is true. Hemlocke watches on, fully aware that no - Thistle is just a dog who wants to smells some poop.

More Secret Agent Work

Princess Gyneth invites Seren and Mio to join her at a spring to bathe as the party reach a decision to find Darius again and update him on the situation. The two young women join Gyneth while the others search for Darius, starting at the patch of trees Hemlocke first met the horse-headed Lecandan at. While the dwarf isn't there, they do find tracks and trace them back to the gate into the fairy kingdom, which Darius is probing.

Realizing they didn't bring Mio along, Darius proffers Hemlocke's torn journal and holds out a hand for something to write with. Remembering the whole ordeal of Darius tearing pages out after writing the bare minimum, Hemlocke excuses theirself and leaves for the spring with Thistle.

Aurelia provides him with a pen while signaling her loyalties. Darius takes to writing in Lecandan, relaying "I believe the sword is Excalibur, the former king of Cymru's sword. It's very potent in magic. It would be a grand setback if King Pwyll retrieved it. But it will take them weeks to sink, if not longer. If I do not get word back, send a message to a dwarf named Casius relaying this threat." Aurelia pockets the message and tells Darius she has a plan to remove his curse if she cannot convince Manawydan to do so. Skeptically, the dwarf agrees to wait.

Hotsprings Episode?

Gyneth leads Seren and Mio to an idyllic spring at the edges of the steading, and without fuss or embarassment, proceeds to remove her armor and dive in. After a brief tussle with their own senses of decorum, Seren and Mio join-in and enjoy perhaps the first bath they've had in days, if not weeks. Gyneth takes the time to ply Mio with questions about her heritage, flirting with both girls as she does. The conversation hits a brief roadbump as Gyneth casually assumes Mio is Seren's guardswoman, and the two explain with dubious success that they are just friends. And also, they aren't dating.

As the conversation continues, Seren again notices Gyneth's practiced deflection of particulars when talking about herself. While uncertain what to make of it, she recognizes it as similar to what her own mother would preach to her and Astri to do. As she watches Gyneth and Mio converse she also puts a name to the strange feeling around Gyneth - the princess appears to be a changeling, a human raised in a fairy realm. More than human, but not fey.

The rest of the party catch-up and begin to relax with the three girls. Hemlocke is embarassed to join-in, Thistle delights in playing chase-the-ball in the spring, and Aurelia is shocked at the casualness with which these Ysbridians will bathe, much less bathe together. It's not right to her dwarf sensibilities!

Hemlocke's Headache

Gyneth invites the group back to her room in the hall, offering to lend them clothes for the feast. Recognizing they are dressed for travel, not feasts, they happily accompany her back.

While the group head to Gyneth's room, Hemlocke is waylaid as a familiar voice greets him in rhyme - it is Puck! Hemlocke immediately tries to make herself look busy with helping set-up for the feast, but Puck gets in her way and proceeds to chat in rhyme with the aggravated seneschal. His mode gets even worse as Puck calls-in the favor Hemlocke owes him for assisting in relocating Seelie fairy within the Unseelie Court.

Through strained rhymes, the jester directs Hemlocke to steal a songbook from King Niyonin, a Cymru lesser king of note. Once obtained, Hemlocke should bring it to Puck at a recently-announced joust. Bothered, the seneschal asks if they have to steal it or if it can be obtained in another way, and Puck assures them that it just must be taken and given over. Irritated but bound by the laws of fairy favors, Hemlocke agrees.

Puck then asks how the Seneschal is and whether he has found a replacement for Titania in Seren. Guilt washes over Hemlocke as she realizes she has done almost nothing to find her missing queen. Puck uncustomarily comforts Hemlocke before excusing himself. Depressed, the seneschal joins the party in Gyneths' room.

Party Preparations

Gyneth's room is stuffed with books and scrolls, piles and piles of which fill almost all the space. Gyneth clears some off an overstuffed steamer dresser that explodes into a spray of outfits as she opens it up. She cheerfully explains that her mother sent too many outfits with her when she came to stay at the Steading and offers to allow the group to use them for the feast in-trade for dances with Mio and Seren that evening. Overtaken by all the finery, Seren agrees without fully realizing what Gyneth asked. From there, the ecstatic Princess hands each member of the party gothic finery. Even Hemlocke, over their protestations that they are a mere butler, relents and accepts an outfit. With some assistance from Gyneth's own handmaid - a severe shapeshifting crow woman - they get changed. We end the session with the party spilling out of the room and quickly leaving the hall so they can be properly announced when the feast begins.

Referee Thoughts

You know, for a session that was all RP and which I thought didn't move the story forward much, I sure had a lot to write in this report!

I still struggle with preparing the next big adventure. After a few days of poking I did confirm that the group want to investigate what is happening with King Niyonin and Seren's former handmaiden, Lady Vesper. They also want to dig into what has happened to Rhiannon's missing husband, Rhodri. With that in-mind, I spent most of my prep time just trying to puzzle out what to do next. I settled on setting-up a feast, using the Lecandan's to more directly explain the threat of King Pwyll in Ysbridia, and introduce Gyneth as another representative of the Unseelie Court. The feast itself would also give me a chance to shower the party in delayed rewards and provide Seren with the magic item that kicked-off this whole adventure.

As a group we decided the magic item will be a musical instrument that allows the player to perform special songs as rituals. The first of these songs will in-turn be the sending ritual that Seren's player asked after a dozen sessions ago.

If it is all very Legend of Zelda, it is because it is. Allowing the artifact to play multiple songs, but making those songs their own thing to find, gives the party something to actively seek-out. In-turn, each song lets me play with the idea of giving them something akin to an Arcanist's Arcana since nobody in the group appears to intend to take that class. Finally, seeding the idea of there being multiple instruments and many songs gives me something for the various villainous factions to pursue and threaten the party with.

While we didn't get to the feast itself, I am happy with the rest of the session. I've wanted to bring back the boarling that Mio punched the tusk off of and let escape for a while. Mio's player wants to have a boarling race or joust, and this seemed like a great way to meld the two ideas. She also agreed and promised she will figure out how an unarmed catgirl can actually joust.

Princess Gyneth took-up almost all prep that wasn't designing the Gallopin' Gurdy artifact. One of my early ideas was to introduce King Arthur's son, Mordred, as a representative of the Unseelie Court. Morgan La Fey would have picked him from the rafts of sons sent out to sea by Arthur and Merlin in an attempt to foil prophecy that Arthur's son would be his death. Morgan in-turn would raise the child with the intent to have a weapon to deploy against Arthur if necessary, but it all ends-up mooted as prophecy twists in unexpected ways. Instead of Mordred killing Arthur, Arthur is slain by Seren's father, Emperor Xerno, whose conquest is in some part motivated by Arthur collecting his first born son as part of the attempt to foil the prophecy.

With Arthur dead and a new threat from Nova Sinfonia, Mordred would then be deployed to infiltrate the Nova Sinfonia court and find a way to undermine it from within. At the time of writing the current plan is to have her find way in by having a blackmailed ally of Nova Sinfonia offer her up as a knight protector for Seren's transgender sister, Princess Astri. This is all tentative, though - I have a bunch of ideas, but end-of-day I will jettison or change them as the players take more control in directing the story.

Hell, the first change already happened. I realized adding a mysterious fey who might be ally or foil and making him a boy would probably not excite the two players who most likely would engage with him as a character since they are both lesbians. After a lot of thinking, jotting down ideas, and combing Wikipedia for fairy and Arthuriana, I settled on Morgan pulling a Princess Ozma and changing the baby Mordred's gender and giving her the fairy name Gyneth.²

And it worked! The party seem to like her as a character and Seren's and Mio's players immediately built a good rapport with the character while also remaining properly skeptical of her. Thanks to some bits in Puck's talk with Hemlocke, they also realize that "The Northern Vale" she comes from is likely the Unseelie Court. She won't stick around much in the next story, but I already plan to bring her back for the Joust that is the culmination of the first Act in my outline.

The bit with the clothing went great as well. I prompted the players to tell me what their outfit looks like, but gave the instructions that it must be goth or darkly ethereal to reflect the Unseelie origin of the outfits and that it must be either outside their character's comfort range or outrageous and audacious. They took to it like fish to water and filled our shared Discord serve with photos of different outfits and accessories. That and another round of the Immram minigame were a great way to wind-down the session.

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