Fabula Ultima - The Romance of Ys - Session 16

18 Mar, 2026

Pigs are contested with, girls meltdown, and libraries are never found as we wind down our time at Rhiannon's Steading this session.

Episode 3, "Hunters X Horses: Showdown at the Stallion's Roost." Session 16

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

Feasting Festivities

The session opens with the party outside, being announced as "Princess Seren of Albion and her attendants," dashing any hopes Seren had of not standing-out. Inside, the hall has transformed, growing in size and shuffling its side-entrances around. A row of magic cauldrons stretch through it, each filled with a seemingly endless supply of different foods and drinks.

Intrigued by the cauldrons, Hemlocke flags down one of the servants and attempts to wheedle the particulars of where the cauldrons are from or how they are made to no avail. The secret of the magic is just that - secret. Undeterred, the seneschal resolves to research them at a later date, recognizing how useful they would be to a household.

Mio sees Oiwin, Prince of Boarlings, eating food straight from a server's plate and talks the young teen into an eating contest. Excited to prove his prowess and longing for a win over the pugilist, he agrees and the two retreat to the kitchen, where they proceed to go three rounds of eating food. Oiwin holds his own, but in the end Mio triumphs and the young boarling has to be rolled off to the side to digest all the bread, mushrooms, and mead he had.

Another Lead for Rhiannon

Taking leave from the festivities as best as she can, Rhiannon attempts to find where there might be a library in the hall. Shifting halls and doors thwart her attempts, and midway into her search she is approached by a towering King Manawydan, who flat asks what she is.

Rhiannon explains her nature as a revenant and how her spouse Rhodri is missing. Solemnly, Manawydan speculates he may have been captured by Sandcagers, a kind of fey fellow who frequents the coasts and uses false lights to trick ships into wrecking on shallow waters. From there, a Sandcager will collect the souls of the dead in lobster and crab cages and bring them to market to sell to all sorts of unscrupulous fey, necromancers, and even vassals of King Pwyll. Rhiannon asks where such markets are, and Manawydan tells her they can be found in most major cities, including the hidden Goblin Market of Caer Ys. He ends the conversation attempting to reassure the revenant wizard that it takes time for a Sandcager to collect enough souls to bring to market, and that any seller likely kept records that can be traced.

Seren Melts Down

After a small peak into the kitchens to see what Mio and Prince Oiwin are up to, Seren is snatched-up by Princess Gyneth. Putting aside her large wine glass, the changeling princess declares it is time for Seren to pay her the dance she is owed for the lending of clothes, and a nervous Seren follows her to the dance floor. There the two princesses proceed to step on each others gowns and feet, neither knowing how to lead or having the grace to improvise.¹ Unable to keep-up with the other dancers, they drift further-and-further to the side of the space set aside for dancing until they are all but alone.

Not wasting the opportunity to talk, Princess Gyneth asks Seren why she left her safe, comfortable position as Nova Sinfonia royalty. A flustered Seren rapidly and with no interruptions relays her much of her story. As she does, Gyneth starts to pull her closer, lean in-more, and Seren - well past smmitten - starts to panic and excuse herself. As she turns, Gyneth hooks her fingers into Seren's dog collar and pulls the young woman back into her embrace. Seren melts, and weakly asks to get some water. Gyneth relents with a smile, and Seren rushes off to Hemlocke, desperate for an adult's guidance.

Hemlocke, never having to mediate between princesses, is unable to provide her companion with advice. But he is able to provide her with a drink, making sure to get her something not too heavy or alcoholic. Recovered, Seren finds Gyneth again and the two duck-away to another secluded part of the hall. Seren manages to squeak out a request to take things slower, and Gyneth complies. Gyneth says again how nice it has been to spend part of her last day in the Steading with Seren and Mio, and the two chat until King Manawydan calls for attention.

Gifts and Title

Standing by his throne and the empty throne of the missing Queen Rhiannon, Manawydan sings the praises of the party before granting them gifts as guests and for their assistance stopping the theft of the Steading's treasures. Each member of the party received a valuable torc along with either a gift or a powerful blessing to their armor or weapons. Even Thistle, Hemlocke's loyal hound, had his armor blessed by the horse king.

As a final gift, he recognized what Seren must be here for and presents her with a weathered hurdy gurdy - an Instrument of Ys, capable of great magic when the right song is expertly played. Solemnly, excitedly, Seren accepts this gift, as well as a gift sheet music for the song "Grim Hound's Keening."

The party step back and Manawydan calls Gyneth to the fore. With practice, Gyneth hides just how unsteady she is from drink and nerves from all but the most keen of the party and steps forward. Manawydan praises the Princess, regaling the hall with tales of her time under his and Queen Rhiannon's tutelage, before asking Gyneth to kneel. The princess obliges and he leans forward. The keen ears of the party catch that the King is quitely administering an oath of knighthood, but not to the Steading. Instead, Gyneth pledges herself to her home and Queen.

The two rise and King Manawydan announces Gyneth as Princess and Knight before presenting her with a large, alabaster scepter.

No Dance, Only Duel!

The festivities resume and Gyneth grabs Mio and Seren by the arms and starts to lead them outside. With drunk excitement, she asks Mio to change the terms of their deal - instead of a dance she wants a duel! Mio, whose Warhorse Vambraces were just blessed by Manawydan, excitedly agrees, and the three women retreat to the nearby woods, followed by Hemlocke, Thistle, and Rhiannon.

Gyneth grabs her scepter, steadies her clearly wobbly stance, and launches into an attack against Mio. The two gleefully duel, exchanging blows and taunts as they do. Through a mix of magic and mighty scepter blows, Gyneth puts Mio on her back feet. At the climax she hooks Mio toward her, goes to kiss her on the lips... and proceeds to vomit all over the pugilist.

As Seren rushes up to hold back Gyneth's hair, Mio leans in and whispers to the puking Princess Gyneth that she shouldn't worry - she will protect Seren. Gyneth gives her a look of acknowledgement, and the evening ends with folks cleaning themselves up at the nearby spring.

Goodbyes and Gifts

The group retreat to rest after the party and soon enough the morning arrives. As the party has a breakfast on the back porch of the hall, they watch as Puck, Princess Gyneth, and Gyneth's handmaiden, Lady Tuft, prepare a cart and (normal) horse for their journey. Hungover and wearing a large, wide-brimmed hat to try and block-out the sun, Gyneth makes her way over to the group and says her goodbyes. As she does, she cheekily asks Seren for a gift, princess to knight. Put on the spot, Seren presents Gyneth with a locket that has a picture of herself and her sibling, Astri, in it. Gyneth promises to treasure it.

Gyneth turns to Mio and tells her she will hold Mio to her promise from last night. Gyneth then leaves, telling Seren and Mio she left them something inside. After waving the princess off, the two head to Gyneth's room. Laid out on her bed is the two borrowed outfits (now cleaned) and two enchanted hyacinth hairclips.

Referee Thoughts

This was a helluva session to prepare for. I figured out the big beats almost immediately after the last session - Gyneth and Seren dancing, Manawydan giving Rhiannon an actionable lead, the knighting ceremony, and the duel between Gyneth and Mio - but the particulars were difficult to nail down.

I tried to come-up with a scene for each player character and mostly got there - I couldn't figure out something interesting for Hemlocke, eventually settling on having Gyneth's handmaiden, Lady Tuft, being a snobby ass to him at some point while also teasing a rumor of Queen Titania possibly being Alba. During play I asked folks what they wanted to do, though, and let them take the lead for the most part. We had fun, but I could have handled Hemlocke's asking about the cauldrons and Rhiannon searching for a library better - I very much shut them down.

I chalk that up to me being exhausted. I've struggled with sleep for weeks and went into the session drained. So drained that I opted to narrate a lot of the scenes in third-person instead of slipping into first person conversations. This shortened the session, but nobody minded.

Seren and Gyneth's dance was an escalation. Seren's player mentioned after the last session that she was playing the character as oblivious, and I promised that Gyneth will be more direct. This could have bombed badly - I am not a romantic person - but instead it became a highlight of the night. I followed-up after, and Seren's player told me she loved it and that it hadn't crossed any lines. I will take that win!

The items remained exhausting to design. This continues to feel like a problem with running a game for five player characters, though. I have to manage very limited budgets and find a way to get necessary equipment to each character that fits their proclivities and isn't boring. I've had very mixed success, but all of the gifts from Manawydan were well received.

The blessings were a nice trick as well. Some of the party have settled into having treasured weapons. Mio's player in-particular decided the catgirl treasures the vambraces given to her by Sir Cai, and will not give them up. That sparked the idea to treat them as an altered custom weapon. Working with Mio's player, we managed to retain the defense and magic defense bonus of the vambraces, but swapped the protection from weak out for a trait taken from the Therion Ripper weapon in the Technofantasy Atlas that allows a weapon to be treated as an unarmed attack for purpose of abilities that rely on a character being unarmed. Finally, we took the third custom weapon slot and made that something that can be rotated out as Mio collects more enchantments on the vambraces.

The duel between Gyneth and Mio took the most time to prepare. I designed Gyneth to be an Elite who rotated between ranged attack, spell, and melee attack, with the goal of tagging her foes with two status conditions that she then could capitalize on with a passive. I built two variations - a level 15 version and a level 20 version - and decided the battle would end when Gyneth hit Crisis or a set number of rounds passed, at which point she would vomit and concede. All this prepped, I then ran some test fights to make sure Gyneth didn't overpower Mio.

It turned out to be the opposite. Thanks to Mio being a very defense-oriented character with self-healing when guarding, neither side really did any damage. On top of that, we are using the optional rule from the core rulebook that allows characters not in a scene to force a single die to be rerolled. With four rerolls a round and Mio's remarkable defenses, Gyneth didn't do more than inconvenience the pugilist.

I batted some ideas around on how to handle this with the folks in the Table Shapers Discord, but didn't come-up with anything clean. Eventually I tweaked a passive skill on Gyneth so that as long as a character had two status effects on them they could not benefit from the optional die reroll rule. I'm not entirely satisfied with it - it is a brute force way to address a balance issue and excluded the other players from participating after the first round of the duel - but the group enjoyed it in-play and Mio's player complimented it as a skill.

The real time investment became the art for Gyneth. I am not an artist, just someone with a laptop that can turn into a mediocre tablet. I spent something like six or seven hours on Saturday and Sunday working through four different iterations of Gyneth.

The bit where Gyneth asked Seren for a gift was an on-the-spot decision by me, and it was a great way to wrap-up the session. Seren's player declared she was spending a fabula point to create the gift and we jointly pitched ideas on what it might be until settling on the locket. The fact it has a picture of Astri in it is great for me, as I have some distant plans to have Gyneth and Astri interact to drive some of the NPC plots forward.

On the note of Seren, her player told me after the session that at the moment the duel ended in puking, she decided Seren fell in-love with Gyneth. I plan to bring her back for the joust that is still tentatively set to cap off Act 1, but given the pace of our game I will need to find a way to bring her back sooner than that. I don't want to have another situation like Astri's, where two players pitch me on the character only for me to take a long time to introduce her and then immediately sideline her. I also am looking for a way to bring Astri back as soon as I can.

Aurelia's player being absent created a bit of a hitch. She had set-up a scheme to steal a hair from King Manawydan to use in curing Darius, the horse-headed dwarf. It didn't feel right to play that out without her, so as a group we agreed we will wind the clock back to allow those scenes to play-out. Fingers crossed that goes well.

I now have to start prep on the next "episode." I asked folks between sessions what they wanted to pursue next, and they showed the most interest in addressing what is happening with Vesper and King Niyonin and investigating Rhiannon's missing ghost wedded spouse, Rhodri. The party decided to investigate Vesper first, so I need to pull that together.

I also want to make it... not mean, but I want the party to leave that episode feeling like they are on their back feet or lost. They had an unequivocal success with this episode's antics and the feast was a great celebration of that success. If I keep to the "this is a television show" conceit, then they should be knocked down before coming-back for a stunning victory at the finale of the act. That said, this is a tabletop game, and one that the players have almost total control of if they so choose. So we'll see what actually happens.

All-in-all, a great session!

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