Fabula Ultima - The Romance of Ys - Session 7

13 Oct, 2025

We start a new dungeon this session, as the party searches for a seer living under a hill.¹

Episode 2, "The Stone’s Voice Speaks! Seek the Secret Steeding." Session 06

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, Widowed Revenant Looking for Answers
• Seren, she/her, Kindhearted Princess on the Run

Matty's Immram

We open with a check-in on Matty as she sails the Mirrorlight Sea. Packing a mirror in her bag, she heeds the party's advice from last session and distracts the giant tuna so she can get back to sailing. Her first stop after that finds her in an archery contest with the Lord of Rainbows, firing prismatic arrows from a rainbow at each other. She loses and limps away, back to sea. There she is visited by an invisible prince of the air, who playfully challenges her to a wrestling match. After getting knocked about, she loses and her trip comes to an end. She offers up three items, but the party don't buy any of them this go.

Before signing off, Matty asks Seren to teach her a heal spell the next time they meet up. Seren excitedly explains the basics to Matty through their linked journals and assigns her homework to practice.

A nice hillside garden

Tucking the journals away, the party explore the hill they arrived at. A massive oak tree grows, with a nice garden growing under its boughs. Aurelia's player is absent, so the dwarf gets assigned to outside guard duty while the party explore. Hemlocke inspects a scarecrow with a vegetable face, only for the face to look back before vanishing in a puff of magic. The seneschal then admires the garden, but refrains from picking ingredients - they're not hers to take!

Mio tries to talk to the tree using her Feral Speech skill, but unfortunately the tree is not a creature - it is just a tree. She does spot some mistletoe in its branches and climbs up to collect it.

Finally, the members who can cast rituals sense that this site is an excellent place to cast rituals related to time, space, and possibility. Unfortunately, those tend to be Entropist rituals, and none of them have levels in that class. Undeterred, they head to a door leading inside.

Pumpkin Problems

Seren politely knocks on the door leading into the hill, but gets no response. Listening at the door, though, the group can hear the sounds of scampering feet inside. Resigning themselves to being a little rude, they open the door and find a group of jack'o'lanterns scampering around a room full of tapestries. Mio attempts to talk with them, but gets no response - unsual for what appear to be plant creatures. While the jack'o'lanterns prance around the party, inspecting their equipment and mimicing their gestures, the group makes a study check and determine that they must be Pumpkin Jacks, a kind of undead. As they discuss their findings, the Jacks get bored and attack!

The Jacks win initiative and the first one manages to mimic Rhiannon well enough to learn the revenant's Elemental Weapon spell! This ends-up being the absolute best the Jacks can manage, though, as every subsequent attempt to "steal" a spell or skill fails.² The party make short work of the Jacks, but feel pity as they fail to steal from the group or even manage to escape. The fight ends with Rhiannon bear-hugging the last Pumpkin Jack, who repeatedly tries and fails to mimic Seren. She hands it off to Thistle, who dutifully carries the fire-proof jack in his burning mouth.

Conflict over, the spirits of the three destroyed Jacks zip down the two halls leading out of the room.

Beyblades

Battle over, the party actually take stock of the room. Plants and roots poke down from dirt ceilings and up from cracks in the stone floor, while the walls are made of stone and covered in well preserved tapestries, which are easy to view with candle sconces lighting the room. Inspecting the tapestries shows playful scenes of people, fey, and undead gallivanting about humorously. Hemlocke notices that there are more fey in the tapestries the closer you get to the east hall, and more undead the closer you get to the west. With this in mind, the party opts to head east first.

The hall opens into a room full of fresh air, blooming flowers, and gorgeous tapestries that look like they were just woven. A painted door leads south, and Seren moves to inspect it. She recognizes the art as depicting Urd, the Fate responsible for spinning the thread of life. Listening closely to the door, she hears a great crashing and whirring beyond. The party open the doors and find a room full of giant spindles hanging from the ceiling, twirling about and banging into each other. At the far end, they spot another painted door.

Disturbed, the party investigates the spindles. As they step inside, they feel a tugging and realize that threads have stretched out from them toward the spindles, which gently but firmly pull on them. As they get closer and closer, they can feel the spindles start to pull on memories - Mio learning how to counter-punch, or the push-ups that helped push her Might to a d8. Frightened at the prospect of losing memories, they retreat and close the door behind them!

Ysbridia's highest highs

Closing off one route forward, the party takes stock of the tapestries around them, with three larger than the rest. The first shows the marriage of King Pwyll and Queen Fand, joining a unified Ysbridia with the fairy underworld of Annfwn through their marriage. Hemlocke recognizes their missing liege, Queen Titania, in the wedding crowd, opposite of her sister and the queen of the Unseelie Court, Morgan La Fey. Seren spots what appears to be one of the cauldrons her family is using to shackle undead and dead fey in the wedding gifts. And after some excellent skill checks, the group also identify that four women attended by beasts are actually the Sovereignty Goddesses of Ysbridia, responsible for blessing the rightful rulers of their respective lands:

• Rhiannon, sovereign goddess of Cymru, represented by a horse;
• Brigantia, sovereign goddess of Albion, represented by a dragon;
• Brigit, sovereign goddess of Eire, represented by a bull; and,
• Beira, sovereign goddess of Alba, represented by a unicorn.³

The next tapestry depicts an older event, the Council of the Sepulchral Troth, where Queen Ceridwen of Cymru and LLlwd, the King of Bones, establish the practice of ghost marriage following an alliance to stop the Mad King Gronw Pebr, who used a cauldron to bind fey and undead into a conquering army. Seren gets excited at this being evidence that the troubles her family is causing with these cauldrons happened before, and importantly, that they were stopped!

The final tapestry depicts events more recent, showing a series of high points in the life of the recently deceased High King Arthur Pendragon - many battles, receiving the fealty of the monarchs of Eire, Alba, and Albion, being gifted Excalibur and its sheathe by the fairy Nimue, and his marriage to Queen Gwenhwyfar. Attending him in many of these scenes is his advisor, Merlin. Seren recognizes her father, Xerno, in the scene of nobles pledging allegiance to Arthur; he does not seem pleased to be swearing fealty.

Scything scissors

At this point Seren declares that she hates embroidery - of all the tasks expected of her as a princess, this was the most painful and mindnumbing. At a loss as to who might have made these tapestries or how to proceed, she convinces Mio and Rhiannon to roll-up one of them, revealing stone wall behind it and nothing more. Not wanting to deal with the spindles, the party head back to the entrance and down the other hall.

The air turns stale and the plants start to wither as they enter another tapestry room. Ignoring the faded and tattered tapestries, they head to the painted door in the south wall of the room. This one is painted with Skuld, the fate responsible for cutting the threads and ending a person's life. The sound of metal on metal comes through the door.

Unconcerned with the tapestries, they open the door and reveal the room is full of threads being pulled toward a pair of scything scissor blades that bisect the room. On the far end, another painted door. Seren and Mio tentatively step in-side, and once again threads appear on them, tugging gently toward the scissors. But this time they are attached to their weapons, their armor... and to each other! And they can feel, instinctively, that the thread linking them represents their Bond. The two retreat, closing the door behind them.

Ysbridia's lowest lows

Frustrated by the two dangerous traps, the party examine the three tapestries in this room. The first depicts the fall of King Pwyll, who grew bitter watching the kingdom he unified fracture after his death. He remained a ghost longer than he should - who can tell the former high king it is time to pass on? - and eventually became a horrible undead lord, sinking his castle underground, from which he deploys agents to steal the treasures and knowledge of Ysbridia for him.

The second tapestry depicts Gronw Pebr's war, showing the Mad King stirring a cauldron from which shackled spirits emerge and do battle with Cymru knights and soldiers. Notably, there is a giant near him, and after some very good skill checks, the party recalls that Gronw's cauldron was a gift to him by a giant for granting him and his family refuge in Cymru.

The final well-aged tapestry illustrates the lows of much more recent history. The party are shocked and disturbed to see Arthur and Merlin loading ships with newborn babes, setting them to sea to die. Arthur's death is also depicted, with the king falling to the orange-and-yellow forces of Nova Sinfonia. Finally, the sacking of the Seelie Court, an event that occurred mere weeks ago, is depicted - Queen Titania in chains is led off as an embroidered Seren looks on in terror and a horse nobody recognizes (but which resembles the symbol of Rhiannon from the other tapestries) flees.

Seren experiments

Utterly exasperated and increasingly frustrated by the anachronisms of the tapestries, Seren takes charge and starts experimenting. She directs Rhiannon and Mio to hang-up the tapestry from the other room on the walls, hoping to see some change to it. Instead, it remains intact, and even brings a bit of fresh air and color to the gloomy room.

Receiving no results, the princess opens the door to the scissor room and strides in. After some clever testing, she discovers that the threads connected to equipment only exist while the gear is held or equipped. She steps back-out and the group begin forming a strategy to get through, only to be reminded that Thistle carries a Pumpkin Jack in his mouth still. As the Jack continues to mimic Seren, she decides to make a connection with the Jack and teaches it how to cast Heal.

Spell learned, the Jack wriggles free of Thistle and rolls off into the scissor room, nimbly avoiding the cutting blades and dashing through the painted door, to everyone's frustration.

Hemlocke's bad day

With the session nearing the end, the group hatches a plan to get past the scissors. They each unequip their gear and then will enter the room one-by-one and chuck it through the scissors before jumping through themselves. Hemlocke goes first, chucking her armor, gunbrella, and other gear across. He follows after it, then immediately scoops it up and heads into the next room to get dressed.

There, she finds herself in a room filled wall-to-wall with tapestries. He takes in the scene and realizes that the embroidered figures on the tapestries are moving. Even more shocking, the figures are all copies of Hemlocke, similarly carrying their own bundles of equipment. As the sensechal takes this in, threads connect them to the various Hemlockes and she can feel that these Hemlockes are from alternate timelines, alternate worlds, and that if he is so-inclined, she could swap skills.

The party has long-last found the diegetic way to respec their characters!

Unfortuanate for Hemlocke, though, there are also a handful of Pumpkin Jacks in the room, all dancing about a leafy green man with a vegetable face. Hemlocke tries to hide... and rolls a fumble! The seneschal panics, attracting the green man's attention and also tossing their gunbrella back into the scissor room! As conflict looms, the session ends!

The party earn 5 xp, enough to level-up!

Referee Thoughts

The session went well! I think the changes I made to my dungeon worked-out great, providing a couple interesting challenges that the party could pick between. The history lesson seems to have been well received and I hope will go a long way toward allowing the party to make informed decisions on how to pursue ways to stop Nova Sinfonia.

The biggest pinch points were time and negotiating things with Seren's player. Regarding the former, I honestly expected the group to be able to get to the end of the dungeon and complete one more fight before we had to end. But experimenting with the puzzles and discussing the knowledge acquired from the tapestries took longer than expected. This is fine, but it does mean I have to think of a third loot pile to add to the dungeon.

As for Seren, it is important to her player that Seren not be an airhead or dumb. All the tapestry histories were revealed through open checks, and not everyone got every fact. There were some I'd provide certain characters without needing to make a check, but end-of-the-day, it was possible for someone to roll low and not recall some bit of history. For Seren's player specifically, the bits about Queen Ceridwen upset her, because she felt that was something Seren would know since she's been trying hard to learn about these cauldrons. We talked things through, but it was a good demonstration of why I should be careful with Open Checks. They lend themselves well to the classic D&D problem where the strapping, large barbarian fails to kick-open the door because they rolled low, only to then watch their weakling wizard companion roll high enough to bust the door down.

The session ended on a dangerous moment for Hemlocke. If Aurelia's player makes it next session, he's potentially facing six foes all alone and apart from the rest of the party. I think I'm going to have the green man, who poses and considers himself a fashionista, to see Hemlocke in disarray and call the Pumpkin Jacks back long enough for Hemlock to re-equip her armor at least. It would only be sporting.

One final note, I've dropped conundrums from the Matty's Immram rules. They feel too similar to the sites she visits. Further, neither the players nor myself were enthused with the mechanic. This is fine, and I'm glad we dropped this now - it would be all too easy for me to make myself miserable trying to force some conundrums nobody is excited for.

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