Session 2: The Faire

June 7, 2026 · Five months after Session 1

What Happened

Faire morning hit Waycross all at once. The first fiddle started somewhere past the main square before the smoke from the breakfast pots had thinned, and by the time the party drifted in, the town was already three deep around the food carts and tent stakes were still going into the ground.

The party scattered. Vexira shepherded Lysa from cart to cart with a pocketful of cookies and fidget toys, Skrit trailing them like a quiet shadow, and ended up at the Kestrel's Roost as midday warmed. Yssala was already there, she had been drinking on Branner's tab for weeks, and on her way to the bar she lifted two healing potions from a shelf nobody was watching. Maena worked the perimeter with the town guards, her familiar Corvus growing visibly fatter on snacks pinched from every stall they passed. Kaeleus, behind the freshly-built stage with the Marquis Players, was visibly trying to hold a troupe together that had not signed up for cairn ceremonies or visiting militia captains.

Then Fez pulled him aside. He had recognized Captain Mara Venn weeks ago, and he had made the mistake of saying so to her ex, an orc named Bruuk Ironfist, who had just walked into the Kestrel.

What followed in the inn was tense but quiet. Bruuk wanted a private word; Mara refused. Yssala, three sheets to the wind, latched onto Bruuk's leg in an extremely successful Athletics check and refused to be removed. Kaeleus stepped between them and smoothed the air on a Persuasion 17. Across the room, Maena was the only one who caught the trouble that mattered: Gaston Dravik, one of the town guards, was muttering anti-goblin slurs to Branner under his breath. She filed him as a problem.

The square went sideways minutes later. Rizka, Bruuk's sister, came at Mara with two knives drawn. Maena's longbow shot was a critical hit; both knives flew out of Rizka's hands without a drop of blood spilled. Mara had Rizka by the throat before anyone else moved. Bruuk arrived a heartbeat later, and for a long moment three orcs stood in a triangle nobody wanted to be the first to break.

The play, somehow, went off. The crowd ate up the Napoleon Dynamite dance, the Jamiroquai bit, and the drag number on a Performance 19 that papered over the knife fight happening on the next block.

It did not all paper over. A child tripped near Yssala and spilled juice down her front; still drunk, she threw a rock at his head. The mother bore down. Yssala cast Suggestion, "have a great evening, go home", and rolled a 91 on the Wild Magic table. Four d10s of lightning, up to three targets of her choice. She chose one. Gaston Dravik became a small pile of grey dust in the middle of the square.

Vexira handled the guards with advantage on Persuasion. The reveal saved them: Gaston had been quietly organizing an anti-goblin rebellion, and the rest of the watch was relieved he was off the board. They thanked Yssala, in their way, for "handling it."

Vexira turned the same energy on Fez next, with a thread of Thaumaturgy under her voice. The full story came out. Fez, Mara, Bruuk, and Rizka had grown up in the same orc tribe. Their elder, a druid named Kragoth Rootbinder, had run summer camps for them and later led them as a teen adventuring party. Bruuk had fallen for Mara. Mara hadn't returned it. Rizka had wanted Bruuk and resented Mara for being in the way. A decade ago Mara had walked out of the party and vanished. Fez had recognized her in Waycross three weeks back and let the wrong name slip to the wrong person.

The Marquis Players gave Kaeleus an ultimatum: leave with them or be left behind. A Persuasion 18 bought him another season in town.

By that point the party had a trail. Mara, Bruuk, Rizka, and Kragoth were all moving toward a grove in the forest. Skrit and a handful of Moss-Eyed goblins helped track them on a Survival 14. They found Mara unconscious on the moss and Kragoth standing over a ritual.

Combat went the party's way in flashes. Yssala used Distant Spell metamagic to cast Cure Wounds at range and wake Mara mid-fight. Kragoth's Moonbeam scoured Maena for ten damage and Kaeleus for five. Vexira crit Rizka with both scimitars and chased it with Ray of Sickness. Bella's Dissonant Whispers sent Rizka fleeing in terror and pulled Bruuk over to the party's side as a charmed ally. Corvus killed Rizka on an opportunity attack as she ran. Yssala's Wild Magic rolled again, this time Mirror Image, four copies of her flickering across the trees. Kaeleus's Phantasmal Force trapped Kragoth in an illusory hallway of doors that would not open.

With Kragoth on his knees, Bruuk told the rest of it. Kragoth's original tribe had been destroyed years ago by an orc warlord named Vorgath. He had been trying to summon a demon from the Thornfather tree to take revenge, and the cairns along the eastern verge were the thing standing in his way. When the party had spent five months helping the goblins keep the cairns instead, he pivoted to a blood ritual: the surviving members of his original adventuring party, hands on the tree, one of them unwilling. That was why he had needed Mara.

Kaeleus spoke last. A Persuasion 25, threaded with something that may or may not have been borrowed from Michael Jackson, convinced Kragoth to surrender. He revived Rizka with his own hands. The Thornfather sat quiet. Vorgath, somewhere west, did not yet know he had been promoted to the party's next problem.