Girls Night Out

Synoposis:

 

Orella has missed her time of the month twice now. She is more than just late. She has not yet shared this secret with anyone else.

Sylvie has just given birth to two children, one light and one dark. The boy is light and the girl is dark. The son's father is Adrian, the girl's father is . They are maternal twins, conceived several days apart. Such a wonderous event is hard to keep secret. The villagers have, as individuals, trickled up to the manor house with small gifts to celebrate the new children. The gifts include bundled grain from the harvest, bread, goat's milk, carved wooden toys, two small woolen blankets, etc.

Among the villagers is a young-ish woman named Wanda. She recently gave birth to her first child, but the child was stillborn. She also lost her husband to “saints' fire” (Ergotism, a fungal infection from bad rye) earlier in the year. She is heavy with milk and desperately wants to help with the children. She somehow works her way into the covenant to help out (maybe this is Albus' doing, thinking he is somehow helping). She is modestly attractive, speaks some Frankish, and still a bit plump from her pregnancy.

She soon marvels at how much the children eat. She finds herself feeding them more and more often, until she she starts showing signs of a severe lack of sleep. It seems that the more she feeds them, the more cross they get. During this time a priest named Richemir arrives, yes news does travel, and is very eager to baptize the babies and see that they have good Christian names. He had heard about the birth of two very different children from the same mother and viewed it as a sign from God. But that morning there is a cry heard from upstairs.

A week ago at night, the children had been switched out for two changeling babies. Wanda is beside herself, nearly catatonic at the thought of losing more children, shrieking, and almost unconsolable. The children in the crib now look like ugly, wizened, shrunken children. At this point, there will be opportunities to trick the changelings into speaking. Once this is done, they can figure out that the changelings are troll-children. The trolls will tell them that they need “The mother who was, the mother who is, and the mother yet be” in order to be successful.

They enter troll lands to exchange the children for their own. They determine the regionne can be entered just after dusk. As they prepare to enter, Robert, Jacques brother, turns up running from some sort of trouble he's brought upon himself. They enter. The find Pavel there, having stumbled into the regionne earlier while tracking. The babies crying is driving everyone crazy. Jacques sings a very powerful lullaby that puts everyone but him to sleep. As he realizes he cannot wake any of them, eight large guards from the Underground People show up. He gamely steps up between the guards and the prone bodies of his comrades. At this point the troll-mother pushes her way through. She and Jacques are at an impass as she tries to reclaim her children. She turns to leave and Jacques hits one of the babies with a willow switch. She stops and continues on. Again he strikes and again she stops, then continues. He strikes for a third time and she turns. At her order, the guards overpower Jacques and knock him unconciouss. Everyone wakes up in a stone hut.

The trolls contest with them three times for strength, speed, and intelligence.

• They learn the trolls were hired by the High Forest court to snatch the magical children

• They learn the way to the high forest court

• One guide will accompany them to the border's edge, this is Bartholomew the Browie

 

Across the land of despair and woe

They cross a stretch of bleak land. The land weighs heavily on their spirits. Jacques sings an uplifting song that seems to ward off the gloom. Bartholomew has warned them not to leave the path. Along they way the encounter a forest with glowing lights. The cries of babies can be heard from the forest. Though Sylvie wants to go, Pavel prevents her. Meanwhile, Wanda begins to walk towards the forest. Sylvie lifts her from the ground and Bernardo lassos her and drags her back to the path. The see a large bonfire that lights up a mining operation. The operation are all children pulling ore from a mountainside and crushing it up with hammers. Again Jacques uses song to divert everyone from the scene playing out by the bonfire until they are well past the miners.

 

At the Court of Honey

At the court, ruled by Hobany and Hobonde, they figure out where the children are.  They are in a place nurished by plants while they grow.  They steal back their children and make a run for it.

[Need to finish reconstructing this from my notes - KT]

Lore was provided during game from lore rolls.

 

The Queen of the Honey Court: Habonde - Fairy who was said to be the consort of Hobany. Described as a beautiful young woman with dark plaited hair, wearing on her head a golden circlet on which there is a star. This signifies that she is queen of the fairies.

 

 

The Troll's poem

A four-footed thief and a man who kills like a bee

The mother who was, who is, and the one yet to be

Three wolves prowl the forest, blackbird on the wing

The drunkard and the entertainer with tales to sing

To the land underground where the old folk dwell

Into the kingdom both beautiful and fell

Across the lands where live despair and woe

Not all can return, but all must go

 

 

Fairy Lore (Germanic)

[1]

A mother had her child exchanged by the dwarfs, and in its place they laid a changeling. The mother was concerned, because the child looked so very old. She shared her grief with a laborer. He told her that it wasn't her child, but rather a dwarf. She could prove this by boiling some oil while holding the child and then asking him how old he was. The woman did this. With the child on her arm, she put the oil on the fire. It asked her what she was doing, and the mother said that she wanted to brew some beer. With that she set some empty walnut shells around the fire, so she could later pour the beer into them. Then the dwarf said, innocently and without thinking:

Now I am as old
As the Harz Wood,
And I've never seen anything like this,
My entire life long.
Brewing beer in walnut shells!

[2]

From Altmark

1. To prevent the "underground people" from exchanging a newborn child, it must be continuously watched until it is baptized. For this reason the baptism takes place as soon as possible.

2. There is the belief that a child can be exchanged is especially strong. People fear that the misshapen dwarfs who live beneath the earth, and who would like nothing more than to have beautiful, well-formed human children, will steal newborns, leaving their own malformed children in their place. Therefore there is always a great rush to have the child baptized, and until this happens the mother and child will not be left alone for even an instant. Furthermore, until then there must always be a burning light near them, even in broad daylight, because the underground people are afraid of light.

3. A child must carefully and continuously be protected against exchange by the underground people until it is baptized. Therefore the so-called "word of God," a leaf from the Bible from a hymnbook, is either wrapped up with the child in its blanket or laid in its cradle.

[3]

A child less than six weeks old should not be carried "on the change," (that is, alternating between the right arm and the left arm), for consequently it might be stolen by a changeling.

 

Fairy Lore (General)

It is known that mistreatment of and cruel dealings with a changeling can result in the return of the human child and the disappearance of the changeling. Methods of dealing with a changeling include:

• Bathing the changeling in a solution of foxglove (Digitalis purpurea, the original source of The heart failure drug digoxin)

• Starving the changeling on a dunghill
• Throwing the changeling on to a bed of hot coals
• Leaving the changeling below the water mark at low tide
• Setting the changeling upon a heated shovel
• Brewing a concoction in eggshells, or some similar strange action calculated to trick the changeling into revealing its true nature