As our heroes entered the long hall, their comrade, the druid Fenrir, caught up with them and they all sat down by one of the tqo long tables that ran down the length of the great hall.
By them sat their traveling companion, the spoons salesman Benjamin Balls, and by the other long table sat the six remaining goblins of the Bloodtusk tribe who our heroes strongly suspected being cannibals.
Grandfather Winter had only just bid everybody welcome as a ghostly simmer of an elvish woman appeared and started to sing as if she was unaware of the huge feast around her.
One of the Gnomes told our heroes and what they saw was a Memory Echo, a manifestation of somebody’s memory of the singer who had performed at the very spot weeks earlier.
They learned that the Memory Echo phenomenon was a glitch from the Glimmerhush, a mighty spell covering the entire Everfrost Forest. A spell that protected the identity of Grandfather Winter by keeping travelers’ memories of the visit to the forest, trapped when they exit the forest.
Orlando the bard immediately started writing down what he had eexperienced so far on some blank paper.
Evening in the forest
As the dinner came to a close, first the goblins, then Benjamin, and finally our heroes retired to allocated guest huts.
The party decided to keep watch and especially a close eye on Benjamin’s hut that lay further down the road. They had seen him sniff the air again and was cautious due to this odd behaviour.
Fenrir took the first watch and his keen nose soon caught an unfamiliar foul stench.
As Alfein came to relieve him, she caught the last whiff of the stench but immediately recognised it as the goblin BBQ smell they had encountered in Whitemill.
They woke three other two heroes and while Fenrir and Alfein followed the smell, Orlando and Amelia checked on Benjamin.
Benjamin’s hut
They found Benjamin’s hut empty and while carefully looking through his traveling backpack, they realised he was carrying none of the common items of a traveler. No waterskin, no flint for fire, no blanket – only spoons.
They also found a gnome hat that was unusually cold to touch.
The Bloodfang’s hut
Fenrir transformed into a rat and snuck into the hut only to find a BBQ rack with a half eaten goblin and five well-fed goblins.
As he left he also noticed to his horror a left arm that looked like it would have fit a gnome. It seemed the goblins were not just fond of their own kind’s flesh.
As soon as he was out and back in his Aasimar form, he and Alfein quickly found a grumpy old gnome guard.
Joined by Amelia and Orlando, the five went to check the Goblins’ hut. It was deserted save the BBQ that was still roasting the last of the Goblin.
The grumpy gnome guard told them to return to their hut instead of making up stories.
Shouts in the night
The heroes decided to return to Benjamin’s hut instead under the guise of wanting to alert him to the dangerous, and now unaccounted for, goblins.
To their surprise they found him present although sleepy.
As he heard about the Goblins he quickly invited them in.
No sooner had they entered before they heard shouts and commotion outside followed by gnome guards coming to provide protection and an escort to the long house. A murder had happened!
The crime scene
Fenrir convinced Fritz, the gnome investigatior in charge, that he himself was an investigator offering to help.
The gnome investigatior readily accepted and the party left the large group of upset gnomes to inspect the corpse.
At first the theory was that wolves had attacked the victim as the left arm had been chewed off. But as Fenrir had found a left gnome arm at the goblins’ hut, the gnome investigatior conclude that the goblins were to blame.
Before the heroes could say anything, the gnomes had all rallies and run off into the forest to hunt the Bloodtusks.
As our heroes kept investigating the crime scene they noticed the gnome’s hat was gone.
So was Benjamin Balls!
The search for Benjamin
Our heroes started searching the abandoned town while they heard the gnomes in the distance rummaging through the forest.
Suddenly they heard a faint cry for help in the opposite direction of the gnome search party.
They rushed towards the cry and found a hill with Benjamin hunched over a lifeless gnome.
Or rather something that resembled Benjamin but was unable to maintain physical coherency as his… or its … body kept changing between several shapes.
The creature was sucking the life out of the gnome as well as maintaining a pulsating spell that pushed away from the hill making it hard for the heroes to get to creature.
First Alfein, then Fenrir started pushing up the hill as if faced with a storm, while Amelia cast multiple Guiding Bolt at the creature hitting home again and again.
Fenrir morphed into a Moorbounder and made a mighty leap to the top of the hill.
The creature knocked Alfein back and unconscious, but it was too little too late and soon the heroes had defeated the strange aberration.
Answers
Back at the long house the heroes and Grandfather Winter shared info to put together what has happened.
Grandfather Winter was a Archfey of Obanastre the ancient world now gone in the legendary Nyxarian attack.
He had been unable to join his kin in fleeing into the Feywild when the gods opened the gate.
Instead he had created the Glimmerhush to prevent any memories to form of himself or his gnomes.
He had done this, as the Nyx travel by memory. They could effectively travel through dimensions, space and maybe even time simply by having a memory of their destination.
And they hard developed a taste for Fey energy.
The heroes put two and two together and realised Scatter had been the memory that the Nyx, known as Benjamin, was trailing, not Grandfather Winter or his gnomes.
Grandfather Winter recognised Alfein as a inhabitant of Obanastre and was able to shed some light on how she had ended up in Skylathar.
The impact of the gods opening the feygate had echoed through time and when Alfein was killed by the Blue Dragon, her soul had been pulled away from the Shadowfell journey it was suppose to go on to reach its resting place.
Instead her soul, void of any memory, had lingered for hundreds of years until it manifested as a fully alive, but memoryless Alfein.
Time to say goodbye to Everfrost Forest
The heroes enjoyed Grandfather Winter’s hospitality for a few days more to recover fully before they continued their journey.
Grandfather Winter have them a fragile glass orb that when broken would return all the knowledge about the Nyx that had been shared with them.
But their memories of Grandfather Winter, his gnomes, their stay in the village and the events of the last few days, would be trapped in the Glimmerhush.
Amelia suggested Fenrir should keep the glass orb as the heroes would have no memories, no knowledge of the fact they had to break the orb. The theory was, it would break by accident when Fenrir transformed to his were-form.
An uneventful journey
As the heroes started to reach the most eastern edge of the Everfrost Forest, they slowly forgot about the events that had taken place.
To them, it had been a nice, but uneventful and unremarkable journey through the forest.
Yea true it was clearly a safe passage, but a boring one nevertheless and one the party was happy to leave behind.
For a brief moment, they wondered what had happened to the funny spoon salesman that had journeyed with them from Whitemill, but they were sure he was on his way safely.
After all, nothing ever seems to happen in Everfrost Forest.
DM notes, with that we end D&D for 2025. Merry Christmas and thank you for playing.
Post credit
Fabulously ambiguent roll from Sean.
