Rot Riddled Rye
The first of High Sun 1493
In the baking summer sun, the party cool off with a dip in the mill pond, known as the Idlewhile. Den attempts a backflip off an overhanging tree branch, bellyflopping into the pond. Meanwhile, Featherfew casts Speak with Animals, and calls the post’d ancient catfish inhabitant to the surface; Ol’Melton complains of the declining water level and the slowing flow of the Hollow Brook. He urges Featherfew to care for the natural environment. Before heading off, Pebbles shows the party the golden pauldron that he inherited from his mother; Ilyad casts detect magic on it and determines that it is indeed enchanted, and evokes the particular energies of the Faerie Realm.
Following the scent of warm baking bread, the party head toward Buck’s Mill. Sighting warm gingerbread cooling on a windowsill, Den attempts to sneak forward to steal one. Crouched beneath the sill, he overhears urgent whispers - someone is worried that …’he will get in trouble…’. Intrigues, he leaps to his feet, revealing himself and demanding: ‘who is in trouble?’ This prompts an angry response from Clara and Jolie Buck, who were worried they had been the victims of an eavesdropper; they drive him off. Pebbles then enters the bakehouse from the front door, asking after some flour sacks that Harley had left for him; he is told they are around the back. Picking them up, he notices that they are labelled with the name Wicklow, rather than Buck’s Mill.
Wandering through the Market, the party witness an altercation between the Miller Harley Buck, and an irate Axel Moorcraft, the small town’s wealthiest citizen. Hovering nervously behind Moorcraft is his young maidservant Lobelia. Moorcraft dumps out a bag of flour, exclaiming that it is full of muck. Indeed, the party see dirt, feathers, and bones mixed into the white powder; Pebble’s Mage Hand inadvertently picks up the bone and wafts it towards him, allowing the party to recognise it as a human finger joint. Burley grabs a loaf of bread, sniffing and tasting it.
Suddenly, the argument turned violent, as a seemingly unconcerned bystander, farmhand Gordy Jenrick, became incensed, shouting that Moorcraft ‘Couldn’t call it filth!’. The party attempted to break up the fight, though only some of them spotted the Gingerbread Men on Buck’s stall animating and scuttling around. Fetherfew felt one crawl up his chest, clinging to his clothes, and swarming over his face, trying to force open his mouth to get at his ‘pearls’. Pebbles incapacitated Jenrick with a net, while Burley tackled two townsfolk, , holding them both in a grapple. Den defended the now blind Father Kendrick from a Gingerbread Man, and stopped a rampaging — with the Colour Spray spell.
Devlin’s Dower’s new Bailiff, Caris Flyte, intervened at this point, reigniting the argument between Buck and Moorcraft. The wealthy moneylender demanded the baker be arrested, but Buck claimed the blame lay with the millers in the neighbouring town Wicklow Mill, where he had been buying in flour once his watermill stopped producing. Ilyad argued persuasively on behalf of the baker, and Flyte attempted to calm the situation by deputising the party to travel to Wicklow to investigate.
Before departing, Ilyad spoke with her guardian, Sir Hugo Dyer, who asked her to leave a rose at the feet of petrified elven knight, whose frozen body stands in a field near Wicklow; he claimed that it was a tribute he performed regularly, but felt to weary to undertake during the hot summer. Den chatted to his foster-sister Evelyn, who asked him to keep an eye out for their father, Gander Farlight, who hadn’t come home the night before. While Enid spoke to Ma Marigold who maintained her somewhat frosty reserve, but enigmatically urged Enid not to accept anything as a gift from anyone while on the road. Meanwhile, Pebbles returned to the Mill and investigated the filth that had been sifted from the Wicklow flour, wherein he discovered a thick copper ring…