Pudding Faire

Excerpt from the Hatheril Harrier:

Village Faire marred by disturbing events
Honeypuddle’s Pudding Faire, usually a successful annual festival for small folk, was marred this year by ill-humored crowds and several disturbing events.

The worst was the shocking transformation of Mayor Barleydew into a frog by a seemingly intoxicated gnomish faire-goer during an altercation in the afternoon. As people attended to the mayor, the guilty party was able to flee into the forest and has not been seen since.

Mayor Barleydew’s curse wore off during the evening’s feast, and he returned to his normal halfling self. He is reported to have suffered no ill effects from his time as a frog and retains the sense of humor he is known for.

“I didn’t exactly jump at the chance to be a frog, but I’m hoppy to be back to my usual self,” he quipped.

Another disturbing event put many people off their meals when the cider stall began serving contaminated drinks at midday. Word spread quickly that Honeypuddle’s famous apple cider had a foul taste and further investigation revealed that newborn moles were in the bottoms of the mugs.

The stall was closed for the afternoon while fresh cider was sought and the mugs thoroughly cleaned. Resounding cheers marked the arrival of clean mugs and a new barrel of freshly brewed cider shortly after Mayor Barleydew’s return.

The last of the unsettling events — and most disturbing for the young children at the faire — was the sudden appearance of a giant wild boar at the oiled piglet-catching contest.

Hopeful young contestants, lined up to catch the piglet, were shocked when the animal turned into a horse-sized beast, with large tusks and froth flying from its mouth as it bucked dangerously around the ring. Terrified children screamed as the contest organizer tried to rescue a gnome boy from the ring.

This reporter understands that a human-sized woman with gnomish features leaped into the ring and fought a wild-eyed, gruesome battle with the boar, eventually killing the beast and leaving the carcass for the villagers to cure the meat.

Despite the cheery band music playing, the crowd throughout much of the day seemed volatile and shrewish. Entertainers usually applauded were instead heckled, competitors accused each other of cheating, and arguments broke out with alarming frequency between usually placid villagers.

By the time the pudding was served, however, the typical jovial atmosphere of the annual Pudding Faire had returned. And hopes are high that the bad luck of this year’s event will never be repeated.

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House Sivis dispatch:

From: Glissando Lyrriman d’Sivis
To: “Grandma”

I got back last night from the most curious experience I’ve had for a very long time. We accepted a commission to search for and capture master halfling thief Elsie Rumknuckle, whom we tracked to Honeypuddle Village, west of Hatheril.

We got there the day before their annual Pudding Faire, so there were plenty of visitors for us, and her, to blend in with.

During the faire, we split up into a couple of groups and explored the different events while keeping an eye out for Elsie.

I was with Dimble and Nissa as we wandered around. Dimble insisted on perusing the yard sale for interesting trinkets and found an interesting orb, but the seller was a grumpy old fella. Shortly after we arrived, some kids tried to pick some apples from one of his trees, and he threw some turnips at them. One missed and smashed a pane of glass in his neighbor’s greenhouse. The old halfling sold Dimble the orb and then went and hid in his house.

We left the yard sale in time to see a juggler accidentally drop a fire baton down a clown’s pants. The clown had to go to the House Jorasco first aid station.

We also enjoyed the entertaining routine of a stand-up comedian before heading to the archery range. Along the way, we confronted someone we thought was pickpocketing, who turned out to be “tip-pocketing” coins into people’s pockets.

At the archery range, there was a close battle between a gnome and a halfling, who were tied for the high score. Just as the halfling was going to shoot her final arrow and potentially win, the moving target machine broke. Dimble investigated and was able to fix it. He tried his hand at archery and had the highest points when we left. He told me afterwards that a mole had burrowed up under the target.

We headed to the puppet show next but were disappointed to find the puppeteer had just slipped in the mud and a wagon had rolled over his fingers so he couldn’t do his show. There was a crowd of children there whom he didn’t want to disappoint so he asked for volunteers to fill in for him. I offered our services and told the old story of the three silly puppets who needed help to free themselves from tree sap and later escape a dessert factory so they could get to their show on time. Nissa and Dimble handled the puppets. It was a lot of fun, and the kids seemed to enjoy it.

We met up with Catnip and Sunny at the cider stall at midday. Sunny told us that she’d wanted to join in the wrestling, but shortly after she got there, the halfling running the show fell and injured his ankle when the crates he was standing on collapsed underneath him. He canceled the show after that.

Catnip and Sunny then went to the stone-skipping contest, where Sunny says a halfling girl got such an incredible series of skips that she fainted. Catnip didn’t see it, and neither did anyone else, because they were all distracted by a swarm of colorful butterflies (not Catnip’s). Sunny did her best to convince the judges of what she saw but to no avail. She also gave stone-skipping a go herself but didn’t win. In the end, Sunny gave the girl a ride on her shoulders to cheer her up.

Sunny also wanted to have a go at the Fool the Psychic tent and managed to trick the fortune teller.

Right before we met up, they had gone over to the archery, where Catnip discovered the event organiser was her uncle, and one of the competitors her cousin. They seemed to have had a good catch-up.

While we were discussing our plans for the afternoon, we were interrupted by a commotion from the table next to ours, where a young halfling couple had been having a quiet conversation. Suddenly, the young man burst into tears and stumbled off, while the young woman sat there blushing. Nissa went over and found out that the young man had asked the young lady to the dance tonight, but she had declined because her mother would only let her dance with the ‘Pudding King’ (the winner of the Olladra’s Luck competition) and she didn’t think the young man, whom she described as having two left feet, would have any chance of winning the crown.

I was curious about Olladra’s Luck myself, so we wandered over to the Great Pudding Tent to learn about the game. We arrived in time to witness a commotion at the entrance. A crowd had gathered around a middle-aged halfling woman holding a frog in her hands. We learned from the crowd that the frog was actually the village mayor, who had been transformed after confronting a sour, intoxicated gnome prospector about his anti-social behavior. The gnome had blown some sort of magical green powder on the mayor that caused the transformation. Nobody seemed to know what to do.

Someone said the gnome, who called himself Patcher Moldwarp, had run off into the woods, so we decided to go after him. In the forest, we found a goblin being constricted by a giant snake. Sunny was able to use her animal handling skills to get the snake off her. The goblin, Drierot, said she’d been minding her own business when all of a sudden her pet snake, Steevahn, had grown to immense size and become hostile.

Well, we didn’t find Patcher that time, as we wanted to be back in the village in time for the crowning of the Pudding King and the festivities that followed.

We just made it back to the Great Pudding Tent in time for the feast and spotted Elsie in the crowd. When she left before midnight, we followed and were able to grab her. We tied her up and guarded her in our room at the inn. At least, that’s what we thought we were doing … but this is where things got very strange.

Grandma, this may seem difficult to believe, but we ended up repeating the same day several times in a row! I’m afraid things have gotten a bit muddled in my head, so the sequence of events that follows may not be in entirely the correct order.

When we woke up in the morning, Elsie was gone, and no one could remember her escaping. As we took stock of the situation, it sounded like the faire was getting started again outside. We all rushed to the window, and sure enough, everything looked just as it had yesterday … or at least what felt like yesterday to us!

After a bit of discussion, we decided that perhaps we needed to help rectify the things that had gone wrong during the faire, including anything that we might have missed. We assumed that we also needed to stop the grumpy gnome from turning the mayor into a frog.

We split up and tried to prevent the mishaps we knew would happen and resolve any new ones that we encountered.

For instance, Sunny prevented the wrestling announcer from being injured so that the wrestling competition could continue.

Dimble also prevented the archery machine from failing due to the mole hole, thus allowing the young halfling woman to win the contest.

Catnip used her magic to absorb the other swarm of other butterflies into her own swarm before they could distract the stone-skipping judges so that everyone would see the halfling girl’s winning toss.

Nissa and I managed to prevent the puppeteer from falling and getting his hand crushed by the cart. I also settled a shoplifting dispute at the herbalist before staking out the Great Pudding Tent to watch for Elsie and Patcher.

Neither had turned up by midday, so I met up with the others at the cider stall again. There were met ‘Nanny Cowslip’, a kindly old halfling candy-seller who had heard of the good deeds we’d done in the morning and presented us with magical jelly beans. When I ate mine, I felt stronger, while Dimble appeared so happy that he shouted everyone a round of drinks. Nissa, meanwhile, became invisible.

Nanny seemed like the sort of person who knows everyone’s business, so we asked her if she’d seen Elsie or knew anything about Patcher. We also tried to describe the repeating day, proving our case by predicting the young lady turning down the young man’s invitation to the dance. The situation concerned her, and she asked us to try to find out what was causing it.

After lunch, I went back to the Great Pudding Tent, but neither Elsie nor Patcher entered. Meanwhile Sunny tried out the wrestling but didn’t win because she had to hop around on one leg due to her height. She also attended the oiled piglet catching contest in time to see a glidwing snatch up the piglet, much to the children’s horror.

Catnip visited the eel-eating contest with the invisible Nissa. Catnip saved a young halfling from choking when he tried to swallow three eels at once.

After her invisibility had worn off, Nissa settled a dispute at the caricature stand.

And when Dimble was finished drinking, he encountered Patcher arguing with the mayor outside the Great Pudding Tent. Dimble was sober enough to punch Patcher, but not quick enough to prevent him blowing the green powder on the mayor and turning him into a frog again. Patcher then turned invisible and ran off before anybody could find out what he was up to.

Catnip and Sunny headed to the forest to prevent the goblin from being killed by her overgrown pet snake again, while the rest of us hung around the Great Pudding Tent. I didn’t explain Olladra’s Luck before. It’s a contest where people have to jump from table to table while throwing food at each other. If you fall off, you’re out. There’s a tally of finishers’ times on a board in the tent, and come sunset, the person with the fastest time is crowned Pudding King (or Queen) and gets to have the first taste of the fruitcake.

Elsie never showed up, but we heard from other fairgoers that someone of her description had gone around the fair trying to win all the prizes.

Before we turned in for the night, we discussed what to do, assuming that the day would repeat again since we felt like we hadn’t resolved all of the problems.

As expected, when we woke up, it was the morning of the Pudding Faire again! We went round to as many of the events as we could get to so as to prevent the accidents and stop the arguments.

I discovered early on that the herbalist hadn’t shown up for the fair. Dimble and I went looking and found her broken wagon on the road into the village. We followed some tracks and discovered that some bandits camping in the forest had kidnapped her and were forcing her to tend to their wounded comrade. Considering that this event hadn’t occurred previously, Dimble and I concluded that the bandits were unaffected by the time loop as well.

Back at the fair, Nanny Cowslip met with us at midday again, but she didn’t remember talking to us the previous day, so we had to convince her all over again of the time loop. This time she gave us magical berries.

I stayed at the Pudding Tent again, while the others visited more of the stalls. Then late in the afternoon while Catnip and Dimble had gone to the forest to stop the snake attacking the goblin, Patcher showed up. He argued with the mayor about whether he could have some pudding, and when the mayor asked him to leave, Patcher blew green dust in his face and turned him into a frog.

In the chaos at the tent, Patcher was able to run off, and I followed him into the forest. Nanny Cowslip was there too, and I saw them arguing. When Nanny tried to banish him, he responded by turning her to stone and cursing the day to repeat until he got some pudding. I realized then that I was watching two powerful archfey! (I also noticed that Patcher’s curse only seemed to cover Nanny and the halfling and gnome residents of the Honeypuddle area. That must be why guests, such as Elsie and ourselves, weren’t affected. But for some reason, Patcher didn’t think to alter his curse to include us after he’d become aware of us. Perhaps he couldn’t!)

When we all met up at the tent for the feast, there was still no sign of Elsie. Based on my realization about Nanny Cowslip and Patcher, Dimble and I determined that there must be a Thelanis manifest zone in the forest. With the moon Rhaan full in the sky overhead, the Faerie Court’s magic must be extra powerful. Nanny Cowslip was trying to play out a story at the Pudding Faire, and Patcher was trying to interrupt that story. And while Nanny Cowslip seemed benign, Patcher was clearly malevolent, and the longer this day repeated, the more his evil influence would cause bad things to happen.

When we woke in the morning, we were prepared. We split up again and prevented or resolved the problems at the wrestling, archery, yard sale, stone skipping, eel eating, herbalist, and puppet show. But we couldn’t do anything about the contaminated cider that appeared for the first time at midday just as Nanny Cowslip came to find us.

Again she didn’t remember what had happened, but we were able to persuade her of the seriousness of the situation. She gave us magical berries again and asked us for help to distract Patcher. She called him the Crawler Below, the malevolent archfey whose story of being banished into the underworld is told through the eel-eating contest. She wanted us to distract him for at least a minute so she could cast her banishment spell on him before he could turn her to stone again.

After attending to a few more incidents — Sunny had to kill the animal at the oiled piglet contest when it suddenly transformed into a giant wild boar that began charging at spectators, and Dimble had to repair the potter’s kiln after discovering it had become dislodged by a thunderous spell cast by the bandits’ mage — and witnessing the mayor be turned into a frog again, we sent Sunny and Catnip to save the goblin from her pet snake before we the rest of us at the forest glade where Nanny would meet with Patcher.

Patcher was there with Elsie and the bandits. Unfortunately, we ended up being a bit too noisy, and they heard us coming. Patcher started to renew his curse, but we jumped into action.

I focused on distracting Patcher with my growing repertoire of magically-laced insults while the others dealt with Elsie and the bandits. Elsie lived up to her reputation and bedeviled us, hiding in the undergrowth and peppering us with arrows while we struggled to find her.

After Sunny had helped deal with the bandits, she got right up in Patcher’s face, blasting him with her wild magic and distracting him with her “dying flower dance”. This freed me to focus on Elsie. I couldn’t spot her, but I knew where she was roughly, so I played a chord on my bandore and got her with an entangle spell. Dimble was then able to knock her out with a thunder punch.

So much can happen in a moment! Just as Dimble reached Elsie, Nanny Cowslip finished her spell, and the ground opened up beneath Patcher, sucking him down. Sunny had to jump out of the way to avoid being swallowed up too.

Nanny thanked us for our help and presented us with a magical good luck stone shaped like a smiling halfling’s face. She also gave each of us a magical jelly bean as an acknowledgement of her appreciation.

We restrained Elsie in our room with a guard rotation but still got a chance to enjoy some of the evening festivities. And then when the next day dawned, it truly was the next day! We said our goodbyes to Honeypuddle and hauled Elsie back to Hatheril for the reward.