Deeper into the Glade

Session Summary: 06/16/2024

Ahhhh, the SOCIAL landscape of the Fey courts demands its own kind of skill! The deeper paths of the Glade of Gloaming Petals wound through terrain that was simultaneously physical and political, the landscape itself encoding the relationships and obligations of the court that inhabited it. Every clearing was a threshold into someone's territory. Every stream crossed marked a shift in jurisdiction. Every conversation carried the potential to create obligations that would outlast the conversation by decades.

The heroes learned to navigate this terrain through the combined expertise of a party whose members approached it from genuinely different angles. Kiren's understanding of how obligations and debts and favors function in criminal networks translated with surprising directness: the Fey courts operated on a similar economy of owed things, with the critical difference that in Fey law, obligations incurred casually were just as binding as ones formally acknowledged. She stopped speaking casually and chose every word with deliberate precision.

Charles's priestly training in diplomatic engagement and the careful management of what one promises in Sarenrae's name gave him a foundation for the theological dimensions of Fey oath-binding that most mortals would have been scrambling to catch up to. He was not surprised, which was itself advantageous.

Diana's connection to death and transition made her an entity the Fey regarded with a particular species of respect: the Boneyard's jurisdiction extended even into the Fey realm, and a mortal accompanied by a psychopomp who operated with Phasma's authority occupied a social position that required acknowledgment. HIM, present at Diana's side throughout, was treated by every Fey they encountered with the specific deference one shows to a representative of an office whose mandate one cannot refuse.

And Mutu was scrupulously honest in a way that earned him a reputation in the Glade faster than anyone else's maneuvering did, because in a realm where deception is an art form, someone who genuinely cannot deceive is simultaneously the most TRUSTWORTHY and most BAFFLING entity in any room!