Agatha’s Cauldrons and the Unique Solution

Session Summary: 10/15/2023

Ahhhh, the decaying Fey Agatha appears once more, and this time the encounter takes a decisive TURN! They had known since the Cairn of Whispering Shadows that Agatha possessed knowledge about the binding rituals, knowledge she had sold to an unidentified woman and which had then been used to ensnare the children of the Five Families in their dream-prisons. The heroes tracked her to her current lair with the combined investigative capability of a group that had been following interconnected threads for weeks, and they found her in the middle of work that suggested she had not yet accepted that her position in this unfolding catastrophe was ENDING.

Agatha fought with the concentrated nastiness of a Fey creature who has been alive long enough to have developed a considerable repertoire of unpleasant capabilities. She was dangerous and she knew how to be dangerous in ways that conserved her energy while maximizing her opponents' suffering. But the heroes had grown substantially since their first encounters with fey magic, and the battle, though difficult, did not reach the extremes that Agatha clearly hoped it would. She fled when she understood that staying meant ending, and the heroes let her go, having accomplished their primary objectives.

Those objectives were specific pieces of ritual knowledge: the precise application of the sacred paints from Flustern Schatte combined with the iron-dust circle Gunther's notes had described. The combination, when applied with the correct sequence and the right understanding of the binding circle's structure, could release a captive without triggering the catastrophic energy release they had experienced with Voleta. They had improvised their way through that situation and paid for the improvisation. Now they had something better than improvisation: METHODOLOGY.

They tested it conceptually against what they knew of the remaining active binding situations and found it sound. They tested it practically against a situation that presented itself before day's end and found it worked exactly as expected. Voleta von Teleki would eventually recover entirely, and the technique they had developed would ensure that any future releases proceeded safely. A good day's work, even if the manner of the victory was methodical rather than dramatic. Sometimes the most important victories are the ones that require PATIENCE rather than heroics!