Campaign 2, Episode 5: Home to Roost

Episode 5: Home to Roost (2x05) is the fifth episode of the first chapter of the second campaign for the Venture Maidens. The trio have decided to leave camp and agree to aid Rook in hunting dangerous Fey. Rook introduced Toni to a chicken hut. How will the others react to the strange home of the age-defying child they now call their boss? Will Aoife get her own bedroom? How well stocked is the kitchen? Who the heck is Gordon?

Synopsis
While fleeing a Carillon's wrath

Our heroes must take a new path

To the unknown our party now heads

Sheltered by a curious homestead

Candlelit Gaze
Toni stares up at the chicken footed hut and the hut glares down with two candlelit eyes. She asks Rook if it is hers and Rook admits that it is her ride, and she is willing to have the group along with her.

Rook has heard of Whistler, and asks how much trouble they are in. The half orc tells the child that they are being questioned about how they saved Winnie, but she has done her best to leave Rook's name out of it. The child asks if she needs to help Toni gather her friends to leave, but Toni assures her she can get them, but asks if they need to rub mud on their faces as she had to do when Rook led her here.

Rook laughs, explaining that they would need a special concoction to see the hut as she pulls a vial of chunky substance from her bag. After a moment she laughs again and tells Toni to just smear mud on their faces.

Toni heads back for the others, feeling the gaze of the chicken hut following her. She sneaks her way back into camp in the haze of late evening, blending in with the other soldiers and gaining information about Whistler's activity in her absence.

She runs into her squad mates, asking them if they have seen the cook or the seamstress around. They tell her that they have seen them floating around camp before asking if she is okay after speaking with Whistler. They admit that they haven't been called to speak with him yet, but have heard he thinks that something happened with the fey. Toni assures them that nothing out of the ordinary happened, and informs them that Captain Harmony has her going on errands and asks them to hold onto any mail or packages that might come for her while she is gone.

Gathering the Group
Lu has busied herself writing her amateur staff lists and instructions to follow in her absence. Toni finds her in the back office of the dining hall, who is wrapping cooking supplies and splitting sourdough starter between two jars. Toni informs her that Rook is outside of camp with a ride out of the area and asks if she is ready to go. Lu assures her that she is ready and hands Toni multiple perfectly-seasoned cast iron cookware.

Aoife, unaware of Rook's recent growth spurt, has been working on sewing a new set of leathers for the child. When the other two come to retrieve her, they find that she is awkwardly handing her finished stack of canvas stacks that she is handing off to a teenage boy. The boy, Jimmy, asks Aoife if she wants to grab a drink with him some time, to which she agrees to meet him the following evening. Toni greets her as a heartbreaker, much to Aoife's chagrin and the satyr dives into her tent, grabbing her handmade bag of supplies.

They make their way out of camp unnoticed and find themselves on the edge of the muddy field. Toni can still see the aura surrounding everything in sharp contrast, but notices it fading slightly.

They hear a bird call from off in the distance and Toni attempts to mimic the signal. Rook pops up over the top of a nearby hill and tells the fighter that her bird call was terrible and they would need a lot of work. She asks if they are ready to go as Aoife is sizing her up, noticing that the child has grown taller and her features has matured slightly. She digs into her nap sack and hands them to Rook, admitting that she hopes they still fit her.

Pink Eye and Chicken Shit
Rook glances down at the bundle of clothing and looks panicked and confused. She chastises Aoife, telling her that she didn't ask for these and wants to know what the satyr wants for them. Aoife defensively answers that she thought it might be nice to have something to wear that fits. Rook tells her she doesn't want them before throwing them back at the seamstress' chest.

Aoife huffs, shoves the clothes into her bag, and walks over to Lu for comfort. She gets the feeling that Rook doesn't know how to accept gifts and the sudden gesture of kindness freaked her out.

Lu asks where the horses are and Rook tells them that they have to put the balm on their eyes. Toni explains that they need to apply the balm so that they can see their ride. Lu smells the concoction and recoils from the stench of chicken shit.

Toni dips her fingers in the balm and manages to wrestle it onto Lu's eyes. Lu quails at the thought of what is one her eyes and vomits. Toni approaches Aoife, but the satyr smacks her hand away and applies it herself.

Upon seeing the now-visible chicken hut, Lu turns to Aoife and triumphantly exclaims that this is what she was talking about when she told the satyr about the good magic in the world. Aoife is awestruck, slowly approaching the hut, asking if it has a name and if it can talk.

Rook steps forward, informing Aoife that it doesn't talk and calls it down so that they might board it. The hut nests down like a hen and the hut comes to a rest in front of them.

Cottagecore Dreams and Adorable Things
They are met with a powder blue door set into the white siding. Toni practically launches herself through the front door, and is met with a decorated mantle over a roaring fireplace. Comfortably chic furniture and rugs cascade across the living room, interspersed with potted plants and tastefully placed decorative gourds.

A small serving hatch window and counter rest between the open-concept kitchen and living space. A hallway branches off the living room next to a set of stairs that lead upstairs.

They excitedly looks around, discussing where they will sleep. Lu says that she is happy enough, even if she has to sleep on the floor. Toni guesses that since it is a magical house on chicken legs, it stands to reason that the rooms inside would also be magical.

Rook scurries in, depositing her muddy boots and gear on the floor before lounging on a nearby couch. She tells them that Toni is right and they should just open a door.

Toni admonishes Lu for bringing her heavy cast iron cookware, since they now had a kitchen, but Lu assures the fighter that she had no choice because nothing was the same as cooking on cast iron seasoned to perfection. Rook is confused that there was now a kitchen which gives Lu pause. She asks what the girl ate if she never knew there was a kitchen and the child tells her that she has been eating mushrooms and other wild things.

Lu immediately heads for the kitchen, determined to cook the child a proper meal. Rook pops her head in and looks around, assuring the group that the kitchen had not been there prior to their arrival in the house. She tells them that she usually just opens a door and whatever she needs is usually behind it, but she forbids them from going into her room upstairs because that is her personal space.

Lu, wanting to test the magic herself, opens a drawer, thinking of bacon. She is delighted to find a drawer of perfectly refrigerated thick cut bacon.

Aoife, excited to have her own space for the first time ever, rushes towards the nearest door in the hallway and throws the door open. The bedroom is covered in a spray of pink and white. The walls are coated in pink paint, with a white canopy bed draped in pink netting, and one corner is full of perfectly organized crafting supplies and sewing machine. A large chest of crocheted throw blankets rests at the foot of her new bed. The satyr drops her bag, belly flops onto the bed, and clutches a pillow to her as she rolls around on the covers.

Rook, used to the magic hut, walks into the new kitchen and opens a refrigerated drawer, pulling out a perfectly chilled bottle of amber liquid. She pours herself a glass and goes to sit in front of the fireplace. Lu asks her what she has and Rook tells her it is obviously booze.

Lu disgustedly restarts dinner, since the dish she was making paired better with wine. She stops abruptly and asks Rook how old she is. Rook mirrors the question and Lu admits that she is "90-something". The child congratulates the drow and continues to drink her booze.

Toni tosses open a door and is surprised to find an almost identical version of her family's yurt from back home. The room is round with wooden beams. A mattress rests in the middle, covered in animal furs. Animal skins, furs, and horseshoes decorate the walls. She rushes in to look at the houseplants that are sprinkled around the room and tears up when she sees a drawing framed on the wall that Gio, her little brother, had made for her.

Any Questions?
Rook gives them a few minutes to process their new home before checking in if they had any questions for her. Aoife shouts from her room that Rook told them not to ask her any questions. Rook calls them to a group meeting in the living room.

She glances over and asks what Lu is even doing and Lu calmly tells her that she is cooking chicken. Rook freezes and clarifies causing Lu to realize that she is cooking chicken in a chicken hut. She immediately shouts an apology to the house before shoving the chicken back into a drawer and thinking hard about fish.

Rook motions that they sit in chairs around the fireplace. She explains that they are free to rest, and she is glad to have them along, but they are there to work. Her job is to hunt and kill fey and to collect bounties. Just because they managed to take down a single fey does not mean that they are going to make it in the bounty hunter industry. She asks them if they can take that kind of heat.

Toni asks what their cut of the bounty on the fey they just killed and Rook explains that the bounty will be evenly divided between supplies and equipment, because the equipment that the group currently had was nowhere near the standard for hunting fey. She explains that they are heading to Coven to collect the bounty on the Tachinid, buy gear, and get another bounty job.

Aoife raises her hand and asks what Coven is. Rook tells her that Coven is the only neutral city in fey territory and it is controlled by witches that have the ability to enforce neutrality within its borders. Aoife also asks what a Tachinid is and Rook, having recently done research on the creature, tells her that is a plant-bug fey hybrid that implants itself into mortal hosts to multiply.

Ever curious, Aoife raises her hand a third time, asking who is putting bounties on fey and why they would pay for it. Rook explains that Coven is protected by a delicate political balance amongst the Sovereign Fey Courts, and the witches that control the city place bounties on unruly fey that threaten to disrupt that balance.

They begin to ask questions about the chicken hut but Rook stops them, revealing that she is still relatively new to the moving house herself. She hopes to make enough on the bounty to buy the necessary items to bind the others to the house so that they won't have to rub the chicken shit mixture on their eyes to see the place.

One thing that she does know about the hut is that it travels on ley lines of magic, but she isn't completely sure how it works, but she is lucky to have received it. Aoife asks if she got the hut from the Wyrd Sisters, to which Rook reveals that she won it off of someone who lives in Coven, but it was a long story that she didn't want to get into.

Toni asks if the Sisters were the reason that Rook was now slightly older than she was the day before. The child goes quiet and stares at her hands, telling the half orc that she isn't ready to talk about that yet, but admits that they have a hand in her current predicament. She admits that her current state was the only reason she was bringing them on, because she was not currently capable of doing the things she used to do.

They discuss fey magic and Rook tells them that when dealing with the fey, they were going to see magic that broke any rule they had previously heard of and that if they wanted out, they should tell her now because Gordon would be upset if they left after bonding with the house. Aoife, thinking Gordon is the name of the house, pats the pillow and tells it that she loves it.

Go(u)rdon
Rook quickly corrects the satyr, explaining that the house doesn't have a name. Gordon is the thing that takes care of it. She calls for Gordon, but nothing around the room changes. Lu and Aoife see one of the gourds above the fireplace, carved like a jack-o-lantern, suddenly light up.

Aoife waves at the pumpkin, calling a greeting to Gordon. The jack-o-lantern chuckles with a campy eeriness, asking if the young mortal wanted it to come over. Aoife assures that she does and vines erupt from the pumpkin, forming a spindly body that carries the jack-o-lantern off of the mantle and across the living room.

Grandmother Filth
It asks the satyr its name, and Aoife says her name is Sursha before giving Rook a thumbs-up. Looking back, Aoife watches as the pumpkin head shoots forward on a snake-like neck, its burning eyes inches from her own, gutturally saying that she is no Grandmother Filth.

Aoife scurries back, hiding behind Toni. Gordon quickly returns to its campy demeanor. Aoife asks if that was who Rook won the house off of, and Rook admits that to be true, but she can't seem to convince Gordon of that fact. Toni suggests that they have Grandmother Filth explain it once they get to Coven, but Rook doesn't think that Gordon is ready to accept that she was his owner.

Gordon welcomes them as guests and asks if they know the rules. If they are going to live there, they must never open a door unless they are prepared to see what is inside of it. The second rule is to never let him out of the house, informing them that is not a rule he set, but one that Grandmother Filth issued. The third rule is to wipe your boots before entering the home, because mud is disgusting. He welcomes them home and retracts his body back into the pumpkin, dropping to the floor.

Toni picks up the gourd and sets it back on the mantle before removing the gourds that she find decorating her room.

Rook tells them that Gordon is bound to the house, and he is not happy about it, which is why rule #2 was important. She hadn't been able to get the full story out of Grandmother Filth because she was a drunk, but she was quite an adventurer in her hay-day.

Toni questions what brought Rook to their camp in the first place, assuming that it was a bounty. Rook admits that a general bounty brought her in their direction and she had accidentally run across them during her initial investigation, but it was a happy accident that lead to her hiring them.

Lu returns to the kitchen to cook dinner, adding chicken and gourds to her list of foods not to cook. Rook calls for Gordon to take them to Coven. The fireplace roars with a rainbow of colors and Rook heads to her room upstairs, retreating from Lu's protest.

Aoife's Flashback
The episode ends with a flashback to a scene from Aoife's childhood when she was about 10-years old. The scene opens in the grey hour just before dawn, with the little satyr wrapped in a blanket on the couch of her family home. Sounds of movement and packing come from outside, waking up the sleeping child, and she runs outside.

As suspected, the sounds are from the train of wagons who have come by to pick up her parents Kieran and Roselyn who are heading back on the road with the Checkered Folies after their annual visit.

Aoife spots her parents talking to a masked figure and a brown-skinned tiefling woman with teal hair. She races over to give her parents one final hug, and the masked person crouches down to speak with her. The masked person introduces themselves as Chess, leader of the Checkered Folies, and apologizes for sending her parents out on the road once again. The young satyr explains that she isn't upset, she understands that her parents are traveling the world to do very important things and she is proud of them for following their dreams.

Chess seems amused by this answer, and gifts Aoife a tiny carved black bird. The ringmaster then explains that if Aoife ever did need to reach her parents, the bird would know exactly how to find him.

This is where our journey comes to an end, until next time! -Venture Away

Player Characters

 * Aoife Flannery
 * Lluvyras 'Lu' Ssath
 * Fittonia 'Toni' Silvertail

Non-Player Characters

 * Bishar
 * Captain Harmony
 * Charlie
 * Chess
 * Doreen
 * Gordon
 * Kieran
 * Rook
 * Roselyn
 * Whistler

Mentioned

 * Grandmother Filthrot
 * Wyrd Sisters

Locations

 * Unnamed Outpost
 * Mess Hall
 * Aoife's Tent
 * Chicken Hut

Inventory
No significant changes.

Quotes
"This isn't what I look for when getting shit faced." -Lu

"It's my own room." -Aoife

"I trust you. Keep it in the house." -Lu to Rook about drinking.

"What? It's thirsty!" -Toni, while watering a plant.

"Why did you give it to me if it wasn't cool to cook it?!" -Lu about cooking chicken.

Trivia
Sage revealed that Aoife is a vegetarian.

Current FECK count: