Session 20 -- An A-maze-ing Adventure

Meeting with Catsby, the party learned that he would use his magical turquoise ring to transform into a cat in order to sneak into the Guylan Estate to see Daysie Bouquet. Tum, her husband, figured out there was some funny-business going on, so he bought a pack of hellhounds to patrol the property and doubled the guards. Thus, Catsby can’t see Daysie the usual way anymore. That’s why he wants the party to deliver one end of a portable portal to her.

Jardin Patissier and Nic Fennel, her best friend and her cousin, respectively, offer that they haven’t seen or heard from her in a while, and now they’re a bit worried that her silence has to do with Tum’s discovery.

The party agreed to take the portal to Daysie, and Catsby, Jardin, and Nic were all able to give them a pretty good picture of the layout of the property. The mansion sits in the center of a large property (with the great Lawn Guylan stretching out for hundreds of square miles beyond that). There is an outer wall around the whole property. Along the sides and front of the mansion, there is a two-tiered yard. The outer yard is fairly open, with a few trees and is patrolled by hellhounds and a couple gate guards.  There is an inner wall, and inside that are a couple more guards and some more hellhounds. The rear of the house abuts a hedge maze that should have no guards or hellhounds patrolling it.

The party arrived on the scene, and Ceangal used wizard eye to look over the wall. Seeing many hellhounds and not much cover, the party opted to navigate the hedge maze.

After Vedica picked the lock on the gate in the back, Ceangal stayed outside the walls to signal with a fireball if he spotted any trouble. The party engaged their invisibility rings and cloak (although Jack held off on using his amulet just yet). They proceeded in an orderly fashion, following one wall to keep from getting lost. Murchad took the lead.

All went smoothly for awhile, but as the party paused to listen for environmental noises, they heard, besides the chirping of birds, a rustling in the hedges.

Readying themselves for a critter, it was the hedges themselves that lashed out at them with thorny vines. They had been tracked by a Kudzu, an intelligent plant creature that uses its razor-sharp vines to grab and devour anything it comes across.

After that battle, the party encountered angry Kudzu several more times. Eventually, Tiv recommended that the party backtrack and take a different path they had originally passed up. This indeed led them to the gate at the exit of the maze.

Once they got through the gate, they were on a narrow strip of grass at the rear of the house. Jack engaged his invisibility amulet, and they began to explore around the perimeter of the mansion, looking for a way in. There were two doors at the rear. Both doors back there were locked, and Vedica was not able to pick either one. Looking around the sides, they saw a window on each side, but each had a hellhound too near for their comfort, so they backtracked to the rear doors.

The fighters decided to bust open the door, even though it would make noise. At this point, Jack’s invisibility wore off, but they decided to proceed with the plan anyway.

Murchad tried to bust down the door, but failed to do so. Jack tried immediately after him, and he also failed.

Then, they heard voices on the other side of the door, and a key in the latch.

The door opened with a stern and annoyed servant standing there. Everyone invisible froze, but Jack was just standing there, right beside the door, wearing his fancy clothes from Catsby’s party and a sheepish grin.

The servant looked square at Jack, who said, “Merry Christmas! Ho ho ho!”

“What are you doing here!?”

“I’m singing Christmas Carols!  ♫♪Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!  Oh, what fun–"

“You idiot! The dinner isn’t until tonight! The rest of the musicians haven’t shown up yet.  How did you get in here?”

As the servant and Jack continued their tête-à-tête, the rest of the party slipped in the open door behind the servant. All but Tiv, that is, who was so thunderstruck by the ridiculousness of the situation that she didn’t think to move.

“We’ve got to tell the guards not to let anybody else in. This is ridiculous,” he called back to someone inside.  “Well, you might as well come in, but you’ve got to stay here in the kitchen until it’s closer to the time. If you want to make yourself useful, you can go over there and help chop some vegetables.”

Jack entered to do as he was told, and the servant followed, closing the door.  Tiv, realizing that she was still standing outside, quietly opened the door (which was now unlocked) and slipped inside the kitchen, too.

There was another servant, a large, late-middle-aged woman in there, also helping to prep a prodigious quantity of food.

Jack engaged the two servants in conversation.

“So, uh, how is Daysie doing?”

“Oh, she’s in a pretty sorry state. The Mister has decided to keep her under lock and key until he’s certain that all the funny-business is over with.”

“That reminds me of Cinderella, I think.”

“Is she the one lives up the street?”

“Oh, I dunno. She’s just a young lady who step sisters were unkind to her. The prince had a ball, and the step mother wouldn’t let her go.”

The female servant spoke up for the first time. “Yah, well, the Mister is a horse’s ass, if ye ask me!”

“Now, Bertha. Don’t be too loud with that. You don’t want to find yourself out on the curb.”

“Pish-posh,” she said, “it’s no secret Aiden. Yah, he’s havin’ a dinner party, and people are comin’, but there’s no one in this town actually likes him, and ye know it!”

Jack offered a half-hearted, “Yeah, true…”

“He’s got a big mouth, and a bigger ego to boot!

“Yeah, well it’s…”

“So how is it you know Daysie, anyway?” the male servant asked, saving Jack from engaging with Bertha’s comments further.

“Oh, I heard some stories,” replied Jack.

“Stories, eh?”

“Yeah, out in the tavern.”

“Oh-ho! Well, the Mister would love that! Tavern-stories about his wife!  He’ll keep her under two locks!” burst in Bertha.

It being late morning, Jack thought of an angle to maybe get him access to Daysie. “So has she had her breakfast yet today?”

“Yeah, she had her breakfast. Bertha over there has to give it to the guard who brings it in to her.” This answer disappointed Jack.

Bertha chimed in again. “Do ye think he’s gonna let her out fer it?”

“For what? The party? I don’t see how he could! He couldn’t trust her not to say anything.”

“Well isn’t that a fine dinner party! Ye don’t even invite yer own wife, and she bein’ home the whole time!”

“Yeah…”

“One o’ these days, I tell ya,” Bertha continued, “One o’ these days, all o’ this nonsense is gonna come out, and all o’ these people are gonna stop pretendin’ they have any affinity for the Mister at all.”

The meal preparation continued in awkward silence for a moment or two before Bertha continued, muttering to no one in particular and everyone present all at the same time.

“Showin’ up to his parties and wantin’ to be seen with him, buddyin’ up to him. They all just think he can do somethin’ for ‘em!”

“Yeah, what goes around, comes around,” replied Jack.

Jack started quietly singing Yankee Doodle.

“Well that’s a nice tune,” said Bertha, her demeanor instantly changed.

♫♪“Yankee Doodle went to town, a-riding on a pony. He stuck a feather in his hat, and called it macaroni”♫♪

Bertha started light-heartedly humming along, even though she didn’t know the tune.

♫♪“Yankee Doodle, keep it up, Yankee Doodle dandy.  Mind the music and the step, and with the girls be handy!"♫♪

Aiden chuckled and started chopping vegetables in time with the tune.

Murchad, Vedica, and Dwårfy headed for the kitchen doorway, looking out into the dining room full of bustling servants, carefully setting the large tables.  Because Tiv would not be fully invisible (every new person she encountered would have a 1 in 6 chance of seeing her despite her cloak of elven hijinks, she and Jack opted to stay back in the kitchen and attempt to gather intelligence, rather than explore the rest of the mansion.