Chapter 12: The abyss gazes back

E2:A2 of my solo Cairn campaign

Jan 21, 2025

Welcome to Episode 2, Act 2 of my solo Cairn campaign.
Last session, Sysa, the half-witch and her husband Ramil, the fieldwarden rode into the Wenderweald to find Sysa’s sister, Razvan. This takes form as a forestcrawl described in Cairn 2e.
Rowena — Sysa’s raven familiar — guided her and Ramil to a hidden fae-path deep in the Wenderweald that only witches can find. It led the pair to a strange lake beyond the veil of reality known as “The Loch of the Grand Swarm”…
…that’s Sysa’s true home, and that’s where this session opens.
Theme: “Hypnagogic” & “Madness”
Weather: “Calm & Pleasant”
Random Event: none

The dead trees smoldered on the horizon, black smoke spooling into the sky. The shallow lake mirrored the distant fires until Sysa bid Eveleen forward with the reigns. The donkey dragged the cart on ahead and that mirror underfoot broke into shimmering ripples that reached out into the misty wide empty beyond.

“Where do we go from here?” Ramil asked, peering over the rail of their cart. The water was shallow but opaque — a pinkish-grey lense filmed over with pale mimics of everything gazing into it.

“Rowena knows the way,” Sysa said, confidently. She watched the dim sky where wings ripped up the low-hanging gloom. The raven descended on a gust of warm air that spooked Eveleen as she overtook the cart. She beat her black wings in a slow, gliding pace just a few yards ahead of the cart.

Ramil snorted. “I suppose I’d rather not know.” He leaned over the rail again and watched the ripples peel away from the trundling cartwheels.

Game notes
My oracle revealed The Loch is shrouded in “13: psychedelic…18: mist,” and given the alien nature of this place, it felt like outsiders might be affected by the fae, haints, and ancestors of burned witches. I rolled a WIL save for Sysa and Ramil. She passed (8/14); he didn’t (15/14)…

Sysa grabbed her husband by the shoulder and dragged him into his seat. “Do not look at the water, Ramil,” she warned.

“It’s so shallow — what could be down there?” His words felt heavy in his mouth as if he were drunk.

“The Grand Swarm keeps this loch,” Sysa said. She stole nervous glances over her shoulder, back to the flat sky, and out to the burning trees. She felt shameful sharing these words with an outsider. But she didn’t belong here anymore either. She belonged to Ramil and him to her. “The Swarm sees everything,” she continued, “and she won’t like that I brought an outsider here.”

“Who is she?”Ramil asked, trying to stay focused on Sysa’s words and the horizon.

“Heslina. A witch — the witch,” Sysa said sharply. “She’s long dead now.”

Ramil closed his eyes and rubbed his palms against them, trying to will the fog from his head. He opened his eyes again and strained to keep his vision focused. Even so, he could see Sysa was in pain. She seldom spoke of what little she remembered from The Wenderweald, from the life she lived as a witch. Forgetting this place and escaping it took every ounce of her strength. Remembering it again and reliving it would see her and Ramil burned.

They’d come close before.

“She’s dead?” Ramil asked, confused. “But she’s here? How can that be?”

“She is the Wenderweald,” Sysa said, steering Eveleen slightly right to follow Rowena. “That’s how Razvan always explained it anyway. She said Heslina ascended into the Wenderweald itself — a sentient wilderness.” A sentient contagion, to Sysa’s mind.

“Well I’m no threat to her,” Ramil said, defensively.

“No one is,” Sysa confirmed. Every eye in The Weald belongs to her and watches over her witches. And every witch drew from her when they conjured. The Grand Swarm was all of them at once — diffused and omnipresent. Empty and complete.

Rowena tacked left slightly, and Sysa bid Eveleen to do the same. Ramil did his best not to watch the ripples roll away under them. He kept his sight on the burning trees out there instead, but their reflections teased him. They looked like fingers clawing at the still water.

“Will we meet her here?” Ramil asked, gripping his axe. “In this…place?”

“Hopefully not,” Sysa said. “Hopefully she’s busy with other invaders.”

Game notes
I took a Travel action to carry on ahead which gave our pair a 2-in-6 chance of getting lost. Thanks to Rowena’s sharp eyes, though, this was only a 1-in-6 chance. I rolled a 3, and they carried on to the next POI.
I rolled up a description using the forest die drop table — a ruin — and rolled up some details: 15: “A splintered obelisk”…10: “fresh corpses”…goodie.
Their Travel action triggered a roll on the Wilderness Event table — 1: Encoutner. Fantastic.
And then it got even worse — 8: The Snallygaster is back…
What’s it doing here?
—Oracle: 8: “Enchanted” and 17: “Secret”

Roweena beat her wings hard and carried on ahead through the mist. Sysa reigned Eveleen into a trot and they broke through the gloom up onto a loamy hill brindled with stubby black pines.

They emerged from the low-lying mist and crested the hill. Across the dells and downs, a black, rough-cut obelisk stabbed up from a dun hillock. Rivulets of blood trailed away from the obelisk and ran down the hillock’s face.

Rowena cawed as she lighted down beside Sysa. Something hovered above the obelisk. Ramil stood with his axe and squinted, trying to focus his vision. He nearly fell over under drunken legs.

“Ramil – are you ill?”

“No, love…I’m —”

Ramil howled in pain. A lance of agony coursed through his soul and blood. His legs gave way, and he tumbled out of the cart and onto the mossy ground.

“Ramil!” Sysa lept after him and tried to haul him to his feet, but he was too heavy. She could use her witchery, but it might kill him. It might alert The Grand Swarm too.

The crash of stone peeled out over the downs like thunder. Sysa looked up just as the obelisk splintered. It crashed to the ground, showering the hillock with rocks that broke away and tumbled down into the moat of mist.

Then she saw it — the Snallygaster. A writhing mass of reptilian bulk brindled with stinging nettles. Its face was a flowing current of tentacles and winking black eyes. Its leathery wings morphed and grew like a swarm of insects as it surged toward them.

“Ramil — you have to get up!” she shook him. His eyes rolled and fluttered as his senses returned. He turned over in time to see the Snallygaster coming for them.

Game notes
The hallucinogenic fae mist peaked hard for Ramil by now, triggering a panic check — 1/15. Idiot is blinded by love.

He pushed himself up and lifted his axe and shield. The thing was coming — too fast to run. Too big to fight.

“You have to use it, love,” Ramil said. He rolled his shoulders, braced his shield, and gripped his axe high and ready.

“I can’t — you’ll—”

“—we’re dead if you don’t.”

He was right, she knew. Sysa reached into the wyrd and spooled up the witchery innate within her — within all witches born to the Wenderweald. Her fingers ran black and greasy with smoking tar that reeked of burning. She felt the familiar heat roll up her hands and chest and neck. Her hair lifted off her shoulders as if lightning gathered around her.

Her voice bellowed, polyphonic. “Forgive me,” she said, and the Wenderweald began to wake.

Ending the session

I knew this ugly bastard would find its way back into this campaign. And now we’re in its native habitat. Fortunately, Ramil is hard to kill and Sysa has been…unleashed.
I advanced my forestcrawl map to account for this new POI. You can check it out here.
Stay close, and watch for the Wenderweald watching.