Lucky Leap Feather Fall
📜 Entry: “Lectures, Feathers & False Faces”
Location: Onadbyr (Upper Town)
Recorded: Evening following our return from Willow Creek
I once believed the forest to be the domain of chaos and uncertainty. How quaint. The city is no less wild—its stone corridors crawling not with spiders, but with secrets, wagers, and illusions far more intricate than any web.
Today began with ceremony. The unicorn Shimmermane (I had, regrettably, misremembered her name as Shimmermere—surely a symptom of advanced wisdom) carried young Byra into Onadbyr like a child-queen from a tale. Craig—Slick’s feline companion of improbable size—trailed behind, majestic and mildly alarming. The gate guards were so taken by the display they forgot their duties entirely. I do love a good entrance.
As the crowd formed around us, I took the opportunity to address them, to assuage their fears about Craig, and to share in the joy of Byra’s return. A scholar’s instinct, I suppose: when faced with a crowd, lecture. When faced with awe, illuminate. I may have gone on a bit—Purrciful's glances implied so—but I would argue, quite sincerely, that public education is never wasted breath.
The halfling family was reunited, and their gratitude expressed with such sweetness that I felt briefly ashamed at the thought of compensation. Still, they insisted on a meal, and in the space between invitation and dinner, I was brought to the party’s base of operations—Mordenkain’s Tower. An impressive place. Slick shared a journal chronicling its mysteries, and the upper floor hosts an enchantment of particular elegance: spectral instruments that play upon approach. A spell of resonance, perhaps? I must study it further. There is much in the world that sings to those who listen.
I summoned an owl familiar this afternoon—a humble nod to the Wise One. She perches now just outside the window as I write, alert and serene. I suspect her presence will extend more than my reach in battle. Perhaps she will sharpen my vision as well.
The evening descended into stranger tales. At the Lucky Leap tavern, we encountered a halfling named Raffolk in the midst of a crisis involving gambling debts, a Coatl feather, and an impersonation of Lord Monder. It began with laughter, a round of drinks, and the kind of gentle chaos that often precedes calamity. But when the bugbear Gulfa arrived—hulking and violent, flanked by a friend built like a forge—I felt the same tension as before a storm.
The rainbowed feather—bright, perhaps sacred—was destroyed in the scuffle. Raffolk’s hopes with it. I tried, perhaps too earnestly, to reason with him. To suggest charity, the clergy, even community aid. But his eyes were fixed not on redemption, but on roulette. His plan—gamble enough to win back his family estate—seemed to me more a child’s wish than a strategy. I floated the idea to the others: should we intervene? Pay off the debt? They were not moved.
Still, something gnawed at me. Not Raffolk’s desperation, but the feather. A Coatl feather is no mere bauble. If authentic, it might serve in scrying rituals, divine auguries, planar bindings—any number of arcane rites. I pressed for an audience with Lord Monder. Riccio Tane, the tavern owner, was... graciously clueless. (He suggested we simply knock on the manor door. A bold tactic, I’ll admit.) Slick, ever practical, took it as sound advice. And so, to the manor we went.
There, at last, we met the real Lord Monder—who, in an amusing twist, claimed he had not been at the Lucky Leap at all. A doppelgänger, perhaps? Glamour magic? Telly suggested polymorph. It is alarming how easily a face can be borrowed in this city. Truth itself wears a mask here.
Lord Monder, though suspicious, softened at the mention of the unicorn parade and our assistance at the Gorso estate. Still, when I attempted to offer my theory on the feather’s purpose and speak (at some length, I admit) on the dangers of celestial components in untrained hands, he... politely hushed me. I am learning, slowly, that not all ears are as hungry for knowledge as my tongue is eager to provide it.
In the end, Monder hired us—not to resolve the feather, but to investigate a missing friend: Lord Rumlyn. The noble has vanished amidst whispers of dark rituals and windmill gatherings. Witchcraft, some say. And there's a stud farm involved, and a missing prize horse. It’s all deliciously tangled. I find myself eager to follow the thread.
We rest now before our next journey. I wonder what awaits us at the royal stud farm. I wonder, too, what stories will one day be told about this strange confluence of gamblers, unicorns, and masked nobles. And I wonder—if only idly—how many times I will be asked, with great courtesy and some urgency, to please stop talking.
May clarity walk with me.
— A.J.