GM: Sigurd
Players: Sapphire (Gry), Reed (Torstein), Dusk (Martin), Mica (Henrik)
NPC's: Basil, Laurel, Bilberry, Trifolium, Pratense, Roja
Description:
Player retellings:
Bees had been behaving oddly. Became even more noticeable now that Winter started, and everything's covered in snow, and bees should by all rights be hibernating in their hives. so when they're forming weird spiral & fractal patterns while flying across town in swarms, or just sneaking around and trying to whistle nonchalantly when someone spots them, and in general are stealing honey left right and center…..well……it was Clear something was up. As in, at one point we noticed a a swarm of bees flying past carrying a GLASS JAR of honey. Or just when someone opened a jar to have some for breakfast, and a swarm of bees zooms in, and each bee dives in the jar, grabs a fragment of honey, and flies off, so that within seconds the jar is empty.
So we try to check it out. find the scholarly heron-bird player char, who does some knowledge checks, and confirms that this is VERY not normal be[e]havior. we ask around for the beekepers, and go to their house, where a crazy person is spying on them. he talks about how the honey refinery is lacing the Product With Chemicals that turn People into sleeper agents, and only we can be trusted, because we're from caravan, and so aren't part of "Them". A fair bit of funny "morons meets crazypants" later, we spot a bunch of bees, and decide to follow them.
Leads to larger swarm, which notices us, and uses interpretive Dance to tell us to Buzz off. as in, their aerial dancing literally conveys info to us, somehow. When Sapphire deploys wings to fly off island, they notice that she's not entirely human, and Our attempts to communicate start to work a bit better, and they show us a map to where we should go, down on the ground.
We fly off, with only minor panic on the part of the Fish. well, fox decides to just fall off the island, and then start floating once he's far enough down. oh, and on the way there had also been a red cardinal-bird, another henge (I think) who had also been trying to solve the problem, but was happy to let us take over, so it could go home and be lazy indoors instead. given the heron-bird was the one talking With that one, comments about "the birds and the bees" were made.
On the way, we notice BIG paw-prints in the snow, heading in the same direction, and LOADS of bees, swarming back and forth. leads to huge hill / pile / whatnot, and entrance. We go in, find Cave or something, and a cell in the wall, half-blocked With rocks, so they form a rough door. inside is lady, With faceted eyes and Crown, and very royal looks, who is all "we are not amuszzzzzed". she's also fairly zonked out by the incense burning in the room, filling it With fragrant smoke. turns out she's the Empress of the Bees, and we should Call her "thy majesty", or if that's too difficult for us, "Your highness" (or as fishy suggested, "Your Hiveness").
when we eventually suggest to queenie that maybe WE could break her out, we're told that "well, she wouldn't like it", and she points behind us, where in through the entrancer comes the 6-METERS tall bear, who lives in this den. She not happy. She's pretty grizzly about the whole thing. Talking happens.
Long story Short: She hadn't gotten around to harvesting enough Food to get her through the Winter hibernation, and now the snow had come down, so it was too late. So she'd captured the Empress of the Bees, used smoke to doze her, and exploited her other weaknesses, and so forced her to command her bees to bring honey, so the bear could have enough of a supply for Winter, without having to actually DO much.
We eventually convinced her to stop taking honey, and give some back, if we gathered food for her instead. Got the Empress to use her swarm-senses / command to have bees scout area for where there's still some berries and nuts and stuff under the snow, and then we did the hard work of going out and foraging. She was about to demand that the fishie with the "Desireable"-drawback had to remain with her as "collateral", but the others would NOT let him stay behind in the warm nest, and convinced her to let him do the hard work out in the freezing snow instead. Sadly, her keeping him could have led to her getting to wish for lots of food in return for letting him go. But no. So the village now has only a fraction of the honey they should have had.
Then we tried to talk some sense into ms. bear for the future. Fishie used his icy alchemy to "spike" the honey, so she'd be more reflective and think about her actions, and maybe she'd realize she shouldn't do such things in the future. Dusk the fox came back and used the dream-power to make sure she did the foraging before it was too late next time, since that was something she was thinking about doing anyway, and that power pushes you to go through with a course of action you're waffling back and forth on.
In the end, we free the Empress, and invite her back home, since the beekeeper's island has spare hives she can hibernate (hivernate?) in. And also convince her to take a form that won't cause too much Surprise in the mortals. so instead of being a human-sized bee, she "assumes a more soothing form": A HUGE SWARM OF BEES!
We talk With the beekeepers, who are trying to cope With the weirdo behavior of their charges. we give them a truthful explanation, just not an honest one: "Some ritualist was using spirit tricks to Control bees into stealing honey from the village. we took care of it." Bit of a rush to prepare an empty hive so it'd overlook the others, and be more 'worthy' of the Empress, and she seemed happy with it (or so the dancing of the bees conveyed). Then the beekeepers suggest we use the catapults they have, in order to get back to the "main" island.