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Session 8: Scarecrows and Secrets

- Waterdeep Dragon Heist

The cold winter morning found Blue and Lyraleth returning to Trollskull Manor from separate business, arriving at nearly the same moment. Inside, Eostre, Null, Silvyr, and Cog were already gathered—and they had news. A white cat had appeared with a message for Silvyr: the Emerald Enclave wished to meet him at Phaulkonmere in the Southern Ward.

For a druid who had been working to heal the environmental damage in the forge district, this was exactly the kind of calling he had hoped for. The party agreed: the Emerald Enclave would be their first stop.

The Gardens of Phaulkonmere

Entering Phaulkonmere was like stepping into another world. High walls covered in moss and ivy enclosed an oasis of green amid the stone landscape of Waterdeep. The scent of rich earth and flowering things filled the air—plants blooming out of season, sustained by magic older than the city itself.

Melanor Felbranch, a half-elf groundskeeper, met them at the gate. His demonstration of power was casual but impressive: at Eostre’s request for an apple, he placed a seed in the ground, murmured a few words, and within moments a small tree stood before them bearing a single, perfect fruit.

“Your boy got skills,” Eostre remarked to Silvyr after tasting it. “This apple is sick.”

But there was no time for pleasantries. Melanor had called them here for a reason.

The Mission

Deeper in the gardens, the air shimmered with fey energy as a disembodied voice spoke—melodious, feminine, carrying otherworldly authority. Lady Jeryth Phaulkon, Chosen of Mielikki and guardian of the sanctuary, laid out their task.

Farmers in Undercliff, a community half a day’s travel from the city, were being terrorized. Three animated scarecrows stalked the fields at night, slaughtering livestock, destroying crops, and driving families from their homes. The attacks had continued for five nights now.

“The signature suggests one who delights in the fear of the helpless,” Lady Jeryth explained. “Complicated magic. Time and resource intensive. Someone who has done such work before.”

The City Watch had refused to investigate—no human blood had been shed, so it wasn’t their concern. The Emerald Enclave, however, recognized the threat for what it was.

Silvyr needed no further convincing. “Fair lady, I for one need no other reason but justice for the fallen to accept this quest.”

“Quit wasting time,” he added to his companions. “The slaughter of innocents is happening.”

Lady Jeryth provided six Charms of Restoration—amulets that could each cast Lesser Restoration once—and promised Enclave membership upon the mission’s completion.

The Road to Undercliff

The journey took them from city streets to suburban lanes to wilderness paths. They might have made good time, if not for the ogre.

Thud, as he called himself, had blocked the road with fallen trees and demanded “tax” for passage. His preferred payment? “Gnome snack,” he announced, eyeing Cog with undisguised hunger.

What followed was a masterwork of misdirection. While Eostre distracted the dim-witted creature with an apple core and claims that the gnome had “foot-in-mouth disease,” Blue pickpocketed Thud’s belt pouch—finding only eleven wooden coins, clearly fake. The party then convinced Thud to accept these same wooden coins as payment, essentially scamming him with his own worthless currency.

They were ten minutes down the road when an enraged ogre scream echoed through the forest behind them. Thud had finally counted his “payment.”

Signs of Terror

The approach to Undercliff told its own story. Abandoned carts lined the roads. Crops rotted unharvested in the fields. Birds and wildlife avoided certain areas entirely, and patches of earth showed unnatural discoloration—as if the very life was being drained from the soil.

The farming community itself was nearly deserted. A handful of frightened villagers gathered near the well: two weathered farmers and a halfling woman, all watching the strangers with wary hope.

They spoke of five nights of terror. Of scarecrows that moved when the sun set. Of livestock found torn apart come morning. Of families who had fled rather than face another night.

And they spoke of the trail—where the attacks seemed to originate.

The Trail of Blood

The party followed converging paths into the wilderness, the signs growing more disturbing with each step. Gore splattered the ground. Viscera hung from branches. Blue picked up pieces as they walked, his predator’s instincts cataloging the carnage.

Then they found them.

Two scarecrows hung from trees—not nailed, but magically attached. One wore a burlap sack hood. The other had a carved pumpkin for a head. Around them, sheep and chickens had been crucified on the trunks, their blood painting the bark.

Cog’s investigation revealed something else: the scarecrows weren’t held by any visible means. Magic bound them to the wood.

As the sun touched the horizon, that magic awakened.

First Blood

The burlap-headed scarecrow struck first, lunging for Eostre with snapping jaws. Cog responded instantly, hurling a dagger through the pumpkin head’s eye socket. Silvyr improvised a Molotov cocktail from oil and tinderbox, setting the creature ablaze.

Eostre’s halberd sang with divine fire as she invoked Searing Smite, carving into the headless one. Null’s eldritch blast found its mark. Blue skewered the burlap scarecrow’s detached head with his scimitar, and the body collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.

The pumpkin-head broke free from its tree and unleashed a wave of supernatural terror. Blue and Null felt fear grip their hearts—but it didn’t matter. Moments later, Null’s blast reduced the burning creature to ash.

Victory. Quick and decisive.

Then Cog looked inside what remained.

The Horror Within

“There’s… there’s bones in here,” the gnome said quietly. “Small bones.”

Blue investigated the other scarecrow’s remains. An entire skeleton. A child’s skeleton. And wrapped around those small bones: a tattered serving apron bearing the Trollskull Manor logo.

In the pocket, Cog found a wooden toy bird, hand-carved and well-loved. Initials carved on the bottom: “L.M.”

The party stood in stunned silence as the truth settled over them. These weren’t just magical constructs. These were the children—Grezelda’s victims from fifteen years ago. The orphans who had worked in their manor, who had been enslaved and murdered by the hag. Now their bones had been desecrated further, animated as weapons of terror.

“There’s too many dead children in this story,” someone muttered.

Silvyr shed a quiet tear. Eostre stepped back in shock. Null explained what they were facing: hags possessed natural necromantic abilities. Grezelda wasn’t just a murderer—she was using her victims’ remains as instruments of cruelty.

The hunt they thought would lead elsewhere had led them here. One scarecrow remained at large.

Old Mara

Back in Undercliff, the farmers provided another lead. An old woman named Mara lived in a hermit’s hut deeper in the woods—a medicine woman who tended sick animals, predicted weather, and practiced “light magics.” The path to her dwelling was well-worn; the community trusted her.

The party formed a plan. They would borrow horses, claim the animals were sick, and use the ruse to investigate Mara’s home while she was distracted.

But first, they needed rest. They tried to sleep in an abandoned farmhouse, but the nightmares came—scarecrows stalking through dreams, children’s bones rattling in the dark. Blue couldn’t close his eyes without seeing horror.

They settled for a short rest instead. It would have to be enough.

The Medicine Woman’s Hut

They set out before dawn, borrowed horses in tow. The hermit’s dwelling looked exactly as expected: herbs hanging to dry, clothes left out overnight, the simple home of a healer who preferred solitude.

While the others knocked and waited, Blue circled around and slipped inside.

The interior told a different story.

Where the outside suggested a kindly medicine woman, the inside spoke of something darker. Skulls lined the walls—animal skulls, dozens of them. The aesthetic was less “woodland healer” and more “bayou witch.” A fire burned low, a pot of stew bubbled, and the single room carried an energy that made Blue’s scales prickle.

He pocketed a small skull as evidence and slipped back out before the door opened.

Mara herself appeared elderly and harmless—gray hair, weathered skin, a grandmother’s face creased with confusion at being woken before sunrise. She recognized the horses immediately.

“These are Marta and Garak’s horses. I’ve tended them their entire lives. Why would you bring them here?”

Eostre’s attempt at deception failed badly. The party’s story about sick horses and family in town fell apart under the old woman’s sharp questions.

Finally, Silvyr told the truth. “We’re on a mission from the Enclave to rid these lands of evil. We found scarecrows with necromantic animation. Ritualistic circles of dead sheep. They came at us, and we slayed them.”

Mara’s expression shifted. Something flickered behind those elderly eyes.

“You managed to destroy the scarecrows,” she said slowly. And smiled.

The Mask Falls

For a moment, she maintained the pretense—offering breakfast, providing healing salves, playing the grateful medicine woman relieved that the threat had been addressed.

But the party had seen too much. Blue showed the others the skull he’d taken. Investigation checks revealed the true nature of the hut. The facade cracked.

And Grezelda stopped pretending.

The transformation was immediate and horrifying. The hunched grandmother straightened and grew, her form rippling as the illusion fell away. Green-tinged skin stretched over iron-hard muscle. Tusked jaws replaced the kindly smile. Predatory eyes fixed on the adventurers who had been hunting her.

“You really should have left well enough alone,” Grezelda said, her voice like grinding stone.

The Battle

What followed was the most desperate fight of their lives.

Grezelda was not alone. Two shadow companions materialized from the darkness, and the third scarecrow—draped in a child’s blanket—lurched to her defense.

The hag’s iron claws tore through armor. Her century of experience showed in every calculated strike. The shadows attacked from invisibility, impossible to track. The scarecrow’s terrifying presence sent waves of supernatural fear washing over the party.

But Null made a decision that would prove critical. He cast Hex on Grezelda, marking her with eldritch energy that imposed disadvantage on her wisdom saves.

It changed everything.

Lyraleth’s Vicious Mockery—normally easy for a creature of Grezelda’s power to resist—found its mark again and again. Each cutting insult (calling her “child-eater,” using her own name as a curse) landed with magical force because Null’s Hex had weakened her defenses.

Eostre channeled divine wrath through her halberd, Divine Smite after Divine Smite burning the hag’s flesh with radiant energy. Silvyr supported from the back, his Healing Word keeping Blue on his feet after a brutal claw strike. Cog darted through the chaos seeking openings. Blue fought with a ferocity that surprised even himself.

The party dealt over fifty damage. They drove Grezelda to the edge of death.

But the hag had survived for over a century by knowing when to flee.

The Escape

“You think you’ve won,” Grezelda snarled, backing toward her shadow companions. “You’ve won nothing. You’ve made an enemy you can’t possibly understand.”

Her form shimmered with invisibility magic. The party lunged for a killing blow—but she was already gone, her blood dripping onto the floor even as her body disappeared.

Then her voice echoed one final time, intimate and terrible, directed at Blue alone:

“The cold-blooded one.”

Words filled Blue’s mind—words only he could hear, delivered with psychic precision:

“I see what lurks beneath those scales. The ancient hunger. The predator’s need. You think you can be a hero, thief. You think you’re better than me. Meat is meat, lizard. But now only thinking flesh can truly satisfy you. Your friends’ flesh. The flesh of those you protect. Soon you’ll understand what I’ve always known. We do terrible things because we must, not because we choose. The hunger will teach you. It always does.”

The voice faded. Grezelda and her shadows were gone.

Blue said nothing. His face remained carefully neutral as he absorbed the implications of what she’d said—what she seemed to know about him. Whatever ancient hunger she had sensed, whatever curse she had laid or awakened, that was his burden to carry.

He didn’t tell the others. Not yet.

The Last Scarecrow

One enemy remained: the blanket-draped scarecrow, still fighting with desperate fury. Poor rolls and lingering fear effects made the cleanup harder than expected—Blue found himself frozen with terror again when the creature’s glare found him.

But Null ended it. His shadow blade carved through the construct, and the thing collapsed into a pile of cloth and straw and small bones.

As it fell, something rose. A soft light drifted upward from the remains, and a child’s voice—grateful, relieved, finally free—whispered: “Thank you.”

The soul that had been trapped in necromantic bondage for fifteen years was finally at peace.

Aftermath

The party stood in the ruined hut, breathing hard, processing everything that had happened. They had saved the community. They had destroyed all three scarecrows and freed the children’s souls. They had driven Grezelda to the brink of death and forced her to flee.

But she had escaped. The hag who murdered Lif, who enslaved children, who desecrated their remains—she was still out there. Wounded, yes. Furious, certainly. And now she knew exactly who they were and what they could do.

“Honestly,” the weight of what they’d accomplished began to settle, “you almost killed her. That Hex saved you guys.”

Null’s tactical brilliance had turned the tide. Without it, the battle might have gone very differently.

As they gathered themselves for the journey back to Waterdeep, one thing was clear: they had grown stronger. Each of them could feel it—new capabilities awakening, new power flowing through them.

Level three. A milestone reached through fire and blood and terrible discovery.

The hag hunt wasn’t over. But for now, the farmers of Undercliff could sleep safely, and three lost children had finally found peace.

Where has Grezelda fled? What revenge is she planning? And what did her words to Blue truly mean—what ancient hunger has she awakened in the lizardfolk’s soul?

The party returns to Waterdeep as heroes of the Emerald Enclave. But some victories come with shadows attached, and some secrets are harder to carry than any wound.

Party Roster