Hard to Bard - Red Hollyphant

What Comes Next?

After the intruders are defeated, a ghastly ululation pierces the air. A feline beast marked with war paint barges into the Grand Theater with its rider and bounds upon the stage. The rider is a female fey being who wears a crown of thorns that glow green and gold. Her eyes are a bright ruby red. Blood drips from her lips, and bloodied  spikes protrude from her shoulder pads and gauntlets. She  roars, 

“Where is he? Joey, I’ve done my bit. You owe me!”

The band are a bit perplexed by this, and quizz the crowned Fey on who she is and inform her that Joey is not here and that he was arrested.

The crowned Fey reveals her name as Xolus and that she has a legion of fey minions who obey her every command.

Only Sister is intimated by her, the others press on with there questions, finding out that according to Xolus's all she done was expand her kingdom and wiped out a fledgling new race of crystalline fungi folk. The Muse was angered, the Muse in her spite cursed me to consume humanoid flesh from a willing person to maintain my power. Hence the pact with Joey, in exchange for my favours he owes me an eye and a limb. 

Heironymo clears his throat to speak, but just then Lemmog's wand bursts into life and Eldridge Blasts Ekam.

Wand of Vocal Wyrding - Discovered words

"charsuk" - Eldritch Blast
“uwu” - ???
“biddaum” - harm

Olar enters the stage at the commotion, as well the audience is still watching! They explain that they have handed Joey to the city guard at the guard tower nearby. Xolus begrudgingly thanks Olar, announces her intention to leave for the guard tower and spits at the characters in disdain because she is annoyed at having to travel to a different venue. 

With that the band let here leave without a fight, a bit dumbfounded in what just occurred.

The Show Must Go On

After the chaos, the band reassure the audience, perform and leave to go backstage, to watch the last act.

They notice that Mistyngael is shaking with worry, Lemmog spots she has imposter syndrome, he then uses his Channel Divinity Appeal to the Masses to imbue Mistyngael with fervent energy, that quells here stage fright.

Mistyngael puts on the most emotionally driven performance of her life as her eyes meet Vio’s in the director’s seat.

Sister and Hydrica are so touched by this that they start involuntarily crying from some deep emotions that have welled up.

Hydrica is shocked at his own reaction to this, and tries to gruff it out, but the rest of the band have seen that Hydrica does have a soft side, if extremely hidden, bolted down, thrown in a chasm, it can surface.
 
At the end of the show, the band step up on to the stage amongst the performers to take a bow. 

Olar thanks the band for their help and pays them 500 GP (party not each) for their effort.

Also provides them a small box containing a pearl of power,  with some items, as says they can take a pick from the miscellaneous stage items. 

Olar provided items

• Oil of slipperiness
• Pearl of power
• Potion of fire breath
• Spell scroll of calm emotions
• Wand of pyrotechnics

Wand of pyrotechnics

Wand, common

This wand has 7 charges. While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 of its charges and create a harmless burst of multicolored light at a Point you can see up to 60 feet away. The burst of light is accompanied by a crackling noise that can be heard up to 300 feet away. The light is as bright as a torch flame but lasts only a second.

The wand regains 1d6 +1 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the wand’s last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the wand erupts in a harmless pyrotechnic display and is destroyed. This item is found in the Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.

This wand is adorned with silver sparkles and red and gold stripes. Each burst of light is a paean to botanical beauty; choose from a peony, chrysanthemum, or willow formation every time the wand is used.

Additionally, this wand is unbreakable. Special means must be used to destroy it. This is a minor property from the What Minor Property Does It Have? Table in page 143 in the Dungeon Masters Guide.

Pearl of power

Wondrous Item, uncommon (requires attunement by a Spellcaster)

While this pearl is on your person, you can use an action to speak its command word and regain one expended spell slot. If the expended slot was of 4th level or higher, the new slot is 3rd level. Once you use the pearl, it can’t be used again until the next dawn. This item is found in the Dungeon 
Master’s Guide.

This pearl fits snugly in the palm of your hand. As you attune to the pearl, it gives off a warm honey-colored glow.

You feel safe holding it; the pearl pulses staccato-like in times of danger, granting you a +2 bonus to initiative if you are not incapacitated. This is a minor property from the What Minor Property Does It Have? Table in page 143 in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. When not in use, it sits inside a little obsidian-black box lined with deep purple velvet.

Oil of slipperiness

Potion, uncommon

This sticky black unguent is thick and heavy in the container, but it flows quickly when poured. The oil can cover a Medium or smaller creature, along with the equipment it’s wearing and carrying (one additional vial is required for each size category above Medium). Applying the oil takes 10 minutes. The affected creature then gains the effect of a freedom of movement spell for 8 hours.

Alternatively, the oil can be poured on the ground as an action, where it covers a 10-foot square, duplicating the effect of the grease spell in that area for 8 hours.

The label on the container states that the oil is “100% organic.”

Potion of fire breath

Potion, uncommon

After drinking this potion, you can use a bonus action to exhale fire at a target within 30 feet of you. The target must make a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw, taking 4d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The effect ends after you exhale the fire three times or when 1 hour has passed.

This potion’s orange liquid flickers, and smoke fills the top of the container and wafts out whenever it is opened.

Spell scroll of calm emotions

Source: Player's Handbook

2nd-level enchantment

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

You attempt to suppress strong emotions in a group of people. Each humanoid in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on a point you choose within range must make a Charisma saving throw; a creature can choose to fail this saving throw if it wishes. If a creature fails its saving throw, choose one of the following two effects. You can suppress any effect causing a target to be charmed or frightened. When this spell ends, any suppressed effect resumes, provided that its duration has not expired in the meantime.

Alternatively, you can make a target indifferent about creatures of your choice that it is hostile toward. This indifference ends if the target is attacked or harmed by a spell or if it witnesses any of its friends being harmed. When the spell ends, the creature becomes hostile again, unless the DM rules otherwise.

Miscellaneous stage items

Sister ritual casts detect magic, so they can find the magical items in the props room.

Ekam offers to identify one item for each member, so they can see if they want it or not.

Lemmog - Armor of Safeguarding

Source: Bigby Presents - Glory of the Giants

Full Plate Armor (Heavy), Very Rare (Requires Attunement)

Set in the center of this armor’s chest is a citrine engraved with the shield rune.

While wearing this armor, your hit point maximum increases by an amount equal to 10 + your level.

Invoking the Rune. As an action, you can invoke the armor’s rune to cast the Beacon of Hope spell with it; the spell has a duration of 1 minute and doesn’t require concentration. Once the rune has been invoked, it can’t be invoked again until the next dawn.

Heironymo - Living Gloves

Source: Eberron - Rising from the Last War

Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)

These symbiotic gloves — made of thin chitin and sinew — pulse with a life of their own. To attune to them, you must wear them for the entire attunement period, during which the gloves bond with your skin.

While attuned to these gloves, you gain one of the following proficiencies (your choice when you attune to the gloves):

• Sleight of Hand
• Thieves' tools
• One kind of artisan's tools of your choice
• One kind of musical instrument of your choice

When you make an ability check using the chosen proficiency, you add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.

Symbiotic Nature. The gloves can't be removed from you while you're attuned to them, and you can't voluntarily end your attunement to them. If you're targeted by a spell that ends a curse, your attunement to the gloves ends, and they can be removed.

Sister - Armor Of Weightlessness

Armor (light, medium, or heavy), uncommon (requires attunement)

This armor has 5 charges. While you wear it, you can use a bonus action to expend 1 or more charges to cast one of the following spells from the armor, targeting yourself: Jump (1 charge) or Levitate (2 charges).

This armor regains 1d4 + 1 expended charges daily at dawn.

Ekam - Mindguard Crown

Source: Phandelver and Below - The Shattered Obelisk

Wondrous Item, Very Rare (Requires Attunement)

While you wear this adamantine crown, you have advantage on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws, and you have resistance to psychic damage.

, a Dragonborn Bard from the college of Swords
, a Human Hornblower Fighter

Hydrica - Robe of Useful Items

Wondrous item, uncommon

This robe has cloth patches of various shapes and colors covering it. While wearing the robe. you can use an action to detach one of the patches, causing it to become the object or creature it represents. Once the last patch is removed, the robe becomes an ordinary garment.

The robe has two of each of the following patches:

• Dagger
• Bullseye lantern (filled and lit)
• Steel mirror
• 10-foot pole
• Hempen rope (50 feet, coiled)
• Sack

In addition one each of the following patches:

• Iron door (up to 10 feet wide and 10 feet high , barred on one side of your choice), which you can place in an opening you can reach; it conforms to fit the opening, attaching and hinging itself
• 2 mastiffs (see the Monster Manual for statistics)
• Wooden ladder (24 feet long)
• Window (2 feet by 4 feet, up to 2 feet deep), which you can place on a vertical surface you can reach
• Bag of 100 gp
• 4 potions of healing

Immith Chargoba - Hunter's Coat

Armor (leather), very rare (requires attunement)

You gain a +1 bonus to AC while wearing this armor.

The coat has 3 charges. When you hit a creature with an attack and that creature doesn't have all its hit points, you can expend 1 charge to deal an extra 1d10 necrotic damage to the target. The coat regains 1d3 expended charges daily at dawn.

Restful Night

The next day, the Opening night was a success! Ticket sales explode! 

The Red Hollyphant digs itself out of near-bankruptcy and can operate as a going concern with Olar Zidd as its helm. 

Vio and Mistyngael pledge their love to each other and become a couple. They continue to work together at the Red Hollyphant and have invited the characters to their wedding.

Sister pledges to officiate their wedding. 

Sister removes curse on Ekam, so he can get rid of his cursed bells, and leaves it in the props room, much to Sisters horror.

Sister then casts remove curse on herself to remove the cursed Violin Bow and drops it down the sewer.

After a long rest, Lemmog's wand regains all its charges, so he heads outside aims the wand at a nearby flying bird and says, "uwu", the bird instantly plummets to the ground, dead before it hit the ground.

Wand of Vocal Wyrding - Discovered words

“uwu” - Power Word: Kill
“biddaum” - harm

"charsuk" - Eldritch Blast

Lemmog then asks Sister, if she can decipher any other words on the wand. Sister notices that one word seems to be a mash up of Sylvan and Orc, creating a new word.

In trying to explain this new word to Lemmog, without saying the word itself, Lemmog says the word, and Chaos Bolts himself.

Wand of Vocal Wyrding - Discovered words

“uwu” - Power Word: Kill
“biddaum” - harm

"charsuk" - Eldritch Blast

"chakara" - Chaos Bolt

Lemmog then looks at the wand, as all charges have now been used, sees the wand by chance disintegrate in front of his eyes to ash.

Lemmog broke his new toy.

Letter from the Court. 

Olar runs to the band panting about a Royal Letter for the band! 

There frolics and fame have reached the Queen!

The letter is from Queen Madeline of Richester, all it states is that she needs their help to find and destroy King Henry’s assassins. 

Inside the parcel is a stone that will allow the characters to cast teleport once to get to about a day’s walk from Richester.

The Theater company give the band some background information on the Royal Court and the Queen.

One thousand years ago, an eladrin noble from the Summer Court made his way to the Material Plane with dreams of conquest and civilization. Taking on the human name Richmond, he single-handedly raised an army of humans and elves and won territory in the mundane world.

King Richmond raised a castle and dubbed his kingdom Richester. The people of Richester lived in harmony for centuries, but as generations passed King Henry the Third proved a selfish, unworthy king. With his wasteful and irreverent nature, he decimated Richester’s economy and lost the trust of his people, who considered him a fool. They did, however, love his wife, Queen Rendala, who had come from eastern Faerûn.

Queen Rendala was generous and caring with her people. She began several programs and projects to help the people of Richester recover from Henry’s financial blunders. Unfortunately, one fateful night, Rendala was killed during a riot that ensued during one of her charity events. Henry, stricken by grief and anger at his subjects, began a mass arrest of anyone he thought may have been involved. Hundreds of innocents died, and the people never again trusted Henry.

Eventually, Henry remarried. He still did not have an heir. His new wife was the daughter of a rich noble from Richester named Madeline.

King Henry was killed by assassins and Madeline, now in control, was given a magical ring by the court wizard, Rachefus, who described a ritual that would transform her into an immortal archfey so that she could rule over Richester eternally in the Feywild. Madeline worked with Rachefus to use Richmond’s teleportation grid, depositing the entirety of the inner city of Richester and much of the surrounded villages, into the Feywild, and told the people this was their salvation from King Henry’s assassins, an invading kingdom.

She invited everyone to come to safety. The people rejoiced. Finally, they had a benevolent ruler again!

In recent months, rumors have spread that Henry, “the true king,” has returned from the dead.

This last note was hushed over very quickly, as no one likes horrid rumors.

Follow the Yellow Dust Road

The band teleport out to within a days walk to Richester, along the route they spot an enormous, furry black cat that seems to be walking along side them muttering to itself and breaking out into song.

As the band get closer to the cat, they can tell it is about the size of a leopard, and it walks on its hind quarters with its front legs crossed.

The cat starts reciting a well known fairy tale, and with it most of the party start to drift to sleep.

The band start rousing each other and attack the black cat, with vicious spells and sharp flails. That's what this band are made of!

But the Cat does nothing but sing songs and try to tell stories, another band member falls asleep.

A Bubble of Silence quietens the cat, but she stalks back and then is surrounded in Darkness

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains within the sound of silence

Sister notices that the Cat nears the end of a particular story or song, she suddenly stops, curses, and begins a new one.

Sister asks her why she never finishes her stories or songs, the Cat  breaks down and explains that She is Grizelda, a Bayun Cat, a living font of stories and music, but I am cursed to always forget the endings.

With Lemmog now holding Grizelda's mouth shut, Sister casts remove curse on Grizelda.

Grizelda then proceeds to fully tell a fairy tale and gets to the end of it, to much triumph.

Grizelda thanks the band, especially Sister profusely, and offers to continue to follow the characters to help them.

 

Grizelda, has the ability to cast Lesser Restoration three times per day and Greater Restoration once per day. 

Grizelda the Bayun Cat 

Female Bayun Cat (she/her), Panther Characteristic. She almost never stops talking; she even talks in her sleep.
Appearance: A black cat with shaggy black hair, graying on her ears and stomach.
Flaw: She has no inner monologue, if not engaged in conversation, she’ll still be speaking under her breath.
One-Liner: “He won’t meow and he won’t purr, he just gorges, drinks and gloats.
And he paws at dirty floorboards like he’s clawing at our throats.” OR “Turn your face to the moonlight, let your memory lead you.”

Medium Beast, Unaligned
Armor Class 12
Hit Points 40
Speed 50 ft., climb 40 ft.
STR 14 (+2)
DEX 15 (+2)
CON 10 (+0)
INT 10 (+0)
WIS 14 (+2)
CHA 14 (+2)
Skills Perception +4, Stealth +6
Senses Passive Perception 14
Languages Sylvan, Common
Proficiency Bonus +2
Resistance to: Magical (Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing), Acid, Cold, Fire, Force, Lightning, Necrotic, Poison, Psychic, Radiant, Thunder

Immunity to: Non- Magical (Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing)
Keen Smell. The panther has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell.
Pounce. If the panther moves at least 20 feet straight toward a creature and then hits it with a claw attack on the same turn, that target must succeed on a DC 12 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone. If the target is prone, the panther can make one bite attack against it as a bonus action.
Actions
Eyebite: “Asleep”: Each round, choose one creature at random as the target of her Eyebite ability, but only the “Asleep” effect can be chosen, and the targets must hear rather than see the Bayun cat, the save DC for this ability is 15.

Three times per day: Lesser Restoration

Once per day: Greater Restoration

Will not use these unless has no where to back off to:

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) piercing damage.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) slashing damage.