The Harvest Moon Consortium

Once upon a time, there was a family.

Dee Dee, a fairy dragon had come to visit Anchorome. She was from Tethyr, more precisely the great forest Wealdath.
She wanted to explore the land and visit her friend Lolo, a pixie who had left the old continent with her friend Cele, a young human woman from an upper class family in Athkatla.
It did not take long before Dee Dee found Lolo in the city of Lapis Port. They were happy to see each other and exchanged stories.
They were both surprised when they found out that they had both heard the same story, but from two different sources.
Dee Dee had met her old friend Dorendanna, a female gnome wizard from Wealdath when she last visited Suldanessellar, the mysterious elven city.
Dorendanna had told about her neighbours, a fairy dragon called Lillithy and her husband, a halfling bard called Terun. Their three children Trilla, Tralla and Trellithy (aka Trella) had gone missing. They had tried everything, including powerful divination magic to find out where their daughters had gone, but with no success. They were now sad and mourned their loss.
Lolo had heard the same story from Trellithy herself. She had left home without a word and gone out in the world to find her two younger sieblings. Trellithy had come to Lapis where she had met Cele who introduced her to Lolo.

Lolo went to find Trellithy so she could hear Dee Dee tell news from home. She found Trellithy in the Art Centre, where she spent much of her time, a natural thing to expect from a bard like her. They guessed that Dee Dee would be in Dandelion Dale, and found her in the inn talking to the entertainer Chorus Nick and sipping pumpkin juice.

After a short introduction, Dee Dee told her story. Trellithy was sad when she understood what grief she had caused and wanted to contact her family to let them know that she was all right, where she was and what she had found out about her younger sisters being trapped in some other world. Trellithy wanted to send them a letter, but Lolo and Dee Dee convinced her to go and visit them so they could finally meet again. Trellithy was afraid they would be angry with her. Dee Dee agreed, but said that was to be expected and that it was a sign of love.
Trellithy knew she had to face it eventually and that it would not be better if she waited any longer.
They soon realized that it would take her more that two weeks to travel back home. That is when Chorus Nick interrupted them and said he wanted to offer Trellithy a quicker means of transportation. He had been up at Windy Vale entertaining the gnomes. In the bar, he had heard many stories of new inventions, some of which had sparked an idea of his. It would work if any of them were an experienced bard. Trellithy told him that she had that background.
Chorus Nick then explained:
“Being a bard is all about performance. A great performance creates its own magic. It pulls the audience into a world that you conjure with your play. However, that is only the basics and is common knowledge even among laymen.
A great performance is virtually without boundaries, and herein lays the magic of the art. I want to show you how to make your play transcend beyond the mundane limitations of time and space. That takes an epic performance, but if we succeed we can conjure up your home and thus make the connection with your family.”

Nick then let Trellithy try her best to play something that reminded her of home. Everybody could feel the presence of a forest, and after a couple of attempts, the vision of her home became clearer, but they were not quite able to get there.

Nick wanted to stack the odds in her favour. He would offer her a better lute and they would proceed playing in an environment more like her home, like a forest.
He wanted to make a new lute in his workshop in the local brewery, a brand new “Nick Chorus” lute. To do that, he would need some special materials to work with.
She would have to find hair from a nymph, guts from a cat, scales from an ant and some black dragon blood.
She went to the black dragon forest. She was afraid to enter the dragon cave and asked Bob for advice, but he only shrugged and said the dragonkin probably had the blood she needed. She also asked if it was all right if she played for him later, and he was pleased that she would perform there. Once in the forest, an adult dragon attacked her. She won the fight and collected the blood. On her way south, she defended herself against giant ants. She picked some of the scales from their dead bodies.
She approached the Lantern Woods to see if she could find a nymph. She approached one standing at the entrance of the wood and persuaded her to give her a lock of her hair.
Finding a cat proved far more difficult. Trellithy did not want to kill an innocent kitten just to get the guts, and she knew no place were people had problems with hostile cats attacking them. She asked about and a woodsman told her that there used to be tigers at some places along the Amraphel road, but that no one had spotted any for years. She went looking, but could not find traces of any big cats. Then she played a song about cat’s food, and suddenly the place swarmed with aggressive tigers willing to kill for food. She got the guts, but felt sorry for the big cats.
After collecting all the ingredients, she returned to Chorus Nick and he promised that the lute would be ready the following day.

The lute Nick had made for Trella turned out to be a fabulous instrument. It was indeed a real Nick Chorus brand lute.
She tried the instrument in the forest near Bob’s camp in front of Nick, Dee Dee and Lolo. They were all moved by the music as it created visions of far away places. Trella focused hard on Wealdath, and suddenly it materialized itself in front of them.
The first person to greet them in Wealdath was Dorendanna. She told Trella to go see her family. Thereafter she should see the shrine of Lurue. Dee Dee and Lolo stayed with Dora while Nick and Trella went to the big tree to see Trella’s parents. It was a happy reunion and Trella met several new sieblings. Lillithy, Trella’s mother was a bit angry at first since Trella had left without telling them anything. Trella then asked if they had found the note she left for them. They had not found anything. Trella could not understand that.
After a while, Trella and Nick went to the shrine and Trella said a prayer there. Suddenly she could hear the sound of a lock opening and a door opened in the shrine itself. There was a beautiful gem in there that obviously was for her. Then a unicorn appeared and gave her an enchanted chip of his unicorn horn.
Trella went further into the forest. Suddenly an angry shadowbird attacked her. She defended herself well, and a nymph and other creatures of the wood came to her aid. Afterwards, when she searched the dead bird, she found a tattered note, the note she had left for her parents. The bird had stolen it. That is why her parents did not get her message. Trella immediately told her parents so they should know.

When Trella showed the gem from the shrine to Nick, he told her that it was a rogue stone and that he could make the lute even better if he used the rogue stone to imbue the instrument. Trella let him try that and they used the magic in the unicorn horn fragment to bless the improved instrument.

They then decided that they wanted to use the instrument to see if Trella could play music that would take them to Trilla and Tralla. That was a difficult task since they did not know where her sisters were and what it looked like there.
Trella returned to the shrine and there she started to play music that described her sisters. Her music conjured pictures of many places as Trella played, but it proved hard to get through to her sisters. Suddenly they experienced something that felt as if they went through a void. Then they saw a strange cube covered with squares of different colors. Then they heard a deafening and brutal noise that almost stopped Trellas music. However, she focused and played on, thinking hard of her sisters. A strange forest materialized itself around them. A cold blue light filled the air, and made everything feel ethereal. They could still hear the noise, now as a faint hum. They saw a couple of empty looking buildings near a glade. In the middle of the glade, Trella and Nick could se two girls with flapping wings. Trella immediately recognized them as Trilla and Tralla. She greeted them and wanted to hug them, but they were in fact ethereal. Nevertheless, they could hear each other and talk together. Her sisters were happy to see Trella. They told her that they had been abducted to this place by some kind of magic. It was a place called Sierra Na and it was in a completely different realm. They were not alone; many others had suffered the same destiny as her sisters. They had many new friends, but missed home.
Trilla and Tralla wondered if Trella could take them back home with her, but Trella was not able to do that. However, she promised to come back some other time. After a while, they had to say goodbye and Trella and Nick returned to Wealdath. Trella told her parents what had happened to her sisters. If she could not take them back home, at least they now had a way to communicate with them.
Finally, they decided to go back to Anchorome. Dee Dee wanted to stay with Dorendanna. Trella, Nick and Lolo finished the song and returned to Bob’s camp where they had come from.

Nick returned to singing and telling stories at the local inns. Lolo went to tell the news to Cele. Trellithy once more had a happy family and now she knew that music really could move people.