Life's Binding
Twelfth Day of the First Month 294 AC
Banks of the Cockleswent, Ashford Lands, the Reach
It had been a long time since Dany had spent a full day in the company of her oldest vassal and her own troupe of mischief makers. She had almost forgotten how just plain
fun Glyra could be. There was a simplicity to the way she saw the world, a stark sense of right and wrong, fair and unfair that reminded Dany a little of how she used to see it when she was younger, only more bloody about it.
Just a little more bloody if truth be told.
Lya had given them a simple enough task, nick the bowls of milk and loafs of bread off doorsteps that were meant for the local sprites to see what the reactions would be from the local smallfolk, first by Glyra herself who was after all a sprite, if not under the rule of the Court of Stars, than by Dany herself. The reasoning was to see if the ritual magic could detect the disruption through the warding amulets they all wore and if so what it would drive the people to do, like plucking a single note on a harp to check for tone.
The trouble was they had found a little more than they had bargained for.
It seemed a normal enough house on the outside, a blacksmith's house, solid and rooted in the earth. There was a vegetable garden out back and a barn with two glossy horses and a well-crafted plow ready for harvest, obviously the smith's own work. It was only when Dany glanced inside that evening in preparation for her own snatching of milk after Glyra's had elicited no reaction that she noticed something odd about the house. For a place where iron was shaped and worked there was none of it on display in the whole house, not so much as a nail that hadn't been capped or hidden somehow.
On its own being careful about iron wouldn't have been that odd, the hearth fey didn't tend to like it even when it wasn't true cold iron that was the bane of fey folk, but all the families in the village that were lucky enough to have attracted a brownie or harvest sprite were anything but shy about it. After all, their lord was good friends with the fey and most of their neighbors prospered from it too.
That was when Dany, still unseen and unheard, caught sight of the lady of the house... and lady was the word for all she wore the glamour of a simple village lass. Beneath her guise her hair was as spun gold in morning's light, her necklace not of silver flowers, a lover's gifts, but living flowers.
Tales of
fey brides were hardly uncommon, from recent rumor and elder tale both, but this one did not seem besotted with her bearded green-eyed bear of a husband, nor did she seem resentful, one caught by a bad bargain, and the markings upon her face were odd, almost like a script...
"Oh... hell, they are fucking the smallfolk too," the princess hissed along the mental bond, drawing an amused giggle from Glyra at the words. The little gremlin did not understand why mortals were so strange about the process of making more mortals, nor about mentioning the darker spheres, but she still got a good laugh out of it every time Dany did it because it wasn't 'princess-like'. People casually slipping out of their roles was apparently never not funny to a gremlin even though Dany had practically set up camp outside hers and was looking to settle down.
***
"It makes sense if you think about it," Rina later mused on their discovery. "If you can't build tall, power flowing from highest to lowest, build wide, a fey watcher in every village, in every hamlet, pillars of the community. Why build a plinth or marker out in the wilds when you can have a hidden altar in town, a living breathing representative, someone who can watch and think, someone who can adapt and shift the mood of the settlement?"
"Wouldn't that be kind of boring though for the ones that are human-watching?" Dany asks slyly. "They might just tell us more than their Queen would wish us to know if we ask carefully enough. It would be a faster than Lya's work with geomantic instruments and careful probes."
"On the other hand it could show our hand too soon depending on how much attention the Star Crowned is paying to Ashford lands, she will know the King was here," Rina noted, voice soft but firm.
"Then maybe we could poke at some other place while Lya continues to put things together the slow way..." Dany mused.
Does the party attempt to obtain information on the ritual from mid-level fey set as minor linchpins?
[] Yes, its worth it to get answers sooner
[] No, best to do all they can to minimize being found
OOC: Lya will get you your answers eventually, but the more data points she has the quicker it will go. This is not guaranteed to be over in a month. 
]
