• 07 Nov, 2025 *

Kawase Hasui. Nara Park. 1952

After a short break, we’re back to playing our weekly game of Cairn 2e. I’ve expanded Eyes Unclouded, a now out of print collection of Studio Ghibli themed 5e adventures, into a more open-ended sandbox. You can find our last session here.

The Clearing

This session, the party was composed of:

• Madrigal, halfling forager and werebear
• Flame, tiny fire elemental in an automaton body
• Sir Percius, law-abiding knight
• Nanaki, “no-face” spirit and artificer
• Ambrose, mountebank and would-be flirt
• September, a flying squirrel druid and practicing violinist

We rejoined the party on the edge of a clearing deep in the Blue Woods. With the help of a clan of trolls, they had crossed through the deep swamp, but the trolls would go no further. They said that they did not travel here, long agreement with the spirits of the woods.

Ahead, a football-sized orb of bark hovered over the corpse of an enormous elk, engulfed by vines. Behind it loomed a colossal, time-worn stone, and around them lay three crescent ponds radiating to the forest’s edge. From the south, the sound of battle raged through the trees.

The party asked Ismene, the Court wizard who had organized this expedition, for guidance. She said this was all very interesting, but not at all what she had expected to find at the heart of the corruption afflicting the Blue Woods.

The Orb

September flew ahead and landed near the orb, barely splashing into a pool and reeling with black-and-white vertigo. Up close, the orb resembled a laminated seed whose layers slowly rotated. Vines linked it to the elk and the ponds.

Casting Speak with Plants, September greeted the orb. It answered in common, its voice even and unemotive as it pulsed and turned. It warned them to leave - the woods were in danger. It claimed to be Eirnos, though uncertainly. When asked what it defended against, it flicked its vines towards the pools.

Without hesitation, September jumped into the middle pool and seemed to fall instantly asleep. They found themselves in a monochrome version of the Blue Woods. The trees seamed healthier, and to September’s druidic eye, seemed a few hundred years younger. A group of humans in archaic armor and tartans battled a horrific shadow creature that seemed to morph and twist, pouncing from behind the trees to strike them down.

After a moment, Flame used an automaton hand to safely fish the squirrel out of the water and they hastily relayed what they had seen. Ambrose noticed that the pool was full of the same kinds of arms and armor September had seen. The party quickly decided these were memories and agreed to check out each pool. They lashed themselves to Flame with ropes and vines and split up

The Near Pool

Nanaki and September checked out the nearest pool. Inside, they found themselves in the same clearing as the real world, but minus the stone, the elk, and the orb. A woman ran into the clearing dressed in robes and a tartan shawl pursued by a mob of Ducal Guard troops. The duo tried to intervene, but their hands passed right through the guards. Nanaki noticed that they seemed to float, their legs disappearing into wisps.

The guards chased down the woman and struck out at her. She seemed to be jerked violently into the air before being thrown into the brush. September ran over to check on her, but by the time the squirrel arrived, she and the guards had faded away. Then the scene played back again.

This time September moved to see the scene from the woman’s side. Nanaki kept watch for any other actors and noticed giant wolf footprints that seemed to map to where the guards had passed. They concluded that someone (Fyrir, the Wolf God?) had tampered with this memory or was here in a disguise.

The Far Pool

Madrigal dove into the furthest pool, finding herself in another glade where the same woman and a colossal elk huddled together. The woman laughed as she drew a map on the ground with the tip of a stick. The elk looked on perplexed, but nodding along.

Moving closer, Madrigal saw the woman was drawing a map of the Blue Woods, divided into a checkerboard of neat squares. She crossed them off one by one, sometimes drawing an arrow back to a spot just outside of the wood. Madrigal knew the local region well enough to recognize the arrows pointed to Wealdstone. The only un-crossed squares corresponded to this clearing, the Cat King’s Court, and the ruins of Mal-Aqat.

Madrigal noted the weirdness of the interaction as well as something subtly off about the shadows here. The elk should be blocking more of the light, but the shadow seemed to suggest its head would be down by the woman’s feet. That same spot had two indents, as if someone were kneeling there.

The Middle Pool (Again)

After comparing notes, the party decided this woman was Alfiann, the mythical figure who had married Eirnos. They recognized her from the design on the shield Sir Percius had “liberated” a few days earlier (all the way back in Session 1!). Suspecting something was amiss with each memory, Sir Percius, Nanaki, and September decided to check the middle pool for incongruities.

The same battle between archaic soldiers and the shadowy creature. The party realized that the humans were actually the attackers. For all the creature’s ferocity, it was being driven back. The way the soldiers were battered was reminiscent of whatever had slain Alfiann.

September was able to use the angle of the sun and the quality of the leaves to deduce a rough timeline here. The three memories occurred in the span of a single season, from outermost to innermost pool.

Reporting Back

The party reported their finding to the orb. It was troubled - these were its only memories. It only dimly remembered Alfiann and nothing beyond this clearing. It had moved, but never far.

When Ambrose asked if the orb could read, it said yes. He tried to show it a book of lore on Eirnos and Alfiann that he had stolen from the library of the Cat King. The orb asked the mountebank to throw the tome into one of the ponds. He complied and it sank beneath the pristine water. The orb seemed to mull this over, but only grew more uncertain.

The orb said it was remaking the forest, something only Eirnos could do. It new about the blight and believed it could be purged through regrowth, even if it took years. It trusted Fyrir to aid this work.

The party discussed at length here. Was this Eirnos or just some vestige of the god’s consciousness? Was this a naturally occurrence or made by someone? If so, who?

Flame went back to consult Ismene, who suggested moving the orb to a secure location in the Court for study - an idea the party met with skepticism. She didn’t press the issue.

And that’s where we left off.

GM Notes

We’re back after a long hiatus! This was almost strictly an investigative session, and this post feels like it is straining a bit under the weight of not interpreting or providing any additional information.

Overall, I think this situation (puzzle?) was a big success. Lots of juicy details on characters long speculated on in the lore, but seen through a veil. Credit where credit is due - these vignettes come from the source text. I’ve just tweaked them to fit the combined cosmology and timeline I’ve cobbled together.

One player was, I think, a little restless with all the puzzling and conjecture and wanted to move the scene along. I note that in terms of “pillars of play” this session was all social and investigative and had no exploration or combat. I’ll probably write a blog post soon with more details, because this feels like a knotty theory topic - how much sway should one player have over what happens at the table? - but I’ll probably reach out to them one-on-one to check in first.

As a procedural note, I was rolling for encounters all throughout this. I treated each pool visit as a dungeon turn (per Cairn 2e’s rules), plus each trip to or from the center. Sometimes nothing wanders in...