Faery's Tale Deluxe - Etud

More Transformations
The culprit keeps using the wand, but
won’t knowingly do it in the presence of the
faeries.
Its effects take place slowly, so cause and effect
is hard to determine. After a person is targeted
by the wand, she merely acts in a vaguely piggish
or donkey-like fashion for a while. Those on
the verge of donkeyhood break into loud brays
and walk around with their faces pointed down.
Townsfolk about to turn into pigfaces make
snorting noises, wrinkle their noses, and can’t
stop stuffing their faces with food.
When they wake up after their next sleep
or nap, the transformation is complete. Most
townsfolk then run out of their cottage in
horror, pleading for someone to help them
and lamenting their awful fate.
The people of Wheatvale are a mostly nice
but a little on the thick side. None of them
notice the early symptoms or see them as a
sign of an upcoming transformation. The
faeries can notice and ask the victims who they
saw recently. Each of them provides a different
list of townsfolk, with the culprit as the only
name in common between the various victims
(or the culprit and the next prime suspect, if
you want a more complex plot).
It’s up to you to decide if the wand can target
faeries. If you think that some in your group
would have fun acting out the transformation,
— Tales of the Fey —
— 86 —
with plenty of enthusiastic snorting and/
or braying, the culprit could use it on
them. Some players get mad when
their faeries lose control or are
subjected to indignities. If you
think yours might fall into this
category, either they are not
targeted, or all faeries prove
automatically immune to
the wand. And, of course,
the wand only works if
the faery has been acting
greedy or foolish before
being targeted.
The culprit is sneaky and
pulls out the wand only
when the intended target
isn’t looking. However, a faery
with the Gift of Alert who happens
to be present when the culprit uses
the wand against an intended victim
(including the faery) automatically sees it happen.
Smart players can figure out the likely next target,
or goad the culprit into coming after the faeries
or a cooperative villager to trick the culprit into
revealing himself. To keep the plot from resolving
itself prematurely, wait until you near the end of
the session before allowing this to happen.
Trouble Brewing
A senseless rivalry between the pig-heads
and donkey-heads grows, as more and more
people are transformed into members of one
side or the other. It is based on nothing other
than outward differences in appearance.
Intersperse scenes of investigation by the
faeries with signs that the rivalry is getting
out of control. Stage the scenes so that they
interrupt the faeries’ investigations, and
escalate them so that each scene feels more
serious than the last.
The exact sequence of scenes depends on
where the investigators go and who they
interact with, but a sample sequence of rivalry
scenes could go like this:
• Berthold and Maggie Tanner have a
public spat. She blames him for his
piggish stubbornness. He curses her muleheadedness.
This upsets other townsfolk;
despite their differences, the Tanners have