Thank you, Enderlord. LET US RESUME, assuming anyone actually cares, hehe.

Spoiler: WOE EP2: WOLF KNIGHT WOLF KNIGHT WOLF KNIGHT
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Episode 2: Wandering Knight, Budding Hero

Rowan's side first; she's doing the wandering hero saving the day thing. Today's most recent saved day is a cute spider woman who teaches her how to weave and absolutely hits on her. Being Rowan is weird, but not unenjoyable... sometimes, anyway. But she's not finding anything, and not doing much more than helping individual people. It's starting to grate on her, and she's starting to run out of juice. Thankfully, Royse (the spider woman in question) directs her to an ancient castle that might help her out?

Unfortunately that's a bust... but she does fall asleep on a nice bed there, and have a dream of dancing with her dead parents, and being directed to Ardenvale castle to find her blood. Steeling herself, she begins to return home.

Over with Kellan, he's been running around trying to find witches- and mostly finding chefs, since a lot of witch magic comes from cooking and brewing and as his mom always said, that sorta stuff is the closest normal folk get to witch-magic. Eventually however, he meets Ruby- a red-riding hooded lass his age who thinks he's going to get his dumb self killed by witches because he's going around asking about them so of course they're gonna notice and find him. She more or less forces herself onto Kellan's team, but she's pretty and competent and throws apples at pixies so she kicks ass.

Less awesome (for them, anyway) is that as they head off into the woods to find the rumoured witch Ruby knows about... they encounter a knight in Wolven armour, who is so so so ****ing cool. Oh my god I love this. The Big Bad Wolf Knight is probably one of my favorite King Arthur/Fairy Tale combos here, and it is incredible. It also terrifies our heroes, who could probably fight off a reasonable sized dog (even if Kellan's weapons, a pair of oaken basket hilts with nothing coming out of them who can boomerang to him if thrown) but have NO chance against a knight in full plate.

Thankfully, in all their running, they encounter some Witchstalkers (strange plant like creatures that eat magic things) that distract the Wolf Knight... AND find the brambly manse of the first witch. She's singing about cooking a knight (Imodan!) and having a good time, and she's so distracted that after some faffing about figuring out what to do (Kellan is a large proponent of the "Something something something, we win" stratagem) the Wold Knight returns, and he's forced to put his plan into action.

which is to say, sneak up on the witch and shove her into his cauldron, which immediately melts her to death. Jeez! This frees the Wolf Knight from her ensorceling- turns out he's Ruby's brother Peter, who I have to imagine has picked a peck of pickled peppers once or twice in his life. Talion's court appears to just, take the witch's cauldron as sign of this leg of the journey being complete, and gives Kellan the next leg of the journey; bean stalk time, to find the magic mirror that has been stolen by giants, and use it to find Not Elsa.

Imodan and Peter sadly sit it out, too injured from their various encounters with the fae and each other.


And that's the story! My thoughts:
Spoiler
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Pretty good and enjoyable! I like the story concepts and I like how they're playing out. I like Kellan and his fumbling around Ruby, who is far and away a stand out in the writing, is adorkable. Rowan's wandering path of lightning-smeared darkness is fascinating, if a bit sad. Uncle Garruk please come collect your niece and remind her of how bad corruptive magic is to the soul.

Ultimately, I don't think this story is GREAT, but it's really nice and enjoyable and "easy", for lack of a better term, only really extending into the heavy stuff with Rowan's severe PTSD and pain from rejection, and if that's how this full story holds throughout it'll be fine. Ironically, this means it'll have the same vibe as the original Eldraine novel, which I liked well enough but wouldn't call fantastic by any measure.


And now today's story!

Spoiler: WOE EP3: The Unending Suffering of Queer Rejection and Menacing Geese
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EPISODE 3: Two Great Banquets

Opening with Rowan again. She approaches Ardenvale, a horrific ruin of what it once was. It's surrounded by Phyrexian carcasses, and a fine mist, and up above it are swirls of the Wicked Slumber that are so emblematic of its taint. Rowan feels the lightning growing inside her, and makes her way inside.

Inside is, unsurprisingly, full of sleeping knights, all of Ardenvale- almost all of which she knows. The Slumber seeps into them like puppet strings and the knights night-fight our bright and plucky protagonist, and eventually she resorts to her witch-bolts. They're sleeping so they won't get all that hurt from falling (gotta keep loose in situations like this, as one of the men she strikes down had taught her) and she's keeping control enough that she won't cleave a man in two next. But each shot is stronger, and each shot feels better, more thrilling, than the last.

Then she reaches the ball room, where she's moss-pitted by a bunch of dancing nobility, sword stolen and forced to dance with who we learn is Ashiok, puppeteering the Wicked Slumber afflicted with their nightmare magic. They're having a wonderful time in this paradise, their good friend Eriette being the one responsible, and the one to draw Rowan here, since that dream Rowan had last time was sent by Ashiok expressly for her. Ashiok even lets her have her sword back as she shows her to way to the Ardent Queen, who resides within the heart of Ardenvale.

Eriette's first words are to ask if people ever tell Rowan looks like her mother. A potentially rude thing given the Kenrith's are that exact meme of blonde-haired blue-eyed people with intense stares looking like absolute alien freaks... and Queen Linden was a big beautiful black woman. But no, no, she means her actual mother- or more directly, her sister. Cause yes it turns out the family resemblance Eriette has with the twins is not a case of "oh their mom survived" like we'd thought, but instead she's just a wine-drinking auntie.

Long story short; assuming Eriette is telling the truth, she didn't intend for the Wicked Slumber to spread to other people. It was a full on accident. All she wanted to do was protect her home, like Rowan does. But then she realized something about the Slumber... those who fall within it dream only of those they love and lost the most, having an eternal happiness with them. And giving Eriette some physical labour that is easy to control and requires next to no maintenance, because ultimately she DOES want to rule, but everything she does she does for love of the Realm and its people.

And with Rowan's witch-blood, they might be able to direct it, control it, so all those who wish to dream can do so. And those who don't... well, I mean, that's fine. They don't have to dream. It's okay. If it weren't for the fact that Erietta is THE Snow White villain, known almost entirely by the name "The Evil Queen", I'd potentially buy this. But don't make deals with witches- they're like demons, but folksy, and know how to manipulate far better than some horned hot-head.

Unfortunately Rowan is severely depressed, traumatized, and facing rejection for being "different" and "wrong" and all of her family wants to help "fix" her and wow it's interesting to see a queer narative play out with a canonically bisexual person who has basically never faced discrimination before. Anyway the point is- she thinks auntie has a point, after all that buttering up. The Slumber brings happiness to people who need it, and WAS a good thing since it stopped Phyrexia. So she bends a knee to the Ardent Queen, and becomes her most steadfast, mountain-cleavingest knight.

Meanwhile; Kellan and Ruby present Jack and the Beanstalk. They hired Troyan, the Ravnican Vedalken, to assist, and he's doing a decent job of... not, helping in any real way beyond showing them the path. About half way up the damn thing they point this out and he's like, okay sure fine, and gives them both potions that temporarily inflict them with a Simic like mutation of Frog, and they leap up the rest of the way toooo, Stormkeld, the giant mansion that holds the Magic Mirror.

Thankfully, sneaking around won't be THAT tricky, they're having a waltz today, so everyone is quite distracted... except for Beluna, the matriarch of the giants. It's her birthday, you see, so she was busy getting ready along side her giant goose, and unfortunately comes across our heroes (after we learn that poor Kellan has been menaced by geese his entire life, on top of all the ****ty bullies. Incredible). It seems our heroes are about to meet a grisly fate, no matter how polite Kellan is (he even wishes her a happy birthday!), when Yorvo, King of Giants, master of Gurenburg... abandoner of Gurenburg as it turns out too. He encourages Beluna to let the poor little ones go. She protests since it's her birthday she should get to do what she wants, but eventually Yorvo convinces her that these three can't even LIFT the damn mirror, so you really don't have any fear of them stealing it anyway.

He does this for them partly because he's such a jolly green giant, and partly because Kellan explains he's working for Talion. Yorvo asks he wish Talion well for is sake, glad they're finally back from their long trip. Which... raises questions, that I'll bring up in the post story.

So, begrudgingly, our heroes meet the mirror. But now to find a secret to tell it... thankfully Troyan shows he's worth his money's worth, since he has a pretty quick and easy one; he's not from Eldraine! They're told to go to the Loch Larent to find Not Elsa, and our story ends as our heroes begin the next leg of their adventure!


And that's today's story! Thoughts:
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Like last week's pretty good all around. The most important vibe for Eldraine's stories is that I feel they really ought to feel a bit like fairy tales... and they do! It makes it a bit hard to get SUPER invested in them, but ultimately it's for the good of the story. Little tales that have a touch of darkness but in the end always embody some degree of light, that's how Eldraine should be, and how it has been- this chapter being the darkest what with Rowan finally succumbing to her inner sadness. Rowan's half of things covers the lightness and comedy well though.

I especially like the depth for Eriette here- assuming she's being fully forthright, she's not even EVIL. She made the Slumber out of the goodness of her heart to protect the plane she loves, and it worked. It just started spreading to others and she didn't quite know why, but it gives people happiness so she's okay with that. The power and ruler-ship she craves does make her lean towards the mad-and-crazy-witch vibes, but she's not malicious about things. Very manipulative though, and very not trustworthy.

Speaking of untrustworthy- Talion, the Kindly Lord, who they mentioned is meant to be the analogue to the villain of Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent. But everything they're doing, it seems, comes from a place of good. Except... if Eriette really does mean good by what she's doing, then in a way it kind of is evil, in a ****ed up fae sort of sense.

But then another thought struck me, when Yorvo mentioned Talion's been away on a long trip. There's... no where to GO, necessarily. Where did Talion GO on their long trip. The only answer I can think of is... Talion is Ashiok, and we're getting another "planeswalker pretending to be a creature" thing, like with The Blind Seer and Tibalt's stint as Loki.

If this turns out to be true I'll be thrilled, if also annoyed because I wanna see Ashiok's home plane and if it turns out that plane is Eldraine I'll be a little bummed. But also Ashiok is one of my favorites and seeing them thrive and **** around has been a joy, so that's good.