Eat Your Feelings

Eat Your Feelings — Ch 4.4

A castle full of secrets, a duchess with a stolen daughter, and a contract old enough to predate the Forgotten Hour — the party came to solve a mystery and ended up staying for dinner. But the cook in the mountain is a grieving dragon who buries her guilt one bite at a time, and the only road to the truth runs straight through her table: a game of taste, where every memory you tell is weighed against a monster who can smell a lie. What story is worth telling to get what you came for? Pull up a chair. Eat your feelings.

Chapter / Episode	4.4 — Eat Your Feelings
Arc	Echoes of ITYS (DM Brin)
GM	Brin
Date / Duration	2026-04-09 · ~3h34m (gameplay from 00:00:33)
Party	Xeros (Dave), Nortle (Steve), TBD (Chris), Foulclaw (Jesse)
Sits out	Basil (Brin is DM) — present as an amnesiac NPC
Ends on	the five sense-clues nearly gathered, and the realization that Sissily’s lost love was a dragon

Synopsis

Still shrunk and squeaking around inside their merfolk diving suits, the party swims back from the underwater City of Hexes to Castle Leary, where the duchess Marie Holton has turned her banquet hall into a red-yarn conspiracy board over Lashara’s recovered belongings. The picture she’s assembled is grim: Lashara and the magic-hating inventor Astaroth were school rivals who once experimented with cloning, until Lashara bound Astaroth with the Mechanical Covenant — no engines of weight, no blight, no false life. Lashara’s death voided the contract, and now Astaroth is working down its forbidden list in order, out of spite — the poisoned Orchard, the men sealed in its trees, and the cloning yet to come — and she has taken Marie’s daughter Millie Holton north. In the corner, a hand-less, memory-less Basil weeps into a dropped mug; Nortle challenges his amnesiac sister to a footrace and throws it on purpose, just to see her bound again.

Chasing Sissily’s five sense-memories (sight, smell, taste, sound, touch), the party takes the cliffside ferry toward the Cave of Ashes. Along the way the boat-cook Cho pulls up hawking Virgin’s Broth and once-a-month “specials,” Xeros cracks open Astaroth’s Journal — braille plates read blind, his Oracle Die forcing a 2 into an 18 — to learn Astaroth tried and failed to break the Covenant for years, and the party ransacks the Ferryman’s cabin, hauling off burlap sacks of near-weightless Mergonian Scales and the dead man’s mergonian sheet music. Then, in a cozy cave lit by candles and a hot spring, they meet the cook the whole clue-hunt has been pointing at: Ursa, a mountainous green dragon injecting her food with green mist and swallowing whole turkeys, sadness-eating her guilt. To learn what she knows, the party has to sit at her table and master the sense of taste — a round of Two Lies and a Truth over plates of childhood nostalgia, where telling the story right sharpens a lie until even a dragon can’t catch it.

The game is pure heart and comedy — TBD’s cheese-chips-are-not-nachos crusade, Xeros’s Aasimar mother frying shad balls in his burning hand, Nortle weeping over tortellini — and it ends, perfectly, with the lettuce-eating tortle winning the Chopsticks of the Divine Palette on a tiebreaker about Basil’s saddest birthday. Then Ursa spills the truth she’s been eating around: her stolen, mutated son Leon fell in love with the merfolk Sissily, and she, Eadro, and Astaroth struck a deal to punish them — Leon burned Sissily to ash, turned from red to white, and vanished; Ursa fled to this cave and never left. She hands over a bag of Sissily’s ashes (the taste-clue), a key to her Dimension Door, and a lonely plea to be counted as family. With ashes, scales, flower, and the ferryman’s tune now in hand, the party pieces the last clue — the “boy waiting by a fire” Sissily first loved was never the human Baden at all. It was a dragon.

🎵 Song Recap (rhyming — drop into an AI song generator)

Scheme: AABB verses + chorus. Suggested vibe: melancholy gospel-folk with a comfort-food sway.

(Verse 1) Back through the water in a second-skin suit, To a castle of yarn and a duchess’s pursuit; A contract undone when the gnome went cold, And a spiteful inventor working down the scroll.

(Chorus) Eat your feelings — one bite at a time, Swallow the guilt like it isn’t a crime; Tell me a memory, make the lie taste true, Sit at my table — I’m so lonely, aren’t you?

(Verse 2) Cheese chips (not nachos!) and a tortellini tear, Shad balls from Pearl and a mother’s white hair; The turtle who lives on a mouthful of green Won the whole game as the truth’s in-between.

(Verse 3) A dragon confesses what the ashes have said: A son loved a mermaid, so they burned her instead. Red into white, then he flew from the shame — And the boy by the fire had a dragon’s own name.

(Outro) Eat your feelings… till the mountain’s your home — They came for a secret; she just wanted not to be alone.

📋 Point-by-point breakdown (player catch-up — everything that happened)

1. 00:00:00 · 📖 Recap — Brin rewinds ch4.3’s big Orchard battle; the party — still shrunk and wearing merfolk DomCon diving suits — is heading back to Castle Leary to check the wagon of Lashara’s belongings.
2. 00:05:39 · 🧭 Travel — Rather than the long swim from the underwater City of Hexes, the crossing is hand-waved; the party washes up at Castle Leary and is greeted by the tired duchess Marie Holton.
3. 00:09:30 · 🎭 RP — The banquet hall is now a red-yarn investigation board; the hand-less, amnesiac Basil weeps over a dropped mug, so Nortle challenges his sister to a three-lap race and deliberately loses to lift her spirits.
4. 00:18:00 · 📖 Lore — The party reports the men sealed inside the revived Orchard trees; Marie suspects it connects to Astaroth.
5. 00:20:00 · 📖 Lore — Marie’s timeline: Lashara and Astaroth were school rivals experimenting with cloning until Lashara bound her under the Mechanical Covenant — no engines of weight, no blight, no false life. Lashara’s death voided it, and Astaroth is now defying each clause in order and has taken Millie Holton.
6. 00:27:00 · 📖 Lore — Foulclaw recaps Sissily’s Scrail journal: five senses (sight/smell/taste/sound/touch) unlock her stolen memory; taste = ashes.
7. 00:39:00 · 🎭 RP — Marie reveals House Leary’s vanished heir Baeden Leary (“Baden”), who abandoned his dukedom chasing merfolk; Nortle proudly reads back his own note: “Baden Leary, parentheses missing.”
8. 00:44:00 · 🎲 Mechanic — Long rest at the castle; over breakfast Xeros casts Purify Food and Drink, and the party consults Chomama’s fortune cards (yes/no answers) to check the eggs for poison.
9. 00:53:00 · 🎭 RP — Marie exposes the truth about the Quills: Basil murdered hundreds of birds for feathers on the road here, and now sleepwalks — unconsciously sorting the investigation papers into the correct order.
10. 01:03:00 · 🧭 Travel — The party sets out for the Cave of Ashes; Xeros repeatedly splits off to swim alone, to the table’s despair.
11. 01:14:00 · 🎭 RP — Cho pulls up by boat hawking Virgin’s Broth and once-a-month “specials”; TBD’s big toe accidentally shuts down her laptop; Foulclaw trades a Quill for fish and asks the fishermen about Wigweed.
12. 01:33:00 · 📖 Lore — More of Sissily’s journal: Eadro planned to gift the Mergonians to Purdona (who called it a dumb plan), an egg was traded, and Sissily fell for a boy she saw by a fire on the shore.
13. 01:55:00 · 🎲 Mechanic — Xeros pulls Astaroth’s Journal (sanitizable braille metal plates) from his bag of holding — stealing it is why Millie was taken — and burns his Oracle Die to turn a 2 into an 18; Foulclaw reads the braille, revealing Astaroth’s failed cloning and years of trying to break the Covenant.
14. 02:03:00 · 🧭 Travel — Nortle turns invisible to sneak aboard the Ferryman’s boat; the party crosses toward the cliffs.
15. 02:20:00 · 🎭 RP — Baden’s cabin is full of Sissily portraits, tally-mark “kills,” dried Wigweed, mergonian sheet music (the sound clue), and burlap sacks of Mergonian Scales — the party loots ~¾ of them for future scale-mail. The Ferryman childishly locks them in; they fly out the window.
16. 02:35:00 · 🎭 RP — In the candle-lit Cave of Ashes they meet Ursa, a mountainous green dragon injecting her food with green mist and swallowing whole turkeys; the party stages a 12-step intervention on the sadness-eating dragon.
17. 02:44:00 · 🎲 Mechanic — Ursa’s trial: each PC’s plate shows a nostalgic childhood food; they play Two Lies and a Truth, and mastering the sense of taste grants advantage on deception. Detect Magic shows the whole meal is illusory — she’s eating nothing but her own guilt.
18. 02:52:00 · 🎭 RP — The rounds: TBD’s cheese-chips-are-not-nachos con (a riff on the real potato-famine reverse-psychology); Xeros’s shad-balls tale about his Aasimar mother; Nortle’s tortellini; Foulclaw’s monastery mouse-ears-and-waffles.
19. 03:13:00 · 🎲 Mechanic — After a three-way tie, the tiebreaker is a round on Basil’s own backstory (her tortle father “Oba” baked the one birthday cake she was ever acknowledged with); Nortle guesses right and wins the Chopsticks of the Divine Palette.
20. 03:20:00 · 📖 Lore — Ursa confesses she is Leon’s mother; her son, stolen as an egg and mutated from dragon to humanoid, loved Sissily. Ursa, Eadro, and Astaroth struck a deal to punish them — Leon burned Sissily to ash, turned from red to white, and fled; Ursa hid here in guilt ever since.
21. 03:25:00 · 🎁 Reward — Ursa gives the party Sissily’s ashes (the taste-clue), the Chopsticks, and a Dimension Door Key to her cave, begging them to be her family; Foulclaw hands her a Church of ITYS pamphlet and Xeros a Habitual Eaters Anonymous flyer.
22. 03:32:00 · ⏸️ Pause — Reading the sight clue (“the boy waiting by a fire”), the party concludes Sissily’s lost love was Leon, not the human Baden; TBD ties the white, dragon-tail-shaped Orchard tree to it. They’ll head back to Castle Leary next session.

Player Characters

Character	Player	Race	Class	Note
Xeros	Dave	Tiefling	Bard	Keeps splitting the party to swim alone; reads Astaroth’s braille journal with the Oracle Die; his taste-tale of his gold-winged Aasimar mother wins the round
Nortle	Steve	Tortle	Monk	Throws a footrace to cheer his amnesiac sister; the lettuce-eating tortle who wins the master-of-taste Chopsticks of the Divine Palette with a Meemaw tortellini story
TBD	Chris	Goliath	Wizard	Crusades that cheese chips are not nachos; a stray big toe shuts down Chomama’s laptop; pays for everyone’s meals
Foulclaw	Jesse	Owlin	Sorcerer (Wild Magic)	Interprets Sissily’s journal, reads Astaroth’s braille via Comprehend Languages, supplies the party’s [[Span Quills

NPCs

NPC	Role	Note
Marie Holton	Duchess of Castle Leary	Proper, British, exhausted; runs the Lashara–Astaroth investigation; mother of the taken Millie
Millie Holton	Marie’s daughter (taken)	Last seen sick, dragged north by Astaroth; Cho confirms she “not look good”
Basil	Nortle’s sister (amnesiac NPC)	Hand-less, memoryless, depressed; sleepwalks and sorts the papers; her tortle dad “Oba” is the tiebreaker’s answer. Sits out — Brin is DM
Cho	Traveling boat-cook (“Chomama”)	Old Tabaxi who sells Virgin’s Broth, fortune cards, and innuendo; reports Astaroth headed ~100 miles north with a sick Millie
Ursa	Green dragon of the Cave of Ashes	Massive, “overweight,” sadness-eating illusory food out of guilt; runs the taste trial; Leon’s mother
Baeden Leary	The Ferryman (“Baden”)	House Leary’s vanished son; his cabin hoards Sissily portraits, tally “kills,” and scales — and the party begins to suspect he’s no mere human
Sissily	Merfolk / Morpho woman (absent)	Amnesiac; her journal drives the whole clue-hunt; revealed to have been burned to ash by the one she loved
Astaroth	Magic-hating inventor (off-screen)	Freed by the voided Covenant; defying each forbidden clause in order; stole Millie because Xeros stole her journal
Leon	Ursa’s lost son (off-screen)	Stolen as an egg, mutated dragon→humanoid; loved Sissily, then burned her; turned red→white and fled
Lashara	Deceased gnome (~400)	Bound Astaroth with the Covenant; her death set everything loose

Factions

Faction	Note
Mergon	The merfolk/mergonians of the [[Hexes
Castle Leary	House Leary’s cliffside seat, now run by Marie’s line; its distillery basement and portraits anchor the mystery
The Church of ITYS	Foulclaw’s faith; he blesses meals, reads braille from “reenactment class,” and hands the dragon a pamphlet

👹 Monsters

Monster	Threat / Role	Note
Ursa	Green dragon	Not fought — a taste trial, not a battle; venom-injects her food, sadness-eats out of guilt, and gifts the party her secrets and a key
Baeden Leary	The Ferryman	Not fought — locks the party in his cabin; the “kills” on his wall and his childish behavior mark him as a threat the party plans to ambush next time
Astaroth	The season’s antagonist (off-screen)	Blight, cloning, kidnapping — defying the Covenant clause by clause; the reason Millie was taken
Leon	Red→white dragon (off-screen)	Burned Sissily to ash as part of the ritual, then vanished

🎙️ Notable Moments

00:07:48 — Emerging from the water, the party is greeted by the duchess Marie — and Brin tries out a new show catchphrase on the boys.

GM (Marie): Dave, don’t make it weird, daddy. Xeros: Don’t make it weird… daddy? GM: …okay, I am officially never saying that again. Almost threw up. TBD: Just don’t look at us when you say it. That’d probably be better.

00:13:50 — The amnesiac, hand-less Basil has dropped her mug and started crying, so Nortle tries the one thing that ever made his sister happy: beating her in a race.

Nortle: Basil, would you like to run a race against me? A little exercise will make you feel better. Nortle: (quietly, to the table) I’m making myself roll at disadvantage. GM: (rolling) I got a 21… and she crosses the line one hair ahead. Nortle: She’s bounding. A little pep in the step. (then, later) If she ever gets back to normal — I did win The Race. I have a reputation to maintain.

00:32:15 — Reviewing the leather-clad inventor's name, TBD finally catches the pun Brin has been sitting on all season.

TBD: A star off. Astaroth. That’s very clever. GM: My epic signature! It really failed. I tried real hard. Foulclaw: She’s a little full of herself. GM: (as Astaroth) If she comes back, we’ll definitely pretend like we’re still hypnotized.

00:39:58 — Marie is exasperated that the party never listened to Millie's tour of the castle portraits — until one player produces the receipts.

GM (Marie): Clearly you weren’t listening. Didn’t Millie give you an intro when she brought you in? She showed you the portraits. Nortle: I did write it down as an important NPC. “Baden Leary — parentheses, missing.” GM (Marie): Thank you. Looks like someone was listening. TBD: I wrote down: “the bait — got obsessed with mermaids.”

01:18:05 — Xeros keeps swimming off alone instead of waiting with the party, so when Chomama's laptop dies mid-scene, the GM finds a use for him.

GM (Chomama): You left the party, so guess what you’re doing? You’re crawling under the table and you’re fixing this. That’s called karma. TBD: (under the table) What did I push? GM: Look what your big toe do! He got a big, big toe, pressed the button! Xeros: Wait — is that a button? There’s been a button down there this whole time?

01:33:09 — Foulclaw asks the boat-cook Chomama whether she has any egg-drop soup. She is inspired.

Foulclaw: Does Chomama have any egg-drop soup? GM (Chomama): Ovulation stew! Oh, I have been thus inspired. Did you know there is a daily special today? TBD: Oh, please don’t say it that way. GM (Chomama): This just in — they only come once a month, you know what I’m saying. Sit down, it tastes real good.

02:36:18 — Deep in the Cave of Ashes, the party finds a colossal green dragon injecting her food with venom and swallowing whole turkeys — and immediately stages an intervention.

GM (Ursa): How did you get in here? Xeros: You don’t need to eat your feelings. There are other ways of getting that out. TBD: Do you want to get into a 12-step program? Maybe? Nortle: Weight Watchers worked for me.

02:45:18 — Ursa's taste trial serves each hero a childhood food. TBD's is a plate of cheese chips — and the table will not let his lifelong crusade slide.

GM (Ursa): (reading TBD’s plate) Those are nachos. TBD: It’s not nachos! It’s cheese chips! Very different. GM: I support this — when I was younger we cooked cheese chips in the microwave, and it was not the same as nachos. TBD: (second “fact”) Cheese chips are nachos, one and the same. (later) And that one was the lie — which means you all agree cheese chips are not nachos.

02:46:10 — Nortle's plate appears, and the deadpan monk is overcome by the most Nortle emotion imaginable.

GM: The pasta on his plate is tortellini. Nortle: A tear starts to roll down my face. Poor little guys… they never had a chance. Xeros: It’s like the most vain, narcissistic thing — GM: Please, that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

03:17:27 — After a three-way tie, a tiebreaker round about Basil's saddest birthday crowns the winner — and the prize could not have gone to a worse palate.

GM (Ursa): (handing over the chopsticks) These are the Chopsticks of the Divine Palette. You’ve mastered taste. Foulclaw: I love that the guy who eats lettuce is the one who got master of taste. GM: Literally the worst palate ever. Nortle: I accept them with honor.

03:20:27 — The taste game won, Ursa finally tells the party why a dragon lives alone in a cave, eating herself sick.

GM (Ursa): My son’s name is Leon. He and Sissily fell in love — complete and utter opposites. TBD: Leon the Dragon? GM (Ursa): He was stolen from me when he was just an egg, and mutated. He used to look like me… me and Adro and Astaroth all struck a deal to punish them. He was a red dragon — but after he burned Sissily, he turned white. And then he left.

🗺️ Locations

Location	Mentioned / Traveled	Note
Castle Leary	Traveled	The cliffside seat; its banquet hall is now the party’s red-yarn investigation room over Lashara’s belongings
Cave of Ashes	Traveled	Ursa’s cozy lair — table, hot spring (acts like a long rest), and a dimension door; reached by the cliffside ferry
Hexes	Traveled	The underwater City of Hexes where the [[Mergon
The Forbidden Fruits Orchard	Mentioned	ch4.3’s battlefield, now regrown — with men sealed inside the trees and a white, dragon-tail-shaped tree
Pearl	Mentioned	Xeros’s hometown; the back-alley birthplace of his shad-balls delicacy

🎒 Items

Item	Used / Introduced	Note
Chopsticks of the Divine Palette	Awarded	Wondrous item to Nortle: taste anything to instantly ID poison/disease/magic, +2 healing from food & potions
Oracle Die	Used	Xeros’s pre-rolled divination die; turns a 2 into an 18 to read Astaroth’s journal
Astaroth’s Journal	Used	Sanitizable braille metal plates from Xeros’s bag of holding (its theft is why Millie was taken); records failed cloning + attempts to break the Covenant
Scrail	Used	The untearable waterproof paper Sissily’s five-senses journal is written on
Mergonian Scales	Looted	Burlap sacks of near-weightless, ultra-tough merfolk scales from Baden’s cabin — the party takes ~¾ for scale-mail
Wigweed	Introduced	Cliffside seaweed that yellows in the fall; found dried in Baden’s cabin
Virgin’s Broth	Introduced	Chomama’s innuendo-laden signature soup (“penetration of flavor”); grants a long rest
Dimension Door Key	Introduced	A small cube; opens a door back to Ursa’s Cave of Ashes, always depositing users at the mountain’s base
Span Quills	Used	Foulclaw’s own body-grown quills; the party’s pens — and the reason Basil murdered hundreds of birds
Cho’s Tarot Deck	Used	Chomama’s fortune cards, here answering yes/no on whether breakfast is poisoned
The Mechanical Covenant (Lashara-Astaroth Contract)	Introduced	Lashara’s binding contract on Astaroth — no engines of weight, blight, or false life; voided by Lashara’s death

⛩️ Pantheon & Religion

Power	Mentioned / Seen	Note
Father ITYS	Invoked	Foulclaw’s faith; he blesses food, cites parables, and pamphlets the dragon
Eadro	Mentioned	God of the [[Mergon
Purdona	Mentioned	The goddess Eadro meant to gift the mergonians to; per Sissily’s journal, she thought it a dumb plan

Cliffhanger

The party leaves the Cave of Ashes with a bag of Sissily’s ashes, a dragon’s chopsticks, and a key back to a lonely monster’s table — but the real prize is the last clue clicking into place. Sissily’s first love, the “boy waiting by a fire,” was never the human Baden. It was Ursa’s stolen, mutated son Leon — the dragon who burned her to ash. Four senses gathered, one to go, and a white tree back in the Orchard shaped exactly like a dragon’s tail. The mystery isn’t who she loved — it’s who made him do it.

Transcript

Full cleaned transcript: 260409-ch4.4-eat-your-feelings-transcript · bundle on the tedit scratch SSD (260409-ch4.4).

Related

Echoes of ITYS · 260403-ch4.3-the-trees-of-insanity · 260501-ch4.5-caged-wisdom · Castle Leary · Ursa · Sissily · Astaroth · Leon · Baeden Leary · The Mechanical Covenant (Lashara-Astaroth Contract) · Marie Holton