This almost turned into a cluster f-bomb. Here's what happened...
The players have my handout detailing what the leprechauns shared with them overnight. As everyone leaves the tree, the leprechauns encourage the players to seek out one of the archfey agents for the information and aid they might be able to provide. The table made me choose (random die roll) which of the archfey to visit since they were split down the middle.
They roll up on the Green Fey Camp, and ask to see Ragnar. Nobody asks about what happened before, or why. They're a very goal-oriented group and just want Juliana and Orlando back, and think the agent can help them. Robin (who they took a little time warming up to, but I had a chance to remind them that he was a really
good fellow :
: ) gives them the spiel about needing to prove themselves to Ragnar before the big man will grant them an audience. They hand out lassos to each of the players who want them, and then set them free in the glen.
The players approach the unicorns just fine and pass that part of the challenge with flying colors, so I put everyone on the map wherever they want to be, and give them a combat round's worth of skill checks, just to get it moving and make things faster.
Second round sees the archers and the nymph appear on the map, and attack. The unicorns spook, make one attack and get away from the players. One of the players manages to lasso a unicorn and another mounts it as part of the in-combat skill challenge. Unicorn fey steps and laughs at the two players. They are ~sore~ both in and out of character. In fact, they went so far as accusing the satyrs of setting them up to look like fools, just for the lulz. The rest of the table starts beating on the nymph and the archers, while the unicorns remind them to play nice, and move up to kick the players as a gentle reminder.
"The unicorns attacked first, what did you expect us to do?!" became the rallying battle cry of my table. They spike the nymph into the ground (proving they're more of a threat than the fey expected), and the archers start going balls out to defend themselves, while trying to clear off the map. I hand out some free insight checks to show that the unicorns ~were~ just competing because, based on their rolls, the bronies were pulling their punches (halving their rolled damage). Didn't I mention that? The satyrs acted like drunken frat boys playing pranks, and the players tried to convince the unicorns to come back to camp for, "This ~awesome~ mead party!"
Anyway... My table's all but certain they're burned the skill challenge, as far as I could tell and try to recover by potioning up the nymph and calling for a cease fire. The pixies are allowed to disengage as the nymph (a little puzzled) demands to know what they were doing with her unicorns. The table is more than happy to narc on the satyrs who they think pranked them, and left them high and dry in true (probably can't name the very famous image board here on the wizards site, but you all know it as the home of Anonymous) fashion.
The nymph gives them the chance to make right with just one question: "How do you feel about... bears?"
Our pixie witch (who now claims Soryth is a coward, because she ran away from the party) bypasses the first half of the skill challenge on the bears by using his beastmaster ability to just sit down and have a chat with mama bear. She's not bright, but a sample of our pixie's honey pot (this running innuendo would get sneakers on and marathon the rest of the session) convinced the bears to follow to the mead.
Needless to say, the satyrs were ~very~ surprised when the PCs came back to camp. With bears.
The two baby bears were led off the wings and straight into a couple of mead barrels without a single problem. When the sartyr brawlers closed in, one of them got dazed, and the block formation kept mama bear from being able to get around/through the party and towards any of the honey. If our berserker hadn't swapped spots, mama bear would have stomped someone into unconsciousness for their honey pot.
The bralwers served as obstacles to move around, but were soundly thumped before too long. One of the hunters got yanked from his tree and was dispatched very quickly by our thief. I think the other one fled the map through the tree canopy, once he knew he was flying solo. The remaining mead barrels were smashed to bits, and everything went reasonably smooth when they returned to the nymph to claim they made right.
General consensus was the players got an action point back for having worked their way through technically two encounters. Instead of handing out extra XP for the session, I would give my table a chance at the grab bag next session in recompense.
"Play nice!" has become a derisive meme at my table since that night. >_< Sometimes you just never hear the end of something... It's my own fault.
