Mother Earth’s Birthday (4/24/2026)

GM: Jozy Zim
Players: Randy Lubin, Sarah Terman, Sean Nittner, Steven Drouin
System: Under Hollow Hills

In Under Hollow Hills, you play the performers, planners, and crew of a traveling circus. You’re fairies and mortal humans, of various kinds and descriptions, but one and all you’ve found your way to the circus and now you travel with it. You make your way through fairyland and the human world, performing wherever you go, in street fairs and crossroads markets, in vacant lots, fairy palaces, amphitheaters, and among the standing stones. You perform for great and small, and to you, a child’s birthday in a town park is as important as the command of the the great Crowned Heads of fairyland.

Wherever you perform, you change: you change the seasons, you change the fortunes of those you perform for, you change their hearts. You change yourselves. This is the game: we change.

Jozy introduced us to the game, and to the show we were going to perform. Elongated Muskrat had met us at Burning Man (which was remarkable, but the playa was an absolute nightmare to deal with) and sent a raven inviting us (and thus compelling us) to perform at the Celestial Skyscraper for Mother Earth’s Birthday.

Our circus members included:

• Merzalan the Unruffled, The Chieftain Mouse. A young boy, a noble knight who had never been bested in combat (though he had been bested in many other ways. In Summer he sounded like Wind in the Grass, had buck teeth, rufus red fur, work worked mail, and had a boyish nature. [Sean]
• Cobbles, The Stick Figure. A cobbled together mass of sticks and branches, pots and pans, and so many other things. Marbles rattled around inside him and he work a single breastplate (made from a pot belly stove) to be more like Merzalan. [Steven]
• Grey Lizzie, The Feather Cloak. A sparrow (in summer) who danced the high wire, served tea and honey cakes, and was desperately in love with a human named Chester who rejected fairyland. She started this circus with Merzalan to bring joy to Winter. [Sarah]
• Argyle Tibia, the Crooked Wand. A witch and wizard with a foppish hat, who once turned Merzalan into a bird and caged him for Argyle’s cat to torment because Merzalan said he did not know fear (so Argyle introduced them to each other!). [Randy]

Highlights

Our next show would be the Harvest Festival, when Summer begins turning to Winter. We had big plans to make them chat. There is a contest to find the first leaf that changes color. It was going to be a riot.

As we joined the procession to the Celestial Skyscraper we all took on planetary sizes. We walked the star road that lead us to the Milky Way above and looked down at all the world from a rooftop garden. Mother Earth sparked green and blue, with white ice cap hair, dressed in clouds.

Drunk uncle Uranus introduced himself to Lizzie and wanted her to perform for him. Though she declined in the moment, she could see that he guarded his true feelings with his boasts and rough behavior. Inside, he was hurt that his family had given up on him and out of habit more than anything else, he got into a fight with his brother Neptune.

Cobbles gathered the attention of Jupiter’s hundreds of child moons who were all fascinated by him. He tried to show them a trick, but then his arm fell off “oh… can help me with that?” As they picked it up they could hear the marbles rolling around inside. The children fought amongst themselves. Some trying to run off with the treasure, others trying to help reattach the lost arm.

Merzalan tried to ask the cousin bats what they had heard, but they were all too afraid to speak when a great falcon appeared. Merzalan was a tenth his size, but did not waver in his conviction. He addressed him courteously, and the falcon Iron Feather, acted in kind. He noted that we should watch out the for the young planets Pluto and Charon, as they were up to no good. He also gave our cirucs an invite to perform at the Falcon Eerie in the future. An honor!

When Cobbles presented himself before Mother Earth he shoot with such excitement that bits of him self off “So excited to perform for you.”

Grey Lizzie set some astronauts free that Luna had trapped in a cardboard box. They thanked her and made their way (invisible) to Mars.

Argyle found Pluto and Charon, the goth planets, whispering to each other about how pedestrian this party was, how much they didn’t want to be here. In a the reflection of their drinks, Argyle divined an image of a of a vial dripping into a goblet. Sinister children indeed.

We learned that Mother Earth hoped that her family would not ruin her birthday, as they had always done in the past, and that she secretly hoped they would all come together as one.

When Cobbles started setting up the, with the help from Jupiter’s Moons, Merzalan approached Mother Saturn, who stood off from the others and kept her moons from cavorting with the others. Merzalan related to her, he also could not abide disorder, but asked if perhaps she could spare some of her older children to aid…and to make sure everything was done correctly. She ascented and we were finally able to get some of the moons talking to each other…it was a start!

In the grand performance Argyle was our ringleader. He announced our acts and ensorcelled the audience to join the finale for a great dance, where Grey Lizzie led them all to hold hands and spiral in towards each other, as though an re-enactment of the big bang in reverse!

Pluto and Charon tried to poison Mother Earth, to make her toxic to the people who lived on her, but we caught them in the act, Uncle Uranus drank the brew instead, and Merzalan challenged them to a duel.

The birthday was a success, and now we had multiple invitations to follow!

We thought Elongated Muskrat, who booked us to perform, had some nefarious plans, but his memory had been wiped by Argyle’s magic, so if he did, none of us would ever know!