Forest Garden, Week 3

Virginia Sterrett

 

15: Spear Thicket

• A boggy area with waist-high long grass.

• (!) Spears buried deep in the bog, with their rusted heads facing up, at odd angles. Running into these means taking a hit.

• (??) A successful search reveals (roll 1d6)

  • 1-3 = A bit of rusted armour.

  • 4 = A golden torc worth 10 coins (only once)

  • 5 = Old bones.

  • 6 = The hilt of the fabled Cloudslicer, gilt, wrapped in dragon skin, studded with enamel skulls, and sporting a ragged bit of rust where it’s giant blade used to be.

16: Village Pond

• (!) Lair of the swan monsters, nesting in the reeds. They love to feast on human flesh.

• A small artificial lake ringed with high rushes.

• (?) The dinghy parked on the bank is leaky but mostly intact.

17: Gaoler’s Grotto

• (!) Lair of an armoured ogre demon. Victims are shut up in the cells within the grotto caves.

• (?) Pile of old human bones under a nearby tree.

• Most cells are empty. One contains Magpie, a sly treasure hunter who got herself captured. Her rope, water, sword, and ornate crystal lantern (20 coins, a treasure she filched from the upper levels) are outside her locked cell.

  • Mapie wants: treasure!

  • Needs: her freedom

  • Fears: betrayal, the ogre

  • Knows: how to sneak in by prying open the sluices. A little about the next level up.

• (?) There is a stone cupboard filled with extremely exotic, but long-rusted and disused, instruments of torture.

18: Imperial Boulevard

• Broad path of marble flagstones flecked with moss and lichen. Overshadowed and hemmed in by tall trees with broad gnarly boughs.

19: Blue Apes

• (!) A small colony of blue apes, living in the nearby trees. The apes speak common.

  • Wants: mischief, insignia of rank

  • Needs: they have all they need

  • Fears: swan monsters, wyvern

  • Knows: a little about the denizens of the garden, but nothing beyond

20: Roadblock

• A pile of 3 upended carriages, now tangle of verdigris and rotten harwood. They block the road (but could be climbed over).

• (!) The wyvern monitors this area for prey.

• (??) The carriages were self-propelled and might contain useful salvage.

21: Lift

• Elevator cage down to the green room in the fortress.

• (?) Brass control rods still function.

Forest Garden, Week 2

You'd better believe the spider man has candystripe legs.

 

8: Hedge Maze

• Thick with overgrowth, thorns and flowers, but the original stone maze paths are still (just) viable. Visibility poor due to darkness from overhanging foliage and wayward branches.

• (?) Hacking through the maze walls is possible but difficult.

9: Courtroom Boxes

• (!) A forest knight guards the door to the box.

• A heavy, stuck door of brass seals the box off from the forest.

• Each box overlooks the courtroom from high above.

10: Sluice Gates

• The canals end in closed sluices – slabs of blackened metal submerged in water.

• Slabs can be raised and lowered by chains that pass through loops high on the wall and back down to brass wheels caked in verdigris.

• (?) The wheels are stuck fast.

• (?) The slabs can be pried open, but will need to be held.

• (?) The sluices exit via the water mouths in the city (East and West). As soon as a sluice starts to open, it will pour water through the mouth.

11: Emperor Fig

• (!) The Spider Man lairs high in its boughs, sly and peckish. He is a shapeless mass of rags until his legs unwind.

  • Wants: Lady Pinnes’ spellbook; to toy with his food

  • Needs: to feast on blood

  • Fears: magic, especially Lady Pinnes’

  • Knows: he doesn’t remember how it all started

• The tree is vast, with snake-like roots and smooth branches strung with giant cobwebs.

• (?) The fig’s fruit are not quite inedible, though they smell delicious.

12: Model Village: Lady Pinnes’ Cottage

• (!) Lady Pinnes lairs in the bedroom. She is a fierce pretty face in a bundle of tattered silk and brocade until her runed wasp-limbs emerge.

  • Wants: the spider man dead; to toy with her food

  • Needs: to feast on blood

  • Fears: the spider man’s bite

  • Knows: something about the higher levels, though she’s mostly forgotten

• An aristocrat’s imitation of an idyllic peasant cottage, somehow still clean, colourful and pretty.

• (?) In the bedroom drawers, a gilt silver mirror and an ivory hairbrush worth 5 coins each.

13: Model Village: Abandoned Cottage

• A dilapidated imitation of a peasant house.

• There is a skeleton tucked into the moth-eaten covers of the bed.

• (?) A pair of ruby earrings with 5 coins.

• (?) The covers are fine cotton with a high thread count, now ruined.

14: Model Village: Barn

• The barn is filled with old bones, human and animal. The only tool is a rusted wood axe.

Forest Garden, Week 1

 

Cao Yawei

1: Stair Cupola

• The top of the great stair that connects to the fortress of doors.

• An airy, domed room, guarded by…

• (!) Forest knight, a giant, beetle-like thing with heavy chitin armour, wielding an immense bladed polearm. The knight is sworn to attack intruders in the dome, but does not pursue. It cannot speak.

• (?) A brass wheel in this room can be turned to rotate the panels of the great stair so that it is an actual stair.

2: Forest

• A high canopy of strange and sturdy trees throws everything into gloom. Beneath, a labyrinthine tangle of trunks and overgrown hedges and feral spined blackberries.

3: Canals

• Canals of slimy stone run East and West to the sluice gates, waist deep with dirty water (unless the sluices are opened).

• (!) Drinking the water without boiling it risks unpleasant parasite infections.

4: Aquifer Pipes

• The canals begin here, in 2 bowl-shaped ponds surrounded by fist-sized black tulips.

• (?) Each pond has a large pipe at its base that runs all the way down to the aquifer in the water roads. The pipe automatically releases more water when the pressure above becomes low, keeping the canals filled.

5: Wyvern’s Stoop

• (!) The wyvern that lives in the upper levels likes to land in this clearing to drink from the canal.

• Enormous, taloned footprints among a field of wildflowers.

6: Menhir Bog

• A swamp, pierced by swordgrass and 20 foot menhir fungi, pockmarked with holes, broad as ancient trees, and crawling with moss and insects. Gloomy under the dense canopy.

• (!) The swamp is treacherous with unseen deep areas, and the swordgrass is sharp.

• (!) The honeycombed menhir fungi are home to many small insects, and a pair of hungry, giant moray lizards in the larger holes.

• (?) The menhirs are slightly soft to the touch, but quite sturdy. Some of the holes are large enough to fit your arm or head in.

7: Court of Snails

• Circular stone courtyard with mossy and uneven flags, home to 3’ snails with gilt and gem-encrusted shells.

• (!) The snails are docile unless disturbed (e.g. by someone trying to pry the gems off their shells), at which point they release a cloud of asphyxiating poison.

Fortress of Doors, Week 4

Karla Ortiz

 

 22: Green Door

• Door of solid green granite, in the likeness of a smiling infant face.

• (!) Door has two locks, one in each eye, which must be turned simultaneously. Otherwise, the floor splits in two, dropping anyone standing over cloaca: pit trap, 10’ down onto the bed of nails.

23: Green Room

• Lit by high, dirty windows. A large room of green stone, ruined furniture heaped against one wall.

• (?) One door leads to a lift that runs up to the gardens. The lift is a metal cage with a brass control lever.

24: Disarming Hall

• Long dark hall with scattered nails, broken weapons, and old helmets piled against one side. Lit by cool lamps.

• (!) There is a pressure plate in the middle of the room that activates the powerful magnets in the wall and rings the great alarm bell in the sorcerer’s turret, once.

• (!) The magnets will pin any iron against the wall, including people wearing iron armour. They deactivate after 10 minutes.

• (??) A the flagstones in the centre of the room seem slightly lower than the rest.

25: Hideous Shrine

• A great hall with ruined tables and chairs piled against every wall. In the centre, a blasphemous sculpture of bone and skin, rising 3 metres into the air, seared with runes and radiating disquiet, in the shape of a bizarre insect.

• A blackened brazier on a tripod stands before it.

• (!) The shrine is inert – for now – but sentient and malevolent. It hungers for human hearts. This room is a potent site for rituals.

26: Courtroom

• Vast and echoing cone, narrowing toward the top, some 300’ above. Dappled light falls from high scattered windows onto dead trees. On a raised dais in the centre of the floor: the executioner’s block, blackened with ancient bloodstains, holding a giant beheading axe.

• Viewing balconies scattered high across the cone. These connect via doors to higher levels. The imperial box stands highest, weather in marble flowers and held up by cyclopean goddesses.

• (!) The shrike demon brood lairs in the viewing balconies.

27: Hall of Nails

• A featureless corridor, with long iron nails scattered across the floor.

• (!) Dart traps that continuously shoot darts while they are activated by pressing down the panels in the centre of the floor. The darts shoot from both ends of the hall.

• (??) Central section of flagstones (~20’) is slightly depressed.

28: Library Tower

• (!) Lair of the sorcerer. A deathless scribe from before the fall who fancies herself an uebermensch.

  • insect magic: dissolves, swarms, feasts. Staff of swarming.

  • wants: occult secrets, especially from higher in the tower.

  • needs: flesh for the ghouls and the shrine.

  • fears: the sentinels and demons that guard the other levels. Has explored a little, but turned back.

• Lit by high narrow windows. Books are simply heaped on the ground, on broken furniture, spilling every which way.

• (?) The sorcerer’s bed, a great four-poster with billowy gauze curtains stained with bloody hand prints.

• (??) Books of all kinds, mostly in poor condition. You might find the book you need. Or half of it.

• (??) The sorcerer’s stash, a locked chest under a pile of books. Contains her actual spellbook and a fistful of silver.

29: Bell Tower

• Deserted ruin, empty aside from the bell that hangs from the 30’ high ceiling: 10’ wide, solid brass, covered in snarling faces.

• (?) Mechanical hammers are poised to strike.

• (?) The bell can be heard throughout the city.

30: Wall of Faces

• Wall carved with grotesque faces in expressions of pain, rage, and fear.

• (??) A very fine seam in the wall, the size and shape of a door.

• (??) One face has a twist handle in its gaping mouth. Opens the secret door in the wall.

31: Control Room

• Various levers, marked with ancient runes.

• (?) Two control the sluice gates that release water from the gardens to the city. One rings the bell.