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.