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.