#henri decannes

[cursewoodrecap]

Session 14: Nice Sociable Folk

Everyone is very nice to us, except one grumpy guy.

This one fought me, folks. And Quarantine Depression didn’t really help. So it’s a bit less pared-down than it could be. But speaking of people who should probably be quarantined, have some virulent fungus.

We return to the scene: Valeria has just unceremoniously yanked a mandrake root out of the ground, and it’s doing what mandrakes do, screaming at the top of its lungs (...do plants have lungs???) and raising hell. Which is not GREAT if you’re in the middle of the Spooky Woods Where Monsters Live.

We’re reckless idiots, but that’s on brand.

Shoshana rolls a Nature check to know it’ll stop screaming on its own eventually, and that getting it into our Haversack will stop or dull the noise. Otherwise, the recommended mandrake-harvesting technique is that extreme heat or cold will stun its screaming. Usually people harvest them with daggers heated over a flame.

Problem: Shoshana is only one who knows this, Clem and Val are stunned, and it’s LOUD, so it’s hard to talk. So it’s up to the sorcerer to handle it. She doesn’t want to burn the dang thing to a crisp and make it useless as a spell component, so blasting it with magic is right out. She snatches a torch out of Clem’s backpack and lights it, heating up her small dagger.

Clem fails to shake off the stun, but Valeria recovers. Gral throws an inspiration at Clem, who’s still stuck, and frantically glances around the area to see if the BIG LOUD NOISE has alerted any enemies. In fact, it very much has. A variety of heavy shapes are uprooting themselves out of the dirt, turning blank mossy faces towards us. 

Shosha tries to hurry up on silencing the mandrake, but her haste causes her to fumble it. At least she doesn’t damage the plant.

Gral, still watching, sees the grassy, lumpy creatures pick up rocks and start hurling them. Shoshana gets bonked. A rock bounces off Valeria’s armor. Gral’s looking at those ones, when another one hefts out of the ground behind him and conks him with a big ol’ stone.

“Ah,” Valeria observes. “Yeetroots.”

Clem, even with inspiration, still fails to unstun herself, clutching her hands to her sensitive elven ears.

Gral swings his sickle into a yeetroot’s rooty, tuberous body, a thick sap dripping from the gaping wound. Meanwhile, Shoshana takes a second stab with her hot dagger and manages to silence the awful screaming.

The one Gral bloodied picks him up entirely and yeets him at Clem. Gral bounces off the drow’s armor comically. Clem remains completely undamaged while Gral pouts at being unwillingly Fastball Specialed. Valeria and Shoshana scatter, dodging another volley of heavy rocks.

Taking an entire orc to the face, though, finally breaks Clem out of the stun. She’s ready to lumberjack down some trees - oh, wait, Gral’s lying there moaning. The battle medic gives him a good slather of Space Mayo, and he’s fine, though he probably smells like a sandwich.

Gral and Shoshana pop off a couple of spells for minor effect, the tuberous creatures shrugging off most of the effects. They’re bothered enough to retaliate, though; the one Valeria’s facing off against hefts her into the air for another round of PC Bowling, flattening Shoshana. The hail of rocks from the rest of the Yeetroots doesn’t let up, but their aim is only mediocre.

Aethis snacks on a root-person Valeria nicely carves up for them, and as Clem gets to slicing and dicing it looks like the fight’s falling in our favor.

Suddenly, a short human guy in rough clothing charges ungracefully out of the woods, crossing through the undergrowth strangely quickly for someone so unathletic-looking. He clonks a Yeetroot over the head with a long wooden staff, whacking it a few times for good measure so it stays down, and then looks up at us with a frustrated expression. “What the hell are you kids doing? Get out of here!” he shouts irritably, like we’re trespassing on his lawn. 

He’s got a bit of an accent. It’s much heavier than Shoshana’s; even by her small-town standards it’s the rural accent of someone who speaks Old Valdian regularly.

Gral Dissonant Whispers a Yeetroot, causing it to run past Clem and the Old Dude. It runs straight into Clem’s sword and dies. Shoshana, Valeria, and Aethis efficiently dismantle the last one standing.

Clem’s ears, still sore from the mandrake’s cry, pick up additional movement through the woods. Sounds like the Yeetroots weren’t the only ones interested in loud, clumsy prey.

The old man seems to know it too, and he starts to scold us. “Pulling a mandrake while the woods are like this? Dummkopfen! Now get outta here! Scram!”

“I’m sorry, we didn’t have a choice-“

“What are you doin’ yakkin’? MOVE!” he shouts, turning and dashing into the underbrush. Shoshana barely catches him muttering “those IDIOTS” in Old Valdian as he scrams.

Well, we’re definitely not gonna stick around either. Old Dude went northeast. The Sturmhearst camp is to the south. We’re all thinking this weird crotchety old man is a druid, so he’s gonna know the best way to go and also we could totally ask him a few burning questions. With a concise nod to each other, we dash after the druid, Valeria swinging herself up onto Aethis’ back.

The wooooooooods are aliiiiiiiive, with the sound of monsterrrrrs, but following the druid’s trail we manage to dodge down an old gully and manage to shake any of them who came to investigate the commotion. Unfortunately, we’ve just put all those monsters in between us and the Sturmhearst camp. We pause, crouched in creek bed, as the last walking tree’s footfalls fade into the distance.

Gral breaks the silence: “…wait, was that a druid?”

Shoshana grumps. “How are we gonna FIND him? He could be a SQUIRREL by now! And I’m surprised he even speaks city-folk Valdian.”

We got the sense of how he moved – he hasn’t left a footprint, but we’ve picked up his pattern a bit. We could keep following him, and Valeria suggests the quest will give time for the monsters attracted by our noise to disperse. Gral doesn’t want to pass up the opportunity to find out what the Druids know about the Prisoners, and Valeria’s hopeful he might have seen the other Order of the Rose knight about.

Shoshana beefs her Survival check. We’ve been doing well following his pattern of not disturbing plant or animal tracks, trying to think like a druid wood. But we hit a dead end.

And then Clem casually points out some tracks none of the rest of us can even make out.

Please. Clem Haxan has tracked wood elf partisans. One aging human is nothing.

We follow Clem’s lead for about an hour. As midday approaches, we notice the sense of vibrant, chaotic, suffocating life is fading a little, and the sickening-sweet scent of flowers and spores has lessened. We come upon a grove of trees, standing tall, centered around one utterly massive tree in the middle whose canopy is just barely open enough to allow beams of light to spear through. In every beam, a sapling has begun to grow. Others, a little more seasoned, have grown tall and thin to push up through the great tree’s canopy.

Deeper in the grove, Shoshana can hear a voice in Old Valdian, and it’s mostly swearing.

“Dumb fuckin’ kids, I swear, first it was those meshuggenah bird mask idiots, now we got - what the hell were those morons doing, stirring everything up? Hard enough when the woods are just tryin’ to kill ME without having to keep an eye our for-”

It seems to be a one-sided conversation. Rambling, but pausing for responses that we can’t hear. Shoshana cautiously steps closer.

She wants to be respectful, but the closest thing Old Valdian has to deferential is a greeting without commentary. “...Hello?”

The voice pauses, and then speaks to its silent companion. “Do ya hear something? Go check it out.”

We all roll real bad Perception. Gral is starin’ real hard, and he only sees a squirrel loop the big tree. We don’t hear the druid say anything else.

She tries a Message cantrip: “We wish to respect your solitude, but we need to speak with you.” Hopefully a decent Persuasion roll will do.

“Wait. Hold up,” the voice grumbles in Old Valdian, heaving a massive sigh. “They’re idiots, they’re not gonna-” 

Something big makes a “GRAAHK” noise. 

“No, they’re not gonna go away unless I talk to them. Look, they followed me here. I knew it was unavoidable.” He calls out to us in common Valdian. “All right, come on in, no funny business.”

Being seasoned D&D players, we’re hesitant to cross the giant patch of fallen leaves, but it turns out it’s not a booby trap; it’s just what happens when you’re under a big ol’ tree. They are pleasingly crunchy and probably serve as an excellent intruder warning.

The druid isn’t pleased with our caution. “Either leave or come over here! Let’s get this over with.”

We circle the tree to find a small hut in a sunbeam, with a little garden. The old guy, looking like a hippie Danny DeVito, is sitting outside on a fallen log, prodding a small campfire with a stick as he heats a kettle over it. More notably, there is an owlbear curled up next to the fire.

“I wouldn’t get too close, he likes eatin’ fingers,” the druid grumps. “That’s why he’s called Fingers.”

“Oh! This is Aethis, and I’m Kyr Va-”

“Yeah, yeah, get to the point.”

“Are you a druid?”

“Ah, right to the point.”

We manage to stumble over a quick introduction, and that we want to ask him about the Druids’ actions against the artist’s colony in Holzog.

“So all druids know each other, huh?” He starts peeling a potato, unimpressed.

"I don’t know how druids work! There was an organized attack against cultists of the Key, at an artist's colony at Holzog Valley. Do you know of this, and are the Druids in an organized resistance against the Prisoners?"

 “Are druids an organized anything?” Shoshana snarks.

Druid DeVito rolls his eyes. “Look, mask guy. I go where I’m needed. I don’t know anything about what’s going on in Holzog. I barely know what’s going on here, I just got here!”

“You... just got here?”

“Yeah, like a month or two ago. Hard to get lay of the land when EVERYTHING’S TRYIN TA KILL YOU, not to mention it’s hard to get a handle on things when idiot adventurers are runnin’ around STIRRIN’ THINGS UP!”

Gral soldiers on. “Well, what do you know of the curse corrupting this area? We were here gathering supplies for a ritual, but it seems like there is also trouble here, what with the villagers and the trolls."

Gral is very polite, so the druid grudgingly answers. “Look, here’s how it goes. This” – he taps the tree – “is Mother Tree. It’s important, for reasons. There’s always supposed to be a druid warden here. But something happened. She’s gone now. So I heard it through the grapevine, and I got called in.”

“Was it a literal grapevine?” 

“The old bag and the windy bastard have ways of getting in touch with us, if we’re needed. They told me I gotta go here and – well, so I came. I’m tryin’ to figure out what happened to old warden, figure out what I can do to keep the place safe. It’s a lotta work! But right now I’m trying to make lunch. Because lemme tell you, this owlbear is a lot calmer than most of his type, but he WILL eat me if he gets too hungry.”

“As far as what I know about it? Half the valley got taken. Everything west of the river got overgrown. Haven’t spent much time on the other side; I don’t wanna get spotted. You see what happens when somebody gets a look at me.” He gestures dismissively to all of us. “No good deed, and all that.”

“So half the valley got overgrown. My sources tell me the other half is honestly not doin’ much better, even though it looks better on the outside. Like I said, I’m still tryin’ to get my networks up and running, which is difficult when most of my sources are working for the enemy.”

“Yeah, the villagers have fungus brain,” Shoshana tells him. “Someone who came from this village seemed to be corrupted by fungus, and was working to encourage its spread. Also, they’re bringing in a Fuckton of Trolls to Bad Herzfeld. Which, if they get fungused, is...bad.”

Valeria, meanwhile, is attempting to feed the owlbear some granola. After a moment, she elects to just toss the bag in its direction. Handfeeding an owlbear is Not Wise.

“I’ll add that to my list of problems,” the old man grumbles. “Bunch of sporebrained trolls, sporebrained villagers, plants tryna kill me…all right. How many they got so far?”

“One troll was definitely fungused, but he’s dead. There’s about 8 at the troll moot now. Their food stores look spore-free so far, but we’re going to be looking into the village more.”

“Yeah, they wouldn’t want to be corruptin’ ‘em yet, it’d tip their hand too early. Trolls are usually solitary types. With how the sporebrains work, any new arrivals would be majorly creeped out. They’d want to get a critical mass before they try to get ‘em brainwashed.”

We agree that’s probably the plan. We explain the situation in Holzog, and ask what he knows about the druids’ actions there and whether the druids are the Prisoners’ jailers.

He shrugs. “Me and mine, we don’t talk to each other much. We each got our beats to cover. It’s not like they give us a manual – we’re not super fond of writing things down. Rumor is there’s old sources – real old – that have some knowledge, but otherwise you gotta get lucky and get a visit from the bosses themselves. But they’ve never been the most reliable.”

“The...bosses? Like Baba and Gramps?” Shoshana asks, referring to the old grandmother and grandfather gods of the woods.

“Yeah, they don’t exactly come when you ring a bell. Now I don’t know what old rattlechains, or the angry lady, or the quiet guy, or the sneaky bastard are like, but the chiefs aren’t communicative at the best of times. And since this fakakta Curse thing started they’ve been harder to get a hold of. We get our orders, they keep us busy, but there ain’t much in the way of answers. I’m told to guard this place, and do my thing. The ‘Prisoners,’ or whatever? That’s new to me.

“Look, stay away from the villagers, anyone especially friendly, anyone who talks about love, togetherness, caring, all that crap. Don’t go anyplace overgrown, anyplace with too many mushrooms. Spores will get in your brain.”

“I just do what I’m told. Or infer, really, I’m not told enough to do what I’m told.

If you wanna be helpful – something’s spreading this. The Curse spreads enough on its own, but something’s deliberately spreading it around. Go hunt for whatever’s doing that. Also, I can’t find previous warden – y’know, the person whose beat this is supposed to be.

He’s mostly losing interest in us, but can’t resist one last jab. “What do you need that mandrake for anyway? Half the things you think they can do, they can’t.”

Valeria jumps at the chance to talk about her Quest. “Over in Mornheim they’re dealing with the undead sort of curse. There’s a disease in the water affecting the whole population, and we found a ritual to purify the river! It’s not the sort of magic I usually work with, but I think I can make it function with the plants that I need. I’ve got almost all of them!”

“Hmm. Whatcha missin’?”

We check our notes. “Norbert’s Wort?”

Those Sturmhearst guys might have some, if you wanna try to get it off ‘em. Or there’s a bunch of it growin’ not far from the riverbank. Lemme see this ritual of yours, I wanna make sure you’re not wastin’ your time.”

He gives it the once-over with a surprisingly appreciative eye. “Oh, huh. Rosalind’s work.” He rolls up the scroll, slaps it back into Valeria’s claws, and turns to walk out into the wood. “Get outta here. I got things to do. If you stick around, Fingers will eat ya.”

Wait.

There’s a beat, and then Shoshana starts yelling. “WAIT, ROSALIND? BECAUSE WE FOUND THIS IN THE HOUSE OF A LADY NAMED ROSALIND. AND I DIDN’T THINK YOU GUYS WERE INTO HOUSES? WAIT COME BACK SHE’S A GHOST NOWWWWWW-”

He’s gone. Dammit.

We wave goodbye to Fingers.

As we cautiously make our way out of the grove, Gral is asked to make a Charisma check. A leaf, still stuck to a small bent twig, falls from the great tree and gently helicopters down. He reaches up a hand and catches it out of the air, easily, as if it was intended to find his hand. With an excellent perception check, he glances up and sees the silhouette of a motherly face in the branches. It’s hard to spot among the rustling green canopy, but it’s looking down at us from the branches - he can almost see a wooden torso in one branch – and then the shape pulls back into the branch, moving through it like sand.

Gral experiences an internal hell yes.

Gral has received: one twig with some leaves! It has vibes. This thing is definitely special, and a gift – not from the druid, but from the Mother Tree.

It clearly has Properties, but we do not know what they are.

So, what next? Trying to get the last plant for the spell has a nonzero chance of getting us lost overnight. We could stop by the Sturmhearst annex, or check in on the trolls....wait. Dang it. This morning we told that old lady we’d stay in town overnight. And we’ve already stood up one dinner invitation this arc.

As Clem capably leads us around dangers and toward Sturmhearst, Gral stares at his twig. He can see the leaves seem to move without wind, and he slowly realizes he’s able to predict which ways Clem is gonna lead us based on which way the leaf radar blows. It seems the gift can help find safe passage in the wood!

With a good survival check, we manage to skirt all dangers and the riled-up zone. Once again we smell acrid smoke from Sturmhearst camp and pass by the impassive looking giant owl guards with their flamethrowers. We see Rita the robot chicken hop by with something in her mouth, and follow her into camp. She ignores us and bops right up into the house that contains Prof. Ulmus’ lab.

Hey, we should go check on Flynn! A student directs us to where they’ve set up their clinic in an old barn, and soon we are confronted with a steely-eyed Fiona, arms crossed, glaring at us. “Hi, we, uh-”

She is silent, as usual, but Valeria rolls a nat 20 insight and can read her face like a book. She’s mad that we didn’t come back when we said we would – we made them worry, and also left them alone in this den of academic madness.

Valeria stumbles over a sincere apology until she is interrupted by a solid barbarian hug.

The paladin takes this as her opening to gossip about our day. “We got plants! And got real lost! We slept over a troll’s place!” Fiona makes a surprised gesture. “Yeah, there’s like eight. They have HOUSES. It’s surreal?!?!?! One of them thinks he’s a doctor!”

She’s interrupted when Dr. Ulmus sticks her hand through a curtain and hands off a vial of blood. Valeria now has blood. “Take this to my lab, please.”

Valeria blinks. “O...kay?” She dutifully leaves to take the blood to the lab.

Shoshana can’t keep her mouth shut. “Uh, ma’am? ….did you not notice that wasn’t a grad student?”

“Hm?”

“You gave this to the paladin.”

“…Good. She’ll follow orders. WAIT, YOU’RE BACK!” The doctor bursts through the curtain, beak-first.

“We come bearing fungus!” Clem gives her a vial of fungus. Clem is then ordered to take this to Prof Ulmus’s lab. She does. 

So now we have two tanks in a lab. They try to flag down a grad student and make them do it . No, too bad, they’re busy. Clem is like, what if I’m enormous and intimidating? But the grad student is not impressed. “Please. Do you know what kind of horrors I’m studying? You can’t terrify me.”

Valeria is like FFFF CAN YOU PLEASE JUST TELL ME WHERE THE BLOOD GOES. But the grad student leaves.

Oh hey, that rack has vials of red stuff. She puts the blood in the blood rack.

Clem shrugs, sets the fungus on a random table, and leaves.

Back at the clinic, a pale and haggard Flynn stumbles out and leans on Fiona. “My sister was very worried,” he tells us, making a flimsy effort at his usual grandiosity. “I, of course, had total confidence in you!”

Fiona, deadpan, signs: [He cried.]

Professor Ulmus finally emerges in full. “Well, Mr. Fairgold, I’d say you’re well on your way to recovery! Practice those breathing exercises I showed you and take it easy for next few days.”

Valeria and Clem hustle back, spouting apologizes for missing dinner, because Valeria is polite and Clem is genuinely upset at missing the opportunity to pick the doctor’s brain about medicine.

“Hmm, yes, you’re back! Well, you’re all alive…” Professor Ulmus starts inspecting us, her beaked mask tilting this way and that. “…oh dear.” She prods Clem a bit. “Yes, hmm.” She briskly hands Clem some sort of compressed herb poultice. “You’ll want to eat this.” Clem immediately makes a med check. It’s some kind of medicine, I guess. Clem swallows it. It tastes super gross.

“So!” she chirps. “I look forward to hearing what you’ve learned. How was your expedition, did you find what you were looking for?”

“Most of it,” Valeria admits. “We’re still looking for Norbert’s Wort.”

“I have a bit, but it’s spoken for, I’m afraid. Anyhow, I believe a dinner was planned! It’s a good thing you didn’t show up last night, I forgot all about it. I had to do quite a lot of work on Mr. Fairgold. The fungal infestation in his lungs should be cleared up, although the treatment did leave some aftereffects. Nausea, some trouble breathing for a few days. Nothing major.”

Valeria just sort of awkwardly lifts her hand, offering Lay Ons. He waves her off, bluffing his way past her insight. Sure, he’s fiiiiiiiine.

“He was fortunate. Not the worst I’ve seen – something worse would have required a substantially more radical treatment. More invasive, too. Were any of you exposed?”

“Uhh, not to that, but to other things?” We tell her about the Snorlax bear over a plate of sandwiches.

“Yes, I’ve seen similar phenomena – a fungal colony hijacking a living creature. Unfortunately that’s where my expertise ends – I might have to discuss with my, ugh, colleague in the aberrant biology department.”

Valeria tells her about the dream mushroom feast. “So you tripped on mushrooms and hallucinated and fought some mushroom men. We’ve all been there.” The professor waves it off with disinterest. “Yes, spooky curse magic messing with your mind, I’m sure it was harrowing. And/or enlightening. But I don’t have time for spooky magics; I’m a woman of SCIENCE! Speaking of, Clementine, where did you put that fungus?”

“On a table with similar looking specimens?” 

“Pardon me a moment.” She immediately stands and runs. We see a huge guard stomp toward the lab. Then flamethrower noises. There’s a bit of screaming. 

She emerges slightly scorched, fixing her coat. “That…was the wrong table. It’s cross contaminated! Well, I suppose that’s the cost of science. Sometimes, in order to make great discoveries, you must burn a table of samples before they kill you.”

“I’m sorry, I asked a grad student and he said put it anywhere, really!” Clem bluffs.

“Which one?” 

“....um, a short guy wearing a bird mask?

“Ah, Jean-Pierre, I know him. We will have words later. Never trust an entomologist, they’ve all got a head full of beetles or something. So! What’s next for you? I can’t say we have a ton of room here, but I’m sure we can try to find somewhere for you to stay...”

Valeria idly taps the clear bead on her earring chain. “Well, we DID promise to stay at the inn in town tonight...”

Ulmus hums discontentedly. “I trust the villagers precisely as far as my guards can throw them.”

Shoshana butts in. “Right? Okay, because the last time we stayed in a fungus person’s house I was RIGHT and it SUCKED.”

We go back and forth, deciding we’ll keep our promise but stay in the annex for dinner. A feast in Mushroom Town sounds...ominous.

Clem, determined, asks the professor if she can have a flamethrower. Sadly, it doesn’t matter how much Clem pleads her strength and skill, those had to be SPECIALLY REQUISITIONED from the ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT. She had to call in favors! Now if you’ll excuse her, she has work to do.

We have an early dinner, and then head to other side of river for the first time. The difference could not be more marked. If this wasn’t German old-growth forest, the other side would be a jungle (a fungus jungle? A fungle.); these are lush, rolling, well-tamed agricultural fields dotted with quaint farmhouses; rural but civilized. 

The “town” is a bare handful of buildings clustered around a small mill. A general store, the mill, the inn, a sheriff’s office, and that’s really it. Blacksmith. Handful of tradespeople. Pretty standard – these are people who live to support the surrounding farmers.

Not far from there we can see the Farmers’ Temple we heard about, a plain round wooden structure with large carved symbols for Rack, Torme, and Lethe. By Valeria’s standards, it’s the absolute bare minimum of what counts as a temple. “They’re trying, I appreciate that.”

As we travel into town, Valeria can see that the people on this side of river seem to fall firmly into 1 of 2 camps: some are incredibly healthy, almost overly large and well-fed, and very happy. The other half seems sickly. Not as bad as Mornheim, but we can easily sort people into Kinda Sickly or Big Healthy. There’s a lot of coughing. Perhaps the Medusoid Mycelium?!

It’s nearly sunset; we head down to the inn. There’s a couple of people sitting around the inn, farmers getting a drink after making deliveries to the mill. A friendly innkeeper named Aaron greets us. “Ah, you must be the people I’ve heard about!”

“Yes, Zelig told you about us?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some rooms prepped for ya. What brings you to town? We don’t get many of your type around – knights, or whatever you are.”

“Oh, we heard there’d been another Knight of the Rose around,” Shoshana probes.

“That’s what Zelig says, haven’t seen him.”

“Well, uh, thank you for your hospitality?”

We head upstairs, breaking into our usual pairs of roommates - Clem with Gral, Valeria with Shoshana, Aethis in the stables weirding out the horses.

Clem, the wary soldier, checks around to ensure the room is secure. She finds something! A note has been tucked into the mattress. “YOU ARE IN DANGER. COME DOWNSTAIRS AFTER THE SERVICES START AT THE TEMPLE.”

Huh.

She tells the rest of us. Everyone is like, “...yeah, we already knew that?” But it’s excellent news that not every villager is in on it.

There’s a knock on Clem’s door. A nervous young woman is standing there, holding a tray full of pastries. “Hey, uh. My dad wanted me to give you these. They’re leftover, they’d just go stale anyway.” 

“Oh, uh, thank you! Much obliged. Um, will that be all?”

“Try ‘em, at least take a look at them. They’re pretty good,” the girl tells her insistently, and scurries off.

Clem and Gral immediately inspect the pastries suspiciously. Pulling one apart - sure enough, there’s a note stuffed in a pastry! It says “CHECK UNDER THE BED.”

Under the bed, where Clem found the first note.

Gral pops down to the tavern area to get a few more deets from Aaron the innkeeper. Turns out temple services start after sundown. “You’ll know it, you’ll see people headin’ towards it. Why, you thinkin of attending?”

“We have a paladin with us, she’s always interested in the local religious customs.”

“It’s nothing you’d be interested in. More of a town hall meeting than anything.”

“I understand. Thank you for the pastries, they were absolutely delicious!”

“Oh, thanks kindly! Sleep well.”

Sure enough, as the sun sets we see lights in the dark as people start streaming in from across the valley to the Farmers’ Temple.

Once it looks like the last stragglers have made it into the service, Clem knocks on wall separating our rooms, as a signal, and we head downstairs. We try to be quiet about it. Aaron and his daughter are there, cloaked and ready for travel. His daughter has a hooded lantern in her hand.

“I don’t know what you people came here for, but you’re not gonna find it here,” whispers the innkeeper urgently. “You have to leave.”

“What kind of danger?”

“I keep my ears open. Zelig came back this morning, told some people about some outsiders, guests – told us to have rooms ready for them, and then stay out of their way when they came for you tonight. I don’t know how long we have – they always go to temple first, but the clock’s running. I don’t know you much, but you seem-“

“This has happened before?” Valeria breaks in, concerned.

“Not in so many words, but, yeah. People have gone missing. Last time we couldn’t do anything about it. We weren’t warned; they just showed up in the night. This time they were worried – there’s more of you, and better armed. Last time was just traveling merchants.”

Gral nods. "We came here looking to find what 'they' were planning at the troll moot. We don't just want to run away, but if you're in danger for housing us, that can wait. What's next?"

“The troll moot? Yeah that’s fishy, but I don’t know how to warn ‘em away. You folks seem connected, can you get word out about this place? But be discreet. I’ve heard stories about the Penitents, and I don’t want no part of that either. There’s still good people here. A lot of people in that temple there, though – I would have sworn they were good people too, until this all started. I’m not sure what it’s all about. We haven’t been going to services, and so far they haven’t forced us to. But they had folks posted in the inn, makin’ sure you showed up tonight. 

“You gotta get moving. Rebecca can get you to someplace safe. Slip out now, and finish leaving the valley tomorrow night.”

Clem insights ‘em, and then seem genuinely honest and concerned for us.

“Whatever this is, something about you guys has them spooked, so I wanna make sure you survive. There’s strange things afoot in Herzfeld these days.”

“Would they let you leave?” Valeria asks.

“I don’t wanna know what would happen if we tried. So far they’ve been content to let us keep running the inn, serving ‘em drinks.”

“How have you evaded their influence?” Clem asks suspiciously. “What makes you the exception?”

“Not everybody’s one of ‘em. The woman, Zelig, she came out of the woods a couple months ago after the other side of river fell. She started talkin’ to people, sayin’ she knew way to protect us. People were scared, ‘specially since the old cleric went over to the other side of the river and never came back. A bunch of people went down to the temple to hear her say her piece. 

“Those that went – not all of them came back. Afterwards, she started holding services regularly. Meetings, gatherings, whatever. Those that go, their crops flourish, they get strong and healthy. Those that don’t start to get sick. Their crops die. And once people start getting sick, everyone tells ‘em to go to temple and pray about it.”

I don’t know why Rebecca and I have managed to avoid the brunt of it so far.”

Rebecca pipes up. “I’ve snuck into the temple during day, it’s open to everyone. It seems fine mostly, bit run down – everything seems to be in place. But whatever’s going on there, it’s weird. The point is, I can take you to a safe place.”

Her dad nods. “I dunno where it is. Safer that way.”

Rebecca continues, her face too grim for her young age. “I’ve been smuggling people out of the valley. Mostly, people who oppose Zelig just vanish. Dad keeps the inn running and keeps his ears open. Anyone we suspect might be in danger, we get them out.”

Valeria considers. “We’re not going until we figure out what’s going on, but staying safe for tonight is not a bad idea.”

“I don’t know how long the service will go. It can be ten minutes, it can be an hour. We have to get moving, now.”

We hurriedly discuss: we want to know what happens at the mysterious services, but Valeria and Clem aren’t exactly built for stealth. Rebecca says that during the service itself, the town’s pretty deserted - everyone either goes in or stays well away.

We decide to split the party: Rebecca will take Team Clank to meet her friends at the safe house; Gral and Shoshana will sneak up to the temple.

 “I can’t tell you where safe house is; if you get captured, you’ll spill. Meet me at the top of hill there. I’ll be hiding in the bushes right by the old fence.”

The shadowy huntress and the subtle bard manage to get close without giving themselves away. Gral gets right up next to a window, and listens in, staying out of the window’s line of sight.

Zelig’s voice booms out, rich and strong: “Brothers, Sisters, we come to our next business. You have heard of the outsiders. They come, they question us. They question our ways, our motives. They endanger our sacred project with our brethren amongst the trolls. Do not fear, for we have a solution: I sense in them a great capacity for love and understanding. Tonight we shall find them, and give them a chance to join in our love. Should they not, should they hold hatred in their hearts, then those hearts may be hollowed and made ready for our love. Come brothers, come sisters, come family.”

Gral minor illusions the hue of the night sky onto his face, hoping it’s enough cover to peek in the window unnoticed.

“It is time. First, let us renew our bonds,” the old woman intones. Zelig stands in the center of the circular room. All the people around her are tall, strong, and glowing with health, crowded together, holding hands. Zelig taps a floorboard, and Hans and Frans solemnly move to pry up the board. 

Underneath is a lush green carpet of plant life. Fungus and vines creep out of the floorboard, growing at an impossible rate. Everyone stands as a wave of vegetable and fungal matter extends through temple, climbing up the worshippers’ legs and enveloping their bodies entirely. As Hans and Frans pull back the boards, a frame rises up; vines work their way into frame, forming a picture. Blooming flowers and different shades of leaves and lichen form the image of a female figure, motherly looking, bound in roots. Yet another tapestry?

The worshippers speak in eerie unison. “Though bound, she will be free. She is the growth. She is our love. She is protection. She will grow free of her bonds. We will grow as she does.” The chanting does not falter as the wave of plant matter entirely consumes the chamber. Gral ducks back under the window as the air chamber starts to fill with dense, cloudy spores.

He’s been relaying everything he sees to Shoshana with Message, and they both agree: We’ve seen what we can see, it’s time to get the hell out of here.

Meanwhile, Rebecca leads Valeria and Clem out of the town proper to a set of  rolling hills near an abandoned granary. There’s a cleverly hidden trapdoor set almost invisibly into the sod, leading down into a small network of caves.

“They used to use these caves to make cheese! Hmm...it should be this one tonight.” She bypasses several doors set into the earthy tunnels, stopping at one seemingly at random and knocking softly.

A voice on the other side whispers, “Who are you?”

 “One who seeks freedom,” Rebecca whispers back.

“And who are we?”

“The last Free Thieves!”

...What.

The door opens a crack, and Rebecca hurriedly herds the tanks through. “The guy in charge is the little guy. His name’s Henri Decannes. Him or one of his people will help you get out. I have to get your friends.” She runs back into night, vanishing into the darkness.

Valeria groans. She understands that stabbing Henri is not an appropriate action at this time, but dang would she enjoy it. And now she’s gonna have a DEBT to him? Maaaaaaaan.

As Gral begins to sneak back over to Shoshana, behind them, they hear the congregants start to move.