The Buzzing Tree - Dolmenwood Play Reports: Session 10
The group find some much needed humor from a merchant beneath a tree.
In the last session, the group defeated a small horde of lamprey men and rescued the bard Gerigrew. They’ve arrived back at Fort Vulgar and are making plans to set back out on the road to Prigwort, and Roland hit level 3!
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Characters
Chalice-of-Duskviolet. Elf Enchanter (Lv2), HP 10/10
Hesper. Breggle Fighter (Lv2) HP 15/15
Sister Molly. Human Nun (Lv2) HP 4/4
Moriah. Human Hunter (Lv2) HP 13/13
Roland. Human Cleric (Lv3) HP 15/15 (+3 from Level Up)
Day 9, Grimvold 9th, 1089
Weather: Icy & Frigid
Wandering Encounter: Yes - 4 Drune Cottagers
Gerigrew was excited to get back to Maydrid in Prigwort, so he decided to join the characters on their trip back. This would give him a well-armed escort on the road and allow him to get to know the group. After all, he needed to get started on the epic poem describing the group's exploits! Before leaving, Moriah decided to get a tattoo of a Lamprey being strangled by a tentacle to commemorate their trip to Fort Vulgar.
Hunters can take a trophy from their defeated enemies. This gives them a small advantage while fighting that kind of creature. Per the rules, the trophy has to be big enough to take up a slot, but you can also mount it in your home to get the advantage. Moriah’s player asked if she could get the tentacle tattoo, incorporate the Lamprey into it, and have it count as the trophy. Given that these are not common creatures, I said yes, but with the caveat that she can't just get a tattoo all the time for her trophies. This is a one-time thing since one of the peculiarities about Fort Vulgar is that visitors often get a tentacle tattoo as a souvenir of their first visit.
GM Tip: If your players come up with cool ideas that won't break the whole game, let them run with it. But also, it's probably worth telling them that you're not letting this be a precedent.
As they left town, the entire group agreed that they would prefer to never visit Fort Vulgar again.
The group had discussed it previously and decided they wanted to stop and see the merchant at “The Buzzing Tree” during their trip. The Buzzing Tree was massive, well known to anyone traveling the Fort Road between Prigwort and Fort Vulgar. It had two rather unique qualities. First were the thousands of insect nests nestled in its branches. There were so many of them that the tree emanated a loud, constant buzzing sound, hence its name. The second was the Scrabey merchant that lived beneath it. Scrabeys were odd, demi-fae creatures possessed of an innate desire to collect and trade exceptionally odd objects. This often led them to become merchants traveling between the human world and the faerie world. While no one knew this scrabey’s name, it was well known that she would trade with travelers if they had something interesting to offer. From what the group had heard, the Scrabey was more likely to have something unique and interesting than she was to have anything truly valuable.
They made their way up to the tree and rang a nearby bell. Sure enough, a few moments, the merchant appeared from beneath the roots of the tree. She excitedly informed the group that she had lots of stuff, certainly whatever they needed, especially if they needed rope, coal, or drugs. She had lots of rope, lots of coal, and lots of drugs.
The group spent the next hour or so bartering for various goods with the merchant. Chalice-of-Duskviolet traded for 2 heartstrings, long sinewy stings that looked like they were dripping blood. In exchange, she traded bottled tears of joy, 50 gold, and a promise to return with 50 more gold within a month. Roland traded some of the jewelry they had found in the Lamy bog for information on three of the churches’ lost shrines. Finally, Hesper traded a weird necklace of teeth he had for an ever-smoking earring.
After some time of speaking with the merchant, the group realized something was wrong with her. She was beginning to forget things that had happened fairly recently. By the time the group was done haggling, she didn't seem to remember that she had done any trading with Chalice-of-Duskviolet. It was certainly odd but nothing that worried the group too much. Having procured some new interesting items, the group decided it was time to move on.
Just before the group left, Arda went back up to the merchant and spent a few minutes talking with her before coming back to join the group on the road. He was holding a package that dripped what looked like blood. He told them he had traded her for something but couldn't tell them what he gave her, and he wouldn't tell them what he got from her. For now, it was a secret. The group hated this.
Most of this session was essentially a shopping session. And while that often invokes dread in most players, I've found that there are really two different types of shopping in a TTRPG. The first is the kind of shopping that is about the stuff. You're selling what you don't want anymore and buying what you need or what you might want, and the entire goal is about items on a piece of paper. The second kind of shopping is about interacting with a weird shopkeeper. Yes, you might get some stuff out of it, but what you're really doing is interacting with an NPC. In my many years of gaming, I found that most players hate the first kind of shopping and love the second kind of shopping. If you judge this session purely by what got accomplished, then it was a pretty terrible session. Legitimately, other than the information about the shrines, the stuff the players bought wasn’t even helpful or useful. Sure, a tiny censure earing that constantly gives off a little bit of smoke is neat, but totally unhelpful. But if you judge the session based on how much fun people had, then it was a smashing success. The players were dying of laughter, and we still have a running joke about having 2,500 feet of rope and knowing where to get drugs if they need it.
My GM Tip here is to let the players do most of the boring/bookkeeping shopping stuff outside of sessions and focus on having a shopkeep NPC that is funny or exciting to interact with when they do shopping during the session.
In this case, the group had told me they wanted to stop and check this merchant out, so I had a little bit of time to prepare. I read through her information and noticed that she had an obscene amount of rope, a lot of very rare herbs, and was cursed to lose her memory. Based on that, I sort of formulated this idea of a super shady yet harmless drug dealer that couldn't remember anything and then kind of ran with it. It seemed to land well because the players were happy to spend an hour and a half literally just talking to this person.
GM Warning: If you do make a fun, engaging NPC, be prepared to get stuck acting as them for at least an hour LOL.
The group traveled without event for most of the day, but about half an hour before reaching Mallowheart’s Repose, the situation changed. Four human men were walking down the road in their direction. They wore odd, dramatic-looking garments, and several of them carried staffs in their hands. These were unmistakably Drune Cottegers, and they didn't look particularly friendly. Given the tense, if not outright hostile, relationship between the church and the Drune, the group was unsure how to approach this. If they remained non-aggressive, there was a chance the Drune would pass them by without issue. But if they let the four Drune get the jump on them, it would certainily spell disaster.
After the session Roland’s player messaged me and ask if Roland might know how strong these Drune were. Especially since he belong to the clerical order of the Pluretine church responsible for fighting dark magic. I asked him to roll a d6 luck check and he rolled a 6 so I gave him an overview of the structure of the organization. Specific to this situation, I told him he would recognize these individuals as Cottegers, meeting they were old enough to be traveling without some kind of chaperone and would each be experienced magic users. From a more mechanical perspective, I told him that they could all certainly cast tier three spells. His immediate response was, “Wait, like fireball?” I told him that they certainly would not all have fireball prepared, but one of them might, and it was within the scope of possibility for them to know that spell. That was pretty much all the player needed to hear, and he became convinced that they needed to avoid fighting them at all cost.
GM Tip: give the players enough information to make educated decisions. Few things feel as awful in a game guy do something totally out of the blue. If the players decide to go fight a witch at level three let them die, but don't make them think they were going to fight a skeleton.
I think everyone had a really good time in the session, and it was a nice change of pace from the depressing, stressful semi-horror of Fort Vulgar. I also really liked that it ended on a good cliffhanger. I'm always on the lookout for opportunities to let that happen, but I don't force it, so it's fun when it happens.
We'll pick up next time with the group seeing how they run in with the Drune plays out. Until then, stay curious.