Synopsis[]
CW: This episode contains a brief reference to self-harm ideation. It begins at the 1:06:00 mark and lasts for approximately 15 seconds. This portion of the synopsis will be placed behind a cut in the written summary.
As sandal man's vortex carries Guard away along the unconscious Isaac and Harisa, Guard swings his axe in the monk's direction. His blow goes wide, and as it does, a gecko lands on the axe blade and begins precariously crawling up the weapon toward Guard's hand. He nevertheless strikes at the monk again, and this time the axe flies true as he swings in harmony with the tornadic winds. Two of the monk's fingers and a good chunk out of his torso are forfeit, and the monk - clearly done with Guard's shenanigans - drops Guard out of the vortex and into the forest below.
The gecko has managed to remain attached to Guard's shoulder, and tilts its head at him as he gently picks it up and regards it. Guard returns the gecko to his shoulder, and it crawls along a filigree thread across his chest and onto his back as a voice from the treetops asks if Guard is all right. Alarmed, Guard looks for the source of the sound, and is confronted with a sloth, ponderously making its way to the ground.
Guard and the sloth confer for a few moments, and the sloth refers to the geckos as "spooky ghosties..." and to Elderwoods as "god trees." The sloth inquires if Guard was harmed in the fall, and describes a tree-like pattern on his back where he impacted when he fell - his plating is altered, cracked, but not broken. The sloth also seems to view Guard as a big lizard, and is surprised to learn that he's associated with the people who cut down the trees. When Guard describes his place in the world as he understands it, the sloth identifies him as a Guardian.
Just then, a low growl rumbles out of the underbrush, a sound familiar to Guard. As if by habit, Guard makes a slow thrumming sound on the ground with his hand, and a young wolverine emerges from the bushes. Guard asks if the wolverine is in trouble, and he reports that he and his siblings are well, and the forest is a comfortable home without the hunters. By his proximity to the wolverines' grove, Guard realizes that he was moved a great distance by the vortex, and meeting up with June again is not perhaps as easy a task as he had thought.
The sloth mentions to the wolverine that Guard is looking for the god trees, and the wolverine says he can take Guard there if he needs to go. But first, Guard invites the wolverine to play a game: an offer enthusiastically accepted. As Guard stands, he notices that his axe is changed: the handle now bears the same filigree as Guard himself, and on the head of the axe, there is a crude outline of an actual face. Guard chases the playful wolverine into the forest.
Elsewhere in the wood, Harisa wakes up to Whiskers waving his foul resuscitation vial under her nose. She realizes she's in one of their previous camps, and Leah says they found her a few yards up the way, unconscious. Harisa can't entirely remember what happened in the grove after Leah and Whiskers left, so they start making their way back toward it, and on the way Harisa discovers unusual tracks that look almost lizard-like, forcefully calling up memories of her recent dream.
She also spots the trail left by the whirlwind as they approach the grove, and once again, in its wake, she sees the lizard prints. She asks Leah and Whiskers to wait with the boar as she takes a small detour to follow the trail, and as she does, the woods close in behind her much like they did in her dream. She hears a sound behind her and turns to look for "Granny" Rossa, but instead sees a wolverine scampering across the path. A few moments later, Guard comes lumbering after, and they catch up on what's happened to each of them since they were collected by the whirlwind.
As Guard and Harisa discuss trying to find June, a gecko drops from the trees onto Guard, much like June in her daily attempts to ambush him. They agree to split up, with Guard continuing to follow the wolverine toward the grove and Harisa continuing to trail the tornado.
June, meanwhile, has been trying to collect herself after being left behind in the Elderwood grove. Railing against the sandal man and the injustice of her lost earring that her mother had given her gives way to steady breathing against the husk of the tree she had tried to regrow. She reassures herself that her friends are okay, and focuses on her heartbeat, slowly realizing that there is another pulse - outside her, around her, coming from the earth itself. She drops to her hands and knees, and as she does, she spots blood-red veins creep to the cut elderwood stump. June scrambles back in alarm, watching the veins collect around the stump and reach up from the stump, spindling out into crimson branches.
She hears a voice, a cacophony of voices, speaking the same words in unison, but all the same she recognizes one voice in the chorus: her father's. Moment to moment, different voices gain prominence, and June converses tensely with the conglomerate, trying to understand its nature. It answers her questions: that it is not her father, that he is gone; that her mother is not part of "us;" that it is what she might consider a god - the god of death in this forest, returning bodies to the soil so that they might provide a suitable substrate for future life. As she watches, she can see the dead husk of the failed tree slowly dissolving into the larger blood-stalk that surrounds it.
June asks about her friends, and the blood tree reassures her that none of them are part of it - saying that recent attack was unfortunate, and it will have "words" with "Porki." It indicates that Isaac - that all her friends, in fact - have jobs to do, as does she.
Her father's voice returns, querying - if he told her what was asked of her - would she consider herself ready? Though unsure, June answers in the affirmative, and the blood tree reveals: other gods of the forest have become unstable, enraged, inconsolable. She must find a way to put them down.
They discuss how the other gods might be recognized, and upon learning they do not all manifest as the blood tree does, June suggests that the blood tree, next time it appears, might consider a less discomfiting form - like a fuzzy sheep, or a little gecko. The blood tree tells her that the geckos are the smallest gods of the forest. It tells her Porki is a god as well, one who shares their purpose in seeking to save the forest, and he had been re-growing the Elderwoods for a time, but concluded it was not a good use of his time.
The blood tree reiterates that the eldest forest gods have lost control and threatened to destroy the forest, and as a snap of a twig behind her draws June's attention, the blood tree disappears. Leah, Whiskers, and Guard enter the clearing as June looks around for the suddenly-absent tree. At the base of the stump, June notices several items have been left: a torch. A tinderbox. And then she sees a gecko place her mother's earrings on the stump - both of them - and skitter away.
Guard asks if June is all right and gets a very chaotic earful in response. In an attempt at solidarity, Guard reveals that a wolverine told him how to get back to her. June finds this somewhat less comforting than Guard had hoped.
Elsewhere, Isaac comes to with Porki standing over him. They eventually manage a conversation, in which Porki reveals that he has been re-growing the trees Isaac and his people have been cutting down for some while, but now the elder gods have lost their minds. In an effort to learn the source of Isaac's power, Porki explains that there are four types of magic, and oaths are one type. Isaac has taken an oath, and derives power from it.
He then proceeds to explain, with diagrams, what's going on in the forest. The Elderwood trees, he says, are a regulatory system: they produce berries, which the geckos collect and bring to the elder gods: represented by illustrations that look rather like a giant mountain, a giant umbrella, a giant pile of sand, and a giant tree. The berries are offerings, ways of telling the elder gods that their world is in check. But without the trees, there are no offerings, and apparently, in the absence of offerings, the elder gods become angry. Now the elder gods are on a rampage.
After a good deal more thought and prompting, Isaac finally concludes that the only potentially-relevant oath he can recall is an oath to ensure Rally survives. Porki, taking Isaac up, up, into the air far above the treetops, explains that Rally cannot exist in isolation: it is part of the ecosystem; for Rally to survive, it must all survive, from the smallest gecko to the tallest tree to moss on the ground to the gods upon whose back it truly grows. Isaac has made an oath to the forest. And Isaac begins to fall.
| CW Content |
| As the ground draws swiftly closer, realizing that he's made an oath to the place he spent the last 20 years destroying, Isaac closes his eyes to wait for the earth's embrace. |
Scenes flash past as Isaac plummets from the sky - people in the streets of Rally, the solstice festival, Harisa walking with Guard, June smiling with one of her new signs - and he reaches out to catch himself on whatever he can grab. As he does, he feels Dale's shield slam against his arm as he scrapes down the side of a tree, slowing his fall. He catches hold of one branch, and when it snaps, another - and he lands on his feet, and Porki regards him with a snort, remarking: "You'll do."
Scenes flash past as Isaac plummets from the sky - people in the streets of Rally, the solstice festival, Harisa walking with Guard, June smiling with one of her new signs - and he reaches out to catch himself on whatever he can grab. As he does, he feels Dale's shield slam against his arm as he scrapes down the side of a tree, slowing his fall. He catches hold of one branch, and when it snaps, another - and he lands on his feet, and Porki regards him with a snort, remarking: "You'll do."
Harisa has been tracking lizard prints for some time, winding endlessly through the forest. Finally, she glimpses a wavering shadow just past the next bush. She stands her ground, and the shadow rears up menacingly. Harisa takes an intimidating step toward it, and it lunges around her in a panic, tearing off into the underbrush. Harisa gives chase until she finds herself in a small clearing with no sign of the lizard, so she looks for tracks again - and finds it in the tree above her.
She takes a step back to see if it will come down, and it drops from the tree, frill rising from its neck as it calls her by name in a familiar voice and urges her to put the torch down. Gobsmacked, Harisa drops her torch, asking in disbelief, "Mr. Spinx?" - and embraces the lizard.
Level 3 Update[]
The players step out from behind the curtain to discuss their characters' exciting mechanical developments as they reach level 3.
Guard's subclass is "Path of the Warden," a homebrew barbarian subclass that gains access to casting in a way similar to an Eldritch Knight, except that the spells are Druid spells rather than Wizard spells. In addition, Guard can speak with small and smaller animals that do not have a language.
In addition to cantrips, Guard gains access to three first-level spells; two must be either transmutation or abjuration, and the third can be of any school. The group discusses the merits of fog cloud or faerie fire for the "anything spell," and Cinder also mentions Jump as a possible selection. He envisions Guard's magic as having a "swamp thing" vibe, where it's more like the forest doing things than Guard himself casting magic.
June's subclass is the Way of the Cobalt Soul, a political and knowledge-focused monk subclass, and at 3rd level gains the ability to deflect missiles as well as "extract aspects," which allows her to gain crucial insights into any enemy she strikes.
Sam also mentions how hype it is to have more than 13 hit points.
Harisa is a Drakewarden Ranger, and her drake is Mr. Spinx. At least at first, he will be attuned to the element of fire, with which he can empower an ally's attack. At higher levels, he will also be able to breathe cones of various types of elemental damage. Emily also has every intention of Mr. Spinx being a significant source of awkwardness and "excessive honesty" for Harisa.
Isaac is an Oath of the Ancients Paladin, gaining the ability to Invoke Nature's Wrath or Turn the Faithless as an application of Channel Divinity at level 3. Craig notes that he's playing Isaac as a very defensive character, so his character choices will tend to be more support-focused. Isaac gains Ensnaring Strike and Speak with Animals, as well as Bless, Compelled Duel, and Thunderous Smite.
Patrick takes a moment to address some of the as-yet undefined languages that the PCs know: this whole session, it turns out, the group has been speaking Sylvan except when conversing with Leah or Whiskers, and so all the PCs add Sylvan as a known language.
Synopsis, continued[]
Porki returns Isaac to the rest of the group at the elderwood grove, where Isaac is tackled by a relieved June, and Porki repeats everything he told Isaac to the rest of the group.
Isaac brings up the presence of another god of concern: the Empressar, who expects their resin shipments, and whose tantrum might also obliterate the party if their expectations are not satisfied, putting a premature end to any other mission they might be responsible for.
Porki indicates he doesn't see much he can do about the Empressar, and Guard asks if he can help with something else: Guard realizes that though he has been unable to articulate this until now, until he came this deep into the forest, he fears he will take up arms against Rally if Rally does not continue to clear the Elderwood trees for the Empressar, and he doesn't want to do this.
June disbelieves that Guard would ever hurt the group or the citizens of Rally, and Isaac says that Guard is a tool of the Empressar. Porki points out that Guard is also a tool of the forest, and June disagrees with the assertion that he's a tool at all. Guard mentions that the sloth called him a Guardian.
Porki and Isaac discuss what the group needs to do next, and Porki agrees that Isaac can take the Elderwood tree that's already cut to buy time. The group also need tools, however - and he demonstrates one of them, asking to see Isaac's shield and then instructing him to walk away. Once he reaches a distance of about 11 feet, the shield vibrates and then slingshots over to Isaac, narrowly missing Harisa and Spinx as it lands on his arm.
Dale's shield has become the Captain's Shield, bound by Isaac's oath. Emblazoned with the sigil of the Agra Wardens, the shield bonds with its wielder rather stubbornly. While he is not incapacitated the shield will automatically return to Isaac from anywhere within a radius equal to 5 feet times his Charisma modifier (which is currently 2). In addition, when a creature he can see attacks a target other than him who is aligned in service to his oath and within his return range, he can use his action to impose disadvantage on the attack roll. Even if a creature is normally an ally, if it is not acting in service to his oath, it cannot be the target of this feature.
Mr. Spinx remarks on the shield, and as attention is drawn to him, Porki asks Harisa if she still has any part of the doll that she called Mr. Spinx as a child. Inanimate-Mr.-Spinx's eye, the button that Harisa wears around her neck, is the Button Eye of Far Sight. When attached to its doll, this button eye kept watch over a small child, but now there's all that promise of protection to watch over its wielder. As a bonus action, Harisa can see through the button eye until the start of her next turn, gaining the benefits of darkvision out to 30 feet. The button eye can look in every direction. During this time, Harisa is blind with regard to her own senses.
Porki turns his attention to June, and asks to see her earrings. She slowly and reluctantly hands them over, and identifies them as the Earrings of Augury. In the course of political stewardship, it is often useful to glimpse the future. Portents shimmer in the blue facets of these sapphire earrings. Once per long rest, the wearer may roll these earrings to cast Augury.
Porki looks over to Guard, and points out his axe - the Lore Axe. The handle of the axe is bound by twisting vines that seem to burn their way into the wood. A toothy maw seems etched faintly into the belly of this two-handed weapon. When invoked, it opens to speak to the guardians of the trees. For ten minutes, Guard can call forth the tree spirits within 30 feet of him, giving them the ability to communicate through the axe and follow his simple commands. He can question the spirits about events in the forest, giving information about creatures that have passed, weather, and other circumstances. He may do this once per short rest.
Guard asks what a Guardian is, and Porki says he fights for the trees. Confused, Guard says he works for the Imperial Guard. Porki insists he has no idea what that means at this time - in his four thousand years of life, many empires have existed. Guard confesses that he doesn't really know what it means, either.
Porki gestures to Whiskers and Leah and indicates that they're probably going to need some calming down. He says he'll do what he can to help with their mortal problems, but doesn't expect that to be very much. He says he'll give them one month to deal with those problems, and then they have to get to work.