ADVENTURE LOG: February 16, 2019

The following occurred between game sessions, after the adventuring party has departed the island of the Thune. It is a stand-alone adventure modeled on a classic D&D module.

Part Two

The commune holds a festive banquet in honor of the adventurers once they have fully recovered from their nine days of wandering in the wilderness. The leader of the hippy commune, a dreadlocked ex-soldier named de Grimston, gestures to a pair of his drug-addled female followers, who press cups into the adventurers’ hands and merrily urge them to drink up. The adventurers happily oblige them. De Grimston raises his own cup to the party’s good health, saying with a laugh, “You’re going to need it.” Korric and Ven exchange quizzical glances.

De Grimston reiterates his teaching that nobody who comes in out of the rainforest, sick and exhausted from seeking, comes here by accident. Take de Grimston, for example. In his mundane life, before he found the sacred grove, he was a soldier who deserted his post and fled into the feywild. Like the adventurers, he was lost for days in a delirium before stumbling across this place, and when he did, he discovered the secret of the grove.

“I was never really lost at all,” de Grimston says. “It was destiny that led me here, and it was destiny that eventually drew all of my beautiful children to me, like tender sheep searching for their gentle shepherd. And it was destiny that brought you here. It’s the Greening, people! It’s happening, can you dig that? It’s so . . . so completely out there that sometimes I can’t even wrap my fuckin’ mind around it. All those mundanes living their mundane lives, out beyond the feywild—they just don’t get it, you know? And they don’t get it because they’re not tuned in to the Greening. But we are. Oh yes, sisters and brothers, we are. The Greening is going to swallow up everything. Everything. So what? We’re joiners, people, that’s what we are. We have made the conscious, intentional choice to be a part of it, to go with the flow, do you dig? We don’t fear the Greening. And we don't fear it because we're already in it . . ."

De Grimston’s “children” listen raptly as his rambling sermon goes on and on. Korric instinctively goes to rest his palm on the grip of his holstered revolver, but his hand feels like rubber. He looks dazedly at Nik, who is attempting to stand but seems incapable of doing so. Sant’oka’s cup slips from his hand and spills onto the table.

“The black flower induces sleep,” de Grimston explains with a laugh. “Don’t fight it. The black flower is part of the teaching. Be joyful. You were chosen, don’t you see? You were brought here to be reborn to the new life, with us, in the Greening.”

De Grimston’s children lovingly collect the four adventurers, who are like rag dolls from the drugged wine, and take them to the grove where the carved Orcus stands luminous in the spectral light of the Lilith Moon.

“But those who are called must first undertake the rite of passage through the underworld," the leader continues. "He who is worthy of the blue flower will surely rise from the dead to new life. He who isn’t is destined to become Shadow. That is the teaching. That is what the King of the Sacred Grove demands.”

He graces Korric with a winning smile. “I’ve got to be honest with you, gunslinger. You don’t seem like blue-flower material—too uptight!”

At a signal from De Grimston, his children lead the adventurers in a joyous procession to a stone slab behind the Orcus statue, where a grave appears to have been carved into the rock. But the “grave” is actually a set of stone steps leading down into the earth. The steps appear to be very old, crumbling and green with moss.

The last awareness the adventurers have before blacking out is of de Grimston sermonizing about the Greening, about how the earth will receive everyone in the end. Some are born again as tender green shoots that unfurl themselves proudly beneath the sheltering sky, while others are fertilizer, feeding the black soil that sustains the Greening.

“It’s the economy of nature, people,” remarks de Grimston as the adventurers slip into unconsciousness. “The Greening must be fed, and that which is left is only the Shadow, because the King of the Sacred Grove also deserves his due. It’s fuckin’ beautiful is what it is . . .”

Then everything goes dark for the adventurers, and when the effects of the black flower wear off, they awaken to more darkness. Korric immediately reaches for his pistols. He is relieved—and a little surprised—to find that they are still at his sides. Unholstering his weapons and cocking back the hammers with his thumbs, he rises cautiously to his feet.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .