Since the Treant attack and ritual performed on the lumberyards at the first fall gathering last year, the trees in the lumberyard (and in Oak Harbor more generally) periodically attack people who get too close to them.* The effect fades fairly quickly outside of Oak Harbor, although occasionally trees near town will take a swing at someone. This has resulted in a large number of the lumberjacks quitting or simply refusing to work, seriously reducing the lumber output of the town. The White Forest Trading Company has been pouring money into Druids and Scouts to tend people back to consciousness, which has kept the lumberyards working at something like half normal rate. The unemployed lumberjacks are scrounging for other ways to get money, resulting in both an increase in petty theft and a depletion of components in the immediate vicinity, as they put their woods skills to use trying to find things to sell.
MECHANICAL EFFECTS:
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The Scavenge skill will produce fewer components.
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If you have the “Tend” skill, you may expend uses of any of the following BGS to do shifts in the lumberyards waking people up.** Each expended BGS earns you 3 leaf which will be in your packet at game on.
Relevant BGS are: Tracking/Gardening/Any contacts skill/Subterfuge.
You may also spend 3 points of Sage or 3 points of Smith’s Endurance for 3 leaf.
Runepool, Dream, Speak with Dead, and [Redacted Alchemy stuff] cannot be spent this way. -
Staffers will occasionally make by my voice calls with an effect along the lines of “all within [5/10/15] feet of a tree, Cleave[or maim or trip or disarm].” This call can be resisted with Parry or Avoid Trap. A cleave call counts as a hit to your torso; you may take a maim on the limb of your choice. The effect is not coming from any character the staffer may happen to be playing at the time, it’s just the staffer implementing the ritual’s effect.
- The trees don’t seem to ever be deliberately lethal, but there have been a few instances where someone was trapped by a tree that kept pounding on them, to the point where they took a death. [Rules note: you can always choose to die if you are being kept unconscious and not allowed to wake up.]
** It counts as having Tend if you buy it before submitting the BGS, even if you did not have it last event.
[This is an out-of-game announcement. Please keep comments here to out-of-game questions (particularly if we have missed any BGS you might want to spend for leaf). If you have in character comments, start a new thread in the IC General Chat category.]