The Old Lands - Session 7
(4-21-2025)
“The Eye in the Orchard”
“He whispered to the roots, and they whispered back. In hunger.”
—Pol Simone, survivor of Honeybranch Hollow
Tim Patty, Oberyn, Morrigan, Stevia, & Grim at the Honeybranch Hollow
🌾 Into the Hollow
The party arrived at the corrupted remnants of Honeybranch Hollow, a once-proud agricultural estate now overrun by strange flora and darker powers. The air was thick with the sweet, pungent scent of blood strawberries—fruits of unnatural hue and origin, their crimson sheen threaded with silver veins. The very soil pulsed with an almost living cadence, and Stevia Nyx noted the brambles and fog seemed to twist in reaction to their thoughts. Strange time distortions and echoes whispered along the breeze. This was no longer a simple farmstead—it was a wound in the land.
Grim, ever vigilant, observed figures darting among the distant buildings, prompting the party to draw weapons and proceed with caution. Morrigan noted the absence of birdsong and insects, replaced by the subtle chime of floating wisps and the echo of forgotten prayers. As they approached the guest house and apiary, their footsteps muffled unnaturally, as if the air itself sought to erase them. Time rippled in strange loops. Some rooms would forget they were ever entered. In this haze of unreality, their true investigation began.
🍓The Blood Strawberry Fields Investigation
“The plants seem to pulse faintly, as though the earth beneath them were breathing. Each strawberry hangs heavy, unnaturally plump, their skin a deep, opalescent crimson threaded with veins of silver. They drip a sticky fluid that resembles watered-down blood, and when touched, the vines twitch ever so slightly in response.”
To the untrained eye, the strawberry fields of Honeybranch Hollow appeared otherworldly, yet oddly beautiful. Lush rows of heavy, glistening fruit shimmered under pale sunlight. But as the party approached, it became clear that something was deeply wrong. The plants seemed to faintly pulse, as though the earth beneath them breathed with some unseen presence. Each berry was unnaturally plump, its skin a deep, opalescent crimson threaded with glistening silver veins. When touched, the fruit wept a sticky, bloodlike sap, and the vines recoiled ever so slightly, like something alive reacting to pain—or memory.
Through careful study and a successful Nature or Arcana check (DC 15), the party confirmed what instinct had already begun to whisper: these plants were not of Kol. Instead, they hailed from a region of the Feywild known as the Weeping Groves—a place where time unravels and emotion takes root in physical forms. In this realm, fruit can remember its harvesters, and vines grow in response to joy, grief, or betrayal. This revelation connected the plants to the Krejavis, who are themselves descended from the Feywild. It seemed likely these cursed fruits had been grafted or summoned into Kol through unnatural means.
Further investigation unearthed several ritual stones buried beneath the tilled soil, partially obscured by brambles. These stones were etched in Sylvan and Abyssal, suggesting a forbidden blending of Feywild and void magic. The inscriptions outlined a hybrid grafting ritual—one designed to fuse native Feywild flora with Void-touched roots. The result was a twisted horticultural anchor that allowed these otherworldly strawberries to take root in Kol. But the fruit thrived only when fed by two things: fragments of memory and offerings of blood.
Scattered around the site, the party found partial, water-damaged notes penned by estate scholars. These documents referenced an ancient Fey Queen named Velka, a powerful and enigmatic figure who had long since vanished into myth. According to the lore, Velka cursed her orchards so that they would only bloom in places where memories had been lost, rewritten, or corrupted. Whether this curse was punishment, protection, or an attempt to preserve forgotten truths remains unclear. Yet her influence lingers in the Hollow, in every drop of blood-sap, in every whisper from the soil.
"I don't think these berries grow from sunlight... I think they grow from regret."
—Stevia Nyx, wiping crimson sap from her boots
🛏️ Guest House Secrets & Tim Patty’s Dramatic Entrance
Grim breached the guest house, the door creaking open to reveal a once-elegant chamber long abandoned. Vines pressed against the windows from the inside, and in the gloom he found a sealed jar, half-filled with syrupy strawberry preserves and marked with glyphs from the Black Church. As he reached to examine a closet, the door burst open—not with an enemy, but with a new companion: Tim Patty, flamboyant bard, Black Church agent, and accidental drama magnet. With a flourish, he introduced himself mid-pose, unfazed by the surrounding horror.
Tim had been sent to rescue Pol Simone, an important and missing asset of the Black Church. But he also came bearing charm and chaos. Tim and Grim exchanged tense banter and a ceremonial handshake of authority. Stevia and Morrigan eyed the bard with suspicion, but Oberyn, as usual, allowed the situation to unfold without immediate judgment. In the following rooms, they uncovered aged, water-damaged scrolls detailing blood rituals involving strawberries, ley lines, and “memory-fed roots.”
The estate’s own history, it seemed, had been rewritten. Blood strawberries were not native to Kol, but to a cursed region of the Feywild—the Weeping Groves. Notes spoke of hybrid rituals combining Feywild flora and voidroot, with strange references to a long-dead Fey queen named Velka. A journal noted, “They only grow where memory dies.” This discovery sent chills down the party’s spine—especially Grim, who muttered, “Then this orchard is a graveyard of truths.” It seemed like the origins of Blood Strawberries were nefarious, even before Tarrow Quin’s further corruption.
🍯 The Apiary and the Tunnels Below
Behind the collapsed apiary, the group uncovered an arcane hatch buried beneath soil and flowering bloodstrawberry brambles. Detect Magic revealed a latent glyph of sealing, which Tim Patty gleefully attempted to bypass with an improvised rhyme and an off-key whistle. Surprisingly, it worked. They descended into the dark—a spiral slide leading to a stone chamber with twelve doors, each sealed by rusted chains and weeping vines.
Inside were prisoners—weak, broken, and etched with glowing glyphs. Among them were Pol Simone and Billy, both survivors of Tarrow Quin’s experiments. Their words were fevered but illuminating. “The eye watches,” Pol whispered, showing the party a fading rune burned into his forearm. “He carved the soil like a god. Fed it his voice. The strawberries drank him in.” When asked what ‘it’ was, he simply said, “Not a god. Not a man. Something in between. A mouth with no hunger limit.”
Tim and Grim opened additional cells, freeing other captives and recovering pieces of the Void Keystone’s history. Billy, though near-collapse, handed the group a ledger and a charcoal drawing of the artifact. These pages showed diagrams of leylines converging beneath the orchard. This convergence, they realized, was not natural. It had been forced. Tarrow Quin planned to further corrupt the blood strawberries here by combining a Beherit with the empowered Void Keystone.
The Void Keystone empowered by the concentration of ley lines at Honeybranch Hollows
🎭 Pol Simone (Rescue Dialogue – “The Eye in the Orchard”)
Pol sits curled near a collapsed support beam, eyes sunken, skin gray-pale. When the players arrive, he squints through the torchlight, flinching at first—then blinking as though surfacing from a drowning dream.
Pol Simone (rasping):
“Are you real? Or are you just another echo from the root-blood? Tell me quick—I’ve bitten illusions before.”
(After a moment—whether comforted or ignored—he looks down, mutters to himself.)
“They told him not to plant them. The strawberries. Said the soil was too old. Too angry. But he didn’t listen. Said they’d ‘sing when the red stone weeps.’ Said that out loud. With a smile.”
Pol Simone (suddenly alert, voice shaking):
“There was a stone. Not from here. From the mountains. A thing that grew wrong. When he found it, he started carving runes into the cellar walls. Started marking us.”
(He raises a shaking hand—shows a faint glyph burned into his forearm.)
“Then he brought in the keystone. Big, black, humming like breath before a scream. Said it belonged to Bertram. Said it had to see the orchard to wake up.”
Pol Simone (starts to ramble)
“He wouldn’t stop whispering. Day and night. Always to it. Said the orchard had a great eye. Said it saw the ley lines running beneath the earth like leashes on a god. He said if he fed it enough roots and mouths, he could turn the whole damn land into a conduit…”
Pol Simone (almost reverent, almost horrified):
“‘Empower the lines,’ he said. ‘Open the gate beneath the flesh,' he said. 'Help the prophets pilgramage over the Dead Lands'
He bled into the strawberries.
He buried the old wards.
He laughed when the bees went quiet.”
(He breaks down briefly, then laughs bitterly.)
“There’s still something down there. I don’t know if it’s him anymore. But it still watches. It’s still feeding.”
🍓 The Greenhouse and the Whispering Roots
Grim and Stevia ventured into the overgrown greenhouse, where glass panes had shattered and the blood strawberries grew freely inside. Each vine pulsed like a vein. Strange glyphs etched into terracotta planters whispered when approached. Here, they uncovered ritual remnants: bones arranged in fertility runes, black ichor seeping from beneath floorboards, and notes about "feeding loss to the soil."
Tim found a cache of labeled potions—one glowing with iridescent red light and labeled "Aqua Delerium." It radiated Feywild magic twisted by the Void. Morrigan uncovered a child's doll hidden under soil, its eyes scratched out and its stuffing replaced with thorny vine—a ward, perhaps, or a sacrifice. Oberyn stood still near a dead tree as birdsong returned—only to abruptly cut off when he took a step forward.
The group debated the ethics of digging further, but they knew: the corruption extended into every root, every brick, every family memory tied to this place. They prepared to enter the orchard—the place most affected by whatever “Tarrow Quin” had become.
🧠 The Eye in the Orchard
By the time the party reaches Tarrow Quin, he is no longer wholly halfling. The once-proud steward of the estate stands gaunt and stretched, his skin waxy and bruised with dark veins that throb in sync with a low, ambient hum. His left eye has expanded grotesquely, now a faceted opal that seems to reflect things that aren't present.
The Beherit—embedded in his chest like a tumor—glows a sickly crimson, veined with black, pulsing in rhythm with a strange sigil beneath his feet. Bits of exposed skin shimmer with Void glass, and as he speaks, his mouth doesn’t move; instead, a distorted voice seems to echo from somewhere behind him.
“You… you don’t remember me. But I remember you. You’re her children, aren’t you?”
“I tore the veil wide… and she gave me everything. Everything… except silence.”
As he steps forward, pieces of his body fall off to reveal his new form with unseen mouths and too-long limbs that stretch and retract as though searching for balance in an alien geometry. A twisted amalgamation of Blood Strawberry roots and sinewy aberrant tendrils trail behind him like a cape. A single, large, unblinking eye sits in the middle of the mass of tendrils and roots.
Combat begins as he cries out,
“I am the mouthpiece of the Tar That Feeds!”
⚔️ The Battle with the Overmind
The fight was brutal. Morrigan launched forward with a divine leap, her scythe cleaving through the vines as radiant energy seared the air. Grim opened with his steampunk pistol, but Tarrow’s tendrils intercepted the bullet mid-air. Tim cast Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, which fizzled against the Overmind’s alien mind. Stevia attempted a Starry Wisp, but the magic faltered—time and space bent oddly in this orchard.
Oberyn struck hard with his sword, only to find the blade partially absorbed by Tarrow's shifting body. “Hit him where the roots tangle,” shouted Stevia, recalling an earlier note in the journal. Grim then fired again—this time embedding the bullet into the Beherit. A scream echoed across the ley lines. Morrigan called down a Wrathful Smite, channeling her fury into a devastating blow that knocked the Overmind back into the vines.
At last, with radiant light burning from her armor and scythe, Morrigan ended it. Tarrow’s final words echoed across the roots:
“She wakes, and ground splits like flesh. She rises, and oceans curl into ash. She remembers what the stars tried to bury. And when her mouth opens—the world ends screaming. Fear not the end, my friends, and let the feast begin.”
His body collapsed into a mass of pulped fruit, bones, and whispered lies.
🩸 Tarrow Quin (Defeat Dialogue – “She Inhales Now”)
Tarrow Quin staggers, limbs spasming as dark veins pulse across his flesh. The Blood Strawberries twist at his feet, writhing like worms that remember sunlight. He drops to one knee, grinning wide through cracked teeth—his voice high and fervent, like a child delivering prophecy through a dying radio.
Tarrow Quin (gasping, eyes wide):
“You think… you’ve stopped me?”
(He laughs—wet and wheezing.)
“No. No no no. I was just a fingerprint. A fleck of rot. A herald made of soil and sins.”
(He raises a trembling hand, pointing to nothing and everything.)
“She’s already inhaling.
Teàrrachar Analach—the Breathing Flame, the Tar Below.
She stirs in the marrow of the ley lines, where the world forgot to dream.
Each Beherit - her tooth. Each Cipher - her name in reverse.
The Godseye - her lullable of unbridled rage”
Tarrow Quin (voice lowering, conspiratorial):
“And I wasn’t alone, no… no…
There are others— who sing the lullaby
and unseal her coffin
(His face contorts, ecstatic and horrified.)
“One dances on glass in the tomb of mirrors.
One howls beneath the snow that never melts.
One burrows in brass beneath the capital’s teeth.
And one…”
(His lips twitch upward—almost fondly.)
“One wears the mask of a fox.
Beau. Oh, Beau sings her name in the roots now.”
(He coughs, blood flecking his chin. His voice cracks into reverent whispers.)
“And the pilgrims… ahhh… the pilgrims.
The ones who will walk the dead ring.
The ones who will breathe the Oubliette's silence and will not choke.”
(He chuckles—mad and gleeful.)
“They bring the exhale with them. Carry it like a blessing.
One by one, they’ll wake her.
Her breath in their footprints. Her laughter in their wounds.”
(He looks straight at the party, but as if seeing through them.)
“They'll walk through the forbidden gate.
They'll kneel before the lungs.
They'll be the scream she breathes into the world.”
(One final breath—whispered with awe and horror):
She wakes, and ground splits like flesh.
She rises, and oceans curl into ash.
She remembers what the stars tried to bury.
And when her mouth opens—the world ends screaming.
Fear not the end, my friends, and let the feast begin.
Tarrow Quin collapses, his body folding like wet cloth. From his cracked ribs, a faint breath escapes—the sound of leaves rustling in reverse, as if the world were inhaling something it shouldn't.
🔺 Aftermath & Divine Threads
In the orchard’s silence, the party gathered the Beherit, Void Keystone, and a page torn from the Book of Vile Darkness. This page detailed how ley lines could be bound to souls and used to awaken slumbering divine weapons. They also recovered the Beherit —a strange crimson stone said to channel evil and the divine.
In a quiet moment beneath the bleeding orchard trees. Oberyn underwent a mystical experience with the Beherit. He heard Renji’s Voice challenging him about his identity and purpose, guiding him through a series of skill checks involving athletics, insight, and religion. During this vision, he was confronted with memories of his past, including his father's death. Ultimately, Oberyn placed the Beherit into a black sword forged by Renji, awakening a new weapon called the "Tooth of the Laughing Prophet."
Stevia suddenly felt inspired and remembered something interesting said by Tarrow Quin - “Ciphers are their names said backwards.” Using this as inspriation, Stevia recited the Ceslida’s name backwards in primordial and syvlan, which caused her staff to upgrade and become more powerful. Both characters received magical enhancements to their weapons through this mystical interaction with the artifacts, suggesting a deeper narrative connection to their personal histories and potential future storylines.
Tim and Grim shared a quiet drink as the fog receded. Morrigan offered last rites for Tarrow. Pol Simone warned them: “This was only a symptom. The infection follows the roots. It spreads.” The estate was now still. But only for a moment.
🎁 Session Loot Summary
Tooth of the Laughing Prophet – Oberyn’s new greatsword, fused with the Baharan
Lunar Butterfly Staff – Upgraded divine staff wielded by Stevia
Bellhop Topper x2 – Taken by Stevia and Tim Patty
Aqua Delerium – A rare potion, stored by Stevia
Void Keystone – Now held in Stevia’s Bag of Holding
Page from the Book of Vile Darkness – Stored safely in Stevia’s pack. The party now has two pages stored in Stevia’s bag of holding.
🔥 Encounter: The Pact in the Honeybranch Hollows
Location: A powerful arcane or divine catalyst. For example, a warped leyline which can be used to bleed and echo Renji’s essence
Goal: Oberyn communes with the Sword of Renji and unlocks its true power
Tone: Mythic, hellish, intimate, and dangerous
Time: Can occur between sessions or as a solo side-scene during downtime in the arc
🎯 Skill Challenge: “Unbind the Blade”
Objective: Fully awaken the power within Renji’s blade
Success Threshold: 4 successes before 3 failures
Cost: Upon completion, Oberyn will be bound by Renji. Oberyn will be required to make a personal sacrifice when the Demon Prince calls in his favor.
🔥 Challenge Context
The sword is not just a weapon—it’s a fragment of Renji’s essence, and its full power is locked behind a ritual echo of one of Renji’s original pacts. Oberyn must navigate visions, temptations, and rage to awaken the blade’s full potential.
🩸🔥 Renji’s Monologue: “The Choice You Always Had”
To be spoken or read aloud during the climax of the ritual scene in “The Pact in the Bleeding Hollow.”
"Look at you… all stone and scars and silence. Just like your father. Just like the ones before him. Bleeding and brooding under mountains, as if that ever made a god kneel."
"You want justice? Then take it. You want vengeance? Brand it into your bones. You keep waiting for someone to tell you you’re worthy—but I’m not here to whisper lies. I’m here to give you truth."
"The clan doesn’t need a chieftain. They need a sword. And you—Oberyn—you were always meant to be unsheathed."
(His voice cracks like fire through old wood.)
"I don’t want your prayers. I want your fury. I want your choice. Because once you choose… there’s no going back. And you’ll never be afraid again."
"So ask yourself, Stoneveil: Are you here to remember your father? Or are you here to eclipse him?"
Left: The Tooth of the Laughing Prophet (empowered by a Beherit) Right: The Lunar Butterfly Staff (empowered by a cipher)
