67. The Grandmother Tree's Forest

* The day is Snowmelt 26. The party and their ally Alric have spent the day trekking through the fringes of a hostile boreal forest inexplicably growing in the middle of the tundra known as the Roof of the World. They know that the forest shall grow thicker and the climate will grow more temperate as they head in, and eventually, growing in the very centre of the great forest, grows the Grandmother Tree - the heart-tree connected to Tiphorea in the Pines, the dryad-turned-witch. The tree has grown in size and in power as the depths of the witch's magic have grown. And in turn, the forest that the alien mind of the Grandmother Tree presides over has come to be riddled with magic and hostile denizens alike.
* Just as the group were going to bed down for the evening, they encountered a troll in a thicket.
	+ It was one of Phigalia's minions, sent to do battle with the servants of Tiphorea, Orphne, and the forest at large.
	+ After a brief chat, Pyt and the group concluded that the thing was incredibly slow-witted - it was apparently looking to hunt gnomes, but didn't recognise Wilfred, standing right in front of it, to be a gnome himself.
	+ Pyt convinces the troll to go to bed nearby and travel with the group in the morning.
* Pyt then sets up his drum-yurt so the group can sleep in comfort nearby.
	+ Inside the hut, on request, Alric sings an old battle song of his people. Its verses repeat lines about cleaning their shields, readying their axes or hammers, and not fearing death, while mixing in various references to macabre things, metaphorical and otherwise.
	+ The berserker also tells them that should he survive what was to come and they fall, he will carry their obligations. He asks them what they might be:
	+ Wilfred shows the old vial of his blood that Aerendyl took back in the Pirate Republic. The gnome says that if he falls, perhaps the blood alone will be enough, so long as they find another willing to take it to Ibn Qahbe and make a lineage log pin. In any case, taking the blood to Ursula the Mother of Bears would probably be best.
	+ Pyt asks them to find the woman who plays the viol as well as he does, whose face is at once flesh and bone. He would like them to tell her Pyt didn't make it this time. And he thinks the Jack of Bones might have some idea of where she is.
	+ Aerendyl says he'd be content with anyone who survives doing what they can to help Wilfred or his cause.
	+ Clwyd flippantly tells them to not bother with any of her concerns after she's gone, saying she's got herself into enough trouble as it is. Alric responds that there are many ways to honour someone's memory and obligations, many ways to leave the world better than it was before. At that, the goblin thinks for a bit and then tells them to 'live a good life' should she fall. Alric nods thoughtfully and says it's a difficult request.
	+ For his own part, Alric simply asks them to return to the Black Salt Springs if they are so inclined. Tell the people of his fate and perhaps someone would have asked something of him that they might see to in his stead.
* The group fall into a routine of sleeping early, Clwyd keeping watch alone for the first four hours, Aerendyl joining her on watch as soon as his trance was done, and then Pyt, Wilfred, and Alric finishing their resting four hours or so after that. It meant that they were all up and ready at about 3am, but with the biting, arctic cold and full darkness of night waiting for them outside, Pyt would instead recast his Tiny Hut spell and they'd wait it out until they had daylight.
* They set off in the morning, roughly around 9am.
	+ Leaving the hut, Pyt found that the troll had completely forgotten who the group was and any agreement they'd made the night before. The half-elf again had to convince the troll that he should travel with the group (after dodging a now fully frozen, half-eaten deer carcass). Eventually, the troll said 'okaaaay' again in a deep, dim-witted acquiescence, and the group was off.
	+ Pyt uses his guile to convince and shepherd the weird troll onwards, making it do much of the work of forging a path for the group. Meanwhile, Aerendyl keeps his eyes peeled and makes use of all his knowledge of forestry to aid and ease their travel.
	+ As they push inwards, the temperature continues to climb, rapidly approaching 0 degrees at this point, which is far more comfortable than the tundra they came from. The types of flora present are also changing as well as appearing in more abundance in general.
	+ By midday, the group can no longer say they're in a boreal forest. Oak and elm and birch and maple trees are growing all around them. The forest floor is covered in moss and leaf litter. The tweets of birds, whoops of monkeys, and calls of a million more animals besides fill the air. The canopy is thick overhead, broken only in the scantest of patches now.
	+ They'd arrived in the Middle Reaches of the Grandmother Tree's forest.
	+ They pushed on, trying for another six hours of trekking before they bedded down for the night. Along the way, the lingering magics of the woods managed to beguile them, causing them to loop back around without realising and wasting a full hour of effort.
	+ Then, just as they were thinking of stopping for the day, they encountered a particularly strange phenomenon. A large number of invisible animals were just scurrying around, going about their business. It takes the group a little while to realise that the rusting leaves or source-less calls are coming from invisible animals, but eventually they do. The troll confirms it with its strong sense of smell, though it's unclear if it even knows or cares that they're invisible. The group decide to leave the invisible creatures well alone, and Pyt sets up his drum-yurt. The troll again goes to bed nearby.
* Again they take their rest in their routine. However, this time the light is still dim by 10am-ish. It doesn't appear to be getting lighter than that, and so the group chalk it up to more of the magical effects of the forest and decide to press on rather than waste more time waiting.
	+ They'd ran out of rations at this point, meaning everyone was now surviving on Aerendyl's *goodberries* alone - they provided energy and sustainable, but they didn't do anything to abet the feeling of an empty stomach. The group endeavoured to not have to rely on them for too long.
	+ Aerendyl casts *darkvision* on Alric to help with the dim light.
	+ Again, the troll has forgotten them with a night's sleep and Pyt has to go through the process of dodging an improvised projectile, convincing the troll they're friends, and then getting the thing to travel with the group. Eventually it says 'okaaaay.'
	+ By late-morning, they were feeling like they'd made good progress. Then they saw a beautiful, ornate sword stuck into the ground with a large thicket of bone-white brambles growing all around it, all in the centre of a small clearing. Aerendyl marks a tree nearby in case they might want to come back. They start skirting around the whole thing. *Detect Magic* reveals to Wilfred some illusion in the area. He tries to *Dispel Magic* but fails the first attempt. The second works though, and the sword slowly disappears, dissipating like smoke in the wind. And with that, they hear the shrieks of monkeys coming on them fast, a large group, sounding violent and threatening and closing in on the clearing they were standing in.
	+ The group runs to the treeline and hide. But the troll doesn't understand what they're doing. Soon enough, a long, hairy, tendril-like arm snakes down from the canopy, wraps around the troll, and pulls it up to the treetops. The group hear howls, screams, fighting, and wet chewing in equal measure.
	+ The group remain hidden a while longer, hoping their arboreal pursuers didn't spot them and were distracted by the troll. Suddenly, a massive, four-armed gorilla-like creature charged into view, heading towards them. It sniffed around, beat its chest, and howled into the air. When two more tendril-like arms reached down and made to pull some of the group up into the trees, a full fight was on! Two of the predatory, orangutan-like grappling creatures in the treetops harried the group on the ground, continually trying to pull them into the trees, choke them out, and bite their faces off. Those exposed by the grapplers soon had to deal with the four-armed silverback. The fight gets tense in a few places, but they're ultimately able to slay all three of the simians and free further into the forest, leaving the troll to be feasted on. Its screams follow them for a long time as they run.
	+ After a brief rest, Aerendyl marking another tree, and a few more hours of travel, the group spots a strange hunting party rushing over a glade. A giant stag is wounded, limping out the tree line, and quick on its heels are four wolves, each with a feral-looking gnome riding on its back. All the gnomes are yipping and howling as if they were dogs or wolves themselves, and a few of them fire off *Eldritch Blast* spells at the elk, eventually felling it. All eight creatures move in on the kill. The gnomes hop down to the floor and the wolves begin to shift forms, rising onto two legs and becoming more humanoid. Alric whispers to the group that he thinks they are ulfrmaðr, similar to werewolves, but originally wolves rather than men. Before they can talk any more, one of the ulfrmaðr's ears twitch towards the group, it lets out a growl, and its partner gnome grows tense and ready for a fight. The group had been spotted!
	+ Aerendyl quickly gets off a mighty *Cone of Cold*, freezing over the trickling waters of the glade and killing all the threats save one in an instant.
	+ The remaining ulfrmaðr is stunned still at the sudden death of its pack-bonded gnome. As it is stupefied, Pyt casts s*uggestion* on it, telling the thing to 'lead us silently to Tiphorea.' The ulfrmaðr can do nothing but comply, even as its all-consuming rage towards Aerendyl for having killed its gnome is fully evident. It turns around, shifting into the form of a wolf, and leads the group through the forest at a fast pace.
	+ The group follow the wolf in silence for four hours, encountering no particular hardships and making good progress. Though the *suggestion* would last another four hours, they decide to kill the beast now, quickly, before it gets dark. Wilfred puts it to sleep and Alric takes its head off with a few swift blows of his axe.
	+ Then they bed down in Pyt's drum-yurt again.
* That night, Snowmelt 28, their third night in the forest, Pyt has a bad dream.
	+ He's surrounded by a dark forest but it feels like he's being watched in all directions, as if by something just beyond the trees. Somehow, he knows that its the same thing watching him from all directions at once.
	+ He wakes up to an ache on the back of his right hand. There, puckered in the flesh as if an old scar, was an eerie circle filled with circles in kind.
	+ Pyt had gained the notice of the Grandmother Tree and was now marked by the forest.
	+ Wilfred tries casting *Remove Curse* on the mark. Suddenly the two of them, the gnome and the half-elf, feel their tiny floating consciousnesses against the backdrop of a vast, unfathomable, near endless creature. They come to know the Grandmother Tree for just a moment, and the experience is awful and humbling. They see how the Grandmother Tree ***is*** the forest. How each spark of life, each rotting leaf or feasting bug, hunting beast or fleeing prey, all of it, was once the Grandmother Tree and will again eventually be part of the Grandmother Tree. They feel the weight of the Grandmother Tree's attention on Pyt, subtle as a breeze but as vast and threatening as a tidal wave. The pairs' minds are wracked by the experience, and Pyt knows fear as he knows the Grandmother Tree is watching him. And as he knows that Wilfred failed to remove the effects of the Weird Magic, the Grandmother Tree just too vast a power while they stood in the middle of its forest.
	+ But the knowledge did travel in two directions. Pyt and Wilfred know then they stand precisely 26 and 1/3 of a mile from the bough of the Grandmother Tree in the heart of the forest.
	+ Pyt covers the scar-like mark with a bandage, but fears it's not enough. Not nearly enough.
* Pyt sets up his second hut of the night and the group wait for the morning light again. This time they're waiting until after 11am.
	+ Very early in their travels for the day, Pyt and Wilfred are led astray by more of the beguiling denizens of the forest. They rush towards a clearing. In the centre of the space stands a curious tree, tall, with a vermilion-coloured trunk seemingly made up of many smaller trunks braided together. The leaves sprout high up on the tree, and bush out in colours of red, yellow, and bluish-green. Pyt and Wilfred are stood close to the trunk and just staring up at the vibrant leaves high above, looking content. Around them, a few small monkeys and rabbits are acting similarly. A closer inspection of the clearing reveals a great many small sets of animal bones and a few recently dead critters scattered amidst the mossy ground.
	+ Aerendyl uses *Greater Restoration* twice to free the pair from whatever effect they'd fallen under. Immediately, Pyt recognises the tree: the loftus tree, a thing that traps animals with beguiling poisons to nourish the ground around it when they die. A tree that can also alter the memories of humanoid folks in a number of ways if they're not careful.
	+ And with that, they leave the area with haste, but not before Aerendyl marks one of the nearby trees.
	+ After the loftus tree, they hike with more caution and care, and manage to make good progress without much hindrance.
	+ Their last hour of travel is particularly easy, and though it's now fully dark by 5pm, they push on a little further, unaware that they're being herded through these easy paths by another of the forest's hunters. They stop when the going starts getting tough in the dark, and just as they contemplate bedding down for the night, they're attacked by a hideous tree filled with searching humanoid eyes and gnashing, toothy maws all over its branches and trunk. It slinks around, warping the ground around it to make fleeing a difficult prospect, and easily blinds them with sap it shakes from its branches that explodes with a flash. It nearly kills Aerendyl before the fight's even begun, ambushing the elf from behind, enveloping him in its branches, and then biting away with a thousand different mouths at once. The elf is forced to teleport away to save his life.
	+ Most of the group are blinded when the tree then shakes its exploding sap all around them. Wilfred is able to protect his comrades by sealing them all inside a *wall of force*, then, as the voracious tree smacked futilely against the invisible barrier, Clwyd surrounded it with a *wall of fire*. After a little trickery from Pyt, making use of his mislead spell to send the tree astray, and a great many more slung spells, Clwyd eventually kills the thing with an *eldritch blast*, boosted by *fury of the small*, and finished with a *kiss of Mephistopheles*.
	+ They leave the area, trek through hard forest - thinking it safer now than the easier routes that had led them astray - and eventually get in Pyt's hut for the night.
	+ By the time they're safely in the hut, Pyt still has 30 minutes left on his *mislead* spell. He keeps his illusory duplicate outside and sees through its senses, curious to know what he'll see. Soon enough, it is attacked by four giant owls.
* They rest for the evening. But Pyt's dreams are getting worse. After going to sleep, he seems to jolt suddenly awake. He's trapped, his head just above the ground, his body apparently buried below, limbs stretched out. He can't move. Slowly, slowly, he feels thick, hard, tendrils moving around him, tightening ever so slightly with each moment. He comes to realise they are roots, a vast network of them, that are coiled all around him and holding him in place. Above his head, the trunk of a great tree extends, its canopy blotting out the sky. For nine days, Pyt screams and suffers there, unable to move, only feeling the roots grow tighter and tighter on his neck, his limbs, and his body. And as the roots finally wrap too tight and he can truly no longer breathe, he feels the life leaving him, and then he wakes up. And a mere nine hours have passed since he first went to sleep.
* The next day, Snowmelt 30, they wait and wait for the morning light, but it's taking even longer now, this close to the heart of the forest. By 11am, though it's still mostly full dark, they decide that they have to go or they'll make no progress at all - and Pyt's dreams will likely keep getting worse from here onwards.
	+ With a few hours of trekking, they reach the heart of the forest, the area under the boughs of the Grandmother Tree. Unlike their shift from the fringes to the middle reaches, this is a sudden and abrupt transition. The ground is filled with thick grass that comes up to mid-ankle on Pyt or Aerendyl, and it makes to clump together and impede their movement as they step through it. It is pitch black beyond, and even their darkvision is impeded by it, limiting them to only 30 feet of vision - save for Clwyd and her hellish eyes.
	+ The impeding grass slows their progress to a mere crawl until Wilfred eventually sacrifices his *arcane ward* to abjure them all against it - all save Aerendyl, who has his own magics to avoid being hindered by plants.
	+ The group have a brief encounter with five fey foxes. They discern that the foxes aren't allied with Tiphorea and they live in the forest since it provides them with good sport for their hunting. Pyt and Aerendyl deftly step through the Sylvan conversation, convincing the foxes that hunting the group would be more trouble than it was worth. The foxes hop away through the treetops, bidding the group farewell and good hunting.
	+ Further into the heart of the forest and the group come across eight bone-white trees growing in a large clearing with ruddy-red soil on the ground. The group are cautious in their approach, but eventually encounter three dryad spirits that seem to have been trapped by Tiphorea in some way. The spirits demand the group present them with the pleasures of the flesh and home they miss, but when they find the scant offers of the party unsatisfactory, they attack. Wilfred falls unconscious to the horrible wailing scream of one of the trio, but overall the group handle things quickly by simply destroying what remains of the dryads' heart-trees - after a little bit of trial-and-error to find the right ones.
* They find a suitable place for a short rest. In the distance, Clwyd thinks she might be able to make out the vast, cliff-like trunk of the Grandmother Tree. After their rest, Pyt bolsters the group with a power he was recently gifted by Mephistopheles, adding magic to his words and readying them for the fight to come. After this, Wilfred spends ten minutes putting up the *telepathic bond.*
* And by this time, the Grandmother Tree and Tiphorea have learned that one marked by the forest is nearby. They hear the witch's voice call out and echo through the trees, telling the forest to rise up and defend itself against one that bears its mark. Suddenly, trees all around the group shudder to life, uprooting themselves from the ground with great sprays of earth. And Aerendyl, Clwyd, Pyt, Wilfred, and Alric are set upon by a strong force of treants and wood woads, while Tiphorea's rasping laughter echoes through the trees.