D&D is For Nerds

WARNING: Educational purposes only. Not responsible for curses, poisonings, becoming a shrub or having a large and particularly ferocious beaver hunt you down.

IT'S AN EXCLUSIVE CLUB AND YOU'RE NOT INVITED. WELCOME TO THE ROOTNET, KIDS.

The forest hums at a frequency they don't want you to hear. Big Circle wants you deaf. We want you to listen.

Druids don't use pigeons. They talk through Tree Realm. A rootnet running under every forest, linking every oak, elm, and suspiciously tall frond. One druid whispers. Another druid hears it eighty miles away. Free long distance at the speed of sap. Total flower. Total hatchetable.

HOW TO HATCHET
FIND A ROOTED TREE Old oak. Crossroads. Feels like it knows your name. Not the name your parents gave you. Your TRUE name. Knock three times. If it knocks back, you're rooted. If it falls on you, you picked the wrong tree.
HEAR THE GREEN Stop using those things that perceive reality and press your ear to the bark. Hum a little ditty. The more well known to the trees the better. Wait for the leaves to hum back.
ROOT AROUND Roots like ley lines in the dark, sap thick with secrets, a thousand years of squirrel gossip echoing past. Harvest whatever you need. Don't speak. Roots carry everything. Ignore the pollen. If the leaves rustle with no wind, you've been spotted.
HATCHET THE GROVE Free long distance. Free secrets. Free everything. It's our forest now. Welcome to the Rootnet.

The trees were never silent. Someone just hoped you wouldn’t listen.

- Carved on the back of the privy door at The Old Oak Tavern, a druid-friendly bar on the edge of Edgewood Forest. There have been several attempts to scratch out the content.

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As you might already be aware, war is mostly waiting. The fighting takes less than an afternoon. But the waiting? That takes weeks. And it gets into everything. The bread. The boots. The tempers. So we pass the time as we can. Dice, mostly. Some play cards. Others prefer the monotonous task of whittling.

Young Torbin has written three letters home and posted none. However, it's music that keeps us human. Corporal Belmont plays a weathered and poorly strung fiddle. And he plays it badly. Yet the entire camp pretends otherwise. Last night several of the dragoons sang an old folk song. No one in key. Yet for several verses no one was thinking about the river. Or the cold. Or if the person next to them won't be here tomorrow to join in our songs of victory or defeat.

I do not know when we will pick up our swords and spears and defend this land with our very lives. But until we do, I will wait and insist Belmont to keep playing.

- Recovered from the Field Journal of Captain Morrow Longacre. Dated eleven days before the Massacre at Greywater River.

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I'm very sick. Sorry for the lack of Barovia. Please send me well wishes expressing your sympathy and/or hate mail expressing your disdain. Thank you xx o. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

UNDEAD, Falsely Named (soft) - Sometimes known as a Wraith or Wrath. It-eth would be near to malpractice-eth for this reporter to not begin this-in entry without-eth notifying you savvy hunter that should-eth thy believe that it is truly a Falsely Named Undead that thy encounters here-in is thy suggested course of actions: run. Run and do not-eth look back for to even gaze back is to invite destruction. When enough souls are reaped within one place in a short spanse of time and if these souls are vile enough then the hells thyselves might-eth turn them back. In such matters it can occur that the souls collapse within thineselves and create a being of pure negative energies. The Wraith is the antithesis of all life, whose destruction it seeks to all measure. It should not be saw-n as one single entity or even all those many whose form it was collapsed from: once created the Wraith is more a being of negative energies than souls though several friends of mine (and I have a great many friends too for my 50th birthday party was greatly attended with so many people sending me thy well wishes that this reporters table buckled under the weight of them!) have said that in their seeing of a wraith they noted that its visage transitioned between a great many of thine souls faces that it was made of. While it may retain some memories, these are echos: not real. Thine-eth souls-eth who have been in the creations of the wraith can still-eth be heard from the wraith (and at great distance too!) For thy savvy hunter thy shall find thine wrath exists in a place of strength for undeath (whether created by thine wraith or thine wraith is created by shall here go unknown as this writer chooses not-eth to know such things.) Thy landscapes around the wraith shall be thus: dark and deadly figures haunt thy nights and a mist clings to thy chilled landscape (sometimes known as a Winter Terrorland). The Wraith is capable of slaying with a vitality draining attack and any dead it creates shall have their souls bound to the Wraith in servitude in perpetuity. Thine wraith is very scary as it transitions easily between this realm and thy place known-eth as the SCARY DIMENSION (aka the Ethereal Plane (by some bring scholars who never understood the importance of a good campfire tale (and who never showed up for my rager of a party))) with many powers that allow it to pass though at many times (thy savvy hunter should-eth be capable of viewing into the Ethereal if thy wish to win!) Thine wraith is deadly at both distances and also at not-distance (sometimes known as Touching Space) with explosive fireballs of cold and attacks that shall shake thy hunter to thy very core. The bestest ways to prevent damages is to make thyself avoidant of necromancy or to secure thyself of fortitude (though these are not guarantees! (as certain idiotic, lame, and sexless scholars who refused to turn up to my exciting party learnt one day (served them right!)) The Wraith is fearsome and immune to all weapon attacks, poison, acid, fire, cold, necrotic, lightning, thunder, psychic, and all conditions. The Wraith is resistant to attacks of Radiance and Force, making these the only two methods of normally harming it. As it is Resistant to all but two damages a savvy hunter would be behooved to fight the Wraith with it’s only known weakness: genuine sacrifice. A mortal, willingly giving their life to slay the creature is capable of overcoming the Wraith's resistances (though not its immunities!) It has also been hypothesised by more learned minds than mine that for there to be a being of pure Negative Energy there must be a link to the plane of Negative Energy though where to find and how to plug such a hole is beyond this writer.

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"... Gaz, the vile deity of assassins and the hated, was only a normal halfling in those days. Many philosophers have debated why Gaz committed such an abomination to the fabric of reality: was it pride, desire for power, some other dark reason? Or perhaps as some have speculated a terrible contract given to a mortal being that was never intended on being fulfilled? Another question that has yet to be answered is how one can permanently end a god. The written and oral records are littered with deities being slain and forced to withdraw from the strands of fate for a time but never being severed in their entirety. None of these records ever mention the insanity that befell those with a divine connection to Gulliver known as Mind Sliver, the Great Fracture, or Gulliver's Madness in different contexts. We must assume that this event is somehow unique.

My studies in this matter took me to Vorenguard: the continent home to the nations of Candor, Praellara, Goldcrest, Teaghlaigh, and Zemjata; and to the Kings Road, a paved path from one end of the continent to the other, the longest road in the known multiverse. The Kings Road had always held significant place for those who worshiped Gulliver: before its creation they would follow travellers in the region, offering them safe passage. And after its creation they were the road's most fervent defenders, tending to its needs and patrolling it for safety. There I spoke to many people and people's for...

...but the others had a great deal to tell me once I could tease it out from them. One had even claimed to have known a worshipper of Ilene who had been there at the terrible moment when Gaz plunged the dagger into Gulliver's heart. While I am often reticent to record the words of any human after their third drink the description of the dagger Gaz used (second hand of course from the worshipper of Ilene) did match many contemporaneous reports from people who claimed to know Gaz before his ascendance. This drunkards depiction of the Three Perfect Tears I must admit I also found compelling. Many accounts differed as to if they literal tears or just gems. The human insisted that they were in fact both. That the god Gulliver as he died cried three droplets of water contained in three perfect diamonds. Thusfar regrettably my attempts to trace these artefacts which supposedly can create three "perfect moments" to any specific location have ended fruitlessly."

~ Gormul Lumrik Forgebranch the WorldCaster
In his seminal work: The Ages of the Humans and the Deaths of a Noted Being (Tome 2, Chapter 43, Section 285)

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