The Sap of the Trees of Abundance

Deep below a village known for its woodworking and mining lies a secret that could spell the doom of everything we have grown to cherish as the norm...
For hundreds of years, a secret lurked beneath the forest next to the town of Bémoth. The Trees of Abundance tower above the canopy that surrounds them, but to most in town, they're not bothered by the sight of them. Little did they know that they should have been worrying all along...
Like the underwater caves that connect the cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula of Earth, a cave system snakes about below the forest, radiating out from a nexus below the trees like a spider's web. The roots of these trees dip down into the caves, shoring up the walls and glowing faintly with golden veins that pulse gently and illuminate the tunnels and chambers of rock.
It is hard to get to the entrance of these caves, as the underbrush is thick and not many travel that deep into the forest. And it is a good thing that not many can chance upon the dangers of what lies within.
Thick rivulets of sap run down the length of the roots and gather in small pools in the floor of the caves, where it remains for only a short time before it seeps into the rock and finds its way into the groundwater. Once in the groundwater, it is soaked up by the roots of the forest around the Trees of Abundance, and is mostly siphoned from the groundwater before it reaches the wells of Bémoth. Enough remains in the water to feed the crops of the town without the farmers and gardeners needing to fertilize the soil—but its more... adverse... effects have long since dissipated.
The Sap of the Trees can only be considered insidious and quite dangerous, as it has the potential to—in a world where some differences are viewed as dangerous and unwanted—change the human form forever.
Humans consider height as one of the parameters of humanness and if one is too tall or too short they are looked at oddly (at best) or with fear (at worst). This is because elves are taller than the average human and dwarves are shorter, and this makes people wonder if there is some intermingling in the bloodlines, leading to prejudice in some. So when something can alter someone so completely regardless of bloodline, the social implications are quite dire.
In the simplest of terms, the Sap, once it touches the skin of a person, be them Man or Woman, Elf or Dwarf or E'duni or Dragon, imbues that person with the Sap's Nature of Abundance, which will inevitably transform them into a towering version of themselves that strikes fear in all who look upon them, a fear buried so deep in the core of all human psyche that even those who are not cruel-hearted can't help but feel some fear.
It only takes a drop to instill some sort of change. One drop can change a man from a normal height to one comparable to Goliath. One shudders to consider what might happen if someone accidentally fell into one of the sap-filled pools...
When that drop touches the skin, its influence spreads to cover every square inch of that person, something it must do before it can exact any change. Curiously, the Sap cannot cross tattoos and thus it cannot activate until the blocking tattoo is removed.

History

The one and only instance in recorded history, of which can only be gleaned from an obscure town historical archive dating back to Bémoth's golden days, is of the appearance of a giant knight that began to terrorize the town once a week during the days when moonbloom trees blossomed in the spring and summer. It became so bad that the townspeople began to starve and the town guards were no match for his mighty strength. The terror did not stop until another giant appeared and fought it until it managed to drag it back into the forest, where they were never seen again.
It's often rumoured that the giant knight had once been Sir Vúmrútt, a free-lance who came to Bémoth after hearing of the need for a trainer for the town guard. The author of the archive was unable to identify the second giant.

Item type

Consumable, Magical

Creation Date

The moment Eldûra came into being.

Creator

The Creator

Related Condition

Gigantism

Rarity

Can only be found in one place: The Trees of Abundance , a small grove of trees located at the core of the forest that looms over the town of Bémoth.