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Sub-Plot: The Orchids

At The Pillars, the residents are losing their ability to speak, instead spending most of their energy on tending to The Orchids that grow high in the trees. They seem keen to distribute these orchids into the wider The Overgrown Wilds. This sub-plot was intended to serve as another mysterious thread for the player characters to follow, as well as to act as an active threat on the west side of The Buried City - to provide tension for Shelter and House Gardenia. Because of a lack of focus on this element, we never discovered what was really going on with The Orchids - if someone or something was in control, if they were malicious, psychic, alien, etc. As required by Apocalypse World, the gamemaster hasn't prepared plot for them or planned any particular mystery or outcome. There was no resolution for this sub-plot.

Themes

Agency, mind-control, happiness, escape.

Structure

Exposition

The Starting Situation

The residents of The Pillars have all but closed themselves off from other settlements in recent times. The caravans slowed and then stopped, with rumours that the people there are forgetting how to speak.