Speaking to the Dryad
General Summary
While Rose was talking to Grovesong , Vanya made small talk with the remaining druids. They told him that Grovesong had been acting strangely lately; she had seen something in the stars that troubled her, and she'd been spending a lot of time at the local church of Ezra. They wondered if this had been what she'd seen.
You did some research into the proper rituals for summoning a dryad and concluded that your best bet was to bring her some natural thing from far away, since she couldn't travel far enough from her tree to see strange and exotic wildlife. You buried Jezra Wagner's bones at her roots on the undead side (when you did, you felt a sensation of warmth and heard Jezra's voice whispering "thank you") and placed some flowers from the Balinoks on the living side. When you did, you saw a brilliant light shining at her roots and heard a woman's voice gasping "Pain..."
Rose wildshaped into an earth elemental and burrowed closer. A woman made of light was huddled within the roots of the tree. She told Rose she was in pain and begged Rose to "take it, please." Rose couldn't sense any deception from her; she was in such agony that she barely seemed able to form the words she was saying, never mind having any ulterior motive. Rose decided to see what would happen if she agreed to help, and some of the light channeled into her. At first, it felt warm, and she felt stronger; as the light continued, she felt feverish, uncomfortably hot. She broke away from the radius of bright light, and the dryad screamed in pain and frustration; then the Vuchar started to boil.
You heard a scream from downstream, and when you went to investigate, you found the body of a woman who had been doing her laundry in the river. She had been burned from the inside out, like Ardmore.
You had enough basic understanding of positive and negative energy to have an idea of what was going on here. Rose theorized that the dryad had gotten out of balance somehow, but you had no idea how that could have happened, particularly like this--her undead side was supposed to be ascendant, so if anythign she should have been killing people with negative energy. She had an idea for how to heal the dryad, but she wouldn't have the proper spell prepared until tomorrow. Vanya suggested confronting Grovesong before then, but Rose pointed out that if she were backed into a corner she might go on the offensive.
Vanya decided to check out the local church of Ezra. A 14 on Knowledge Religion was enough to know that the Darkonian sect of the church was actually called the Nevuchar Springs sect, and that the Nevuchar Springs sect has a reputation for fire and brimstone. He went and found an acolyte on his hands and knees, using a toothbrush to scrub a mosaic of a stern-looking Ezra smiting the Legions of Night. He was eager to take a break and talk to Vanya. Apparently, the church had been living in uneasy peace with the druids; Bastion Teodorus Raines, the leader of the sect, wanted to burn the Mother Tree to the ground because of its undead half but recognized that doing so would cause a riot, so he let it be. Recently, however, one of the druids had been coming to the church to talk to Bastion Raines, although the acolyte wasn't privy to those conversations. She'd also been spending quite a bit of time in the archives looking up prophecies about something called the Time of Unparalleled Darkness. Vanya asked if he could talk to Bastion Raines, and the aclute said that he was a very busy man but he might be able to talk after that night's services.
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