Treating With Treants--Hazlan

General Summary

You arrived at the standing stones, which Rose thought looked like some wizard had done their PhD dissertation on druids and was trying to find a way to make use of their quaint customs, and waited for the band of refugees to arrive. After over an hour, you heard rustling in the trees, and Vanya made a big show of how you were there alone and unarmed. A creature about the size of a large cat scurried toward you, and when it came closer, you saw that it was a raccoon with its mouth sealed shut like the woman that Constance had saved from the awakened tree. She communicated through terrified pantomime that the trees had done this to her and that the other refugees were dead.
She led you into the forest, which started out as horribly mutated as any other forest you'd seen in Hazlan but gradually became almost normal. Eventually, you reached three treants who had the exsanguinated corpses of the partially petrified man and the tentacle-faced woman in their branches. They were hostile at first when they saw you and assumed that you'd come by the scroll from Thornroot through ill means, but you were able to get them to calm down enough to at least hear you out. Their leader (she never actually introduced herself, but let's say she did just for ease of reference--her name is Bloodoak) wrote a druidic word meaning "a purging event of mass destruction like a wildfire" and looked at Rose expectantly to let her prove that she was both a druid and the kind of druid who wouldn't clutch her pearls at the thought of magicide, and when Rose said that magicide sounded pretty great but you had to make sure not to harm the innocent, Bloodoak clearly relaxed a bit. There aren't a lot of druids in Hazlan. She thanked you for helping Thornroot and you asked to be let in on what they were planning so you knew whether and how to help.
The basics of the conversation/the Circle of the Black Grove's plan:

• Bloodoak doesn't think there really is such a thing as an "innocent" human in Hazlan. Humans learn how power is to be wielded by example, and she thinks that even the victims in Hazlan will become as monstrous as the wizards as soon as they're the ones in power. Vanya told her about how humans lived in relative harmony with nature in Barovia in an attempt to #NotAllHumans, and Bloodoak said that was all well and good, but this was Hazlan. She seemed especially offended that the refugees had come in with magic items, including the wand made from treant wood; that was why she had killed the two and spared the other, because the one without a mouth hadn't had any magic items.
• The elder treant who was killed to make the magic items (Thornroot called him "grandfather," while Bloodoak calls him "father") is on the move, looking to reclaim his missing parts; the pieces are coming to life because he's close. Bloodoak thinks he's going to kill Kourdara on his way to Sly-Var and is over the moon.
• "Grandfather" was once the hierophant of the Circle of the Black Grove, but after he was killed, he "lost balance" and is no longer a druid.
• The treants can't use the rune in Sly-Var to affect their magic because it's arcane. When "Grandfather" comes, though, that will change; because his body was used to make arcane magic items, he's infused with arcane magic. The treants can use him as a conduit to channel their magic through the rune and perform an incredibly powerful spell. They're still debating what they want to do, but they only have one chance; even if their spell doesn't destroy the city and the rune along with it, they'll lose the element of surprise once they trigger this spell.
• They expect "Grandfather" within the next two days; the objects wouldn't be reacting like this if he weren't close.
• One of the treants, Witherleaf, wants a more moderate approach; he wants to summon an earthquake that will collapse Sly-Var. Bloodoak eventually revealed that she wants to unleash a plague, since wizards have almost no healing magic to defend themselves from it. She doesn't see the sense in destroying Sly-Var and the rune unless they have a half-decent chance of taking every single wizard in Hazlan with them. She encouraged Rose to make sure that she had cure disease prepared.

You asked them to only strike down the guilty, and Bloodoak said that if you found a way to kill all the wizards in Hazlan while sparing the commoners, she was all ears. Vanya asked if there was anything you could do to help them, which visibly earned you massive credit in her book; no human has asked her that in centuries, if ever. She said that if you knew of any other pieces of "Grandfather," you should bring them to her so they can present them when he comes. You agreed to get the box from Iskander, but Vanya asked that in return, they consider destroying only Sly-Var; it housed the magical academy, and cutting off the head might kill the serpent. They didn't agree, but indicate that they'd at least consider it. You also asked them to restore the woman to humanity, which they did.
You're still trying to decide whether the best course of action is to try to present this threat to the wizards in order to convince them that the treants will kill them if they don't change their ways (which could end this whole thing without any loss of life, but could also clue the wizards in to the treants' plans and end with their being slaughtered) or to try and evacuate as many innocents as possible from Sly-Var (which can't possibly be everyone and which also won't help if Bloodoak's plan wins out). I don't think you were considering any other possibilities? Let me know if I'm forgetting anything.
You headed back to Sly-Var with the surviving refugee in tow.

Character(s) interacted with

Circle of the Black Grove  Kourdara (mentioned) Iskander (mentioned)

Related Reports

Previous session: Hazlan’s Latest Exciting Magic Item Crafting Trend!—Hazlan
Next session: @he

Report Date

26 Oct 2022

Primary Location

Hazlan