>>6189207You note along the way pools of deep black water amidst the wood, some of which are steaming. Your heart flutters as you realise what you’re seeing.
“Hot springs!” Eva says, voicing the thought.
It’s a joy of home you thought you might not see for a long time. Cuva’s isles are all the slopes of a great range of fiery mountains, and though their eruptions periodically bring woe to your people, they also bring hot springs. Amidst the damp grey of a Cuvan winter there is nothing better to warm the bones, and no matter how you tried, you’ve never managed to replicate the real thing properly with a mansion.
“We’ll have to ask if they’re not also sacred first, but…”
“I don’t think the gods’ll mind what they don’t know,” Eva says with a wink. You catch her meaning well. She’s a druid, you’re a transmuter - you could visit anytime.
Eva’s breath hitches when the heart tree itself comes into view. White as old bone is its bark, with red leaves like a thousand bloody hands reaching for the heavens, half of them now illuminated in the pale light of the early sun. Beneath its boughs stands a large round pool of black water.
And then there’s the face. No one said anything about a face. The eyes and mouth are carved deep into the trunk, wearing a melancholy expression, while the eyes are red with dried blood-red sap.
You may be no woodswoman, much less an archdruid, but even city elves have a certain instinctual affinity for all things that live and grow. You don’t need Eva to tell you that Something is Wrong with this tree.
>Choose any 3 for Commune to analyse: >Ground or terrain (including caverns)>Plant life>Minerals >Bodies of water >People >General animal population >Presence of woodland creatures (i.e. fae) >Presence of powerful unnatural creatures (undead, aberrations, outsiders, constructs)>The general state or health of nature in the area AND
Roll a general Wisdom check for Eva, +9 (base +6, +1 from Guidance, +2 from Owl’s Wisdom)
If you have any specific skill checks you want either caster to make, feel free to suggest them.
