A Talking Tree

“All at once, the three of you feel a rush of strange feelings. Your bodies feel expansive, huge compared to what you’re used to, but also buoyant like you could float away. The only thing that keeps you grounded is the feeling of the rough bark of the tree on your hands. Everything else has fallen away,” I said once we had gotten over the Nat 20 Elyse had rolled for the attempt to commune with the Chun-Shi tree.

“It’s quiet, until a voice speaks out of the misty void in your mind. ‘H-hello?’” I put on a variation of the voice I usually used for kids, quickly scribbling down an idea into my notes.

“Hi,” Olivia said. “Can you hear us?”

“I- I can,” I replied, still using the voice. “Wow, I can! Hi!”

“Howdy,” Jade said.

“Hey, uh, Mr Tree,” Renee said.

“It’s so nice to talk to someone,” the tree said. “I used to have more trees around me, but now it’s all little peoples like you but they can’t talk proper.”

“Well, hopefully we can teach some more people to talk to you,” Olivia said. “Do you have a name?”

“Ummm, not really,” the tree said. “I’m usually just ‘the big tree’ to you little peoples. Sometimes they call me pretty though, and that’s nice.”

“Well, you are very pretty,” Jade said.

“Are you going to be my friends?” the tree asked. I was really laying it on thick.

“Oh, it’s so cute,” Elyse said, then shook herself and tried to get back in character. “I think we can be good friends, Pretty.”

“That would be great,” the tree said.

“Pretty,” Olivia said. “Do you like having little peoples around you?”

“Oh, yes,” the tree said. “Well, most of the time, anyways. Sometimes they make little hurts on me, but so do the squiggles and the woodpeckers and it’s not so bad. Most of the time the little peoples are nice though. They like my apples, and they throw parties around me, and I like the music!”

“Isn’t party music just the best?” Olivia grinned.

“The best,” the tree agreed.

“I think we’ll have to have lots of parties, then,” Olivia said. “Right, girls?”

“Sure,” Jade agreed.

“Absolutely,” Renee nodded.

I had them hooked.

“Hey, Pretty,” Jade said. “Do you think you could answer some questions for us about what was here before the little peoples made their town?”

“Oh, um, I can try,” the tree said.

“Were there ever any big monsters around here?” Renee asked.

“Um… big monsters?” the tree considered. “None bigger than me. At least not that came near me - lots of seasons ago there was a bunch of big peoples flying through the sky.”

“The Dragonstorm,” Olivia guessed, referencing another of my old campaigns. Melissa and Dan really had told her the big plot points of all of them.

“I dunno, maybe,” the tree said.

“What about smaller than you, but bigger than us little peoples?” Jade asked. “Any big predator animals that used to be around here?”

“Um.. yeah, I think so,” the tree said. “For a while there was a big bear who liked to eat my apples. She got extra big because I liked feeding her, but then she didn’t come back one day. After that, there was a Howly that would scare off all the animals for a long time, and my apples just rotted into the ground instead of getting eaten up.”

“A Howly?” Olivia asked. “Do you know what it looked like?”

“Like a Howly,” the tree said.

The girls all glanced at each other, amused but a little frustrated.

“Did the Howly eat other big animals?” Jade asked.

“I dunno. Probably. That’s usually what scares them. And it would howl every night, and I could hear it even if it was very, very far away. That’s why I called it a Howly.”

“Wait, did the Howly talk to you?” Renee asked.

“One time,” the tree said. “It asked me a question, but I forgot it.”

“The Howly communed with the tree…” Olivia muttered, mostly to herself. “So it must have been intelligent enough to have divine or arcane power of some sort.”

“Maybe!” the tree said, not really helping.

“Pretty, thank you so much for your help,” Jade said. “We’ll try and come back soon, but we think there might be other Howlys out there that are scaring all the little peoples around here and we don’t want that, so we’re going to go try and scare the Howlys. When we come back for a party, is there anything we can bring you?”

“Um… Maybe a party bow?” the tree said. “I had a big party bow once when the little peoples had a big party in front of me. I looked extra pretty that day, all the little people said.”

“We’ll get a pretty bow for you for sure,” Renee said.

“Absolutely,” Olivia agreed. “Alright, I think we end the communing there.”

“Bye!” the tree said, and then I cleared my throat. “OK, so, anything else you’d like to do in town?”

“Well, now we know that the big thing in the woods might be more than just an alpha wolf,” Olivia said. “But I don’t know what else we can do to prepare unless we know more.”

In the end, the girls decided on a couple more tasks, which Tori came up with. Since they were planning on going out into the wild to track and hunt wolves, they wanted to hire someone who knew the area - and who better for that than a local trapper who could double as someone to manage the two pack donkeys they purchased, and who could skin the pelts of the wolves and whatever else they killed. They agreed on a flat rate payment, plus a cut of the proceeds from any pelts they brought back, and struck a deal with a grizzled old veteran woodsman named Fergus - I had intended for him to be a wily and wiry, somewhat elderly man, but somehow the girls finagled him around to being in his late fifties but more of a former lumberjack-turned-silver fox.

With their new paid comrade and a couple of donkeys with the supplies they might need, they set off for the wilds.

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