The Blighted Hamlet ### “The Green Song” **Recommended Level:** 14 (low-threat but high atmosphere) **Primary Purpose:** Establish tone, introduce the corruption, and give the first concrete evidence that something vast and intelligent is spreading through dreams. --- ### 🎯 **Scene Goals** 1. **Investigate the Disappearance** – learn what happened to the hamlet’s people. 2. **Encounter the First Signs of the Rot** – visual, auditory, and magical contamination. 3. **Acquire the First Clue** – the _Diary of the Miller_ and traces leading toward the forest. 4. **Foreshadow Psychic Contagion** – the “green song” reaching into a hero’s mind. 5. **Establish Emotional Stakes** – show this isn’t just rot; it’s something _alive._ --- ### 🌫 **Arrival** **Read-Aloud** > The hamlet crouches at the forest’s edge, its cottages slumped like weary sentinels. Doors hang open. Vines crawl over thatch and stone, blooming with pale flowers that drip emerald dew. A single windmill turns in slow, uneven circles, though no wind blows. The air hums faintly, as if the wood itself were breathing. --- ### 🕵️‍♀️ **Key Areas & Clues** |Area|Description|Checks / Clues| |---|---|---| |**1. The Green Windmill**|Blades coated in sticky sap; each rotation emits a faint note of the “green song.”|**Arcana DC 17:** detect telepathic resonance; **Investigation DC 15:** find runic markings carved into the gears — draconic sigils of listening.| |**2. The Common Well**|Water glows faintly; reflection shows faces of missing villagers whispering silently.|**Religion DC 18:** identify as residual soul-echo; **Persuasion DC 20** (if addressed kindly) – spirit mouths “the forest dreams us.”| |**3. Miller’s Cottage**|Roof half-collapsed, flour mingled with spores. A diary lies under a child’s toy cart.|**Investigation DC 15:** locate and read diary. First reading causes psychic pulse (1 Corruption).| |**4. The Fields**|Crops grown into spiral patterns pointing toward the Wealdmere. Birds dead mid-flight, bodies intact.|**Nature DC 16:** unnatural geomancy — plants following a central will; **Survival DC 16:** barefoot tracks vanish into tree line.| --- ### 📖 **The Diary of the Miller** A few translated entries: > _7th Bloomtide_ – The children hum that tune again. Says the lady in the woods taught them. > _8th Bloomtide_ – I heard it too. Sweet as honey and rot. We all dream green now. > _9th Bloomtide_ – We’re going to the forest tonight. She said she’ll show us how to grow forever. Reading it aloud triggers a soft vibration through the ground. Any character attuned to magic hears a whisper: > “One voice, one root, one dream.” --- ### ⚔️ **Optional Encounter – The Last Watcher** A single villager remains: the _miller’s apprentice_, now half-rooted to the floor. **Stat Suggestion:** _Ghast_ with +20 HP; poison damage replaced by psychic. **Behaviour:** begs for help but compulsively hums the green song; mid-conversation he lashes out. **Clue if subdued:** “She sang through the grain… through me… through you.” --- ### 💬 **Side Objective – Cleansing the Hamlet** Cleansing or containing the infection earns favour with druidic allies later. |Action|Result| |---|---| |Burn the fields|Halts spread but releases poisonous smoke (Con save 17 → poisoned 1 hr).| |Bless or hallow the well|Prevents future psychic bleed-through (costs 1 Greater Restoration or 5 spell-levels of radiant magic).| |Bury the dead properly|Reduces party Corruption by 1.| --- ### 🧩 **Leads to Other Nodes** - **Spiral crop pattern** → points directly toward **The Fungus Grove**. - **Draconic runes on windmill gears** → match symbols carved inside **The Sunken Shrine**. - **Spirit in the well** → whispers “Heart beats below the river,” hinting at **The River Hollow**. --- ### 🧠 **Player Objectives Recap** |Objective|Completion Marker|Reward| |---|---|---| |Identify what happened to the villagers|Discover Diary + apprentice|XP / 1 Corruption point reduced if purified| |Learn first weakness of the Rot|Arcana 17 → resonance traced to fear-frequency|Advantage on Insight vs. psychic effects (1 day)| |Determine direction of spread|Survival 16 → spiral pattern|Leads to next node|