Story Seed - Babel

Image Source: http://mandelwerk.deviantart.com/art/Skies-of-Babel-490232276

"It reaches to the sky it does! Repeatin' smaller an' smaller each time, like ... like some kinda pattern." The boy gestured with his hands trying to indicate the immense size of the object.

The scholar wrinkled his face in doubt, "It looks like a rock." The object at hand did in fact look a little like a rock, though in truth it was fairly obviously a device of unknown technology. "But let's say I believe you, how does it ... open?" The white object was perhaps five feet tall and half as much wide, oblong like some kind of enormous pill.  It was decidedly not infinitely tall and reaching for the heavens.

The boy frowned in return, "You gots ta believe me! It jus' happened on it lonesome.  The water was lappin at the rock an' it just started to grow."  He scratched a filthy arm with dirt encrusted fingers, "T'was a full moon during the day, would that matter?"

"Now we're getting somewhere," the scholar muttered to himself, "Yes, yes indeed, that may well make all the difference..."

~~~~~~

The scholar found a small cottage, rented it with trade of services identifying items culled from ruins, or providing healing of the sick, and with his spare time he studied the eastern ocean.  He kept a journal of the high and low tides, of the moon and its phases, and in time he was able to discern when next the full moon would be visible during the day at a time of high tide.

~~~~~~

Six years passed before the scholar returned. The boy was a young man now, and he recognized the scholar as the older man rode into town on a strange beast.  He remembered the questions that the scholar had asked and he knew why the man had returned.  He returned once more to the beach, and found the stone, or whatever it was, half buried in sand and wet with the incoming tide. The young man looked to the sky and saw the crescent moon.  In three weeks he suspected that he would see the stone unfurl once more, that alien device reaching upward to the heavens again.
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Story Seed - Breakout

Image Source: http://trichardsen.deviantart.com/art/Hypnotic-495027810

The night was quiet as Otyr sat below the canopy of stars. The hunk of wood in his hands slowly shedding pieces of itself as he worked the knife.  Otyr didn't yet know what was within the wood, but head steadily cut away at it nonetheless, waiting for that first hint of what this would become.

Behind him the homestead was likewise quiet, he could hear his wife washing dishes, he could hear his boys, supposed to be sleeping, playing quietly in the back of the house.  He smiled to himself, remembering his own childhood, the things he thought his parents didn't know he did. The folly of youth, Otyr thought to himself as he carved away another curl of wood.

The small pile of shavings at his feet grew larger as the evening wore on. The boys quieted down, finally succumbing to sleep's embrace. Kiolla came out to sit by his side for a while, her knitting needles adding a new rhythm to the evening, but eventually she yawned and retired for the night, leaving Otyr with his carving.

After some time he stopped, flexing his cramped hands, and took a long look at the figurine in his hands.  He frowned, it was not what he would have expected.  A figure of sweeping curves and gaunt features, it was clearly a shade or spectre. Staring at the hideous figure and wondering if he would ever be able to see such an object at market Otyr noticed that the quite of the night had become a stillness broken only by a low rumble.

The rumble quickly built, jostling the ground itself, and setting his teeth on edge. The sound was painful. Unnatural.  Otyr stood, preparing to check on his family when the rumble reached a crescendo, exploding into a great sound like stones being broken. Otyr was bowled over, the figuring tumbling out of his grasp one way, his knife the other.  The mountains, distant but visible under the light of the moons shuddered once and then subsided, crumbing in places with distant rumbles of stone on stone.

Rising from the broken peaks an ejection of spectral ectoplasm, glowing green in the night sky and dotted with indistinct bright motes.  Otyr swallowed, fearing what he did not understand, but knowing intrinsically that something had happened in the Night Vaults, and fearing that what he saw was something escaping.

Back Issues #9 - The Emerald Death Cap

The natural world is often stranger than we know. Take for example the discovery of arsenic based bacteria here on earth, something fundamentally different from all other life on the planet. One very real natural phenomenon that we encounter only rarely outside of the cinema is bio-luminescence. The following photo is of a very real fungi; the idea is decidedly fictional however... 

Issue #9: The Emerald Death Cap

The Emerald Death Cap is a magically active fungus coveted by arcane spell casters, necromancers, assassins, and practitioners of holistic medicine. Like all magically active fungi the Emerald Death Cap resists every effort to cultivate it and is exceedingly rare. An average sized specimen, with a cap roughly one to two inches in diameter will fetch 5000 gp or more in even small cities, and can often achieve prices of 10,000 gp in the largest cities.

The Emerald Death Cap grows on the graves and corpses of creatures of magic. In addition the Death Cap requires a dark and damp environment. These two environmental requirements together are responsible for the Emerald Death Cap's rarity, and its known resistance to cultivations. Emerald Death Caps are most frequently found in clumps or clusters of three to five caps with as many as a half-dozen clusters per site, depending on the size and magical power of the cultivation site. Rare finds on the remains of subterranean leviathans have been known to yield dozens or more clusters and have often made the finder fabulously wealthy (or very dead). The Emerald Death cap is universally poisonous to all life and has a noxious scent of rotting flesh.

The uses of the Emerald Death Cap are many, and like all magically active fungi are known to be a powerful source of concentrated mana. Necromancers are known to covet the fungus for its ability to aid in the restoration and animation of necrotic flesh. It is said that a single cap can be brewed into a potion of such potency as to animate a score of fresh corpses into zombies under the necromancer's control. Arcane spell casters who are not necromancers can utilize the fungus to aid in the creation of artifacts that drain life or affect the undead, or the mushroom can be prepared in such a way as to become safe to consume after which it will energize the imbiber with its latent mana. The toxic nature of the Death cap has made it attractive and sought after by assassins who can prepare one of the world's most potent magical poisons from the fungus, and holistic practitioners are aware of preparations of the Death Cap that will yield a powerful antitoxin. Other uses and preparations can be found in ancient texts and obscure tomes; the Death Cap is said to be but one ingredient in a potion of everlasting life.

The undead have their own uses for the negative energy Emerald Death Cap. Beings like mummies, liches, zombies and vampires can ingest an unprepared Death Cap for restorative effects. Prepared Death Caps can be refined to provide potent temporary or permanent increases in power. Immensely powerful zombies and flesh golems have been known to be the result of applications of the Emerald Death Cap during creation or after the fact, for instance.

What kinds of unique magical and mundane plants do you add to your own fantasy games? Do you use real world botanicals and photos as your inspiration or do you find inspiration from a different source?