Useful or Valuable Flora
Pick one of the following, or create a new kind of flora for the PCs to discover.
Either way, keep in mind when and where the PCs will encounter this. If you're presenting something useful, it should be useful now (perhaps with a bit of care or effort). Don't present them with an apple tree in winter and claim it's useful. If you're presenting them something valuable, it should either be something they can harvest now, or something that they can feasibly come back and get later.
Wild food
Mushrooms, morels, asparagus, leafy greens, dandelions, all sorts of berries, cherries, plums, apples, beans, nuts, bulbs, tubers, etc.
Can gather ×◇ provisions ( uses each). If you like, roll to determine effort required and/or palatability.
Poison
Death caps, hemlock, belladonna, arum, foxglove, fire lily, oleander, yew, the wrong parts of many edible plants/mushrooms or medicinal herbs, etc.
Can gather doses (dangerous). If you like, also roll each for potency, rapidity of onset, and ease of delivery. A skilled herbalist could refine it, make it more potent, rapid, or easier to use.
Medicinal herbs
As a poultice, chew, incense, tea, extract, essential oil, etc.
- Treats injuries/aches; use in lieu of supplies to Recover ( uses)
- A remedy for a debility, illness, infection, or poison ( uses)
- Valuable in ◇◇ bulk to a skilled herbalist (Value 1), the source of a medicine (or a poison)
Useful materials
- Vines that could work as rope
- Saplings, good for setting snares
- Saplings, straight and sturdy, good for arrows/bows/spear shafts
- Large tree, toppled in the Great Wood, a good source of timber
- Good kindling (dry leaves/needles/ twigs, birch bark, etc.)
- Dry wood/peat for burning
Sample specimens
Brightberry
A thorny shrub with delicious berries that glow with soft, golden light (hand). In spring, it smells like baking honeycakes. Harvest berries as provisions ◇ (3 uses, fragile), but they burn away within hours. Dig up a ◇◇ small shrub, pot it, and nurse it to health (tricky); merchants will pay handsomely for it (Value 2).
Sleeping Elksheart
A giant mushroom, sometimes big as a house, found in dark forests. Fills the air with paralytic spores (inhaled); the mycelium digest the victims. Carefully collect spores to use as a poison (dangerous, Value
1). Burn the cap to destroy the spores, cut it up, and feed a town with it ( Surplus, immobile, Value 2).
Violet Lotus
A lily, grows alone along rivers/ streams in protected eddies. Inhale its burnt petals to ask the GM a Seek Insight question about whatever situation you wish. A tincture of the flower makes a lovely perfume (Value 1).
Twisting Pine
An evergreen that rotates as it grows, resulting in twisting trunks. The sap flows freely when tapped, but hardens quickly unless bottled up and protected from air.
Use a vial in lieu of supplies to Recover (seals wounds, flakes away days later). Harvest a jar (Value 1) to use as a sealant or ◇ a pottery glaze.
Vanta's Blade
A low, herbaceous plant with broad, blade-shaped leaves that absorb light.
Patches of the plant look like holes in reality. A pouch can be made into a rich dye, ◇ ink, or paint (Value 2), but Hillfolk and Manmarchers consider it cursed and will burn patches (and bearers) of it on sight.
Hartwood
A small tree with a distinctive twopronged shape, found growing atop rocky outcrops. Climb up, chop off a branch, and burn it; apply the ashes to skin as a ward against possession.
Snowembers
Pretty flowers found only in certain snow-covered meadows of the Huffel Peaks. The petals are edible and warm, even in the dead of winter, but they turn to mush soon after picking. Can harvest provisions with a few hours' effort; those who partake grow flush and count as wearing warm clothes for the next day or so.
Questions
- What's distinctive about it? How did you spot or recognize it?
- What is it (sometimes) called?
- Who taught you to recognize/use it?
- What superstition hangs over it?
- According to the tales, how did this plant come to be?
- Why is it thought impossible to cultivate?
- What bird, critter, or bug eats it/lives in it/pollinates it/spreads it?
- Who back home would be most excited by this find?
Cultivation
Should the PCs wish to cultivate a useful or valuable flora, then Make a Plan. Some example requirements include:
Also establish the benefits of success, such as:
- Access to a new special possession
- Extra Surplus in a particular season
- A trade good (Value 1-2) produced each spring/summer/autumn/winter
- Extra HP regained when Recovering
- Extra folks fed when you use a mess kit and supplies
Creating new flora
Think first about where it's found, how and where the PCs encounter it.
With that in mind, decide how it's useful/valuable, or have someone roll the Die of Fate.
| 1-6 | … in the field, here and now |
|---|---|
| 7-10 | … to folks back home or in some other community |
| 11-12 | … both in the field, here and now, and to folks back home, or in some other community |
| 1-3 | ×◇ provisions ( uses) |
|---|---|
| 4-5 | As a poultice/medicine/remedy; use in lieu of supplies to Recover or to treat a debility ( uses) |
| 6 | Replenishes Stock to a Blessed's sacred pouch |
| 7-8 | Fills a need (for shelter, fuel, kindling, water, material, etc.) |
| 9-10 | Grants a benefit (like a four-leaf clover that adds 1 to a single key roll, or moonwort that clears the mind of beguilement) |
| 11-12 | Provides a path forward or a solution to a problem (shrooms to commune with a spirit, a weed that masks your scent, poison fruit that might defeat a foe, bait for a trap, etc.) |
| 1-2 | A present, a curiosity, something pretty or nice (Value 0) |
|---|---|
| 3-4 | Material for common crafts /trades (fiber, wood, medicine, oil, salt, tannin, etc., Value 1) |
| 5 | A luxury (seasoning, perfume, dyes, cosmetics, etc., Value 1) |
| 6 | Something sketchy (a drug, a poison, etc., Value 1) |
| 7 | An offering, a charm, a ward, a counterspell, etc. (Value 1) |
| 8 | Food for many people (counts as 1 |
Surplus, immobile, Value 2)
If it's not already obvious, pick or roll for the form-factor in which it's useful or valuable.
| 1 | As a small item |
|---|---|
| 2 | As a pouchful ◇ |
| 3-4 | As a ◇◇ sackful or bundle |
| 5-6 | In large quantities (immobile) |
| 7-9 | Roll again, but it requires extensive effort to harvest/process/ make valuable |
| 10-12 | Roll again, but also it's fragile and/or cumbersome Next, pick or roll for qualities and a distinctive trait. |
| 1 | Attracts/houses a pest or danger |
|---|---|
| 2 | Dangerous to harvest/handle |
| 3 | Harmful to the soil/biome |
| 4 | Horrid taste/odor/texture |
| 5 | Finicky/delicate/spoils quickly unless properly processed |
| 6 | Steeped in superstition/said to be cursed/a bad omen |
| 7 | Associated with a specific god/ entity/hero/legend/tale |
| 8 | Easy to work with |
| 9 | Especially strong/durable/potent |
| 10 | Delicious/aromatic/beautiful/ supple/otherwise pleasing |
| 11 | Rare/legendary/thought extinct |
| 12 | Pick or roll an additional way in which it's useful/valuable |
| 1 | Always found with some type of hazardous growth |
|---|---|
| 2 | Always found with (hidden by?) another, less-useful growth |
| 3 | Grows/blooms only in particular/ uncommon/unlikely conditions |
| 4 | Grows in a particular pattern |
| 5 | Attracts/houses some innocuous bug/bird/critter/spirit |
| 6 | Intricate pattern/texture |
| 7 | Distinct shape/configuration of leaves/stems/trunk/flowers/bulbs |
| 8 | Leaves/flowers/seeds/fruits/pods that look like something else |
| 9 | Strong, particular odor |
| 10 | Bright/garish/unusual color |
| 11-12 | Roll twice Now, considering all of the above, and where and how it's found, decide: What is it? Pick 1: Lichen, moss, algae, fungus, mushroom, fern, grass, sedge, plant, weed, vine, climber, creeper, briar, shrub, succulent, deciduous tree (willow, ash, oak, alder, birch, elm, fruit, maple, chestnut, rowan, walnut, etc.), conifer (cedar, pine, fir, juniper, cypress, spruce, yew, etc.). |
What part is useful/valuable? Pick 1-4:
Trunk, stem, shoot, limb, body, wood, flesh, bark, skin, root, tuber, thorn, leaf, fruit, gourd, nut, seed, spore, flower, pollen, pod, cone, sap, oil, resin, ash, etc.
How is it prepared/used? Pick as many as make sense: Eaten, chewed, rubbed in, used as a poultice, burnt, smoked, ground, pulverized, stripped, soaked, cooked, infused, reduced, tinctured, mixed with __, carved.
What is it called? Mix and match words however makes sense (like "raven's ash" or "witchpetal"). Maybe translate it based on who named it (e.g. to Welsh for a plant local to Stonetop).
autumn, bear, bell, berry, bitter, black, blossom, breath, bright, burr, cat, cave, claw, clover, crow, day, dock, dog, drake, dye, elk, eye, feather, finger, flax, foil, fox, gold, greater, green, hair, hanging, hart, heart, hemlock, hood, horn, ivy, lesser, lily, lotus, midwife, mint, mist, moth, moon, night, old, orchid, pad, paw, pepper, petal, poppy, potter, priest, puff, rain, raven, red, river, rose, rough, shade, silver, skunk, sky, smooth, snake, spotted, spring, sun, sweet, star, tanner, thistle, toe, tongue, violet, water, white, wild, wilting, wing, witch, wort, anything from the lists above, __.