⭗ REDIRECTIONS XIX⭗
⭗ CORNFLOWER SETTLEMENT ⭗
“The storms are already moving in,” Charred-Hand said, licking his thumb and reaching toward the sun.
“We’ll need to make the border before they hit or we’ll be stuck on this side of Pompidou Pass all winter,” Coda-2 said, her male bodies looking worriedly at the sky.
“We have time,” Kvelak grinned, his hands on his hips. “This heat? This tells me we have a few weeks yet. We might be the last caravan to pass through Cornflower this year, but that just means we can charge more for goods both here and in Emerald City.”
“I could definitely use a bath,” Lleva grimaced, scratching at her skin. “Three days in Cornflower? Or a full week? What do you say, Ilod?”
“In nine days, the pass will be iced over and the roads to Azure will be muddy with the coming rain,” the Blue Oracle turned to the greenfolk naturalist and the redlander merchant. “Two days. Plan for two days and two nights in Cornflower.”
Ilod chuckled and shrugged as Lleva looked at him. “Your oracle hasn’t been wrong yet. Two days and two nights it is. Let’s get moving.”
“The storms are already moving in,” Charred-Hand said, licking his thumb and reaching toward the sun.
“We’ll need to make the border before they hit or we’ll be stuck on this side of Pompidou Pass all winter,” Coda-2 said, her male bodies looking worriedly at the sky.
“We have time,” Kvelak grinned, his hands on his hips. “This heat? This tells me we have a few weeks yet. We might be the last caravan to pass through Cornflower this year, but that just means we can charge more for goods both here and in Emerald City.”
“I could definitely use a bath,” Lleva grimaced, scratching at her skin. “Three days in Cornflower? Or a full week? What do you say, Ilod?”
“In nine days, the pass will be iced over and the roads to Azure will be muddy with the coming rain,” the Blue Oracle turned to the greenfolk naturalist and the redlander merchant. “Two days. Plan for two days and two nights in Cornflower.”
Ilod chuckled and shrugged as Lleva looked at him. “Your oracle hasn’t been wrong yet. Two days and two nights it is. Let’s get moving.”
⭗ DESCRIPTION ⭗
Sometimes referred to colloquially as “The Last Home” by caravan traders who journey west and north into the Peltier Plains and points beyond, Cornflower is a sizable farming cooperative founded by greenfolk settlers who pushed out into the Bluelands to get away from taxes levied on agricultural ventures by Emerald City. Of all the grain suppliers that feed the Emerald City (and, to a lesser degree, Safranj– also the Violet City, where corn is used mostly as cheap kibble feed for the lesser among the human thralls of the cat lords) Cornflower is the furthest out, and the most reliant on independent caravans to get its product to market. The largest routes in and out of Cornflower run east (toward Emerald City) and west (toward the Windlash) but an imposing mountain pass on the eastern road (The Pompidou Pass) separates this bluelander settlement from the Greenlands and closes off all passage through as soon as the first snows of late autumn and winter begin to fall. Due to its remoteness, the settlers of Cornflower have become incredibly hardy and self-sufficient, with wide, welcome arms and open tables for any caravans that happen to cross through their cooperative (especially the well-stocked ones.) Expect the cheer to fade if you’re stuck through the winter.
⭗ WEATHER AND REST ⭗
Weather in the lowlands around Cornflower generally ranges from hot to uncomfortably warm, but it is always humid, even in the deep winter. There’s always work to be done, and a simple farm hand can expect to earn €1 - €2 for a full day’s labor. Specialists (like physicians and some wizards) can command greater sums for their assistance, especially if the need is urgent. Travelers can sleep in the barn with the Pug-Brahmin for €1/week, in the bunkhouse with the laborers for €5 per week or in fine accommodations (with a bath and everything!) for €10 per week.
⭗ MISFORTUNE IN THE SPRAWLING FIELDS ⭗
1. Someone is bitten by a creature that has the elf-rot. Difficult endurance test or go insane and run off into the wilds to become one with the wall of wood.
2-4. Stumbled into a trap-nest of waiting rat-spiders. They swarm and bite, then flee into the fields. Lose 1d10 life, a henchman or a beast of burden.
5-7. A heatwave blooms and slows everyone down. Lose 1d4 days or risk heatstroke (moderate endurance test or lose 1d4 endurance.)
8-9. Sweat and grime and long days on the trail breed sores and itchiness. Everyone is cranky and irritated.
10-11. Wait, who told you that water was potable? What do you mean that blue woman in the distance told you it was okay to drink it? What blue woman? Holy stars, man! Get a hold of yourself! That smell! Ugh! (1d10 days of azure squirts.)
12-19. The roads are easy and the heat is manageable. You make the crossing through the lowlands without anything worse than a little grit in some uncomfortable places.
20+ You meet another friendly caravan on the road flush with goods from faraway lands. They’re looking to trade, and they’ve got some great deals they’re willing to make just to shed some weight in all this heat.
⭗ ENCOUNTERS AROUND CORNFLOWER ⭗
1. Yellowfolk Vampire Wine Salesman (L1, jittery). Claims to be peddling high-grade vampire wines at the edges of the civilized world. Definitely not a spy. Definitely not a vampire either. Just someone who stumbled into a fortune of fine wines, trying to make an honest living. Honest!
2. Blayat Nowester (L2, confident), one of Cornflower’s leading councilmembers is out in the fields today, inspecting the crops after the appearance of a new crop circle. He’s spent years perfecting his fake smile, but those who know him, know better than to trust him.
3. Vomish gophers (L2, sneaky) tunneling around and stealing whole cornstalks with tactical precision in places where they believe they are least likely to be noticed.
4. Farm cooperative laborers (L1, menial) busy about some task or another, earning their daily bread and their spot on the thresh-covered floor of the barn with the pug-brahmin.
5. Perfectly ordinary bluelander cultists (L1, secretive) just passing through on their way to the next shrine to the Blue God. They have some curious trinkets and relics to trade, perhaps acquired by totally legal means, by graverobbing, or by something worse.
6. Scarecrow golems (L3, gun-studded) hang in the fields here and there, defending the corn from aerial threats, like howling fire-geese (L1, burning) and vome-locust fractalswarms (L2, countless blades). Mostly they are quiet, but once or twice every day, the scarecrows come online and spin up their miniguns to blast something (usually a threat, usually) out of the sky.
7. Pug-Rustler Outlaws (L2, bandits): A gang of notorious pug-brahmin rustlers is trying to sneak into the cooperative to steal a couple of prized pug-brahmin while everyone is busy with other farm tasks. The rustlers are hungry and smart and can be bribed, but they know that the penalty for getting caught stealing pug-brahmin is death by hanging.
8. Miniature mastodons of the Myrtille Way (L4, trumpeting) suddenly charge the cornfields. Ranch hand riflemen (L2, sharpshooters) rush to the settlement’s defense. Whoever wins, tonight promises good eating.
⭗ ODDITIES AROUND CORNFLOWER⭗
1. Spirit of the Harvest (L3, spectral) and the Eclipse Corn Mutations (L1, ensnaring): Cornflower has been dealing with a lot of high strangeness lately, even more so than what they usually deal with being in the Bluelands and on the frontier. Recently, a terrifying spectral being they've come to call The Spirit of the Harvest has been corrupting the corn and turning it into carnivorous mutant plants that trap and suck all the blood from their victims. Some speculate that the Spirit of the Harvest may actually be one of the council leaders who disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances, but the rest of the council leaders deny that any such person ever existed. Once thing is clear: as long as the Spirit of the Harvest haunts the fields, people are going to keep dying. Eventually, the spirit ramps things up and starts creating corn-made clones of its worst enemies, attempting to assassinate them with corn-plant dopplegangers.
2. The Bent Maze: there is a place in one of the cornfields where no one goes. Mostly invisible and imperceptible, the place seems to exist out of time, twisting reality around it and pushing away everything that tries to cross it. Some of the laborers swear that it's there, but they can't find it and they can't get inside of it. Anyone cunning enough to get past the twists in reality will discover a strange sinkhole that descends a good fifteen meters into the anthrocene. Down there, in the darkness, is a moldering organic starship with a crazy ghost stuck in its meaty circuit brain. Vomish spitting lizards that the starship has assimilated and conscripted to be its (mostly ineffectual) repair crew flit about here and there, trying to raise the starship from the dead.
3. The Harmonic Windmill: generates bizarre music while grinding grain. The rattle of winds off the Peltier Plains drives the windmill to create melodies more felt than heard, and they are loudest in the Noösphere. Some claim that the windmill's music is soothing and healing, recharging both body and soul. Others claim that it has exactly the opposite effect. Some caravan leaders have theories about why all this is, but they're unlikely to share them unless you get them drunk first.
⭗ OUR PARTY (SO FAR) ⭗
Lleva Vyeldisana, Greenfolk Naturalist and Zoa Conservationist
"Charred-Hand" a perfectly ordinary and unassuming wastelander
The Blue Oracle, Dreamer of Dreams
Coda-1, Coda-2 and Coda-3, a bluelander polybody pilgrim, allegedly.
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