Creatures
As the final week draws on, you begin to recognize patterns in the behaviors of Nightroot’s manifestations. At the beginning, it was simple crude amalgamations of stones and rubble, seemingly drawn from the depths of the park’s terrain. The disparate parts of these creature’s bodies held together by a localized magnetic field, you gave them the nickname of Bedrock. A fairly passive expression of Nightroot, they typically only act with aggression when unobserved by a camera for longer than 5 to 10 minutes (15 to 30 seconds in game time, so a roughly 27 min run time for a full night. Admittedly lengthy, so adjustments might need to be made, though you could implement a save code system so players can come back later for the more difficult nights). With activity beginning shortly after dusk at 9:00 PM, and it ceasing at 6:00 AM the following morning, the first night passed unusually smoothly. While you are usually able to keep yourself locked away within your tower, your duties sometimes force you to leave during the night, and while there is always an element of danger, it’s best to fulfill any desire for exploration early in the week before the woods become too dangerous. Of course, your tower has its own security flaws, as you will soon discover. Emerging from the caves on the second night, a swarm of Fuzzfoots driven into a feeding frenzy by druidic influence begin to stalk the trees and attack any light sources, requiring you to turn off the lights within the tower within moments of hearing the screech of an approaching cauldron as it descends over the woodland. Thankfully, the energy exerted in these flights requires long periods of rest, so such attacks are infrequent upon first encountering the creatures. On the third night, Nightroot’s power consolidates enough to form a lesser vessel of its power, the part of the druidic soul known as the Koru, possessing control over all leaves and grass within the druid’s domain. While the core manifestation is repulsed by the electricity surging through the tower from the generator, it can send smaller Skara leaf demons to chew through the wiring, or to create a hole in the gas tank of the generator. Regardless, you are forced hastily conduct repairs to the appropriate areas using a power guzzling drone, lest the Koru break down the tower door and shred your soul into a fine green mist within its swirling husk. Even once dawn breaks at the end of the night, the dead leaves of the manifestation block off paths throughout the reserve, inhibiting the speed with which you can repair campsites and evict vagrants. The fourth night introduces the Nightclaws, twisted animals that were once wolves before they were corrupted by Nightroot. Aggressive and swift, they give little warning before they clamber up the tower to attack you, requiring you to close your door and consume precious power to withstand their onslaught. In addition to the new threat, Fuzzfoot swarms become more frequent, and harsh winter winds rolling over the mountains debuff player speed and shift the remains of the Koru’s vessel, randomizing path obstructions. As a new moon rises over the darkened reserve on the final night, Nightroot’s spirit uses its last reserve of strength to give itself a physical form for its full spirit. A pale, rotting trunk of wood rises from the Earth at the mountain’s base, and begins steadily approaching the tower. Behaving similarly to Bedrock, it can be held at bay by cameras, ut destroys them if observed for too long in a single session. This isn’t likely to be a concern, as you will still have to contend with Fuzzfoots and Nightclaws swarming the tower as you attempt to slow the progression of the Nightroot. In a form this potent, you stand no hope of defeating it should it reach the tower, and thus you can only hope to delay it in a desperate last stand as you pray for dawn to break and cast this nightmare into oblivion.
Ending(s?)
Demise
Despite your best efforts, the Nightroot reaches the tower and releases a screech that shatters your eardrums as it grasps the steel and wood supports with tendrils of jade green vines. Kneeling prone in agony as you clutch your aching skull, the floor beneath you begins to pitch at an angle as the tower is torn from its foundation, accelerating with gravity until it crashes down into the lake below it with a mighty SPLASH!
Drifting in and out of consciousness as you feel the crushing weight of the water begin to drain your body of its last dregs of oxygen, you vaguely perceive a twisting brown shape curling into the submerged tower, tossing aside a collapsed ceiling beam that had been pinning your legs at the knee, and grabbing your ankle to begin dragging your into a murky tunnel further below in the depths as your vision recess to black.
Waking slowly, you see the dim flicker of light dance along the cavern walls around you, seemingly cast from a pulsing red moss coating the stone above. Attempting to turn and glance at your other surroundings, you find yourself bound to a stone slate by unyielding dark roots, unnervingly reminiscent of the fateful night that began this whole saga of horrors. The stone begins to shift, until you are held vertically against, your mouth gagged with moss to prevent your screams of fright as you gaze into the vengeful eyes of the spirit that faces you. Though no words pass between you, it seems to pound its intent into your mind through sheer force of will, showing its sharpened bark rending your flesh as it begins consuming your blood, soaking it into its roots to fuel it to purge the region of Gim filth for good, calling its brethren to rise from their slumber and aid in its purge of the vermin who had poisoned them for so many centuries. Thankfully, you black out from pain before you can fully experience the wrath visited upon your body as you meet your demise, your soul absorbed into the pulsing black mass within the creature’s heart.
Purgatory
Though you succeed in fending off the Nightroot, you know that safety has once more eluded the forests of Sprucehaven. Desperate as your efforts were to prevent it from feasting upon your fellow Gims, its manifestations none the less slaughtered enough to sustain it in hibernation for the next year. Though you may have defeated it now, you are cursed to be bound to this land in endless cyclical combat against the creature until at last it lacks fuel to sustain its hatred and returns to slumbering within the earth.
Peace
An unearthly screech echoes through the clearing as the Nightroot’s vessel stumbles across the wood line to the grounds outside the tower. Despite your best efforts to slow its rampage, it seems to have reached you in time to consume you and spread its vengeance far beyond the confines of Sprucehaven. But as hope seems to flee your body, it surges back in full force as rays of light begin to peek over the horizon. Screaming in fury, the Nightroot makes a dash for the tower, colliding with a support right as a beam of sunlight contacts with its bark. Petrifying in an instant, you gaze downward into a visage of pure hate before you feel its spirit fade into the ground beneath you. You stumble back from the window, breathing a sigh of relief that this region is now safe. Collapsing into a chair, you give a weary smile, thinking ahead to your reunion with your wife, hugging her and easing the loneliness you two have felt within you since Nino sacrificed herself to defeat the Hunter at the start of all this. But even in defeat, the Nightroot wreaks vengeance upon you. Your moment of joy is shattered by a growing creaking, the tower tilting towards the ground as it finally gives in to the damage the vessel of Nightroot caused it. Initially panicked in your search for escape, a sense of peace fills you as you plummet towards the earth below upon realizing the inevitability of your demise. You already have cheated fate in living as long as you have in any event, and with Nightroot vanquished, it now is only a matter of time until the rest of the druids return to their earthen slumber. Upon conclusion of that, Fleio and the rest will soon come to you, at last accepted by the afterlife now that they have made penance for their inability to stop the Hunter’s rise. You smile one final time as the home you have known for the past year is crushed into rubble against the ground, the sole sign anything ever occurred in this past week. Eventually, with no malicious spirit to fuel them, the urban legends of Nightroot fade save for a few crazy theorists that shift to some new doomsday scenario after a couple years in any event. The people of the towns around Sprucehaven never know the danger they lay in before your fate intertwined with theirs, and things return to normal. And finally, nearly a decade later, you have the pleasure of welcoming your loved ones to the afterlife, the last druids who had threatened Gimkind returned to their natural state.
(Editor’s note: Wow, this took an hour and a half, it was nice to have a lengthy project. @bakedpotato , feel free to let me know if you need any further lore, or technical explanations/stat blocks/ abilities for anything mentioned in the above essays. Thanks again for such an interesting project, been a pleasure to work on this!
Side Tangent
Still curious if anyone can guess who the player character is, here’s a link to the topic in which they were used previously:Lore needed for my characters
Hope you enjoy the reading of both the essays in this topic and their predecessors. Feel free to give feedback, as I am always looking to improve my writing!
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