Choices of Mercy
Choices of Mercy
“A test of compassion amid the leyline's fury.”
— Hook · rescue and moral choice
“The rift is sealed, but the forest is not safe yet. From the glowing clearing come the cries of warped deer and the sobbing groan of a treant spirit in torment. Will you end their suffering, or defend yourselves against guardians that no longer know friend from foe?”
— Hook · rescue and moral choice
Dim green light still pulses from the sealed rift. The air shimmers with residual arcane heat as four warped deer break from the brush, their antlers blackened and their eyes bright with pain. Behind them, a towering treant spirit rises in a veil of spectral vines and lets out a sound like a forest trying not to die.
Thorn-of-Moss
Urgent but respectful. The questgiver asks for restraint first, but accepts that the party may need to defend themselves.
Rumours
d4 · table- 01The deer were seen drinking from moonlit puddles before the rift opened.
- 02Old hunters avoid the burial grove because the trees there refuse to burn.
- 03A singing root line beneath the clearing can be heard only at dusk.
- 04Someone buried a black stone under the roots long before the rift existed.
Lives are at stake, but so is the party's reputation with the forest and the moral shape of their victory. A violent answer ends the immediate threat, yet may deepen the land's wound. A merciful answer is harder, but may reveal the true cause of the corruption and win the forest's trust.
Background Lore
The sealed rift has not only stopped a surge of raw leyline magic, it has also bled the nearby forest of its old protections. Creatures once bound to the land have been twisted by the aftershock into suffering, half-living sentinels that attack from fear and pain rather than malice. The clearing now hums with unstable green light, necrotic sap, and the echo of a guardian spirit that cannot find release.
After a dangerous rift is sealed, the party enters a clearing where warped deer and a tormented treant spirit emerge from the woods. The creatures are aggressive, but their violence hides pain and fear. The party must choose whether to fight, to calm, or to free them before the forest is lost to the rift's aftershock.
