The Cloudgrave Tree

Cloudgrave trees grow darker as they age.

Some trees are still blackening from the autumnal gold of their youth, their crown fronds mixing with the leaves of other trees. The oldest, the giants, are like tornado columns or the iron arrows of titans, striking from the canopy like banner-shafts above a host of men. The older a Cloudgrave is, the harder it is to see at night, the Old-Black, Night-King trees blot out moon and stars like phantoms in the dark.

The Cloudgrave crown tree is an unfolding diadem of fronds like the stems of an enormous fern uncurling, presenting tough and slender blades before the sun like fields of oversized grass. Its blade-leaves, shaped like hoplite swords, are a dark near-blue-green, but the Cloudgrave sap that crystallises on their edges is refractive blue. When you see the sun through a Cloudgrave crown, the fronds are haloed in blue crystalline fire that dances as the trees shift slightly in the wind.

The trunk of a Cloudgrave is rough and dense but difficult to climb, the bark grows diagonally down in tubes and is  frictive enough to shred ropes and fingertips.

As the tree grows higher, the lower fronds loosen and die, eventually crashing to the ground, crushing the saplings of competing trees and slowly releasing its crystallised sap into the earth, acting as a mild growth retardant. Large competitors are rare, the spaces taken by tough brambles, fungi and noxious flowers.

The smashed and fallen fronds of the Cloudgrave obstruct easy access much of the time. They decay  slowly and build up into a jagged mess at the base of the trunk.

The Blue Blood of the Trees

 The crown of the Cloudgrave tree is where the new fronds grow, protected by the Cloud blood sap, or 'The Blue Blood'.

There is a pool in the centre of the crown right at the top of the tree, 'the wound in which life enters'. The wound is full of azure resin in its most liquid form and this resin *is* the Zone, or at least, the foundation stone of its economy and the reason for its exploitation.

The Tree Blood oozes from the frond-blades and crystallises there, making them utterly inedible to any form of life (other than the shamefully torpid Stilt Sloth).  The resin pit captures and kills any bird or creature foolish enough to fall into its grip and mummifies the remains which sink to the bottom of the pool to be absorbed slowly by the Cloudgrave as it grows.  When a wind comes up, the wound fumes gusting from the crown disorientates climbing animals, and human beings, the well known 'Tree Dreams' (see page XX). In this manner is the tree protected.

The crown-wound sap is more potent than the crystal smear on the leaves of the tree and is much easier to harvest.

"Easier" being a relative term for a dangerous hallucinogen with the consistency and weight of semi-liquid tar which adheres instantly to human flesh, or almost anything else, on contact and which occurs about twenty stories up a dangerously frictive tree that likes to drop its absurdly large fronds without any apparent warning.

The only solvents that dissolve Cloudgrave sap are rare, expensive, and only partially effective, making it almost impossible for harvesters to remove unless they are willing to peel off the skin underneath, which most will eventually attempt, or face gradual encasement in a blue gemlike exoskeleton.

DM Knowledge

Most cultures in a D&D world don’t have enough abstract knowledge about biology and environments for the following information to be directly transmissible or easily explicable, but it might be useful for a DM to know.

(People may well have a highly sophisticated attitude towards their local environment and knowledge of things like fire regimes and the nature of particular species, but they generally don't systematise that stuff and spread it around.)

Cloudgraves are giant tree ferns and their life cycle is adapted to fire. The trunks are highly heat-resistant and become more so the older they get. The delicate organs of the plant are hidden deep within the trunk (the high silica content which makes the bark so abrasive also helps with this) and right at the top, hopefully far above the reach of any blaze. When a fire breaks out the trees drop their older heavier fronds and curl up their fresh still-flexible growth like an octopus retreating into a hole.

The heat carries the spores of the Cloudgrave high into the air. When they land they grow into small, apparently-unrelated gametophyte trees which develop both eggs and sperm. When six to thirteen feet high, the gametophyte trees exchange their wind-blown sperm, which then hatch into a new Cloudgrave in the heart of the pregnant gametophyte, consuming it as it grows.

Harvesting Principals.

Even small Cloudgraves are incredibly tall and harvesting one is highly skilled work. Only the most adept climbers should ever attempt it and a fall from any significant height is almost always lethal.

Harvesters often bring up light wooden platforms which they tie to the tree and use as a staging area to lower full buckets and bring up empty ones. This platform, slightly below the crown itself and therefore out of the wind, is less susceptible to Tree Dreams and, if they can afford the spare hands, a team will usually leave a member there, armed with a sling to threaten any Hook Birds that venture this high.

The next problem is lowering the sap to the ground without spillage. Harvesters must choose between lowering each bucket along with a member of the team (slower, more dangerous for the bucket rider, but more reliable) or lowering the bucket on its own (faster but more vulnerable to Hook Birds and likely to spill).

With the team divided, those left on the ground have the job of receiving and protecting the valuable sap, driving off Hook Birds, Spiderhead gangs and Maroons, and dealing with abusive Safety Teams (its effectively impossible to harvest a tree to the required quota without breaking some safety rules).

Since the two groups are so separate there is little they can do to help each other and it’s not impossible for a harvesting team to climb down to find the ground team wiped out by Maroons or killed some other way, or for a ground team to watch the sky team ascend, never to come down. They might be overcome by Tree Dreams, attacked by Moon Moles, or simply disappear, only to be found mummified in the tree wound many years later by another team.

Falling Damage

Due to the enormous height of the Cloudgrave, anyone falling is assumed to do so from a significant height.

Standard falling damage is d6xd100

If the DM is feeling generous they may apply the standard value only to NPC’s and animals and allow PC’s to take only for NPCs and allow PC’s to take only ‘lucky fall’ damage, allowing for a slightly greater possibility of a miracle survival.

Lucky fall damage is d20xd20

 

Harvesting for PC's

How big is the tree?

Tree Size	Height in feet	Climbing time	Pints recoverable
Small	100 to 130	½ hour	100 + d50
Medium	200+	1 hour	200 + d100
Large	260+	1 ½ hour	400 + d100

Who’s on the ground, who’s up the tree?

The PC’s must decide who goes up the tree and who stays down below. More climbers going up means greater safety and more sap harvested. Less people down below means less safety from threats on the forest floor.

Of course, only those with good climbing skills should ever be allowed to even attempt the climb.

In systems where not everyone has explicitly stated skills, only those with a ‘climb’ skill should be allowed to attempt it.

In systems where everyone has a certain degree of skill, only those with an above average rating in that skill should be allowed to try it.

It should be reasonably obvious in any particular game which characters are ‘climby’ and which are not. If non-climby characters attempt to push the issue, simply make them roll an individual standard climb test for the whole ascent and descent, inflicting falling damage if they fail.

Harvesting the Sap

Once up the tree, assuming no interruptions, a competent team of four can safely lower about 25 pints of sap per half hour

Rope

Standard rope is assumed to have 30 hp and to be however long they need to be. Hook Birds will often choose to attack rope rather than people.

In real terms it is probably practically impossible to carry about the gigantic amounts of rope required around the zone, or to manage its enormous weight as it hangs from the tree without a sophisticated pulley system and a series of relay points. If intelligent players point this out, they are right and you should deal with that however you usually deal with the confluence between intelligent players and inconsistent fictional worlds.

Remember that workers going about the zone are usually carrying huge coils of shitty hemp rope strung about themselves.

Rolling for encounters

Every half hour, each group, those above and those below, must roll a separate encounter die. On a roll of 1, an encounter takes place. Depending on their position at the time, each group has a separate encounter chart.

Encounters climbing the Tree

D20
1	Fall! - Lowest DEX member tests climbing or falls, others can test to execute a daring rescue but if they fail, they fall too.
2	Abrasions! d12 damage to rope or d4 to hands of random PC. (Ropes have 30 hp)
3	Fall! - Mass dislodgement, all test individually or fall individually. Rescues can be attempted as above.
4	d4 Hook Birds attack!
5	Fall! – Random PC must test climbing or fall. Rescue can be attempted.
6	d6 Hook Birds attack!
7	Tree Bees! PC’s must climb silently to avoid enraging them. Make stealth or DEX checks.
8	d20 Hook Birds attack!
9	Fall - mass dislodgement, all test individually or fall individually
10	One Hook Bird but its INT 18 and evil as fuck
11	Fall – random PC must test climbing or fall. Rescue is possible.
12	Insert bird! Deranged humming bird tries to insert living insect into random party members ear. They must evade or defeat the bird to avoid this.
13	Stilt Sloths in the canopy!
14	Rat-Panther nest disturbed!
15	Fall! Lowest DEX member tests climbing or falls, others can test to execute a rescue but if they fail, they fall too.
16	Zonal Worm disturbed!
17	Disco-leg! PC with lowest CON has stress-induced vibrating thigh muscle, group has to pause for a while. Add extra half-hour onto total climb time.
18	Clickers Individuals! Moving through the canopy, a mid-air encounter begins. If the ground crew has a sentry watching the canopy and they pass a WIS test to spot the Individuals, the climbers get a free round of action.
19	Sun through frond crystals causes trippy visions, DM may describe what they like to one PC.
20	Frond Fall!

Encounters at the Crown

                                       

D20
1	Sap Contact! Hand! Odds right, evens left.
2	Sap Contact! Face! d100% of face covered. If over 50% PC must roll a DEX test to close their eye fast enough to stop it getting in. 100% means testing for both eyes.
3	Sap Contact! Roll again 1-3 chest, 4 chin, 5 neck, 6 mouth.
4	Sap Contact! Roll again Odds right, evens left 1-2 forearm, 3-4 bicep/tricep 5-6 shoulder.
5	Sap Contact! Roll again. Odds right, evens left. 1-2 thighs, 3 crotch, 4 abdomen, 5 back, 6 ass.
6	Sap Contact! Feet! (harvesters rarely wear shoes) Odds right, evens left.
7	SapFall! You fool! Sap dislodged in lowering. All below roll a save vs breath weapon or suffer an attack with no attack bonus. If hit, they roll a d6 on this chart.
8	SapFall! You fool! Sap dislodged in lowering. All below roll a save vs breath weapon or suffer an attack with no attack bonus. If hit, they roll a d6 on this chart.
9	SapFall! You fool! Sap dislodged in lowering. All below roll a save vs breath weapon or suffer an attack with no attack bonus. If hit, they roll a d6 on this chart.
10	D4 Tree Dreams! PC with lowest CON rolls d4 on the Tree Dreams table.
11	D4+D6 Tree Dreams! The PC with lowest CON rolls d4+d6 on the Tree Dreams table. Or, another PC may accept the d6 and roll that separately.
12	D6+D6 Tree Dreams! As above.
13	D6+D6+D6 Tree Dreams! As above except a third PC may accept the third d6 and roll that separately.
14	Insert Bird!
15	Stilt Sloths migrating en-mass across the crown!
16	Zonal Worm disturbed!
17	Moon Moles disturbed!
18	Tree Bee nest discovered!
19	From the crown you see something approaching the ground team (roll a d6 on their table) but it’s hard to warn them in time!
20	Frond Fall!

Encounters at the base

D20
1	Safety inspection! Roll Safety team.
2	Masked Maroons!
3	‘Mister Company’!
4	‘Clickers Individuals’ in the trees!
5	Fiddlehead queue gang!
6	D4 'escaping' workers being chased by Security team!
7	Another team arrives, claiming they have been assigned this tree.
8	Tomb-rumour obsessed rando, convinced they have intuited tomb location, requests assistance, refuses to wait.
9	D4 workers found ‘hiding’ in roots, beg for assistance.
10	Slumber Monkey nest in roots!
11	Humbler Snail!
12	Fiddlehead Spider!
13	D4 Hook Birds!
14	D6 Hook Birds
15	D20 Hook Birds
16	D100 Hook Birds
17	Cephalophant sighting!
18	Dementia wasp! All non-pc’s flee in terror!
19	Rat-Panther attack!
20	Frond Fall!