The Tree and The Waterfall

 Last night, I ran a session of D&D for a small group of friends.  We've been slowly playing through The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and it's an absolute hoard of storytelling opportunities.  I've created or tweaked existing NPCs to suit the fascinations of the players all along, but last night I really got to Do A Thing.  

Context: tWBtW offers a treasure table of "Feywild Tokens" that players can trade with NPCs for items or favors.  Our crew doesn't go so hard into Magic Item StuffQuest though, so they're rarely wheeling and dealing as a whole.  I also dislike resource management as a feature, so we go by the honor system and everyone seems perfectly content.  However, it IS fun to get a little surprise item every now and then, so I will roll on the trinket table just to see what comes up.

Last night, one of our bards received a folded paper knight riding a unicorn.  Cute, but nothing particularly special.  I clocked that the item was mildly underwhelming and allowed the player to roll a history check to see if it had any more interesting aspects.  In my mind, it'd be a little more special: it used a rare feywild paper, or was crafted by a famous feywild artisan.

Then they rolled a Dirty 20.  

I don't always reward mod-20s with wild flavor, but this felt right.  

So, I gave the bard a Story.

Once upon a time, there was a tree that fell in love with a waterfall.

The tree called out to the waterfall, declaring its love, but the waterfall could not hear the tree over its tumult.

The tree asked the earth to help, but the earth wouldn't listen.

The tree asked the sky to help, but it also refused.

Distraught, the tree called out to the stream, lamenting, heart aching.

The stream listened.

It spoke to the salmon, who jumped up the river to deliver the message.

The sky then heard the story in the splashing of the trout, and being so moved, sent mighty rain clouds to help deliver the message.

The earth felt the message in the rain, and shifted great shoulders of rock and dirt, speaking the tree's message in the tumbling of rock and mud.

And the stream burst its banks, calling out to the waterfall, who finally heard.

As the cliff came racing down in a great landslide, the waterfall reached the tree at last.  Time slowed, the tree bending against the pressure of water, earth, and stone - blissful to receive its love at last.

When the water receded, the tree miraculously still stood, though changed in a strange way.

Many ages later, a woodcutter approached the tree and found it to be of good size for his purpose.  The woodcutter swung his axe and dealt a mighty blow to the bark of the tree.  However, he found that he had made no mark on the tree, as though his axe had simply bounced right off.  Try after try, swing after swing, the woodcutter made no progress.  Finally, exhausted, he slumped at the base of the tree and called up "At least a branch?  I wish to build a home for my family."  Moved by the honest plea, the tree dropped a great twisted branch at the woodcutter's feet.  

The man dragged the branch back to his workshop and tried to find a use for it.  But so strange was the bark, and odd the woodgrain, that the woodcutter could not find a use for the branch. So the branch sat. For years, it stood in the workshop, taking up space. Eventually, the man threw his hands in the air, exclaiming, "Fine! I will grind you up for paper pulp and give you to my children."  And so he did.  Grinding and soaking, pressing and shaping the material, the man labored long.  And when he finished, he made one thousand and one perfect square sheets of paper like no other.  When folded, the paper seemed to take up no more thickness than before - seeming to bend to the artist's desire.  The squares became legendary for their ability to be crafted into the most intricate designs.  Many craftsfolk and artisans searched for the sheets for a lifetime without success, and even more tinkers and traders claimed to sell the mythical squares.  

Few sheets of the paper remain, but those folk who happen across a trinket made from one of the squares know that it is worth more than it seems.

(c) 2023 SRupp