novel bin Chapter Two-Hundred Seventy-Eight
Chapter Two-Hundred Seventy-Eight
Chapter Two-Hundred Seventy-Eight
I’m not the only one around here doing some renovations. Violet, Hullbreak, and the Southwood all get working on their own projects as I let the forest of four seasons get settled. Southwood designates a bear scion and offers me a trade, which I’m surprised to see. I thought I’d need to send Teemo to talk to the Stag, or at least Leo or Honey, but it seems that allies make trading things a lot simpler.
He wants some extra mana to make sure he won’t have troubles paying for his bear, and trading me the climate control ability will definitely get that for him. I take the climate control, but I still don’t trade for a bear of my own yet, nor a fox, but they’re near the top of my list. I think once Leo, Honey, and Thing head back, I’ll do the trade then so they can all travel home together. I’m pretty sure the Stag is still hanging out with little Vanta, who seems to have accepted the name now he’s had some time to chew on it. So yeah, once they’re ready to head home, they can check in with the Stag and have the trade waiting for once they pass through the Southwood.
As for the Southwood’s bear scion, he’s still getting used to the new responsibilities, but I can feel the Southwood getting more information about beyond his borders now, so it looks like it’ll be slow and steady. I bet the Stag is going to ask Leo and Honey details about scouting, probably once Vanta’s borders stabilize. There’s also more of the Southwood’s denizens wandering around Silvervein, ensuring the Shield followers won’t be the only line of defense if anything nasty shows up.
Closer to the homefront, Violet has her expansion going now, too. Coda and Slash helped make what I’m thinking of as a water main from the sewers down to her territory, though they put it pretty high up. It’s not like sewer water will help her bunnies or ore nodes. But it gives her a proper expansion path, which she eagerly takes. Her new denizens are interesting, too.
The first is an alligator spawner, or crocodile? I think she technically only has caimans, right now, which I’m pretty sure are their own thing separate from crocs and gators. I would complain, but I still remember how I changed Neverrest’s wasp spawner to bees, despite how much difference there is between the two bugs. Either way, she has moderately-sized bitey lizards wandering the sewers now.
I think Nose and Legs are already looking for ways to make the water main a bit more accessible so the things can possibly come populate the rest of Violet’s territory, but it’s not a big rush. I’m kinda glad there’s not a lot of ways to travel down to Violet from the sewers, thanks to her other spawner: decay elementals.
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My own new invaders have shown themselves, and they’re rather insidious, especially considering what I want to do with the big tree. I’m getting boring bark beetles. I don’t mean boring as in uninteresting. I mean boring as in holes. Holes are not good for trees, generally speaking. Thankfully, my chosen spawners are perfectly suited to thwarting the things. My bark pixies might look cute, but so do ladybugs, and just as the ladybugs have a voracious appetite for aphids, my pixies have an unquenchable desire to eradicate the bark beetles.
The living vines, on the other hand, help heal the trees and plug up the wounds, ensuring nothing happens to the lumber. I’m definitely going to want to make a lumber node later. For now, I’ll leave it alone until I can talk with the Southwood about what kinds he wants, and what kinds I should use. I think I might focus more on firewood and wood for making charcoal, and he can have the more structural timbers, but we’ll have to hash that out later.
My new scions are stepping up, too. With the climate control option, I designate both summer and winter quadrants, and Titania and Poppy leap at the chance to get the bounty of fancy wild seeds into the ground. The little pixie even starts commandeering my fruitbats to ensure they grow healthy and cost me just a song to officially designate. Poppy also gets a few fruitbats, but she’s more interested in wrangling a couple ratlings to help her plan out the central tree. Thumbs and garden tools are going to be a big help for her project. I don’t know if she managed to hear me musing between willow and yew, or if that’s just the actual best choice, but either way, she’s growing a few small saplings of each in the central area.
I mean, even sapling is a bit grandiose for what they are right now, but they’re growing quickly, even the yew. I don’t know if she’s going to hybridize them or maybe graft, but either way will need her to grow them a bit first. I really hope she can somehow magically hybridize them, giving the elegant beauty of a willow and the twisting branches of the yew. I bet if she can’t on her own, Thing and Queen will be more than happy to help with alchemy or enchanting.
Even with Poppy boosting the growth of the little trees, she has plenty of time to promote growth elsewhere, too. I think she’s taken some inspiration from the hedge maze, and wants to make the sections of the forest similar to that, but on a much grander scale. I think that’ll work perfectly, too. There won’t be Tiny hunting people in the forest of four seasons, but that just means they can focus a bit more on the encounters.
I need to work on the encounters more, too. It’d be easy for me to make the whole place a wonderful little hiking trail with nodes and such, but I can’t forget that I want to make a dungeon crawl for the stronger delvers around here. I think it’s time to take a good hard look at my spawners and see what I can to do give the people the fights they crave.