Tuesday 18 January 2011

Medelpad Chestnuts

The forest of Medelpad is famous for its chestnut trees. In one remote, hidden grove deep within it, there is a stand of these trees which appears to have magical properties. Various explanations for this phenomenon exist: some say a god died there long ago and the trees' roots burrow down to his vast corpse; others attribute it to faeries; others say the trees themselves contain the souls of dead sorcerers and witches. Some nuts from the trees of this grove have beneficial effects when eaten, while some are damaging; most have no effect at all.

Medelpad Chestnuts

Within the forest of Medelpad during autumn there are usually hundreds of chestnuts freely available, either on the ground or in the trees; however, it is only within the secret grove itself that they are imbued with magic. Even there, only 1 in 12 are special in any way (roll 1d12 to determine whether a given nut is magical; at the height of autumn 10d100 nuts can be gathered in the grove, while in winter 3d100 can be gathered, in spring 1d100, and in summer 1d20). Detect Magic spells work as usual, though an Identify spell is required to know the nature of the effect of eating a specific nut.

A magical chestnut will have one of the following properties (roll a d100; for caster level, assume level 3; effects only act on the eater):

01 - Increases a random stat by +1, permanently
02-05 - Allows the eater to levitate at will for one week
06-10 - Acts as a neutralise poison spell
11-15 - Acts as a lasting breath spell
16-20 - Makes the eater immune to paralysing attacks and spell effects for one week
21-25 - Allows the eater to detect evil at will for one week
26-30 - Makes the eater invisible to animals for one day
31-35 - Makes the eater invisible to undead for one day
36-40 - Acts as a protection from evil spell
41-45 - Acts as an augury spell
46-50 - Acts as a speak with animals spell
51-55 - Acts as a cure blindness spell
56-60 - Acts as a cure disease spell
61-70 - Acts as an insatiable thirst spell
71-75 - Acts as a speak with the dead spell
76-80 - Acts as a call woodland beings spell
81-95 - Acts as a goodberry
96-98 - Allows the eater to commune with nature three times a day for a week
99 - Acts as a cause critical wounds spell
00 - Acts as a power word: kill spell

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