The Money Tree

29 November 2024

Contents

• Contents
• Intro
• The Money Tree
  • Week 1: The Golden Shoot
  • Week 2: The Coin-Op Blossom
  • Week 3: The Hedge Fund
  • Week 4: The Money Tree
  • Week 5: The Stalk Market
  • Week 6: The Garden Vault

Intro

It's Blog Friday! I wanted to write a hex location that evolves as you spend time away. I made this between entertaining the in-laws over Thanksgiving break, so blame any inconsistencies on the pilgrims.

Also, I occasionally tease new posts over on bluesky, so if you want to see snippets of upcoming stuff, follow me there!

The Money Tree

One day, in a town too small for even a name, a lonely farmer plants some money.

Week 1: The Golden Shoot

Last week, Farmer Hyatt planted his life savings between two rows of okra. Today, the village is aglow with wonder: a golden shoot, tall as a child, has sprung from that spot. How curious! Villagers poke and prod. Yes (Miss Calm says), it feels like gold. Yes (Old Klayton says), it tastes like gold. But how can these newborn leaves unfurl like any other?

Farmer Hyatt never married. He's chuffed about the attention and happily accepts visitors. Why did he plant his savings? "Well, I can't take it with me." He yaps unprompted about his dreams: live burial, every single night, dirt pouring over his face like rain. Something in his body tells him that his flame is fading fast.

Unknown to the village: each midnight, he sleepwalks out to the field. There he lays a gold coin on his tongue, digs a small hole, and places his head inside. He doesn't move until sunrise - by then, the coin is gone.

Interacting with the shoot

Within five feet, all coins in your bag vibrate with a metallic attraction to the stem. Farmer Hyatt jokes that you should plant some too. "A little fertilizer ain't gone hurt."

If you place a coin near the stem, it rattles and crawls towards the base, then slowly melds into it over the course of an hour. Tomorrow, you'll wake to your "payment": different trifles scattered around your pillow. Petals, fur, teeth.

If you bury a coin near the shoot, add the following note somewhere on your character sheet: Angel investor at Hyatt's farm. This has ramifications during Week 6.

Taking the shoot, or attempting to cut it, earns the villagers' ire. You can get ten gold for it at a curiosity shop, but it won't grow anywhere else.

Week 2: The Coin-Op Blossom

Last week, a golden plant grew from the spot where Farmer Hyatt planted his savings. Today, it's bloomed. Oblong sacs bulge like pitcher plants beneath the central blossom, a shining disc ringed by paper-thin petals. The locals thought it some kind of sunflower until they looked closer. In the middle of the disc, beneath the florets: a rectangular slot.

Word's spread. The farm's got visitors. Tourists ooh and aah and laugh as they insert coins through the slot and bend their ears to listen. What's that sound? A few rattles (wind chimes?), then nothing. No, not nothing - a light thump as something falls into one of the sacs.

Farmer Hyatt looks tired. His breath smells metallic. Yesterday he tripped and scraped his knee - a visitor, helping him up, offered to pay for a sample of his blood. The experience shook him; he never thought he'd be party to a miracle.

Interacting with the blossom

If you insert a coin into the flower's slot, after a few seconds, an item travels through its stem and pops out inside one of the sacs. You can retrieve it through a hole at the top of each sac. Looks normal, but close inspection reveals it's composed of thin, tightly packed strands, not unlike mycelium.

Week 3: The Hedge Fund

Last week, Farmer Hyatt's little golden plant bloomed. Today, it's overtaking the field. The central stalk, thick as two men and tall as three, grows from the center of a shining dome shaped by sinuous limbs. A few sacs still hang beneath the main blossom, but most have elongated, forming supple tubes that disappear into the soil below. Around the dome, sharp thorns up to a foot long poke from the dirt. Some out-of-towners think it's a defense mechanism, but Hyatt disagrees. "They're tongues. They're how it speaks." How can he tell? He shrugs. No-one questions this.

The crowd is dense and loud, jagged edges in an unfamiliar space. The inn's full up, but Hyatt lets folks sleep in the field. Some locals joke that they'll have to name the town soon.

Farmer Hyatt hosts tours by day, vigils by night. He wants eyes on the plant at all times. This golden blessing has already changed so much, it'd be a shame to miss even the smallest detail. When he coughs, a pleasant tinkling sounds from his chest. He used to think his name would die with him. Now, he's not so sure.

Interacting with the hedge

If you place the tip of a thorn in your ear, you will, eventually, hear a word. "Hear" doesn't fully cover it - the feeling is more like a fingernail tracing a picture through the grooves of your brain. For the listener, this transmission takes a few seconds. For anyone watching, it takes an hour. At any given moment, two or three people lie flat, thorn in ear, eyes chasing a shape you cannot see.

• This is a request for an offering. See table below.
  • If you return with an acceptable gift, the central stalk bends down until the disc-shaped blossom is at your level. The rectangular slot widens as necessary to take your offering. After a few seconds, one of the hanging sacs distends as your rewards drops inside.
  • If you try and commune again before fulfilling the request, the thorn spikes up into your ear (take 1d10 damage).

Your reward is an amount of coinage commensurate with the size of the offering. The currency is visibly printed from the material you gave to the plant. Still, merchants accept it like any other. Under no circumstances will they admit it is anything other than bog-standard coinage.

Week 4: The Money Tree

Last week, the golden plant at Hyatt's farm grew into a wide hedge. Today, it's become a tree. "Is it a tree without wood?" asks Old Klayton, but nobody cares about the locals anymore. A pillar of gold, ten feet in diameter and thirty high, towers over the field. Long branches bear hanging sacs; wobbly tubes dive from the crown to the ground. Shining thorns sprout every few feet throughout the farm - those closest to the tree are occupied by Hyatt's listeners, ready to document whatever task the plant throws out. And always, the massive disc at the top of the tree waves and waves.

Every hour, little cysts form on the underside of the disc. These quickly burst, showering the ground below with coins. Or are they fruit? Either way, the now-constant crowd scrambles for the free cash. Somehow, the braying masses always set aside a pile for Hyatt - "the planter's portion," they call it. Despite the blessing, the crowd is uneasy. Whispers on the wind say the farm will be attacked soon; it seems word has spread too far. The people look to Hyatt for guidance.

Hyatt no longer farms. "Haven't felt the need." In fact, he hasn't entered his home in days. There's simply too much to do. He stands now in unwashed bedclothes, eyes bloodshot, directing a small cadre of dedicated followers. He has only listened to the thorns a single time, in secret, and he's told no one what he heard. One thing is for sure: he will do anything to protect his plant.

Interacting with the tree

At the top of the hour, the tree drops a pile of exactly one hundred gold coins on the ground below. Without a dedicated plan, assume each party member can reasonably fight through the crowd for 1d2 coins / hour.

If they talk to Hyatt, he asks for help protecting the farm. An attack's coming soon. People want to claim the tree for themselves, or worse. In return, he offers his entire collected portion worth 500 gold ("ain't no use to me"), plus a reward: two golden eyeballs, which, if placed in your head, highlight any gold piece in sight range, even through walls.

• The party has until the end of the week to prepare for the attack.
• Assume enough people are coming for there to be a real problem. Something like a detachment from Electric Bastionland.
• The eyes are his own. He plucks them painlessly from his own head once the attack is repelled. "Don't need 'em where I'm going."

Who's attacking the farm this week?

Week 5: The Stalk Market

Last week, Hyatt's little golden plant grew into a tree, and a group of outsiders tried to claim it for themselves. Today, it's become a forest. What once were thorns protruding from the dirt have erupted into tall, swaying stalks, overtaking the field with gold tubes. Listeners hang from the thorns at the top of each with cloudy eyes, communing with the market. Each of these stalks has a hole cut at head height, too smooth to be an imperfection. Above it all, the money tree towers, dropping cash to the patient crowd.

The stalks are thick enough that they impede movement heavily. Anyone making the pilgrimage to the tree must navigate a golden labyrinth. For most of the earlier crowds, the inconvenience has outweighed the results, so the area around the center now holds maybe thirty of Hyatt's most devoted. They collect all dropped cash with a zealot's fervor. Nobody leaves the field to spend it. Why would they, when the market is at their feet?

Hyatt threw up blood the other day. He sees gold when he closes his eyes. His followers hardly bear him any mind as he lays collapsed beneath the central stalk. No need for speeches, no need for work - the market hums around him unguided. In his dreams, he is being lowered into the rectangular slot still at the uppermost part of the tree. He thinks: was this life so bad?

Interacting with the market

If you place any money into one of the holes in the stalks and speak the name of an object, the hole widens to spit out your purchase.

• Your purchase is affected by how much money you put in (see below)
• The item comes up the tube from below. Dirt rumbles; the tube bulges to accomodate the purchase like a freshly fed snake.

How does the market accomodate your purchase?

Week 6: The Garden Vault

Last week, waving stalks grew throughout Hyatt's field. Today, the farm is gone. A shining golden dome covers the entire space. Looking close at the walls shows that they're composed of last week's stalks, now curled and woven in on each other. If you place your ear to the dome, you can still hear the tinkling of money falling from the tree. There is no entrance.

The only remaining sign of the original sprout is at the top of the vault, where the shining disc-shaped blossom still pokes through. The rectangular slot at its center occasionally spits out a belch of warm, musty air.

Not many people around these days. A few ladders from curious wanderers lead to the top of the dome. Life in the village has, more or less, returned to normal.

Interacting with the vault

If you throw anything into the slot at the top, your character accrues that object's worth. Keep track of the retail value of everything you donate. When your character dies, their corpse may be treated as a unit of currency worth that total value. The corpse may be donated to the slot to stack that value onto another character, as well.

If any party members are angel investors, an opening appears in the vault on approach. From it totters Hyatt, moving stiffly, unable to bend his knees and elbows. His eyes have been replaced by solid gold coins. Something under his skin rattles when he walks. His smile never leaves his face.

• Hyatt follows the party freely and can obey simple orders, but cannot speak or otherwise communicate.
• At any time, Hyatt may be commanded to spend points of HP to cough up gold coins at a 1:1 rate. He recovers HP as any other creature.
• If Hyatt dies, his body shatters, leaving exactly 206 gold coins behind.