Aboleth Overlords

You get

A hand rake, one floppy hat, a small watering tin.

Why did you leave your job?

1. Tormented: Thinking you were ridding yourself of a garden-variety pest, you poisoned the pet mole of a particularly cantankerous gnome. They have since defiled your gardens and wilted your herbs whenever they could.
2. Haunted: When you were a child one of your village playmates drowned while you two were playing in a lake. You never told their parents, and for the past several years you have been seeing your friends face in the mounds of dirt where you go to pick herbs.
3. Allergies: You thought if you just searched long enough you would find the cure to the sneezing you suffer when encountering most roots and leaves. Unfortunately this never happened.
4. Assassin: Every time you went looking for new plants, you were always assaulted by murderous strands of sentient vines, intent on using your body for fertilizer.
5. Competition: A shroomfolk found their way to your village, and would offer spores of itself to the locals. It seemed to cure most ailments, and the being disdained being paid for its services, rendering you out of work.
6. Poisoned: Stuck by the thorn of a corpse-thistle, you were bed-ridden for several months. While fighting for your life, you called to one of the many goddess of gardens, and promised you’d pick flourishing vegetation no longer.

What did you take with you?

1. Amadou: A peculiar kind of fungus that catches flame quite easily. You have about 6 uses worth.
2. Cat’s Nip +1: You keep this in a tightly-sealed bottle, but when you sprinkle even a pinch of it, a dozen or so local cats will find their way to it, and nearly any feline will be rendered catatonic for nearly an hour after getting a taste. You have about ten pinches remaining.
3. Tacky Stalk: This woody reed contains a fibrous, chalky interior that may be chewed into a gummy mound. After a few minutes this mound will harden entirely, becoming a permanent adhesive after drying.
4. Artificial Flowers: You’re not completely sure what this is, but it seems to be a bouquet fashioned out of felt, wax, wire and other materials. It looks real as long as it is not closely observed, and is rather resplendent.
5. Seed Bomb x3: You have three dirt clods held together in small canvas sacks. Their contents will explode on impact, showering whatever they strike with dirt and a multitude of seeds, dizzying anyone struck, and with a bit of rain will produce a patch of wildflowers in a week or so.
6. Jovial Mandrake: A small root that looks somewhat like a tiny human. This being follows you about, telling you jokes and laughing in its shrill, high pitched voice. After spending months with the thing you’re not sure its so bad that you cannot speak Mandrake.

Inspired by Electric Bastionland, Knave, and Ten Foot Polemic.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.