%% date:: [[2025-02-02]] %% # [[036_20250202 The Garden grows, the Garden culls]] ![[036_20250202.svg]] ## Session Summary > [!tldr] [[036_20250202 The Garden grows, the Garden culls]] > ^summary %% ## Video [Video](https://youtu.be/-cM_wT5OwnM) %% --- ## Recap ![[ttrpgs/The Great Dark/035_20250126 Careful Hands make light work#^summary]] --- ## Log [[Dan Barrett]] is their Face-- he's a journalist. [[Diantha Venkman]] - a criminal. ![[cosm-diantha-venkman.png]] [[Egon Spengler]] is a doctor. ![[cosm-egon-spengler.png]] [[Ricardo Stantz]] is the Medium. [[Lightkeeper Ry Anne Zeddmore]] is a Soldier. Ricardo and Ry Anne are not there. It's just Dan, Diantha, and Egon. [[Lilyspire Labyrinth]] is the labyrinth in [[Garden of the Gods]]. Ash creates a *Ghost blade*, something that can kill things he can't see. Dan is flirtatious with me. They say the other two are doing a patrol around the *Promenade of Teeth*. The other two, Ricardo and Ry Anne, return as we're speaking. They're perturbed. "There were more of them - we had to retreat." We sit and drink with them. Ry Anne said they don't know much about [[Avery Choi]] either - she's only been down for a couple days and they hadn't met her before that. Diantha said that "with that sort of attitude", she's surprised she'd lasted as long as she had. Liliyspire Labyrinth changes from under you - you could really get trapped there if you're there too long. They say they know there are people in Candela Obscura who wish they were more aggressive, but they're the only team that has been able to monitor the place with the least cost-- nobody's died. [[Mariam Takashi]] mapped the Labyrinth 30 years ago. It's definitely out of date though. They give us the same starting information that Avery got. Dan hero-worships Avery and definitely has a crush. She just has the best stories. Even just getting to the remote locations. She was endlessly fascinating, especially to people who have been stuck in a cave for a few years. Ry Anne: [[The Culling]] Their rules: - Stay on the path (in this case the Promenade of Teeth). - Don't touch anything. - (corrollary) Don't destroy anything. - (addendum) Don't use artificial lights. It's almost like the Garden wants to tempt you. It puts things in there that will make you think you need to have something. Beautiful flowers, trees with bright fruit on them. Remember: No one has left the Garden with anything from the Garden. The people who try wind up dead. And they wind up dead in ways that they (the Circle of Careful Hands) never see. They're killed by plants: strangled by the vines. If we see plants coming after us, we're probably already dead. There are relatively small vaguely humanoid creatures made of plants with glowing red eyes and they're along the path now. This has only happened in the last few days. The Circle have managed to survive encounters with them because of their rules, but they don't really know how to deal with them. [[Alchemist's Greenhouse]]: western edge of the Garden, smashed ruins of a greenhouse. Roof is shattered. There are large sections with alchemical writings on the walls. It, and the pillars, are the only things that are human-made. There were a lot of deaths around the Greenhouse back in the day so they're careful not to spend too much time there - that's why they don't have accurate drawings of those symbols. here's a superstition that when people die, there should be cloth around their mouths and noses to prevent their souls from escaping. Rictus rite: criminals are killed with mouths open so that their souls DO escape. Halfway across the Promenade of Teeth, there are skeletal arms that hold bouquets of flowers of roses. Avery was not reckless. They took her on a patrol or two and she didn't break the rules. She went into the Lilyspire Labyrinth with the express goal of finding what's at the centre of it. Ry Anne says it's still possible she's alive. There is the sound of running water at several points, audible from the path, but nothing visible. It's not a huge place - it should only be an hour to go around into the labyrinth. - [x] THE CULLING - [x] Did they see other people come in and did the Garden change when they didn't come out? The red-eyed creatures appeared about a day or so after Avery went in. Ash talks to Egon (doctor) and Ricardo (Medium). - Egon loves categorising and classifying things. The plants down here are never exactly like what we find on the surface. There's always a variant. The versions here are larger and more aggressive. - Ricardo is less enthusiastic about these plants. As a Medium, he's more focused on people. The Culling - about 5 years ago, in the middle of the war. - Candela Obscura had exclusive access to this place, but at one point they didn't. Lots of other factions got in there too. - The Circle of Careful Hands withdrew. People were sent in there and they all died. When the Circle returned, they saw all the peope who had died. - Candela Obscura built the elevator going up when all the factions left it to Candela again. There's a correlation between how long you stay in Lilyspire Labyrinth and whether you will die. They believe that the Garden rejected the others. In the last five years, only the Circle and Avery have ever gone into the Garden. This place was built by people of [[Oldfaire]]. Each group of pillars is in a group of five. Just like the pentagrams in [[South Soffit]]! Each is a pentagram but there are also five groups of them that are an even larger pentagram. Smack dab in a middle is a last group of five forming a pentagram, surrounding Lilyspire Labyrinth. Ry Anne, along with Ricardo and Egon, take us to the labyrinth. We feel the textures of teeth under our feet through out shoes. Ry Anne tells us to use artificial light sparingly. It looks about dusk here. There's a sickly smell everywhere and it's super vivid. Ash does a ritual. It's like the Garden reacts to him doing magick in it. Ash takes a Bleed to complete the ritual. He knows the Garden does not want this. If he pushes ahead, he will be operating against resistance. He'll need to make a high stakes roll (most of the stakes will be high stakes in the Garden). We all see a vision in the ritual circle that Ash has created. Ry Anne looks away. Ricardo begrudgingly looks away too. Only Egon is watching. - We're on the same path, but we hear shouts and running. - We see things sway as if in a storm, but we don't hear wind. - Someone wearing an EONS security uniform like [[Dwayne The Rock Johnson]] was wearing is there too. It's all very disorderly. He is running, trips and falls. Gets up and runs some more. He trips again. One of the creeper vines pierces him with a blade-like vine. He's trying to pull it out of his body but he just succeeds in getting his hands bloody. He dies. Up ahead, there is a glow of two red dots. %% # Excalidraw Data ## Text Elements ## Drawing ```json {"type":"excalidraw","version":2,"source":"https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin/releases/tag/2.0.25","elements":[],"appState":{"theme":"dark","gridSize":null,"viewBackgroundColor":"#ffffff"}} ``` %%