The Trees of Insanity

The Trees of Insanity — Ch 4.3

Sent by a queen to save a dying orchard, the party climbs to five ancient trees that have stood since the Beninging — and finds them rotting from the inside, guarded by a blight that answers to someone they thought they’d left far behind. When every drink in the world is distilled from these five trunks, who would want them dead… and what secret has been sleeping in the wood the whole time? Some cliffs you climb. Some you fall from. These trees make you lose your mind either way.

Chapter / Episode	4.3 — The Trees of Insanity
Arc	Echoes of ITYS (ch4 — DM Brin)
GM	Brin
Date / Duration	2026-04-03 · ~4h45m (gameplay from 00:31:00)
Party	Xeros (Dave), Nortle (Steve), TBD (Chris), [[foulclaw
Ends on	a stolen mermaid diary that may unlock two lost memories — and a road back to [[castle-leary

Synopsis

Fresh off being flushed into the sea by The Ferryman, the party surfaces at the base of a monstrous cliff, climbs its endless stairs (skipping the Princess-Bride sword-fight at the top), and steps into the Forbidden Fruits Orchard — beautiful, and beautifully decaying. Reading the trees, Foulclaw recognizes five massive trunks at the center: The Pillars, the original trees standing since the Beninging, purchased long ago by Zen au Kouréas and tended by Castle Leary, from which every one of the Seven Deadly Sips is distilled. They’ve been strangled by a three-week Mist and blight, their fruit rotted to slime — and the moment Foulclaw carves a sample, a spiked vine coils his ankle and the whole grove wakes up hungry.

What follows is a marathon brawl against a Tree Blight, a pair of grappling Fester Vines, a yappy twig-blight “dog,” and a hooded druid — the Keeper of the Blight — who, when unmasked, turns out to be Tobiah: the mute, form-filling owlin the party once decked and doused in liquor back at El Cinede. Now he can talk (barely), and he’s been hired by Astaroth to poison the Orchard so “no one can ever pour alcohol on him again.” The fight is pure chaos — Foulclaw rides a string of nat-1s straight into Wild Magic, shrinking to a molting, invisible toddler until his own allies think he’s exploded; Nortle hoists the Keeper 50 feet up in a boiling Watery Sphere; TBD sculpts a Scorching Ray around the sacred trunks and later drops his first-ever Fireball; and Xeros, going incorporeal on his Ghost Step Tattoo, keeps sticking his head inside the trees, finding a sleeping man in each and reviving them one by one with Lesser Restoration. The Keeper goes down (spared, hot-domed unconscious), the boss Tree Blight dies with its acorns crushed, and the blight finally recedes.

With the Orchard healing, the party eats a bud from the restored purple Laranune tree — and gains Truesight: Xeros isn’t a demon at all but a teenaged boy, and everyone who loves you glows, which shocks Nortle out of his grudge over the last session’s deception and points his fury squarely at Astaroth. They charm the pathetic Tobiah, pack him off to Manni Dugal and the School of ITYS for “conversion,” and race back down the cliff to the mermaid queen Sissily. When they show her the Laranune flower, a memory surfaces and she weeps — then recognizes the journal they looted from the Ferryman’s cabin: it’s written on Scrail, her people’s scale-paper, stolen from her hundreds of years ago by an obsessed Baeden Leary. Her god Eadro forbids the merfolk any record, so she hides a secret library to reclaim what the siren takes — and reveals the gut-punch hook: the friend who also lost her memory to the Ferryman was Basil. Sissily sends them back to Castle Leary to gather their wagon of information and find Millie — who, unbeknownst to her, has already been taken by Astaroth.

🎵 Song Recap (rhyming — drop into an AI song generator)

Scheme: AABB verses + chorus. Suggested vibe: swampy folk-rock stomp with a gospel-tent bridge.

(Verse 1) Up a cliff that would drive a sane man to despair, Five old trees in the rot and the mist standing there; Every drink in the world drips down from these five — So who poisoned the roots and who’s keeping them alive?

(Chorus) Praise ITYS! — and dodge the grasping root, Seven nat-ones falling, five nat-twenties to boot; A wizard’s first fireball, a tortle in a sphere — The Trees of Insanity are driving us queer!

(Verse 2) The Keeper drops his hood and it’s Tobiah the bore, “No one pours the whiskey on my feathers no more!”; A shrinking little owl, a dog gone glizzy-fried, And a man sound asleep in every trunk inside.

(Verse 3) Eat the purple bloom and the true sight comes clear, The ones who love you shimmer, and Nortle sheds a tear; A diary on scale-paper the sea-queen used to keep — Two women lost their memories in that Ferryman’s deep.

(Outro) Back to Castle Leary, where the answers might be — They came to save an orchard; they woke a memory.

📋 Point-by-point breakdown (player catch-up — everything that happened)

1. 00:31:00 · 📖 Recap — Brin opens ch4.3 and rewinds ch4.2: the party escaped Astaroth’s lab, The Ferryman dumped them into the sea, they ate at Cho Mama’s, and met the mermaid queen Sissily, who laid an egg mid-conversation and asked them to investigate The Forbidden Fruits Orchard.
2. 00:40:00 · 🧭 Travel — After an hour hiking the cliff’s “secret stairs to Mordor,” everyone’s back to full size; Xeros escapes the digesting Dom-Khan jellyfish suit and the table can’t resist a Princess Bride bit at the top of the stairs.
3. 00:45:00 · 🎭 RP — The party enters the Orchard; the Mist has cleared but the vegetation is still slime. Foulclaw flies up to scry through Xeros’s orb, humming LaDonna with no mute button, and sees only a canopy of rot.
4. 00:54:00 · 📖 Lore — Foulclaw’s 17 History IDs the five giant trunks as The Pillars — here since the Beninging, purchased by Zen au Kouréas, tended by Castle Leary, and the source of all Seven Deadly Sips.
5. 01:03:00 · 🎲 Mechanic — Foulclaw cuts deep samples with his herbalism kit; a spiked vine coils his ankle. Xeros defines a “brisk,” and Brin’s slip about “deeper penetration” seeds the session-long P-word jar.
6. 01:11:00 · ⚔️ Combat — Initiative! A Tree Blight, two Fester Vines, a twig-blight “dog,” and a hooded Keeper of the Blight perched in the branches.
7. 01:16:00 · ⚔️ Combat — Foulclaw casts Wither and Bloom and reslots his Knuckles of Change gems; Nortle drops a Watery Sphere on the Keeper and floats it 50 ft up; TBD nat-20s a Scorching Ray, using spell-sculpting to spare the sacred trees while cooking a Fester Vine to charcoal.
8. 01:38:00 · 🎲 Mechanic — Xeros goes incorporeal on his Ghost Step Tattoo, sticks his head into a trunk, finds a sleeping man inside, and revives the fire tree with Lesser Restoration.
9. 01:54:00 · 🎲 Mechanic — Foulclaw’s back-to-back nat-1s trigger Wild Magic (his old killer): he shrinks to a molting toddler, then rolls invisible — every enemy thinks he detonated.
10. 02:03:00 · ⚔️ Combat — Nortle bursts a grapple, kicks a Fester Vine until it pops, and lands a superhero pose — then a straight-20 pose-off with the Keeper.
11. 02:06:00 · 📖 Reveal — The Keeper pulls off its hood: it’s Tobiah, the mute owlin bureaucrat from El Cinede, now a vengeful druid hired by Astaroth to blight the Orchard.
12. 02:12:00 · 🎲 Mechanic — TBD’s Shatter kills Tobiah’s loyal twig-dog (a callback glizzy); Xeros needles Tobiah, whose crushingly boring answers earn mock “tokens.”
13. 02:36:00 · ⚔️ Combat — Nortle Breath-of-the-Dragon “hot-domes” Tobiah inside Foulclaw’s Wall of Force, knocking him out cold (spared for questioning).
14. 02:39:00 · ⚔️ Combat — TBD casts his first-ever Fireball; the party trades grasping-root grapples and 13-damage crushes with the boss Tree Blight, and a lightning flash from the Knuckles blinds it.
15. 03:35:00 · ⚔️ Combat — Xeros grabs the Tree Blight’s acorns and Burning Hands them to death — “you have crushed its posterity.” The blight and Mist recede; the Orchard starts to heal.
16. 03:38:00 · 🎲 Mechanic — Xeros Lesser-Restores the remaining trees (white, red, blue, black, purple); each holds a sleeping man, focused on “something else.”
17. 03:42:00 · 🎭 RP — The party eats a bud from the purple Laranune tree → Truesight: Xeros looks like a teenager, and “those who care for you glow.” Nortle forgives the ch4.2 deception and redirects his rage at Astaroth.
18. 03:46:00 · 🎭 RP — They charm the spared Tobiah and send him to Manni Dugal and the School of ITYS for “conversion” (and co-eds); Foulclaw poses as Tobiah to bait Astaroth at the cliff — she stands them up.
19. 04:07:00 · 🧭 Travel — The party races down the cliff (spectral wings, flaming feet, gauntlet-rockets) and back into the sea to Sissily.
20. 04:10:00 · 🎭 RP — They give Sissily the Laranune flower; a lost memory surfaces and she weeps.
21. 04:23:00 · 📖 Reveal — The Ferryman’s journal is made of Scrail — mermaid scale-paper stolen from Sissily centuries ago by an obsessed Baeden Leary. Her god Eadro forbids the merfolk any memory.
22. 04:30:00 · 📖 Lore — Sissily reveals her hidden library of copied books and cleanser-records, her fight to rebuild her memory through Memory Anchors — and that Basil lost her memory to the Ferryman the same way.
23. 04:40:00 · 🎭 RP — Sissily sends them back to Castle Leary to gather their wagon of information and find Millie (already taken by Astaroth). TBD nat-1 shrinks on the way out.

Player Characters

Character	Player	Race	Class	Note
Xeros	Dave	Tiefling	Bard / Cleric of Father ITYS	Goes incorporeal to heal each tree from the inside; Truesight reveals him as a teenager, not a demon
Nortle	Steve	Tortle	Monk	Boils the Keeper in a Watery Sphere; forgives his friends when the Laranune bud shows them glowing
TBD	Chris	Goliath	Wizard ([[school-of-magus	School of Magus]])
[[foulclaw	Foulclaw]]	Jesse	Owlin	Sorcerer (Wild Magic)
Basil	Brin	Harengon	Fighter	Sits out — Brin is DM this arc — but her [[knuckles-of-change

NPCs

NPC	Role	Note
[[sissily	Sissily]]	Mermaid queen
[[tobiah	Tobiah]]	The Keeper of the Blight
[[astaroth	Astaroth]]	The chapter villain
[[the-ferryman	The Ferryman]] / [[baeden-leary	Baeden Leary]]
[[millie-holton	Millie]]	Missing helper
[[manny	Manni Dugal]]	[[the-church-of-itys
[[cho	Cho]]	Broth cook (ch4.2)

Factions

Faction	Note
[[the-church-of-itys	The Church of ITYS]]
[[the-cleansers	The Cleansers]]
[[leary-family	Leary family]]
[[school-of-itys	School of ITYS]]
[[school-of-magus	School of Magus]]

👹 Monsters

Monster	Threat / Role	Note
[[tree-blight	Tree Blight]]	Boss plant
[[fester-vine	Fester Vine]]	Grappling brutes (×2)
Twig Blight (“the dog”)	Tobiah’s loyal blight-pup	The only creature ever loyal to Tobiah; killed by TBD’s Shatter → a “glizzy”
[[tobiah	Tobiah]] (Keeper of the Blight)	Owlin druid (dual NPC + Monster)

🎙️ Notable Moments

00:41:47 — Climbing the endless cliff stairs to the Orchard, the table cannot let a Princess Bride setup pass — and it names the whole episode.

Nortle: The Cliffs of Insanity! Oh, we’re done. Xeros: As long as we get to have the sword fight at the top. Foulclaw: I am not left-handed. I am actually— sorry, that’s not my line. Nortle: Wait — actually you are. You ruined it.

01:07:08 — A vine draws blood and a poison save; Xeros celebrates the wound with a word nobody knows.

Xeros: In ITYS, we call it a brisk. Nortle: Sorry, I didn’t follow that one. TBD: A brisk? Xeros: When we celebrate a young man’s birth and we remove something from him — that’s called a brisk, my friends. Nortle: Umbilical cord?

01:54:07 — Mid-fight, Foulclaw's back-to-back nat-1s trigger the Wild Magic that nearly killed him once before.

Xeros: Did you just Wild Magic? Jesse — this is how you died last time! Foulclaw: I shrink. I’m baby-size out here. Freshly hatched. GM (Brin): …and now you roll invisible. It literally looks like every enemy thinks you’ve just died. Foulclaw: I just killed myself because I didn’t know how to cast the spell.

02:06:05 — The terrifying hooded druid finally reveals himself — and instantly stops being scary.

GM (Brin): She pulls off her hood — and you see this is not a she. It is Tobiah. Tobiah: I have to destroy this orchard so that no one can pour alcohol on me ever again, like you reprobates did! Xeros: (clapping from a tree) Well done, Tobiah — you can drop the act now. You just lost all credibility. TBD: The Keeper was actually kind of scary… and now it’s just a joke.

02:14:12 — Tobiah, upside-down and captured, keeps answering questions with the least interesting thing possible.

Xeros: Hey, Tobiah — did your wife leave you because of your voice? Tobiah: I’ve never been married. That’s a very odd question. TBD: This guy’s going to kill us all with his mundaneness. Xeros: You just bored me to death, my friend. Give him a token.

03:35:54 — Xeros ends the boss the only way this session could: reaching into the giant Tree Blight and squeezing.

Xeros: I reach in, grab its acorns, and cast Burning Hands. TBD: You have killed this tree by crushing its acorns. GM (Brin): You have crushed its posterity. You’ve taken the seed of blight and obliterated it. Foulclaw: It failed the posterity check. Xeros: Roll for posterity.

03:37:34 — First-time DM Brin keeps "slipping," and Steve has learned exactly which words spring the P-word jar.

Nortle: Ask me if I was baiting you. I was. GM (Brin): This place is just soaking in it — the magic. Nortle: I said “so” and “baiting”… and you took both of them, exactly as I knew you would. GM (Brin): This is my swear jar. I have a problem.

03:44:16 — Eating the healed purple tree's bud grants Truesight — and shows Nortle who really loves him.

GM (Brin): With true sight, the people who care for you glow like candlelight. Nortle: (seeing his friends blaze) …they were only trying to spare my feelings. Nortle: He needs to let go of that frustration — and direct it at Astaroth, and punch her in the throat. GM (Brin): That tracks. Yep, that tracks.

04:23:17 — Shown the Ferryman's looted journal, Sissily recognizes the very paper it's written on.

GM (Sissily): This paper it’s made of — that is Scrail. Only my people make it. This was stolen from me. Foulclaw: You mean… hundreds of years ago? GM (Sissily): I know who took it. It was Baeden. He had very strong feelings for me. He was obsessed. TBD: So it’s a diary.

04:31:37 — Nortle can't resist a Disney number inside the sea-queen's forbidden secret library.

Nortle: (bursting into song) Tale as old as time… Foulclaw: Nortle — we’re having a beautiful moment, and we’re supposed to keep our voices down in the library. GM (Sissily): If I am caught with any book, I will be severely punished by Eadro. Nortle: …I’ll leave the singing to TBD. Sorry.

🗺️ Locations

Location	Mentioned / Traveled	Note
[[the-forbidden-fruits-orchard	The Forbidden Fruits Orchard]]	Traveled
[[castle-leary	Castle Leary]]	Mentioned
[[sissily-s-library	Sissily’s Library]]	Traveled
El Cinede	Mentioned	The floating city where the party first met (and doused) Tobiah

🎒 Items

Item	Used / Introduced	Note
[[ghost-step-tattoo	Ghost Step Tattoo]]	Used
[[knuckles-of-change	Knuckles of Change]]	Used
[[dom-khan-fish	Dom-Khan fish]]	Used
[[laranune-flower	Laranune flower]]	Introduced
[[scrail	Scrail]]	Introduced
[[purple-filth	Purple Filth]]	Used
[[love-tapped-nectar	Love Tapped Nectar]]	Used
The Ferryman’s journal	Introduced	Baeden’s diary, looted from his cabin last session; the Scrail reveal makes it the key to Sissily’s — and Basil’s — memory

⛩️ Pantheon & Religion

Power	Mentioned / Seen	Note
Father ITYS	Invoked	Xeros the cleric “saves” and proselytizes through the whole fight; Tobiah is sent to the [[school-of-itys
Selûne	Invoked	Foulclaw praises Selûne; “turns out Selûne is with you” on his escape roll
[[eadro	Eadro]]	Named
Zen au Kouréas	Mentioned	Long-vanished owner of the Orchard; the five Pillars were purchased by Zen

Cliffhanger

The Forbidden Fruits Orchard is saved and Tobiah is packed off to church — but the real prize is a diary made of stolen mermaid Scrail. Sissily lost her memory to the obsessed Baeden Leary — and so did Basil. If the party can gather the right Memory Anchors, they can give both women back what the Ferryman took. First stop: Castle Leary, their wagon of information, and Millie — who’s already in Astaroth’s hands.

Transcript

Full cleaned transcript: 260403-ch4.3-the-trees-of-insanity-transcript · bundle on the tedit scratch SSD (260403-ch4.3).

Related

Echoes of ITYS · 260320-ch4.2-cho-mamas-pho-cup · 260409-ch4.4-eat-your-feelings · The Forbidden Fruits Orchard · The Pillars · Sissily · Tobiah · Astaroth · Baeden Leary · Scrail · Basil · Memory Anchor