Wondertree Powers Activate

Wondertree Powers Activate — Ch 4.6

The five trials are passed and the five relics are won — but the moment the party turns for home, Castle Leary is already a pillar of black smoke on the horizon. To wake a drowned queen who’s forgotten her own name, they’ll have to plant their hard-won trophies in five singing trees and hope the roots remember. What lives in the water still knows every secret they came for — and one of them costs a color. Wondertree Powers Activate.

Chapter / Episode	4.6 — Wondertree Powers Activate
Arc	Echoes of ITYS (DM Brin)
GM	Brin
Date / Duration	2026-05-15 · ~2h07m (gameplay from ~00:06:00)
Party	Xeros (Dave), Nortle (Steve), TBD (Chris), Foulclaw (Jesse)
Joins / Departs	Basil sits out — her player Brin is DMing; Basil is off-screen, hidden safe with Sissily
Ends on	Sissily’s memory restored, mid-confession: how Leon was forced to burn her and bled white

Synopsis

Fresh off passing all of the five trials at Moon Basin Falls, the party barely gets to enjoy their new relics before they spot a familiar pillar of black smoke rising from Castle Leary. They rush back to find the whole household — every servant and the duchess consort Marie Holton — sitting hypnotized with bright-purple eyes, Lashara’s research piled and ruined in the center of the ruined banquet hall. Xeros phases in incorporeal through the walls on his Ghost Step Tattoo, TBD shrinks to seven inches and rides in Nortle’s mitre, and Foulclaw flies silent recon — but the floor itself is rigged. A bomb blows the room skyward; Foulclaw’s Wall of Force sphere saves the party (and knocks him cold), and Xeros stabilizes the impaled Marie with Spare the Dying. The villain Astaroth has come and gone, cranking the hypnosis, taking Marie’s daughter Millie Holton, and leaving a corpse-strewn wreck behind.

From the wreckage the story pours out. In Marie’s emptied treasury, Xeros recovers a braille fragment of Astaroth’s Journal, and Foulclaw reads the horror written there: Astaroth was commissioned by Damanos to grow a clone army, and her Engine of cloning recipe — a thousand bees’ venom, the blood of a fertile female, cooked in dragonfire — kills its subject and reyokes them as a living clone-factory. That was done to the merfolk queen Sissily, which is why she can’t remember and why she lays eggs without end. Marie hands over the last missing relic — Basil’s nose ring, the Trial-of-Smell token — and the clue to fix it: place each trial item into its matching tree among The Pillars.

At the Orchard the party plants the whistle, the firestone, the glove, the chops and the nose ring in their singing trees; the roots blaze and the song Siren of Senses rises off Moon Basin Falls. The Purple Filth thick in the air forces a round of saves — TBD and Foulclaw crit-fail and end up gnawing glowing roots in a “communion of the roots,” while Nortle stays serenely unconverted (“balls of gas burning millions of miles away”). Then it’s off the 150-foot cliff into the falls — TBD Magic-Missile-rides the drop — and down into the Mergonian city of Hexes, where a memory-restored Sissily greets her saviors. In her hexagon library she finally tells her tale: favored by her god Eadro, she raised a beached egg into Leon, the first Dragonborn and son of the red dragon Ursa — until a jealous Eadro and Astaroth forced Leon to set her aflame, turning her into the Engine and draining every color from him. That is where the white Dragonborn line began. Basil is safe in the stacks, Baeden Leary the Ferryman is quietly dealing with Astaroth for longer life, and Millie is still out there — and Sissily is only halfway through the story.

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

Scheme: AABB verses + chorus. Suggested vibe: sea-shanty gospel with a synth undertow — mournful, then triumphant.

(Verse 1) Five trials done and five prizes won, Then smoke on the castle black as a gun; The servants sit purple, the duchess bleeds through — A bomb in the floor and a friend to pull you.

(Chorus) Plant it in the tree, let the singing roots wake — Wondertree powers, for a lost queen’s sake! The song hits the water, the memory comes clear, But the truth that they wanted’s the last thing they’d hear.

(Verse 2) A journal in braille and a recipe grim, A thousand bees’ venom on a villain’s whim; Kill the fertile, remake her an engine of eggs — That’s the curse that stole Sissily’s name and her legs.

(Verse 3) Off the hundred-foot cliff on a missile they ride, Down to Hexes where the drowned queen’s eyes open wide; She raised a red egg into a dragon-boy’s flame, Then they burned her to white — and gave the line its name.

(Outro) Wondertree, wondertree, sing what was lost — Every color remembered has a color it cost.

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

1. 00:03:35 · 📖 Recap — Brin welcomes the table back to The Boardroom ch4 (“episode six”); quick intros and a recap: last time the party completed the five trials and each claimed a trial relic.
2. 00:09:08 · 📖 Recap — They cleared the Trial of Sound and Trial of Sight; Foulclaw earned his by his moral compass rather than a test. The group is leaving Moon Basin Falls for Castle Leary.
3. 00:10:31 · 🧭 Travel — Walking back, Xeros and Nortle bump shoulders — Xeros can suddenly taste the air, Nortle feels a strange warmth (relic side-effects) — then they see a pillar of black smoke rising from the castle.
4. 00:14:25 · 🎭 RP — They rush the eerie, torch-dark castle. Xeros phases through the walls on his Ghost Step Tattoo; TBD shrinks to seven inches and rides in Nortle’s mitre; Foulclaw flies silent recon.
5. 00:22:49 · 🎲 Mechanic — Foulclaw insists Xeros smother his glowing tattoos in compost; Xeros refuses, they roll off, and Xeros nat-20s a charcoal cover — earning full narrative control of his entrance (“just sitting outside like a guy from Greece”).
6. 00:30:01 · 🎭 RP — Nortle licks the banquet-hall door and tastes pure fear; inside, every servant and Marie Holton sit hypnotized with brighter-than-ever purple eyes, Lashara’s research heaped and wrecked.
7. 00:36:18 · ⚔️ Trap — The floor was rigged. A bomb detonates; Foulclaw burns Tides of Chaos + his gauntlets to conjure a Wall of Force sphere, saving TBD, Nortle and himself — then drops unconscious. Xeros rides it out incorporeal.
   • Half the blast would have been 7d6; the sphere caps it. Foulclaw takes 16 and is knocked out, dropping the wall.
8. 00:42:22 · 🎭 RP — Marie is found impaled by a chair leg; Xeros casts Spare the Dying then Cure Wounds to stabilize her. The cook Pamsey and most of the staff are dead — “may Selûne take her into the moonlight.”
9. 00:48:17 · 🎲 Mechanic — TBD casts Beast Bond on the still-unconscious Foulclaw and telepathically “confesses” that Xeros defaced a devotional poster; Xeros’s 29 Deception sells the lie, jolting the devout Foulclaw awake in a rage.
10. 00:54:57 · 📖 Lore — Marie reveals her backup: Love Tapped Nectar — one drop saves the dying, who then love the first face they see for 24 hours. Xeros immediately tries to weaponize it.
11. 00:58:04 · 🎭 RP — Xeros phases into Marie’s hidden treasury (already emptied by Astaroth) and recovers a small braille fragment of Astaroth’s Journal.
12. 01:03:40 · 📖 Lore — Foulclaw reads it: Astaroth was commissioned by Damanos to grow a clone army, and the Engine of cloning recipe — a thousand bees’ venom + a fertile female’s blood, cooked in dragonfire — kills the subject and reforges her into a living clone-factory.
13. 01:11:01 · 🎭 RP — Marie produces Basil’s nose ring — the missing fifth relic (Trial of Smell) — and the clue: restore Sissily’s memory by placing each trial item in its matching tree.
14. 01:16:18 · 🧭 Travel — On to The Pillars (the Orchard). Foulclaw’s divine sight reads the trees; the party pairs relics to trunks (whistle → weeping tree, firestone → ember tree, glove → white tree, chops → silver-veined tree, nose ring → the flower tree).
15. 01:28:15 · 🎲 Mechanic — Items placed, the roots blaze and the song Siren of Senses rises off the falls. Everyone rolls Conversion + Purple Filth con-saves; TBD and Foulclaw crit-fail and end up sucking on glowing roots (“communion of the roots”), and Xeros goes limp with his head stuck in a trunk.
16. 01:38:02 · 🎭 RP — Nortle keeps resisting every conversion roll — the table’s resident skeptic (“plenty of natural explanations… you don’t have to go supernatural”).
17. 01:42:32 · 🧭 Travel — The party dives the ~150-foot cliff into Moon Basin Falls; the seven-inch TBD Magic-Missile-rides the drop, high-fiving Xeros mid-fall for Bardic Inspiration. They enter the Mergonian city of Hexes.
18. 01:48:29 · 📖 Lore — Sissily’s memory is restored — “you are now my saviors.” She lays eggs without pause (the Engine of Cloning). Basil is safe, hidden in the library.
19. 01:52:29 · 📖 Lore — In her hexagon Library, Sissily begins her origin: favored by her jealous god Eadro, she raised a beached egg into Leon — the first Dragonborn and son of the red dragon Ursa, made when Astaroth experimented on Ursa’s egg over 400 years ago.
20. 02:04:18 · 📖 Lore — With Eadro and Ursa’s consent, Astaroth forced Leon to burn Sissily alive — turning her into the Engine and draining all color from him. He fled to Destination Desiccation and sired the white Dragonborn line. Also surfaced: Baeden Leary deals with Astaroth for longevity, and Millie is her captive.

Player Characters

Character	Player	Race	Class	Note
Xeros	Dave	Tiefling	Bard / Cleric	Phases the castle incorporeal; heals the dying Marie; nat-20 entrance; schemes to weaponize the cloning recipe into a boy band
Nortle	Steve	Tortle	Monk	Tastes fear on the door; silent cartwheels through the maze; the one immovable atheist against every conversion roll
TBD	Chris	Goliath	Wizard	Seven inches tall all session; Beast-Bonds a lie into Foulclaw; discovers “Magic-Missile riding” as a travel method
Foulclaw	Jesse	Owlin	Sorcerer	Now a full PC this arc. His Wall of Force sphere saves the party from the bomb; reads the braille journal and utters the song’s true name
Basil	Brin	Harengon	Fighter	Sits out (Brin is DMing); off-screen the whole session, hidden safe with Sissily in the library — her nose ring is the missing fifth relic

NPCs

NPC	Role	Note
Sissily	Merfolk queen of Hexes	Cursed into the Engine of cloning; her memory is restored this episode and she tells the arc’s deepest backstory
Marie Holton	Duchess consort at Castle Leary	Impaled in the bombing and stabilized by Xeros; reveals the Love-Tapped Nectar plan, the journal clue, and the nose ring
Millie Holton	Marie’s daughter	Taken by Astaroth before the party arrived — still captive
Astaroth	The villain (unseen this session)	Returned, cranked the hypnosis, planted the bomb, and abducted Millie; now part-machine, commissioned by Damanos
Leon	The first Dragonborn (historical)	Raised by Sissily, her love; forced to burn her, then bled white — origin of the white Dragonborn line
Ursa	Red dragon, Leon’s mother	Her stolen egg became Leon; consented to Astaroth’s punishment
Eadro	Sissily’s jealous patron god	Highly favored her, then helped hand her to Astaroth
Baeden Leary	The Ferryman / Leary patriarch	Revealed to be dealing with Astaroth, replacing himself with machinery to live longer
Damanos	Distant commissioner	Named in the journal as the one who ordered the clone army

Factions

Faction	Note
Mergon	The merfolk of Hexes; Sissily is their memory-lost queen, now an unwilling clone-engine
Holton family	Marie and the missing Millie; near-wiped in the bombing
Leary family	Owners of Castle Leary; patriarch Baeden is secretly compromised by Astaroth

👹 Monsters

Monster	Threat / Role	Note
—	No combat	A talk-heist-and-lore session — the only violence was Astaroth’s bomb, a rigged trap rather than a fought creature. The looming threat is Astaroth’s clones / the Engine of cloning army for Damanos — established here, not yet engaged.

🎙️ Notable Moments

00:08:19 — The intros drift into biology, and the table remembers Nortle has no idea where anything comes from.

Foulclaw: Owlins lay eggs too. It’s part of life. Nortle: I most certainly do not [find it gross]. I assume that we just spring out of the ground, fully formed. TBD: He’s never wondered once where babies come from. Nortle: You have like the Mariana Trench for a brain — there’s just… nothing down there.

00:22:49 — Foulclaw wants Xeros to smother his glowing gold tattoos in compost before they sneak into the dark castle. Xeros has a better idea and a hot die.

Foulclaw: Xeros, why are you rubbing compost on your body? Xeros: I’m just going to use my Ghost Step Tattoo. Fine — I’ll roll off with you. I’m doing charcoal. Nat 20. GM (Brin): You have full narrative control of how dope Xeros’s entry into this castle is going to be. Xeros: I’m going to sit outside the front door like a guy from Greece, smoking a pipe — then I phase through the wall.

00:30:53 — To scout the silent banquet hall, Nortle uses his taste-relic on the door.

Nortle: Hey, TBD — this room tastes like the first day of gym in 7th grade. It tastes like fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. GM (Brin): A salty, metallic taste is what I wrote down for fear. Don’t elaborate on that. Let’s just go with it.

00:36:18 — Xeros pops his incorporeal head up through the floor to scout — and springs the trap.

GM (Brin): It’s too late, guys. Boom. It was a bomb. Xeros: Hey — it was a bomb. I’m so glad I’m incorporeal. Foulclaw: Do I have time to gauntlet this thing and put a shield around us? GM (Brin): The stone splits and explodes upward, the air ignites — but the Wall of Force throws your sphere back into the doorway. It could have killed you. You saved yourselves.

00:49:13 — With Foulclaw knocked out, TBD casts Beast Bond and picks the one telepathic "confession" guaranteed to wake the devout owlin.

TBD: There was a poster of LaDonna in Xeros’s pack — but he put a paper over it and drew his own set of knockers on it. I’m hoping this wakes you up out of sheer anger. Xeros: (Deception) Seventeen — that’s a 29. GM (Brin): I approve this message. I feel bad for all the women in your life. Foulclaw: Whether it’s true or not, the thought of it is enough to provoke me. I wake up and charge straight for you.

01:09:38 — Reading the cloning recipe (kill a fertile female, and she's reborn as an engine that mass-produces one chosen creature), Xeros finds the only silver lining that matters to him.

Xeros: So I don’t have to kill LaDonna — I just need to kill a woman, and then I can make many LaDonnas. You could have a whole boy band or girl band. TBD: Xeros is getting real excited to recreate his glory days. Xeros and the LaDonnas. Foulclaw: This is extremely unnatural. We have to stop this.

01:33:39 — The relics are placed and the trees light up — but the Purple Filth in the air forces con-saves, and two of them crater.

GM (Brin): You feel an overpowering urge to eat something strange — dirt, slime, a root. TBD: I grab the brightest glowing root and shove it right in my mouth. Foulclaw: Same boat — I failed my save and rolled a one. Holy roots. GM (Brin): Tree sacrament. Communion of the roots. Jeez Louise.

01:38:02 — Everyone keeps rolling for conversion at the singing trees. Nortle keeps not converting.

Xeros: Nortle is batting a thousand against conversion. Nothing’s getting into his head. Nortle: There are plenty of natural explanations for this. You don’t have to go supernatural to understand what’s going on. Xeros: You’re like Pumbaa — “they’re just balls of gas burning millions of miles away.” TBD: Billions of miles away!

01:47:02 — Seven inches tall and facing a 150-foot cliff, TBD refuses to simply fall.

TBD: I’ve got Spell Sniper, which doubles my range — so I’m Magic-Missile riding this thing down as fast as I possibly can. Xeros: As you go past me, I put my hand out for a high-five and give you Bardic Inspiration. TBD: Twenty-five! TBD: And that’s how TBD discovered a whole new way to travel.

02:02:39 — Deep in Sissily's tragic origin story, the table keeps derailing into babysitter jokes until the DM breaks.

GM (Brin): I was supposed to be paid with joy and happiness and a hobby — but now it’s just a bunch of bullshit. I’m so tired of all of you! Foulclaw: I love the lore. I’m here for you. Xeros & Nortle: Praise the lore! TBD: Don’t make it weird, Daddy.

02:05:43 — Memory restored, Sissily reaches the part of her story that gave the world its white dragons.

GM (Sissily): Astaroth gave me the elixir and forced Leon to set me on fire. He’s the one who had to kill me. Xeros: He bled out all of his red. GM (Sissily): All the color drained from him. That’s where the line of white Dragonborn comes from — from Leon. In his agony he traveled up to Destination Desiccation and started his own clan.

🗺️ Locations

Place	Note
Castle Leary	The party’s base — found smoking and hypnosis-locked, then bombed to a wreck; most of the household dead
The Pillars	The five singing trees of the Orchard; the relics are planted here to trigger the memory ritual
Moon Basin Falls	Purdona’s waterfall; source of the Siren of Senses song and the dive into Hexes
Hexes	The Mergonian city beneath the falls; Sissily’s drowned throne-hall and library
Sissily’s Library	Hexagon library of ending knowledge where Basil is hidden and the origin story is told
Destination Desiccation	The high desolate land Leon fled to and founded the white Dragonborn clan (referenced)

🎒 Items

Item	Note
Smooth criminal glove	Xeros’s Trial-of-Touch relic; planted in the white (iridescent-scale) tree
Water Whistle	TBD’s Trial-of-Sound relic (“whistle fruit”); stores and replays the song; goes to the weeping tree
Stick Chops	Nortle’s Trial-of-Taste relic (jade + refined silver); paired to the silver-veined tree
Ember firestone	Foulclaw’s Trial-of-Sight relic (“phoenix heart”); highlights and photographs text; goes to the ember tree
Basil’s nose ring	The missing fifth relic (Trial of Smell); grants hunter-grade scent-tracking; placed via Mage Hand
Ghost Step Tattoo	Xeros’s incorporeality — his whole approach to the castle and the bomb
Love Tapped Nectar	Marie’s one-drop revive; the revived loves the first face they see for 24h
Astaroth’s Journal	Braille fragment recovered from the treasury — the Engine of cloning recipe and the Damanos commission
Wigweed	The parted curtain-weed that guards Sissily’s library entrance
The Bag	Xeros’s bottomless cargo pants — “I have all of those [recipe ingredients] in my pants right now”

⛩️ Pantheon & Lore

Entry	Note
The five trials	Sight / sound / touch / taste / smell — all passed; their relics drive this whole episode
Engine of cloning	Astaroth’s recipe: a killed fertile female reborn as a beehive-like clone-factory with a queen; Sissily was the first
Siren of Senses	Also “Melody of Memories” — the restoration song that rises off Moon Basin Falls
Purple Filth	The memory-thick residue in the air at the trees; forces the shrink/root-eating con-saves
Purdona	The presence felt in the warm water of the blue tree and the falls
Eadro	Sissily’s merfolk god; favored then betrayed her out of jealousy
Selûne	Invoked over the castle dead (“may Selûne take her into the moonlight”)
Gog	Xeros’s comic prayer of choice (“heavenly Gog”) — flagged by the devout Foulclaw
Father ITYS	The faith Xeros converted to last chapter; the reflex behind his “praise be”

Cliffhanger

The relics are planted, the song has sung, and Sissily — memory whole again — is only halfway through the worst story the party has ever heard: how her god and her villain forced the dragon-boy she raised to burn her alive, and how his grief turned an entire bloodline white. Basil is safe in the stacks and Millie is still in Astaroth’s hands — and the queen of Hexes is about to tell them the rest.

Transcript

Full cleaned transcript: 260515-ch4.6-wondertree-powers-activate-transcript · bundle on the tedit scratch SSD (260515-ch4.6).

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Related: Echoes of ITYS · Sissily · Astaroth · Leon · Hexes · The Pillars · Engine of cloning · Castle Leary · prev: 260501-ch4.5-caged-wisdom · next: 260530-ch4.7-clorox-kill-box