Image by me.

The sky giants are having a wedding. The giant bride threw a bouquet of roses over her shoulder. It sailed through the air and crashed into the hillside below, leveling a bridge outside the small village of Gebenbok.

The town alderman wants the bouquet cleared so that traders can continue to travel the Old Road, but the frightened / superstitious villagers won't go near the tangled wreckage. Worse still, since the bouquet landed rumors have started to filter in of giant insectoid monstrosities that devour huge swathes of crops in the night. The alderman is prepared to pay a small bounty to anyone who scouts out the sight and a bigger one to anyone with the gumption to clear the bouquet off of the road entirely.

Encounter Table (1d6)

Cross off entries as you roll them.

1. A giant bridesmaid descends from the heavens and scoops up the bouquet (and anyone inside of it), carrying it back to the cloud palace of the sky giants.
2. 1d3 + 1 thorn elementals mourn the withering stem.
3. 2d6 dire aphids devour a load bearing branch.
4. A thorn elemental in pitched combat with 1d6 dire aphids.
5. 2d4 + 1 enterprising lumberjacks are here to steal some lumber that doesn't belong to the Crown.
6. Remgaud, a wandering Romantic poet, has come to admire the bouquet. Surely, it's a metaphor. He'll reward any party member who can tell him for what.

Locations

1. The Approach

Winding road from Gebenbok to Grossenburg

• Occasionally paved but mostly waterlogged ruts.
• Little tree cover means a long field of view.
• Smells oddly vegetal (from the rotting mass of flowers).

2. The Ruined Bridge

Buried beneath the wreckage, chunks of masonry emerge from frothing water.

• The densest thicket of stems makes movement difficult.
  • 4 feet thick and studded with head sized thorns.
  • When cut, weeps necrotic fluid (-1 CHA to those submerged as they stink of rot, smells delicious to aphids.)
• The ruins of a merchant cart and the carcass of a days dead donkey.
  • Their cargo and paychest are submerged in the fast moving water nearby. (200 crowns in a waterlogged coffer, ruined fabrics, miraculously intact jars of honey and oil worth 300 crowns to the right buyer)

3. The Flower Prime

A beautiful rose, pink with dark red accents, 20 feet by 20 feet and partially hollow.

• Home to the dryad Elwesme who has taken this flower as her home.
  • She's very distressed about what has happened, but views outsiders as potential weapon against the aphids.
  • The thorn elementals treat her with loving reverence.
  • She wants to be transplanted to an equally beautiful new home, will award her champions with fragrant, sappy potions of healing that leave the drinker lightly buzzed.

4. The Aphid Nest

Clutches of pearly, semi-translucent, basketball-sized eggs clutch to the stems here. 4d3 dire aphids guard this space to the death.

• The eggs hatch after 1d4 days and a chihuahua scale aphid emerges. Alchemists will buy the eggs (or larvae) as curiosities, 5 crowns each. Releasing any number of them is likely to cause an ecological disaster.
• Among the eggs, a round ivory shield. It's warm to the touch and the detached hand of its former wielder is still strapped to the reverse. The aphids may have confused it for a weird flat, egg.
  • The shield can be imbued with any spell that targets the self. The wielder experiences the effect. Imbuing a new spell dispels the prevous one. Currently, it is imbued with Sure Grip - a charm preventing the caster from being disarmed.

5. The Cut Ends

The stems here have been cut by a sharp giant sickle. The edges are jagged and sharp enough to cut skin.

• Any who fall here risk serious laceration.
• Necrotic ooze weeps from the ends here, frequently lapped up by aphids.
• A golden, silky ribbon binds the bouquet here. Picnic blanket sized sheets can be extracted (40 crowns each), but each sheet extracted risks unbinding the bouquet (2-in-6 chance) and causing the whole space to collapse.

Monsters

Dire Aphids

HD: 1 (5 HP), Bite: as Dagger, Armor: as Leather Dexterity +, Wisdom +, Intelligence -

Leathery, sap drinking insects the size of mastiffs. They reproduce asexually and continuously, devouring all plant life they encounter. Peaceful unless threatened or intruding on their nest. They are adept climbers, and adults grow wings capable of bearing them aloft for short periods of time.

Impulse: To devour plant life. To lay eggs. To scuttle into hiding. To drop from above.

Thorn Elementals

HD: 4 (20 HP), Slam: as Scimitar, Armor: as Plate Strength +, Constitution +, Wisdom -

Sapient, silent humanoids - 10' tall and carved from jagged rose thorns. They love flowers and tend to them like a shepherd tends sheep, coaxing them from hill to hill. They worship dryads as flora's emissary and follow their instructions implicitly. They can read subtle tremors in plant life like a spider reads their web. They are intrigued by glass, dragging their fingertips across it to make music.

Impulse: To cultivate. To bristle with sharp edges. To writhe upon their foe. To scrape, scrabble, and rasp.