The Glade

The Glade

Where the grass grows taller than a horse and stays gold without being gilded. The wind makes it look like an ocean. At the very far corner, where even the grassland traders don't go, there is a farmhouse that shouldn't be there. Green shutters. Two chairs. Tomatoes.

What it is: Lilith didn't build it in Ferrum. She built it as far from smoke as she could while. The Goldenrod Grasslands — endless gold, but the good kind. The kind that was gold before Draxos ever prayed for walls.

No one knows it's there. Aurum thinks the far corner is empty. Ferrum thinks grasslands are boring. Which is exactly why they survive. Bonnie gets her mortal days. Sun on her face that isn't filtered through forge smoke. Soil under her nails. She is 50 something going on 80 something eventually, and every year she gets a little slower and a little happier.

Lilith gets to watch the grass turn. She, who has lived 200 years and will live 200 more, now measures time in harvests. "This will be your 25th tomato season." "Your 26th." She pretends she doesn't count. But she counts everything now.

She still looks like a devil — horns tucked under a wide straw hat that Bonnie makes her wear, wings folded under a coat, red skin sunburned in a way that would be funny if it wasn't so tender. She hates farming. She loves that Bonnie loves it.

For the GM: If players stumble into The Glade, play it as wrong map.

Lilith will interrogate the player and Bonnie will hush her and feed them.

If they ask Lilith what she will do when Bonnie is gone — she will look out at the gold grass that doesn't need fire potion to survive and say, very quietly, "I will stay. And watch the grass. And hold on to being mortal for a little while, because someone has to water the tomatoes."