Goblin Fruit

Torchbearer Monstrous Compendium
1

Dean, don’t read this.

“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”

The floor in this dark chamber is riven apart, flagstones overturned by the roots of a massive tree with dark bark and long brown leaves. The tree grows here in darkness. As characters approach, fruits swell from buds on the branches and hang down, red and oily and sweet-smelling.

One portion of fruit (Held 1, Pack 1) will remove the angry, afraid, or hungry condition in that order, but anyone who eats the goblin fruit will be unable to remove the hungry condition with ordinary food, and they gain the trait “lazy.” After five phases without eating goblin fruit, these effects will be removed.

Goblin fruit rapidly spoils once picked, lasting only two phases.

2

Deliciously evil. Very inventive!

3

Holy cats. That is some evil shit. Being unable to remove hunger is a brutal penalty.

4

Very cool. Very harsh on 5 phases, but very cool.

5

I probably wouldn’t use this until my group got the hang of the cycle of phases to fully understand just how fucked they would be.

6

Honestly, who the hell eats unfamiliar fruit hanging off weird trees that grow in total darkness in a dungeon? But if it’s too harsh, you could reduce it to three phases or allow characters to go cold turkey on goblin fruit like Ewan McGregor went with heroin in Trainspotting. “One bucket shite, one bucket piss, one bucket vomitus.” The character makes a Will Test at Ob4 (friends can help). If he succeeds he can start overcoming Hungry with real food and he loses the Lazy trait, but he becomes Sick.

7

Either you’re too kind of a GM or you haven’t been playing this game long enough. At a certain point, adventurers will eat anything.

8

I meant it as a disapproving quip indicating that they deserve what they get more than a real question. If I really thought they wouldn’t eat it I wouldn’t make rules for it. :evil:

9

Precisely. :slight_smile:

10

Just to make sure I understand, do camp phases count as phases for the above? I’m assuming that wasn’t intended, since that would encourage turtling. (“I test survivalist to find another safe campsite, taking a trait penalty due to my impatient and fiery nature. I make camp. Rinse and repeat. OK, now I eat food!”)

One interesting option of similar duration would be “until the end of next winter”.