Actual Play: Where The Wheat Grows Tall

I got to bring the zine recently reviewed Where The Wheat Grows Tall by Evlyn Moreau and Camilla Greer to the table. I worked in the unbalance of the day and night spirits as the driving force behind an environmental disturbance randomly generated in my campaign sandbox using the Deck of Worlds. The forever-shining sun was drying out a local swamp and the players headed down to investigate. My tweak to the set up was that inside the field, day and night remained as normal, but outside - at the farm and in the region all around - the sun was blazing ceaselessly and drying up the swamps, their rice crops and shrimp fishing.

Spoilers abound from here on.

Zine and Playnotes

Play Report

They liked the spooky, fey atmosphere a lot - approaching with a lot of caution, spying from afar and creeping up carefully to first investigate the tree over the wall and then the farmhouse. They spent a lot of time with Oleg the sprite, noting the cold iron charms all over the door and window frames. They were about to set out into the field with all caution when the cries from the well (about which they had been warned) led them to try and rescue cousin Svara - then abandon the rescue halfway through - and then have to flee in disorder as cousin Svara was now freed enough to self-rescue and made rapid progress climbing up out of the well. They entered the field in disorder, scrambling through the wall in full flight from Svara.

A couple of lucky encounter rolls had them run into Nikolai early and with a cold-iron poker chase off the Barstukai following them and drag him back to the tree-in-the-wall and out. This was where our first session wrapped.

We restart with the party tending to the raving Oleg, trying to get him to make sense. The cold iron charms of the house are calming his compulsion to the Noon Maiden but still he raves and makes little sense. They winkle some pieces of the sequence of events out of him and mention of the Likho, to complement what Oleg told them, then leaving Nikolai in the care of Oleg they ventured back into the field.

Barstukai, by Evlyn Moreau

First they encounter some Barstukai tormenting some ducks which they scare off with a brandished iron poker before coming to the scarecrow perch, empty of Piotr and converse with the crows. The cryptic crows, affiliated with neither the Noon Lady or the Midnight Maiden, are yet another faction and the party decides to hike on after questioning them. Traipsing about in the field, the party spots a gigantic crop spirit and decides to let it pass on its way. They hike around under the blazing sun until they come to the old siege tower and the soldier ghosts. Venturing closer to it, they find themselves first among corn-stalks, then bones and the ghosts of the soldiers. These they spoke to a bit more but decided not to trouble them and pay the crows no heed.

Onwards again, they stumble upon the Likho's cottage - linking neatly to one of the party's previous encounter with a forest witch. The Likho chats with them to find their intentions and when they reveal that their intent is to restore balance to the weather, they make common cause. The Likho makes them promise to finish the job uprooting the Midnight Idol in return for a guide to the Noon Idol and the knowledge that it too must be toppled and tossed in the lake for the blazing sun to finally set beyond the walls of the field. Through this conversation, being very cagey because members of the party were already under obligation to a different hag-like being in a cottage, they learned of the Likho and Midnight Maiden and decided it was none of their business restoring the old balance and freedom for fey was all to the good.

A surly barstukai brings them to the Midnight Idol and the party sweats and fells it, then rolls the stump into the lake. While they are doing that, a random encounter roll has them trip over Lana and chase off some other Barstukai with cold iron again. Night has fallen at this stage and they party has lost track of time, they just know they have been in here for a long time and are concerned that time may be moving differently outside.

They trek on to the Noon Idol, ignoring the offerings of wheat and gold and set to hacking down the idol. Poleviks surge out of their hole at the base and a vicious combat ensues, with one of the party beaten to within an inch of their life. Narrowly victorious, the party hacks down the Noon Idol, and while they are working first Galina appears - gathering herbs, then happy to see Lana - before scarecrow Piotr lunges out of the crop line and is repelled by the sight of his family.

The Noon Idol is rolled across the field and into the lake as well and then the party exhaustedly hike out after Galina to spend the night at the farm.

Notes

All in all a very nice and atmospheric little adventure, tons of disquieting little details to keep a party of interlopers jumpy and fey unusual enough that they were not trivially dismissed as known quantities. The players felt they needed to figure it out without lots of fighting because they were not confident they could out-fight all the fey. It lead to a questions and cagey conversations and matching of wits which felt very appropriate.

There were lots of lore elements to give hooks out to a wider world which was very handy. I was interested to see which lore elements the players engaged with - the fey and their goals and the long ago war. The long ago war I can understand as part of the broader hex-crawl history but it was very interesting that they engaged much more with the fey present and their goals than in trying to unpick the history of events.

On the family: I don't think the players got down into the weeds of this, they were more looking at the larger scale 'what is going on' and from their point of view they were not here to rescue the family, that was a nice side-effect if it could be done at all. Piotr was abandoned to the fields and it was only a set of lucky random encounter rolls that disproportionately turned up the family that got most of them out.

Play time ran over two sessions, six hours in total, as the party very cautiously sidled up to the various fey and argued extensively amongst themselves about how best to deal with them. We burnt some time in the first session just integrating the module into the campaign - venturing out from homebase, a random encounter along the way - maybe 45mins ~ and with 15mins spin up for the second session, call it five hours of solid playtime.