D20 SYSTEM✦ Normal

The Animated Scarecrow Expulsions of Harvest Farm

# Dark Fantasy# Intrigue# Construct# Wilderness

In the heart of the agrarian belt, the idyllic Harvest Farm is under siege. Its lifeline—vast, enchanted fields tended by animated scarecrow guardians—is being violently expelled by a coalition of desperate vegetable farmers. These farmers, known as the Root Wardens, claim the magical constructs are poisoning their soil with erratic, oversaturated growth magic. Opposing them are the Growth Wardens, a druidic circle who believe the scarecrows are sacred protectors of a failing ecosystem, and that the farmers' aggressive pesticide sprays are the true blight. Caught in the middle, you arrive as the harvest fails and both sides prepare for a final, bloody confrontation in the fields.

Chronicle Prelude

The players arrive at the Harvest Farm's central hamlet, Millstone Cross. It's a tense, barricaded settlement. On one side, Root Warden farmers sharpen tools and mix alchemical pesticides. On the other, Growth Warden druids tend to wounded, twitching scarecrows. The air smells of ozone, rotting vegetation, and mutual fear. A council elder, visibly torn, pleads for outsiders to investigate the fields and end the violence.

Environmental Traits

The immediate crisis is a failing harvest that threatens a regional famine. However, the root cause is a deeper, corrupted ley line beneath the fields. The farmers' pesticides and the druids' growth magic are both reacting catastrophically with this corruption, creating monstrous plant-animal hybrids and causing the scarecrows to malfunction violently. Victory means stabilizing the ley line, but doing so requires choosing which faction's 'cure' to endorse—and condemning the other to ruin or exile.

Legendary Archetypes

Rayan

HP:45

STR:16

WIS: 12

CHA:11

Key Factions & Autonomous Nodes (8)

Elder Brin
An elderly man with a deeply lined face and weary, intelligent eyes. He wears a simple but clean woolen tunic bearing the hamlet's seal. His posture is stooped from a lifetime of hard work and, more recently, the weight of impossible decisions.
Captain Korra of the Root Wardens
A weathered woman in her 40s, with close-cropped hair and arms scarred from chemical burns and plant thorns. She wears patched leather armor over a sturdy farm tunic. Her expression is one of grim, weary resolve, and she carries a heavy, modified wood-axe.
Drover Thistle of the Growth Wardens
A young, fierce-eyed man or woman (gender is ambiguous) with wild, tangled hair woven with living vines. Their clothing is a blend of cured leather and bark armor, and they move with the fluid grace of the forest. They carry a staff of twisted, living wood.
Malfunctioning Scarecrow (Unit 7)
A twitching, jerking humanoid figure made of burlap, straw, and rusted farm implements. One of its button eyes sparks with green energy, and its movements are erratic and violent. It attacks anything that moves within its patrol range, a malfunctioning guardian of the quarantine.
Mutant Sprout Beast
A tragic, shambling creature that is a grotesque hybrid of plant and animal. It has the basic body of a large badger or boar, but its skin is bark-like, covered in moss and pulsing fungal growths. Its eyes glow with a dull, pained green light, and vines writh from its back.
Corrupted Dryad Echo
A ghostly, translucent figure of a feminine humanoid made of twisted wood and sickly green light. It flickers in and out of visibility, its form warped and unstable. It speaks in whispers that sound like rustling leaves and cracking timber, a broken echo of the land's spirit.
Frenzied Scarecrow Sovereign
A towering, monstrous construct standing over ten feet tall. It is the central scarecrow, animated by the corrupted ley line. Its body is a massive amalgamation of farm tools, burlap, and straw, now fused with pulsing green crystal and iron. Its multiple arms end in scythe blades and threshing flails, and its head is a jack-o'-lantern skull filled with screaming green fire. The air around it hums with chaotic energy.
Blighted Grove Matriarch
An ancient, corrupted treant, a massive being of twisted, blackened wood and pulsing, sickly green sap. Its bark is split with glowing fissures, and its roots writhe like serpents. Where its face should be, a cluster of burning green eyes weep glowing tears. It is the heart of the corrupted ley line nexus, a sacred growth gone monstrously awry.

Chronicle Prelude

Environmental Traits

Legendary Archetypes

✦ Related Cases ✦

The Lost Workshop: Heart of a Raging Core

The Reignited Forge: A Crisis of Iron and Will