A drought has struck the land and there aren’t enough food to go around. Strangely, a village nested by the side of a mountain has a bountiful harvest. Tales have it that a holy site rests within the mountain and there one can find a sapling which when planted, would cause a vast expanses of land to be fertile. Strangely, the sapling would sprout overnight, mature and just die within a year, just after harvest time. A pilgrimage has to be organised to retrieve a new sapling each year from the holy place. Other nearby villages and even fiefs have began to eye the sapling as well.
- The story of the One Year Tree is just a cover; within the mountain dwells a Earth Elementalist who has the power to bless the land to ensure its fertility. However, the price for the boon is that the Earth Elemenatlist’s existence be hidden. Only a council of elders has this knowledge and they delibrately invent the story of the One Year Tree to protect the identity of the Elementalist (the tree itself is an elaborate Earth spell). However, the village has this boon for over three hundred years. Just who would he be?
- The One Year Tree is a semi-sentinel monster that feeds on buried dead bodies for its vitality, which in term ensures the fertility of the surrounding area which it is planted in. The villagers frequently depose of the weak, elderly and sometimes, vagabonds or the occasional wandering knight, to the tree to ensure that it lives. When the year is up, the tree will die, where the villagers will have to embark to the mountain for another sapling. But just what is the tree and where does the saplings come from.
- Long ago a clan of Elves dwell within the forest upon the mountains and traded frequently with the villagers. For safeguarding their location, and eventually, their tombs, the Elves gave the elders saplings of the One Year Tree in return. When the last of the Elves either die or leave, they charged the villagers with the protection of their treasure vaults and home in return for the saplings of the One Year Tree. The rest of the tale concerning the tree is real – it matures and dies within a year. However, if the Elven tombs and treasures ever removed, the saplings would stop falling off its source (a large tree which grew into the cliff itself) and the village’s soil would immediately become infertile.
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