Casting Shadows

This is a seed for the post-nuclear war reclamation and rebuilding RPG, the Morrow Project.

The seed
This seed focuses on how the universe can be cruel and kind in the same toss of the dice. What we think we know, we may not. What was safe, may be safe no longer…despite appearances to the contrary.

Planting the seed
This seed is not intended for anything long-term, but might prove useful as a complication or added depth to a campaign where the team is seeking to expand quality food supplies or increase trade and discourse between currently warring regions. Planting the seed is simple, it just requires the bite of an apple~

The details
In their explorations and gradual expansion of monitored territory, the project team comes across reasonably maintained dirt roads, and well-tended orchards. The primary crop is apples. Some oddities stand out, such as a larger than usual population of small animals and greatly increased predator activity in the area.

Meeting the locals to converse is not easy as they seem to have developed cultural routines of operating in tight family units with constant readiness and skilled use of reliable ranged weapons. While primarily on the look out for the larger predators in the area, they are not averse to shooting people first and forgoing any questions.

If the team can overcome the community’s learned suspicion and protectiveness, they may be able to enter into negotiations for the large and delicious-looking apples.

The locals eat the fruit mainly as a form of apple-sauce with the additive of a strong and bitter herb which will definitely take most people time to acquire a taste for. The project, and anyone with any familiarity with apples would most likely to prefer to just eat the apple as is. The locals have no objection to this, but see it (culturally, again) as ridiculous.

What’s going on
The apples are delicious and a very addition to a healthy diet. Unfortunately, the trees have developed two new characteristics since the war. They attract many different levels of prey species, and their nectar and fruit contain a potent hallucinogen which can cause disorientation, lassitude, and a pleasant buzz in small doses, and dream-like trances with full paralysis in larger doses (such as 2-3 apples).

The locals’ tradition of eating the fruit with the herb counteracts the hallucinogen, while ruining the taste, but they have long-since forgotten all of that. They just do it this way because it is the way to do it.

Enjoy~