Sacred Garden of the Ancients
This long-abanded garden features plants and pathways arranged in numbers and shapes in line with numerology and holy symbology. The plants here are of rare varietals, some of them thought to have been extinct for hundreds of years.
Ancient Knowledge. A successful Religion check reveals the garden itself is meant as a place of worship, and tending it for at least 1 hour is the proper way to show respect to the garden’s deity (this can be done while gathering plants but must be declared). Adventurers who do so gain the benefits of a long rest next time they take a short rest .
Cursed Negligence. Failure to tend to the garden at all results in each adventurer suffering two levels of strife and adventurers are cursed until the end of the next phase of the moon (each phase is about 4 to 5 days). The nature of the curse is determined by the Narrator and functions as a bestow curse spell cast at 8th-level (see Chapter 10: Spellcasting, in the Adventurer’s Guide).
Adventurers suffer this curse for one moon phase if they fail or critically fail this challenge. This does not stack with Cursed Negligence.
Sacred Place. The entire garden is filled with a feeling of ancient power that seems to beat to an almost tangible rhythm. Magic is suppressed while within the area of the garden as if in an antimagic field .
Strange Plants. The plants were at one point especially cultivated, but that was many years ago. Adventurers without experience with this region’s history and plantlife can’t benefit from any specialities in Medicine, Nature, or Survival such as herbalism, plant lore, or foraging.
Each adventurer can choose to make a Medicine, Nature, or Survival check to harvest materials. Materials can only be harvested once a day from this garden.
Critical Failure. Each adventurer that failed the check finds 1d6 plants that they are certain serve as medicine. When consumed, these are revealed to have been drastically misidentified. Creatures who consume are affected as though they had ingested a potent poison (see Common Poisons in Chapter 4: Equipment of Adventurer’s Guide) and roll their Constitution check against this challenge’s DC. Additionally, the adventures that failed suffer the effects of Cursed Negligence until the end of the current moon cycle.
Failure. Each adventurer that failed the check can’t reliably identify anything and errs on the side of caution. However, they suffer the effects of Cursed Negligence until the end of the current moon cycle.
Success. Each adventurer that succeeds on the check rolls on the effects table below and accurately identifies the plants’ effects.
Critical Success. As success, plus the adventurer finds a plant that they believe to be a startlingly rare varietal. A cutting can be sold for 210 (20d20) gold pieces to the right collecter if the cutting is delivered alive (requiring a DC 16 Nature or Survival check each week), or a quarter of that if it dies in transport.
Leave It Be
The adventurers can always leave the garden alone, though going around costs an additional 4 (2d4) hours of travel and yields no experience.