The shattered hollow tree smolders in broken slabs, violet roots twitching across Rozah's mantle like angry veins. The Hooded Rider steps into the clearing and stops short of the wreckage, studying it with reverent cold.
Hooded Rider
You tear at the forest and it still answers you. Are you its master, goblin, or only the next thing it means to consume?
The Goblin Lookout hangs back near the roots, tense and watchful. The air thickens with rot and ozone as the Rider's gaze stays fixed on Rozah's mantle, not the others.
Rozah the Goblin
The forest comes through me. That makes it mine to aim.
Hooded Rider
Then prove it. The corruption does not stop with a broken tree. It will keep feeding unless you lead it, bind it, or break it clean.
The violet light gutters, then surges once around Rozah's shoulders, as if listening. Behind her, the tribe's silence tightens into expectation, waiting to see whether their new war chief can hold the thing now living on her skin.
✓ Quest Accepted
Win the Hooded Rider’s support
✓ Quest Accepted
Stop the corruption from feeding
“I command the violet roots to weave into the ground and seal the rot away.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled -2)
Rozah presses her palm to the shattered ground. Violet roots slip from her mantle, thread into the soil, and spread in a low web around the broken tree roots.
Rozah the Goblin
The rot smells weaker here.
The corrupted pulse buckles, then sinks under the earth. Around the clearing, the guttering light dies back to a thin, steady seep.
A sharp crack answers her seal. The brass horn shudders in the dirt, and a strip of violet residue smears across its rim as the roots spend themselves.
Hooded Rider
That is no trick. You have bound it, at least for now.
A Goblin Lookout
Then the camp holds. Rozah, look.
The Rider lowers his hand from the wreckage and turns fully toward Rozah, wary respect cutting through his chill.
Hooded Rider
If you mean to keep that power from feeding again, I will stand with your path. If not, I will take it from you before it wakes.
Quest Complete
Stop the corruption from feeding
Quest Complete
Win the Hooded Rider’s support