the woods where the moon will be born

here's a place you can go, and here's the rules for when you get there

Tove Jansson is my favorite artist and one of my favorite writers. Her work is the most important foundational part of my ideas about fantasy, and this is how I want to try and show you that.

These are the woods where the moon will be born. The world is young; the sky is still dark water, and the sun beyond sinks down through it slowly, in drops of liquid light. Many things are not yet finished.

The trees have leaves of green-black, and trunks and branches like scratches of white on tinted glass. They have not learned to leave any light or oxygen for others, and so the woods outside the paths, the river and its banks is a cold vacuum of total dark.

Animals live here, learning how to exist and wondering what is going to happen.

The Big People live here, hungry, strange and afraid, and sometimes kind. You are one of them.

The Lonely People live here, hungry, strange and fearsome, and sometimes kind. You are nothing like them.

Small Beasts live everywhere, and so they are here too, bothersome and silly and inescapable.

And of course, the Moon People live here in their Manors; they all stand empty, for every Moon Person has gone to the party around the moon, a huge globe of silverglold still emerging from the earth. Each of them is like a poem, and they are all more grown up than you will ever be.

The white of the map is the path, and the blue is the river. While you are on either, or along the river bank, you may breath freely. In between, there are the woods, black, cold, and airless. You may hold your breath in them for perhaps three minutes, and then you must find a clearing, or scramble above the foliage, or die.

Encounters
Whenever you enter an area location, roll 1d20 to see who is already there.

1. Moon Person
2 - 3 Lonely Person
4 - 6. Big Person
7 - 9. Animal
10 - 13. Small Beast
14 - 20. Nobody

When you do something noisy or that takes a long time, roll 1d20 to see who overhears and comes to investigate. You can spend 1 meal to exert yourself and not make an encounter roll.

1 - 2. Animal
3 - 8. Big Person
9 - 16. Small Beast
17 - 20. Nobody

Lonely People

Grandmither. Like an evil candle that's been all mushed and melted. she has a long dress with a bunch of pockets with little glass and metal toys in them and they're all connected back to them with tiny tiny metal chains that spool out longer and longer. once you've touched it, (13+) or you'll never let go of it and any other Big Person who sees it will be witched to kill you for it (13+) and Grandmither will come to eat the body. The witching is only broken by giving Grandmither a present, and she only wants the sun to light her wick.
Averruncator. he's a tall sensitive gentleman on thin stilt legs with a head, hands and fingers like ribbons. he uses his ribbon head to write in the air. doesn't really have any response to being rejected or confused other than to get upset and lift your head off. when he does it, if you can't stop him (13+), it's clean and bloodless. he just picks it up like it was never attached to begin with. you still die though. he wants you to gather all the heads (there are 5) that he's left all over and and read the apology he wrote to them. if you do, he'll let you take one of his fingers; like a garrote that bloodlessly pops the head off whatever neck it's tied around.
The Terrible Bird. a huge grey, blind pterodactyl. its beak doesn't open, just a huge spike honeycombed with holes that the wind whistles through and blood trickles into. Because of this whistling, it cannot sleep, and exists in a state of perpetual, sleep deprived rage that it cannot express except through the language of impaling and thrashing and battering. were it ever to sleep, it would become quite a tender creature, friend to the Dryads, using its bill to pierce holes in the earth and plant new seeds.
Saltsinger. a tall pale worm standing like a birch tree. sings, and salt and stone are pulled from the young earth from all directions towards it. your tears are pulled from your eyes and roll through the air like beads. the song rings in your ears from all directions, and forms invisible barriers, a palace maze of sound.
each time you would move, roll a d4, and that many directions are barred by a hanging reverberation. press through it (13+) and your ears bleed and your entire body begins to shake itself to pieces. the stones cannot pass through these walls either; roll a second d4, and if the dice do not match, you are safe.
you may find things in these corridors; invisible things, little knots of sound. on a 4, when you are trapped for a moment in a chamber, you might find
1. a spear of song, like a shimmering spike in the air. swallow it, and the next time you speak it will be hurled forth from your lips.
2. something like a ridged knot of invisible rope. roll it ahead of you and walk along its length; your only perceptible presence will be a ringing in the ears, though the world will become undetectable to you as well.
3. a head-sized crystal of completely transparent salt, enough to foul a pool or spring to lethal salinity
4. a jagged heap of 6 invisible shards of sound. if you strike another with one of these notes, they will tear their throat raw with a scream like a shell exploding
5. a fragile mass of rhythm; if split and broken, it would summon the Grand Earthworm from the depths to rage blind through the trees.
6. a single horrible note. place it in your mouth and blow, and anyone who has eaten the flesh of Big People will whistle that awful tone.
as the song goes on, larger and larger stones are torn from the earth, shambling like glacial shift towards Saltsinger. If it ever stops its shuffling, they will catch it and crush it beneath a piled cairn. They will run you down in their eagerness to do so.
the first time it is cut deeply, its worm-head splits in two. the second head is its Wound-Brother, whom it hates. Their songs crash into one another, and great stones are hurled in all directions.

Big People

Quillig the Trog: Girl with a troll mask made of clay and bottlecaps. slingshot with hard stones or mushrooms that explode into big clouds of white foam. messiest eater in the world
1d3 of the Bride Brothers: Abe, Bo, and Charlie are three dirty little boys and when they're together they all wear one wedding dress. they're the most direful boys in the world, and they run a circus. Abe at the top is missing his ears and has two snakes (one dead, one half dead) that he uses as whips. Bo in the middle is missing both nipples (he makes a bigger deal out of this than it is). He has a big thorned stick. Charlie, at the bottom, hidden by the skirts, is missing his tongue and has two pocketknives.
1d6 Jameaters: Big People who gave into temptation and ate one of the witched sleeping people in the Jampile at #14. armed with sharpened sticks and rope, they are the most treacherous people in the world. Nobody knows where they live.
2d6 Stoneheads: Big People whose upper halves have been turned to stone by the frog at #29. they blunder around at full speed and if they run into they try to batter you to bits with their stone heads in a panic.
The Picklejar Twins, Fermina and Isldra. They have an unfinished picklejar that can hold one thing of any size. They are notorious thieves, but nobody is ever able to prove it. Fermina is missing a hand and let the fire they used to smoke out the bees at their camp (#1) go out. Isldra is missing an eye and is furious with her.
1d2 of Tender and Tilly. Sisters of Tavvy in #6. She's been lost and they're worried. Tender is the toughest girl in the world; her hands are permanently red and sticky from jamberries and she knows karate. She's missing a breast, and carries around a little lunchbox with bandaids in it. Tilly is the silliest; she has a tail she made out of grass and feathers tucked into the back of her pants. She's missing an eye, and put a marble in the socket. They wander through the paths helping people; they're the ones who move all the sleeping people to the Jampile at #14. If anything happens to either of them, every other Big Person knows about it and will take their revenge except for the Jameaters and Satania.
Zingbearer Kahn. Very tall for a boy, and fearsome. the proudest person in the world. Missing both his little fingers. he wears a white button down shirt and high trousers. In one of the pockets of his trousers is a wasp nest. When the time comes, he takes the wasp nest from his pocket and a big black and white wasp crawls out. whatever body part it stings grows 1d6 times in size and strength each times it stings it. Zingbearer takes this power very seriously. If he has to take off his shirt and you're a girl he'll ask you not to look.
Greedy Gary. Greediest boy in the world. Missing his toes. Wants to team up with the Picklejar Twins but they won't have him. Wants to be friends with Quillig the Trog but she hates him. always running around grabbing shit. Right now he's grabbed 4 of Grandmither's toys and he can't put them down: a toy soldier with a tiny gun that shoots, a wind up glass bird that really flies, a zippo lighter, and a pocket knife with every single tool. He killed the Big People in #66 for them; he swears he doesn't know why he did it. He's right, he doesn't, but you'd kill for them too (13+).
The Fire Peddler. He's almost as old as Old Grey Will (he's 17). He's got no fingers, and his whole body is perpetually blackened with soot, even his tongue; he's the filthiest boy alive. he pulls a wagon full of buckets of unfinished fire; all kinds. He'll trade you fire for unfinished things. He's got
1. Fire that will burn without air
2. Fire that gives a loud cackle and leaps at any movement near it
3. Fire that releases thick smoke from even a matches-worth
4. Fire with smoke thick enough to climb
5. Fire that warms but never burns
6. Fire so bright that it blinds
The location of the lightning at #65 is his trade secret; he makes his fires by using it to burn unfinished things.
Satania. Most evil girl in existence. She's missing a foot, has three white alligator heads from the dragon at #38, and a boomerang. She doesn't ever eat whole people cause she doesn't want to break the witching. leaves eyeballs and arms and legs all over the place.
Little Elizabeth. the sister of toothless Gilbert, who lies dead in a Moon Manor at #66. the shyest girl in the world, she has no arms and rides crosslegged on the Bell Stag Widower, a white barbel-mouthed deer with silver bells growing from its antlers. the Bell Stag at #12 was his husband. if his bells are run, it summons a terrible rainstorm of heavy drops of lead that smash and break stuff and the Stag and Elizabeth go around licking the pulps and piths.
1d4 of the Boodlers. Big People with hammers breaking and smashing stuff. they want to spoil everything for the moon people. they're the most spoilsport people in the world. Smish and Smash are missing their front teeth. they love the hammers the most. Bip and Bop are missing a right and left arm. they help each other out. They don't live anywhere; they just take turns sleeping well the others prop the sleeper up and swing their hands for them.

Animals of the Woods and Paths

Sweet Dreamers: a swarm of butterflies with bright tattered wings like scraps of cloth. if they land on you, you feel tired and sleepy and cozy and warm. if you let enough land on you to cover your face, you fall asleep. more and more cover you until your whole body is covered with them, and you sleep the best sleep ever without dreaming (they ate the dreams). if you had an empty stomach, you can still heal 1 wound while you sleep, +1 for each meal you'd had the day before. X:4 chance that you are witched to never wake up until you sleep in a Moon Manor bed, where X is the number of meals you had.
Fish with Feet. they're had feet pinned to them by the Gleeful Fishwife at #59. they don't really know what to do with them, but fish don't have to breath (not finished yet) so the woods suit them fine. they follow the Small Beasts at #39 like slavish dogs, but the Small Beasts loath and despise them as mockeries.
Fish with Wings. the wings are pinned on by the Gleeful Fishwife, and they flit around the woods in silvery schools.
Burning Tigers. flame impossibly in the airless woods. their hearts are hot enough to synthesize new elements, which are vented through their stripes. an aura of oxygen surrounds them.
Tarsirs. Peek out from behind things to watch you. steal your stuff while you're asleep and leave it tantalizingly distant in the woods. Climb up to treetops to gulp air.
Tapirs. Always panicked because their trunks can't reach above the trees. Too stupid to realize that certain areas have air and others do not. Dash wildly across the paths gasping and gulping. They HATE the elephant at #34.

Animals of the River

Old Grey Will. A somewhat tiresome naked 20 something man with long grey hair, swimming with a remarkable ferocity and catching fish with his teeth. His camp is at #41 and you can read more about him there.
Fish with Arms; arms pinned on by the Gleeful Fishwife at #59. A school is strong enough to pick up and throw your boat!!!
Huge Catfish, big enough to gulp a child up entirely.
Boa Constrictors (1:3 are a Boa Constructor. they are scornful of their relatives. they loop around your neck and force you to construct altars in their honor).
Horrible long slippery carnivorous otters. Like to play with their food and crack your head open with rocks to eat your brain.
White flamingos (shrimp haven't been invented yet).

Small Beasts

Like little cat monkeys small enough to fit in your eardrum (their tails dangle out). they desire mainly to bite your ears and to purr really loudly in your ears and to threaten to bite your brain if you take them out.
They look like painted pebbles of all colors, but instead each one is a little beetle with bioluminescent antennae. The form useful patterns; pre-roll the next encounter; they are arranged as an image of it. They're also rather rude, and get together in groups to spell out "U R Stinky" and things like that.
Looks like a goldfish that flops around on the ground gasping for air. but when you come over to investigate it pops up out of the ground; it's like toadstool and its cap just looks like a dying goldfish. then it spits water at you.
Like little yellow lizards with three tails like super-slippery banana peels. run under your feet and then cry and scream about you stepping on them.
Like tiny dust bunnies combined with horrible long hair little old lady dogs. allergic to themselves so they're sneezing all the time and they climb in your stuff and make you sneeze and your eyes water like crazy
Something like an orchid mantis that looks like a beautiful stately flower. If you get close enough it does a screaming honk at you loud as an air raid siren!

Along the Path

very steep rock that big people have notched footholds into in order to climb it (7+). the top of the rock is open and hollow and full of a huge beehive. Fermina and Isldra, the Picklejar Twins, have a shelter of sticks propped against the rock.
village of little people like tiny cows with lots of legs and noses like flutes that they play. they live in little holes in the ground and ask you why about everything and scurry around in panic pricking you with their horns (9+) if you try to eat them.
tree with huge black grapefruits. hard to eat because there are Small Beasts like little black and white striped paintbrush head grubs who want go inside you (17+) and paint pictures on ur insides. Several of these trees have rather sarcastic Dryads living in them.
a little lamb tied with a white silk scarf to a nearby tree. "hey you, want to be my mother?" 4:6 chance any big person you meet is also the lamb's mother; she's collecting them. she eats an insane amount very quickly; three meals is one meal to her. The Dryad of a nearby tree is incredibly tired of this lamb but cannot reach the scarf without leaving her tree.
if you are one of the lamb's mothers, so long as you can see her, you get +1 to all combat rolls for each unique way you personally have dressed her up. +2 max, but dressing her up more can offset penalties if you've dressed her up 4 ways and suffer a -2, you still get a +2.
gigantic thorny white widowmaker branch hangs across the path here, but some big people have propped it up with branches so you can get under it (4+).
Tavvy in #6 has made some people out of clay and moss and placed them on top of the branch like they're sitting there, watching you as you duck under.
a bridge of black wood. under it lives Tavvy, a Big Person who has been witched with an dragon head like a white alligator by the dragon at #38. she's hiding from her sisters, Tender and Tilly.
she spends her time making beautiful people out of moss and sticks and mud and then hunts them while crying bc she dont want to. she has to eat a real person to get over the curse.
deep well and at the bottom of the well is a Big Person's head face down; Proper Dottie, Quillig the Trog's only friend. the water is clear; no blood runs from their neck. the water is witched so if you look down into it you can't look away. the witching is broken by reflecting the water in a mirror.
a moon person schoolhouse where you learn to increase the potency of your reflection and shadow. your teacher is a mirror and a lantern. There are some people that Tavvy in #6 made of mud and stones sitting at the desks.
if you study there all day on a full stomach (three meals) three times, your shadow and reflection can interact and be affected by things like it was a flesh and blood creature separate from yourself. it needs real food and sleep now; as much as you.
it's always raining from the same grey cloud in the school, and the top of the schoolhouse has tiny stairs so steep up to the raincloud.
a Moon Person's cute 40s chevy pickup crashed into a tree. Its Dryad is dead, splayed across the windshield the car blocks the path. it's dripping gasoline that will get all on you if you crawl under it. there's a big pile of dead leaves and newspaper in the back and under all of it is Keen Puck, a big person master archer, and friend Sylvia Snarl at #30. He is huddled in three fur coats with his bow and arrows.
he's been witched to be chilled to the bone by the pool in #74. good thing he's the most stoic person in the world!
a nasty little circus. a sitting in the back of a circus wagon with faded paint is multi-level cage made of sticks and twine holds six Small Beasts, all dressed up in filthy cloth like lions, seals, elephants, bears, monkeys and zebras. the lion has gigantic fists for his size and has gone mad with power, chasing the others around.
the Bride Brothers run this circus. 5:6 chance they are here and will make you pay admission, 3:6 chance 1d2 other big people are here watching.
yucky fort made of muddy bricks. you have to worm through a hole in the roof to get in. only three rooms, and each one is so small that really only one person can fit in it on their hands and knees; two if they cram. this is where the Bride Brothers live. sometimes they start a fire in the middle of the fort right under the hole and sit around coughing and cooking their food, eyes raw red and streaming with tears.
the earth isn't all the way done here and is like quicksand, though it doesn't look it. a gigantic pair of antlers, golden bells sprouting from each prong, sticks up out of the ground like spreading tree branches. people use them to scramble over, but if you disturb the bells, a storm of napalm fire will rage, and all but the Fire Peddler will despair.
here the way is piled deep with frigid drifts of snow, cold enough to kill you if you ventured over it without winter clothing. beneath 15 feet of snow, a flower like blossoming frost hides, protecting itself with winter. if you dig down in the snowdrifts, you can find the severed heads of two Big People. These were Lolly and Lally, best friends and spiteful brats who belonged to the Boodlers. They'd come to find the flower for Uncle Curfew at #57. none of their blood has spilled into the snow.
the Jampile, a heap of 23 sleeping Big People, each of them painted in sticky scarlet jam. they've all been witched. there's a gentleman's agreement not to eat them; those taboo-breakers, marked with red sticky mouths and hands, are killed and eaten on sight.
the Hoostlings are clan of Small Beasts like fat little white mice ball guys with two legs. they jiggle and shake. they want to help the Long Haired Lady witch the river into Small Beasts. they know shes gonna eat them. they don't care, they don't think they die when they're eaten, and they're right, so they'll let you eat them on a (4+) but they're too rubbery to chew, so they just stay alive inside you biding their time.
the Vanisher is a Lonely Person whom the Hoostlings have buried under a pile of stones. he is a balding painter with eyelashes down to his chin, but no eyes, only painted sigils. anything he paints is witched and vanishes into his painting, but he only wants to paint the Hoostlings, which he considers to be the most beautiful creatures in the world.
the Long Haired Lady is here. a Lonely Person who is like a talking snake with iridescent girl hair all down its flanks moon dust color with a crown of opals and she wants you to help her witch the river into Small Beasts to eat.
this would happen if a Small Beast sould somehow eat the witching stone in the river and sit there in its place. she's witched, so (13+) to hurt because her hair grabs everything.
the witching is undone forever if she's submerged in the river; this would also finish the river and make the water normal. she's very nervous about getting her hair wet.
a wheelbarrow with a small black volcano in it. if it's jostled too much it will go off like a bomb if you don't steady it immediately (18+). intended for the moon manor at #21 as a curiosity but the wheel wobbled terribly so it's been left where it is.
a translucent noose dangles down from the watery sky. if it's looped around anything living, that thing is jerked up into the sky until it drowns dead, then lowered back down. if it's looped around anything else, that thing is pulled up into the sky and then lowered back down totally crusted in limpets. if you can peel the limpets off before they eat the thing entirely (it takes all day) what's left behind has been chewed down to an eighth of its former size and eight times more potent than it was before. wood will burn eight times as long, bright, and hot, etc.
moon manor, the outside overgrown with feathery fronds that dust you with pollen that makes you float upward to drown in the sky. indoors, everything is white and perfumed and kind of wilting; tea kettles that sadly fold in on themselves as they're heated, beds that gently let you sink to the floor over the course of a night.
moon manor, big locks on the doors and locked shutters and curtains on the windows and a huge black spider, bigger than the living room, that screams and thrashes around if you let any light in. it's got a bristly proboscis like a trunk as long as a firehose. Little Beasts like big wingless flies with eyes of dark glass creep around, tending to glow worm and mushroom farms and trying to stay out of the way.
In a cradle in the cupola of the manor, swaddled in an asbestos blanket, is a tiger's heart like a little sun. it'll burn through anything but its blanket; if you dropped it, it'd burn a hole clean through the world and let the Grand Earthworm free; a beast large enough to flatten forests.
moon manor, with wallpaper all slimy with snails that crawl on you while u sleep. rest on a (4) bc the snails aren't finished yet so their feet are all warm and soft like the bellies of cats. lots of food in the icebox but it's all covered with snails and their slime. if you eat either, you start tripping. you can't sleep until you eat 6 meals, and until you eat 3, roll 1d4 every time you meet somebody to determine if they appear like
1. a Small Beast
2. a Big Person
3 a Lonely Person.
a big animal like two big black dogs crossed through each other like an X sits outside this Moon Manor. must be fed to let you inside.
all the velvet curtains and furniture and pillows and blankets are warm and trembling like raised hackles. if you cut any of it, there's blood and meat underneath, but the beast runs in and tears you to pieces like if you're in the middle of a dogfight.
Moon Manor with the roof caved in and turned into a nest for the Terrible Bird. The bottom floors are a maze of collapsed beams and guano. it's impossible to determine what is crucial to keep the structure standing; everything rests upon everything else. whenever you remove something, even so slight as a bottle of wine, roll 1d6, and on a 1, a piece of the house comes crashing down, and you repeat the process.
the entire inside of this Moon Manor is a maze of dripping pipes bending and elbowing around each other. some are boiling hot, others so cold that you'll stick to them if you touch them. if you're moving quickly you'll definitely bump into one or the other (18+). a given pipe contains
1. poison
2. lava
3. gasoline
4. water.
5. medicinal ointment
6. warm milk and honey.
Moon Manor w terrified old steward, a small beast who coughs and sneezes so hard that he rockets all over the house and breaks his bones and the china and crystal, of which there is far too much for the cabinets and tables to hold. there is a crystal bell under one of the teacups, and if you ring it, no matter where you are, the steward will sneeze rocket himself to you and help you as much as an old man with broken bones could help you.
Moon Manor and its freezing cold inside, all the taps are dripping icicles. rest on a (4) bc the ice isn't finished yet and doesn't know how to kill you so it just crystalizes you like a nice cocoon while you sleep. you need to be taken outside to thaw out.
there's a Big Person here who's the most beautiful and contrary girl in the world. Her name is Astaline and she's wearing a dress made of flower petals and butterflies and she's frozen solid. she's the princess of the treehouse people in #70.
there are 3 different iceboxes is full of food, fruits and meet encased of blocks of ice, but opening them without warm clothes on probably (18+) flash freezes you.
everything in this moon manor is just a shadow puppet paper cutout with a shining lamp behind it. your shadow can use everything; sleep on the shadow beds or armchairs, drink the shadow water, etc. there's plenty of shadow food in the larder and icebox, and it will feed your shadow nicely.
there's a shadow gymnasium with big cartoony shadow barbells, and if your shadow works out on a full stomach (3 meals) and sleeps after, and repeats this for 3 days, it will become as strong as 3 Big People and get +3 in melee combat, tho it will still only be able to interact with other shadows.
a big statue of an skinny starving frog holding his sunken-in tummy. if you reach up and rub his shiny nose, you'll get good luck until you eat again (+1 to everything).
if you rub his nose with a full stomach (3 meals) he'll try to gulp you down, though you won't fit all the way and your legs will stick out of his mouth. if you get pulled out, your upper half will have turned to stone, but you can still walk around and stuff.
there's a wooden shipwreck blocking the path here, and in it lives Sylvia Snarl the sailor. She's like 9 inches tall but she's the most experienced person in the world, as strong as 8 Big People, and if you call her a Small Beast she'll kick your damn ass. you've gotta arm wrestle her to get past or get her some hooch.
she made a boat and hoisted it up into the sky with the noose in #19 but couldn't hold her breath long enough to make it to the top side of the sky and had to come crashing back down.
in her boat are 10 white balloons full of air; 15 minutes worth each.
huge white column, too cold and smooth to climb (20+) but it's easy for a moon person, it's like a diving board from which they can jump up and fall into the big watery sky to swim around. sometimes when they do unfinished stars splash down and fall to earth.
there's 1d3 every time you go and if there's three, there's a Moon Person swimming in the sky up there.
you can throw the stars at things (4+) and if you hit, they'll start to orbit the thing and illuminate it, 1 quarter at a time (front, back left and right) and only the illuminated side is awake and may act (if back is illuminated can only walk backwards etc)
Satania's lair and lives in a hut made of bones. the area around is strewn with hands and tongues and eyeballs and feet.
in the hut there is nothing but a huge warm, quivering velvet pillow from the moon manor at #23 that she sleeps on and a white and wilting piano from #20 that she plays.
The Angel Michelle, a Lonely Person like a 10ft china doll with four faces, one on each side of her head. Her arms hinge at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist, but she cannot move her legs.
She has the only sword in the world and is the wisest person ever. She can tell you how to undo any witching, but she needs help to eat; she can only eat dragons, and can't move to go find them. She's never had one before.
She spends most her time looking at the sky. Her sword lets you roll a d20 in melee combat instead of a d12.
A white elephant guards a well of pure water. It can flap its ears hard enough to send you flying and has a devious look in its eye. It's a lil stinker; the worst in the world, in fact. It loves to eat fruit, and will squirt you some water into your mouth if you give it 3 meal's worth, though it can be lured by a single meal.
a little grey farmhouse and a patch of big green gourds, half buried in the earth. they're the tops of the heads of the Lonely Person Ogre Maniple, who is like a huge green hand with 24 fingers and a gourd-head on the end of each one. he has 24 finger legs as well in an inverse root hand on the bottom. he wants a bath after having been all buried in the dirt.
the big person Squill (missing her lips) lives in the little house and harvests the brains from Ogre Maniple by keeping him sedated with a huge needle full of poison from the Moon Manor at #25. she has trepanned the heads and scoops brain broth out a little at a time.
a cluster of big bushes with fat scarlet jamberries on them. when mushed, they stain things permanently red and sticky as gorilla glue. no good to eat; they stick you mouth shut!
Poor Napoleon is the ticket taker for the party around the Moon. He's like a wet black cat with a broken umbrella and a squashed hat. He's got both his legs in a cast, and sits on the back of a white horse, who also has four casts on all four of its legs. He's so horribly hopeful and even more horribly unlucky, so his hopes are always getting dashed. Whenever he cries, his tears sprout into little pinwheels and flowers of razorwire and flechette that burst when you touch them. they're growing all around him. He wants to go into the party so so bad.
Four dryads live nearby with black bark and silver-white leaves for hair. They're all in love with Poor Napoleon and they think he's so darling and funny. they pick their way through the razor flowers and hug the knees of his horse and beg for cigarettes and it makes him so terribly sad.
three big white alligator dragon heads on thin thin thin necks that trail off into the woods. they bite off your head and right before they do they say "i'm going to bite off your head and if you want to live you better pick me up and put me on the stump" and then they bite off your head and then snap off their neck and drop on the ground.
|you have a couple seconds to put a head on your stump; if you do, you're witched, and will have an alligator head and have a really hard time resisting (13+) eating anyone you meet. If you eat one whole Big Person, boots and all, you break the witching and your head becomes a big persons head (but not your own, someone else whose head was eaten. 4:6 chance that a Big Person you meet knows your head's old owner.)
the path winds through some prickly dead gorse here, just little spots of yellow flowers here and here. The Hup-Hungries live here. they're Small Beasts like little dry land piranhas with chicken feet, and they'll chase you pretty much forever in swarms of 6+3d6 unless you start crying, which makes them very sad and then they waddle the long way back from whence they came.
a steep hill, loose and sliding shale just under the topsoil. the top of it is an dense thicket of blackberries around a pool of liquid sunlight. every so often, a fish of liquid gold leaps high enough to be seen like a shooting star above the thorns. hotly contested territory; 5:6 chance of an encounter with Big People anytime you visit here, and another chance every 20 minutes.
Old Grey Will's campsite. Old Grey Will is one of the oldest Big People (he's like 21) and has gone grey before his age. He's the weariest person alive. His camp is a big big of cloth strung between the trees to keep out rain. underneath, he sits in a tub of river water so he can stay a person, since he's been witched by the to be a fish on land and a boy in the water. He's missing both ring fingers.
He mostly reads comic books that the other Big People draw for him, and if you draw him a comic, he'll tell you something you already know. When he's hungry, he flops into the river and goes hunting, swimming nude with the skill and intensity of a mighty trout.
Tender, Tilly, and Tavvy's campsite. Appears to be occupied at first because Tavvy made replicas of them all out of shells and clay and reeds. There's a pile of Jamberries in the center of the camp, and 3 hammocks stretched across the clearing.
A dock cobbled together from many different types of planks. A boys best work. There are three boats tied up; Zingbearer Kahn has a little sailboat that he built himself, big enough for two. Quillig the Trog has a raft, and so do Tender and Tilly. theirs is the biggest, and has two poles with a hammock strung between them. A giant snapping turtle lives under the dock. sometimes he gets cheeky and tries to nip off a toe if it's dangling.
Zingbearer Kahn's campsite. A very proper boy scout tent under a tree with a climbing rope hanging from one branch. all his food (12 apples the size of cranberries. shrunken down by the limpets at #19, each is worth 8 apples; that's like a whole meal per apple!) is hanging from a sack at the top of the tree. in the tent he keeps a needle and thread and a big stack of moon people newspapers.
Quillig the Trog's campsite. a big pile of compost, grapefruit peels and apple cores and chicken bones. if you root around in there long enough for an encounter roll, you can find a gross tin of sardines or a half-molded loaf of bread.

At the Party
A big pile of bottles of liquor with exciting and mysterious paper labels. they say things like
1. "The children start to march / Against the world / In which they have to live" 2. "A woman trying to lift the shutter door of her plant store"
3. "29 dollars and an alligator purse"
4. "Pale pink light shining from the sky on an unremarkable plot of land"
5. "There is a dull book with me / an apple core, cigarettes / An ashtray"
6. "Lying snowblind in the sun."
A crowd of Moon People are standing on their heads and swinging from branches and laughing and rolling around here. Everyone is waiting for Presto to arrive. Some of them are
1. Premortem Paul (he's prettiest when he's unfaithful but if he cheats you gotta kill him)
2. Alabastronaut (wants to get married to the moon but can't find a ring big enough)
3. Tumbling Timberlily (plays the violin, wants to toast to everything)
4. Laboolius (thinks the moon may be a hoax, wings open like refrigerator doors)
5. Winnicker Snap (entire body is really only painted on an eyelid and sometimes it blinks open and you see your own eye under it.)
6. The Wonderful Chasm (she's like a red cliff with a river running through it and she wants to sneak off and make out).
Long picnic tables with a beautiful feast for the Moon People party. There's flutes of black champagne and roadmap napkins (suddenly, you're in a car with anyone who wants to come, driving through the hills at night with the windows down and roast chicken being passed around; open the doors to get out).
There's pomegranates as big as watermelons and watermelons as tiny as grapes. There's barrels of apples and a waterfall of salmon. There's beer and dumplings that taste like you're lying in the sun.
There's a general strolling around feeding people his purple hearts (they taste like plums) and if he likes you he'll feed you his real life heart (it tastes like blood).
There's snakes that are cucumbers and mint, and oranges you can only eat by kissing someone who ate one and suddenly it's in your mouth and the juice is down your chin.
where the moon is being born, bulging up from the earth huge and round and silvergold against the trees. Moon People lounge around it; hopeful, hopeless, transfixed, terrorized, laughing, screaming.
Francis Nicoise is running a projector that draws its light from the moon. She's the sister of Judderjack, bitter and cynical, like a tall skinny mouse who only drinks black coffee with its tail in a mousetrap, or broken glass and rusty nails in a field of violets. She's the seethingist anyone who ever was. Reels of film hang from the trees around her; she'll put on any movie you ask for (anything at all! all movies are real!) but she'll hate you for it.
a screen hung on the trees and the project at #49 is showing a film; Just Another Chapter in the Saddest Story Ever Told. If you stumble between the projector and screen, suddenly you're in the scene and the the moon people clap and cheer
1. you're balancing on a phone line, walking towards a tightrope walker; it's the first phone line in town and the crowd below feels incredibly moved by it
2. you're sneaking through an apple grove; the apples are all tied to the tree branches with string. ahead of you, Taj, the most earnest prince, courts the moodiest princess, Saberdinia Bellerophon. She is about to take a big bite of an apple with a stick of dynamite burning down in it!
3. you're waist deep in a pond wading towards Little Henry, who is drowning in his silly striped bathing suit; if you can reach him and pull him out, you'll find he's a frog
4. you're armwrestling the sweatiest army recruiter and if you lose you're going to be drafted into the One Hundred Dollars War! Your school chums are crowded around you, stacked high as the ceiling and hooting like the devil.
5. you're fishing in a well and suddenly you're hauling a sea-monster like a huge scaly rabbit-snake out hand over hand; it's swallowed your wedding ring!
6. you're being chased by a pack of dogs (it's all guys dressed up like dogs) with a stolen pie in your hand full of 4 & 20 blackbirds (it's all girls dressed up as blackbirds).
A collection of elderly Moon People sit on a blanket and gloomily surmise that it's all downhill from here. They're the saddest drunks in the world.
Rumptious Bones is like a seagull all covered in engine grease.
Lallabby is talking about how all the rivers will have to get dressed now, and what a shame, all that naked water covered up.
Teddy Boone is drinking pints of whisky and slowly growing denser and denser, like a dying star.
Wispshisher is like a slender girl reading a beautiful book with gilded edges that come off on her fingertips, only it's her gilded fingers that do the talking, like hand puppets, and every so often they run out of gilt and she goes back to reading for a bit.

Along the River
the spring where the river emerges. it's easy to drink the water because it's not finished yet and doesn't know about running through fingers, so you can scoop bubbling handfuls out to carry around.
big rock here shaped like a fish with a head on both sides, and as the water flows in one side and out the other it gets witched. if you drink it or go in any water downstream from here, you'll probably (13+) turn into a fish on land and a person in the water. this witching is undone by sleeping in a moon manor bed.
bunch of brown beer bottles tied to the reeds and even more without their tops drowned in the bottom of the creek. they are the Boodler's secret stash.
a white horse stands in the river here. Actually his name is Gustav, and he's a lonely person, but he's playing dumb. If you climb onto his back in the water, he'll carry you to shore, where you'll see he actually has pale white human hands instead of hooves right before he strangles you with them. he hates being cold and wet, but the river hides his hands and help the bodies get all mushy so he can eat them with his horse teeth. If you get away from him on land he can't go far or fast at all; Old Grey Will tricked him into eating bread from the Moon Manor at #76, and it sits in him like a stone.
beneath the edge of the riverbank here lives a horrible octopus the size of a shed, with arms far longer. it's the most sadistic creature alive, and desires nothing more than a way to get out of the water and slink through the woods so it can pull every living thing limb from limb. it and the elephant at #34 would be rivals of legendary proportions.
Uncle Curfew sits here, a Lonely Person, squat and round as a ball, with 6 stumpy legs, long arms, and a huge bristly beard that covers his whole body. He smokes big cigars and is at war with the river, but the only thing he can think of to do is to freeze it. He keeps a block of ice frozen in the woods beyond the bank, and chips off chunks to throw into the water. He moves incredibly slow, and the ice usually melts before he gets back to the bank. He desires more than anything the flower in #13, and if you can get it for him, he'll lift up his beard to reveal the bomb he keeps hidden there, a bomb so powerful it could destroy the moon. He built it back when he thought exploding the river would do anything. He's usually not hungry, so 5:6 he's as amiable as a grouch can be, but on a 1 he throws rocks at your head incredibly hard.
The Grim Fisherman. A Lonely Person, bent like bow, his head and its one bulging eye and wispy beard down by his huge yucky feet. He is trying to catch the Fish That Will End the World; he's seen enough already and he doesn't like where it is going. Above all, he despises the Gleeful Fishwife, but the worst thing he can think of doing to her (or anyone) is pushing them into the water.
|Somehow he catches nothing but clothing; huge piles of fur coats and trousers lay by him, and he lives off of boot leather. He'll trade you for bait.
If he ever caught Old Grey Will, he would truly recognize him as the fish he has been looking for. Unfortunately, history knows that he's only right insofar as Bill's children will go on to build the factories that will eat everything.
If the little sun in #21 ever bores through the earth and unleashes the Grand Earthworm, he and the Gleeful Fisherwoman will be valuable allies.
The Gleeful Fishwife. Perhaps the only happy Lonely Person in the world. Her grey hair is like a long net and she uses it to trawl the water for fish. You can hear her whistling and humming from far away.
When she catches a fish, she fumbles in her pocket for a pair of legs or arms or wings, sticks them on with a pin, and lets them go. She's incredibly awkward around people, and clearly wants the conversations to end. She's got a sweet tooth though, and if you give her some candy or fruit, she'll give you a handful (2d4) of wings, arms and legs that you can pin on to whatever you please.
She finds the Grim Fisherman hopelessly attractive.
impossibly gigantic waterfalls with mist like clouds. high enough that several skyscrapers would be swallowed by it. However, the clouds are thick and unfinished, and if you leapt and seized one, you would be lowered slowly to the ground.
a reverse waterfall, the river roaring up into the liquid sky. enter it, and you would be borne upwards through that starry ocean with such force to breach the surface on the other side, and gaze upon the islands of the Sun People.
a Moon Person shipwreck, smashed to piece by the waterfall and floating in a jumble downstream. Apples, bananas and peaches bob in the water; more crates of them in the gut of the ship, impossibly fresh. A Moon Person, Alone Survivor, huddles inside; but it's all wrong. Her mouth is long and glistening, and she embraces you and is so glad you are safe, and wraps you in her blanket, and your skin under it burns as if bitten by a thousand ants. she whispers in your ear "Sing! Or I'll kill you." then she sings "I was going to take a walking stick and beat the Glistening One / I meet the Incarnation-of-ripe-bananas in the Glistening One."
a gigantic rose and dusk colored shell with a Small Beast dancing on it. he finally found his way out and he's the most joyous exuberant beast in the world. There's a gigantic crow in a nearby tree who eyes him hungrily, but cannot bring herself to eat such a happy creature. she flies off, returns, flies off, returns.
the river gurgles like a lethal drain and pours dark and fierce down and down into the veins of the young earth.

Within the Woods
unfinished lightning stuck in a split and blasted tree, quivering. if you free it, it'll leap to the next closest thing and stick in that instead. if there's multiple things equally close, it chooses the tallest.
Inside the tree is the body of its dryad, instantly carbonized into a charcoal doll. Inside that doll is its heart; a glowing seed. If planted in the ground, a big tree will grow the next time you sleep, but it will not be home to anyone.
If you give the seed to a Dryad, she will cry sap tears and kiss you on both cheeks. You will be able to crawl into any tree with a Dryad in it, and crawl out of any other tree with a Dryad in it anywhere you like.
The Dryad will plant the seed wherever you choose, and after the next 3 times you sleep, it will be fully grown and a young Dryad will be living inside.
A Moon Manor, on a raised hill above the forest. Large, open windows, dust caught in the air, totally motionless. Incredibly still; anything you drop remains fixed in space. Actually, the house is packed full of invisible servants, who do everything they can to step and bend and twist out of your way. They hold everything you let go, keep every fleck of dust suspended. If you stay still long enough, they'll keep you fixed in place too (10+).
The ice in the icebox has melted and the food has rotted, but there is still tinned tongue, coffee, and flour, and sugar in the pantry, and a very nice bar. Trying to move anything is hard, but if it's a question of letting you have something or revealing themselves, the servants choose to let you have it.
Four Big People lie dead here. Poplar (no hair), Gilbert (no teeth), Sootburn (no eyelids), and Finch (no legs), one in each of the bathrooms. They lived in this Manor and were the most timid people in the world, keeping out of each others sight, so they wouldn't kill each other for Grandmither's toys. Greedy Gary killed them all.
pile of black grapefruits from #3, with all the small beasts plucked out. there's a pit trap trench full of sharp wooden stakes in a an almost perfect circle around it, the only safe way is the way furthest from the path on all sides. Belongs to the Bride Brothers.
A cheerful little country store in a cheerful little clearing. run by Hambone Jane, a big person and the most gregarious girl you'll ever meet. Tavvy in #6 has made some people from leaves and sticks and put them on the roof of the store. they're waving and giving a big thumbs up.
Jane sells food and unfinished things, and will trade one for the other, 3 meals to 1 thing. For food, there apples and bread and hard cheese and smoked fish and lemons.
For unfinished things, she's got
1. A rubber ball, but when you bounce it on the ground, it just falls flat and you bounce up an equivalent distance.
2. A flower that can learn a smell and then will lean towards traces of it.
3. A yo-yo with a string that stretches longer every time you use it and always snaps back.
4. A pencil that stabs through anything you try to write on.
5. A teapot that pours out an endless amount of sand.
6. A pair of shoes that it impossible for your feet to move or be moved.
Hambone Jane also as a knife. It's unfinished, and cuts without pain. She'll take any part of your body you want for 3 meals or 1 item. She feeds these parts to the Jameaters, who have a filthy hole in her cellar that leads into filthy tunnels that lead into every Moon Manor on the map. She hates doing this, but it's how she gets enough things and food to stay in business.
huge pile of food out in the airless woods. The Boodlers have been storing it there to gorge on it but they're all far away. The head of a Big Person lays beside it all, food still in their mouth, neck bloodlessly severed. That was Stixin, that rotton thief. Some people say he worked with the Picklejar Twins but they deny everything.
lots of trees here have footholds cut into them or ropes made of vines or hair. some of the ropes have hidden brown snakes braided into them! climbing up takes you to the treehouse village. here there is air and light.
18 Big People live up here. none of them have lost any body parts. they dress themselves in honey and flower petals and living insects, and fish in pools of sunlight that haven't figured out that it isn't a liquid yet and drip down from the sky.
the fish have outsides made of liquid gold, and you have to quickly scoop it off of their delicious organs before it cools and hardens.
The people of the treehouse village are worried about their princess Astaline, who went to explore the Moon Manors and never returned.
if you follow the thin dragon necks at #38 into the woods you'll find the huge bloated body of the dragon.
the dragon bites off peoples heads, attaches its heads to people, and then whatever they eat goes into its belly, and it uses their head to grow itself a new one. right now its belly is full of sticks and mud and moss because Tavvy at #6 refuses to eat a person, so it's working on growing new heads but they keep turning out to be mud and clay.
very tall and climbable tree, branches like ladders. can see everything nearby. A Big Person's head at the foot of the tree, plucked off without blood by Averruncator. He was Baby Blue, and all his friends became Jameaters so he ran off alone. A Dryad lives in this tree and sits at its foot, weeping over his head.
a huge chrysalis entirely covered by worshipful Sweet Dreamer butterflies. the butterfly inside is the Luna Moth. she's fully grown in there, and can talk throgh the walls, but she's waiting for the Moon to be born so she has somewhere to live. the dust from her wings will make you fall asleep and float upward, and with her proboscis she will be able to control the body of any sleeping thing like she's using a finger puppet. she thinks it's really funny. as a caterpillar she ate the big feathery moon fronds and she's excited to try flowers next.
a pool of witched water. if you drink it, you'll be chilled to the bone, and fail all odd numbered rolls due to teeth chattering and shivering. you can break the witching by swimming in a pool of sunlight. any flower given water from this pool will shroud itself in winter like the one in #13.
an unexpected clearing in the woods. you can breathe there and there's a little yellow tent. nearby in the woods Perfect Persimmon, a Big Person, is dead and blue in the face next to his storepile of 6 mackerel. nobody has ever met him. he's not missing a single part of his body.
a Moon Manor like a tall, thin tower. each of the 13 floors is like a ringed balcony; there are no stairs, but many ropes hang down from from the many terraces and ceilings. the house is well stocked with food and drink, but all of it is terribly heavy; you stagger under the weight of a loaf of bread. if your stomach holds one meal, of it, you cannot run; two and you must crawl. three, and the food will never leave your body, and you will be sustained, slow and immortal as a tortoise.
the water races through a canyon of black stone here and in the cracks you can see rubies. slugs that ooze petroleum live on the rocks, alongside big crabs who make sparks by clacking their claws

Luv you <3

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the woods where the moon will be born

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