Goblin Fruits

Aetherfruit
Appearance: Small grape-like bunches, although they are also sometimes found in larger soft-fleshed forms with a single central stone.

Effect: When consumed raw they intensify dreams, and are sometimes used by those seeking prophetic visions.

Amaranthine
Appearance: A small, red eggplant.

Effect: Eating an Amaranthine heals the changeling of a single point of aggravated damage per scene.

Limitation: Glutting on Amaranthine has no additional effect.

Extra: This goblin fruit is comparatively rare.

Babel Gum
Appearance: Resembles a large wad of multicoloured chewing gum that has been left on a surface to harden.

Taste: A hard marshmallow that releases licorice- like cordial.

Effect: While under the effects of the goblin fruit, the character cannot make sense of any written words; they appear to be distorted, random collections of familiar and not-so-familiar letters. At the same time, he becomes capable of understanding and speaking any language he encounters.

Limitation: The effects of the gum last for a scene.

Extra: Grows lichen-like on the surfaces of the urban Hedge.

Bloodapple
Appearance: Dark crimson fruit, splotched with small patches of deep reddish purple, the Bloodapple is shaped like a slightly knobby and irregular version of an ordinary apple.

Taste: Its skin is slightly tough, but edible, concealing cloyingly sweet, pulpy, extremely juicy flesh the colour of freshly spilled blood.

Effect: Consuming a Bloodapple changes one point of aggravated damage into one point of lethal damage.

Limitation: A changeling may only benefit from the use of one such fruit in a single scene.

Extra: A tight seed cluster at the centre of the fruit forms something of a pit.

Bloodbane
Appearance: Pale yellow lichen that tends to grow in moist areas, and needs to be scraped off using a sharp knife.

Effect: When dried and ground up, it is easily mixed in with other foods and prevents the blood’s clotting agents from working.

Effect Single Dose: Can cause gut cramps or minor bleeding into the lungs and the effects wear off after a day and a night. (Toxicity 3)

Effect Regular Dose: It attacks the character’s bone marrow, preventing creation of new blood cells, and can cause massive internal bleeding. If consumption is stopped, the character will eventually recover, although they will be sick for some time. (Toxicity 6 if taken more than once in a month.)

Bloodroot
Effect: A narcotic for vampires.

Extra: Has no apparent effect on changelings.

Brumebulb
Appearance: A small onion.

Taste: Sour. May require a Resolve + Composure roll to choke down the acidic, chewy sourness.

Effect: An instant exit from the Hedge when consumed by having the character’s very flesh turn to a drifting vapour and then, with a brief wind, is gone from the Hedge. The character reappears within a few miles of wherever the character entered the Thorns in the first place.

Limitation: One must first succeed on a Wits + Investigation roll to even find Brumebulb, and may suffer penalties to that roll because it so often grows beneath heavy grasses or tangles of briar (assume a –3 penalty in such an instance).

Limitation 2: Upon returning, the character vomits, suffering two bashing points of damage in the process (it’s a heaving, painful regurgitation).

Nourishment: Sanity.

Extra: It grows beneath the ground, and gives only a minute curl of pale foliage to announce its presence.

Chu Chu Culm
Appearance: Bamboo-like grass, pale green and always gently swaying, is found in temperate parts of the Hedge’s grasslands.

Taste: Sour lime.

Effect: Breaking open the bamboo stems (or “culms”) and drinking the blood-red liquid inside is like consuming a highly potent alcohol. A single thimbleful inebriates one utterly. The drunkard feels happy, gaining a +2 to Social rolls, but a –2 to any dice pools based on Dexterity, Wits or Intelligence.

Limitation: These effects fade entirely after one hour as one’s head clears.

Extra: The story, still told in Vietnam today, goes that a happy drunken man (called Chu Chu) wandered out of his world and into this one, and eventually died blissful and ignorant amidst the bamboo. It’s further said that the bamboo that grows in that region contains part of this drunken man.

Cocorange
Appearance: Massive seeds are about the same size and shape as a football, with a hard outer shell.

Taste: Pulpy, fibrous, citrus flesh that can be eaten raw, squeezed for its juice or cooked.

Effect: When consumed, it produces a mild intoxication, equivalent to about one shot of liquor.

Extra: Grows in tropical and subtropical climes.

Coralscalp
Appearance: Harvested from under the waves where the Hedge and the ocean meet, Coralscalp resembles kelp from a distance. Only close inspection reveals it to be made up of long, fine, hair-like fibres.

Effect: When dried and smoked, Coralscalp bolsters a changeling’s sense of self for the remainder of the scene; she gains a bonus die on perception rolls and rolls to avoid losing Clarity.

Limitation: Afterwards, however, the character experiences mild hallucinations, suffering a -2 penalty to all perception rolls for the following scene.

Coupnettle
Appearance: A delicate, leafy plant that grows in the Hedge.

Taste: Whether steeped as tea or eaten raw, Coupnettle has a bitter, minty taste.

Effect: Consuming an entire Coupnettle plant invigorates the changeling, allowing her to restore a single spent point of Willpower.

Limitation: Each additional Coupnettle consumed in any given 24-hour period restores an additional point of Willpower, but imposes a –1 die penalty to Composure rolls.

Extra: Coupnettle is often used to make tea.

Cousin’s Trumpet
Appearance: Yellow, conical flower.

Smell: None.

Effect: A potent hallucinogen when brewed in tea.

Effect in Real World: One hour of powerful aural, visual and tactile hallucinations. During this time, the consumer often feels blissful, and “at one” with the world around him (though extenuating negative circumstances can easily turn this into a “bad trip”). The consumption allows the character to retain a single Willpower point, but also confers upon him a –3 penalty to all dice pools (as well as Defense and Initiative).

Effect in Hedge: The tea confers upon the consumer no hallucinations at all, but simply allows her a greater grasp when attempting to consciously mold the Hedge’s psychoactive properties (granting her +2 to her Wyrd score for purposes of shaping the Hedge to her whims).

Limitation: Over-consumption of this hallucinogen or any psychoactive substance can lead to derangements, caused at the Storyteller’s prerogative.

Extra: This yellow, conical flower is not a carnivorous plant like many in the jungle Hedge, and to many it seems nothing more than a pretty flower that gives off no aroma at all.

Dactyl
Appearance: These, oily, juicy fruits resemble dates and prosper in arid environments.

Taste: Foul.

Effect: When consumed, a dactyl makes the imbiber seem new and exciting to everyone she interacts with, granting the 9-Again rule on social rolls for the remainder of the scene.

Limitation: Requires a Resolve + Stamina roll to eat and keeping it down at the end of the scene requires a second.

Fear Gortach (Hungry Grass)
Effect: Makes the person who consumes it famished. No matter how much he eats, he madly desires more.

Effect 2: A character who tastes fear Gortach temporarily suspends the effects of any other goblin fruits he has eaten (if they have lasting effects — healing fruits, for example, are unaffected because they’ve already restored points of damage) and any he may eat for the remainder of the scene (healing fruits included here).

Limitation: A character who has eaten Fear Gortach must succeed at a Wits + Composure roll if he encounters it in the next scene or he must consume Fear Gortach again.

Limitation 2: Characters who have the Gluttony Vice suffer a three-dice penalty to this roll.

Extra: Unlike other goblin fruits, Fear Gortach also affects mortals and other creatures.

Flower-Of-One-Hour
Appearance: Weedy hibiscus that grows rampant in hotter, more humid parts of the Hedge. The blooms look first like thistles before unfolding swiftly and unfurling velveteen petals of impossible black. The bloom’s pistil and stamen are fierce orange: the colour of the sun or a tiger’s fur. The flower only blooms for a single hour a day, but not the same hour each day.

Effect: To harness the properties of Tiger Mallow, a changeling must brew it into a tea during its blooming time; if the changeling drinks the tea after this hour has passed, the tea tastes of bitter licorice and chills the bones. If consumed during the proper time, however, the tea fills the drinker with warmth both literal and figurative: tender, sunburned skin paired with a fiery passion (or sometimes an uncontrollable rage). For the next hour, the changeling may trade points of Resolve to either Strength or Stamina. If she moves more than two dots in this manner, however, she burns out after the hour is completed. Burning out means the character feels empty, exhausted, even occasionally confused. She must immediately sleep for eight hours or suffer a –3 penalty to all dice rolls until she does.

Limitation: These effects only apply to those who possess dots in Summer Mantle. Tea brewed from Flower-Of-One-Hour has no effect on those possessing Mantle from other seasons beyond its taste.

Extra: Also called Tiger Mallow.

Fuguespores
Appearance: Brown spores that come from a type of fungus that grows on the briars of the Hedge.

Effect 1: When ingested, they tend to lodge in the intestines, growing slowly through the gut wall and releasing toxins into the bloodstream. These toxins, over time, can cause hallucinations or dizzy spells.

Effect 2: If a spore lodges in the character’s brain, the fungus destroys the character’s memories, leaving him in a fugue state.

Effect 3: In extreme cases, it can put the character in a coma or cause permanent brain damage.

Extra: Fuguespores are Toxicity 5. When the fungus matures inside the body, more spores can be released into the bloodstream to grow in other parts of the body.

Ghoul’s Shroud
A lacy, light gray moss that sprouts up from the cracks in rock faces and falls in hanging curtains, ghoul’s shroud can be dried over a fire and ground into a meal that becomes a bland but sustaining porridge when added to hot water, but it must be consumed in its raw form — tough, fibrous and almost painfully tangy — for its more otherworldly qualities to take effect. For the remainder of any scene during which she eats raw ghoul’s shroud, a changeling ignores any poison with a toxicity of less than 4. During this time, her eyes weep constantly and her throat is parched, and no amount of water will slake her thirst.

Headgourd
Appearance: Brain-like fruit.

Taste: Some liken it to foul French cheeses.

Smell: Stinks.

Effect: If a changeling smears the mess across his body, he becomes harder to hit (+1 to his Defence), as the odour forms a kind of pungent and invisible barrier around the character. Also causes a –2 to Social rolls.

Limitation: The effects last one hour, at which point the fruits dry up and begin flaking off. (Some collect these dry flakes in bottles to use as potent spices, thus giving the Headgourd an additional use.)

Extra: In the Hedge, often around where other goblin fruits grow, one might find what’s called a Gourdbody. Tumescent vines lined with whisper-thin spines grow up into a form that appears not unlike a scarecrow — arms dangling off a cross, legs hanging loosely just above the ground. Above the Gourdbody is always a fat gourd, the Headgourd, that is often striated with patterns of green and orange. It even seems to have eyes and a puckered mouth.

Hera Pear
Appearance: Almost a normal pear tree; its leaves may be a little greener, and the yellow fruits a bit more succulent and polished.

Effect: Consuming a single pear will rid the person of one disease of that person’s choice, anything from ringworm to bone cancer.

Limitation 1: Derangements do not count.

Limitation 2: Every Hera Pear tree is guarded by a powerful hobgoblin. This hobgoblin may take any form, whether a pack of briarwolves or some monstrous serpent coiled around the base of the tree. One must defeat the hobgoblin to pluck a pear — or, at least, somehow get past it long enough to snatch one from the branches.

Limitation 3: Hera Pear trees cannot be transplanted.

Extra: Some say they only grow near the “center” of the Hedge, if such a thing even exists. (Further legend suggests that to find a Hera Pear tree means that you’re at the point of no return — keep going past it, and you’re now on the wrong side of the Hedge, the one closest to the kingdom of the Keepers.)

Hidefruit
This goblin fruit is small, comparable in size to a pomegranate seed, with an equal blush of crimson as its color. The inside of a hidefruit, however, provides a piquant punch of brown ooze, similar in consistency (though not in taste) to molasses. Because the fruit is small and grows not in clusters but alone on rare vines mixed in with the rest of the Hedge, they can be difficult to find and procure. Assume a Wits + Survival roll is necessary, with the number of dice subtracted from the roll determined by the thickness of the briar at that point (thicker Hedge equals larger penalty). Consuming the fruit helps a changeling hide from any True Fae nearby. The changeling doesn’t appear merely mortal — no, to most Fair Folk, he does not appear at all, as if the fruit imbues him with an essence demanded that he be consciously ignored. The Fae must succeed on a Wits + Composure roll to track the changeling, but suffers –5 dice to this roll until the effects of the hidefruit expire. The effects last for a number of minutes equal to the changeling’s own Wits + Resolve score.

Hoarflakes
Appearance: Intricate snowflakes as big as the palm of one’s hand.

Effect: In breaking a Hoarflake and dusting oneself with the glittering remnants, a character gains the Windwing kith blessing for a full hour.

Limitation: Note that the blessing works exactly as it does in the book, requiring Glamour expenditure to activate.

Extra: The snows of the mountains seem to sometimes have an effect on the little rocks and scree one might find upon desolate mountain paths. Those little rocks that sit beneath snows for very long periods of time seem to gain some of the essence of the snow, becoming themselves like large, delicate flakes.

Windwing Blessing: Although you can’t fly, the air bears you up. A Windwing may spend a point of Glamour to glide in the air for up to one minute per point of Wyrd; he cannot gain altitude without appropriate updrafts, but may move at his normal Speed. In addition, a Windwing takes only one point of bashing damage for every 15 yards fallen, and begins to take lethal damage only if he falls more than 150 yards.

Jarmyn
Effect 1: Jarmyn leaves are stimulating, and add three bonus dice to the roll for a character to stay awake after a period of extensive wakefulness.

Effect 2: The Jarmyn fruit found in the Hedge alleviates the dice pool penalties for actions taken during extended periods of activity for the duration of the scene in which it’s eaten.

Limitation: Consuming either the leaves or fruit of the Jarmyn (or both) cause the changeling to sleep for entire day after the effects wear off, once she finally takes her rest. This sleeping effect is cumulative: for each “dose” of Jarmyn, whether fruit or leaves, the character consumes, the number of days the character sleeps increases by one, to a maximum of seven days.

Extra: Both the leaves and the ovaries of the Jarmyn plant are edible, and each produces a distinct effect.

Jennyapples (H)
Appearance: Misshapen, black-spotted apples that hang on the low branches of a tall shrub.

Smell: As soon as the skin is pierced (easy to do, it peels away like skin sloughing off a sore), it gives off the wretched odour of the Jennystone.

Effect: If eaten, they cause a roiling, acidy stomach that confers –3 to all rolls made for the rest of the day

Effect 2: When the skin is pierced, a nauseating scent spreads in a five-yard diameter, potent enough to inflict a –1 dice pool penalty to anyone with a sense of smell unfortunate enough to be in that area.

Nourishment: Dream

Judas Yew
Appearance: Its berries are red, each no bigger than a thumb, and grow at about the 10-yard mark and above.

Effect: Consuming a berry does one point of lethal damage, but also allows a changeling to go without food or drink of three times the normal length of time.

Extra: This tree grows up out of the walls of the desert Hedge. Be they the hard rock walls of a deep gully or a tangle of brittlebush, the Judas Yew grows in, around and all over the wall.

Nevernip (H)
Appearance: Lush purple berries that dangle from the stalks of the tall grass.

Taste: Too good to give up.

Effect: Heals.

Limitation: The character who has eaten Nevernip must succeed at a Wits + Composure roll if he encounters the plant in the next scene or he must consume it again.

Limitation 2: Characters who have the Gluttony Vice suffer a three-dice penalty to this roll.

Nourishment: Blood

Hybrid: Blushberries and Fear Gortach

Extra: Nevernip, unlike fear Gortach, doesn’t affect mortals or other non-fae.

Nightcap/Buglewort
Appearance: These two goblin blossoms look almost exactly alike, though their functions couldn’t be any more different.

Effect Nightcap: Makes anyone who eats it woefully lethargic — it effectively cuts the changeling’s Speed in half until the character achieves four successes on an extended Stamina + Resolve roll, which may be attempted every hour.

Effect Buglewort: Spins a character into a wild state of alertness, increasing his Initiative by 4 for the duration of the scene (though some who eat Buglewort say it makes them irritable or distracted).

Limitation: The two fruits are so similar that it takes an Intelligence + Survival or Occult roll to distinguish what the changeling has foraged.

Extra: Additional doses don’t stack effects, though a person can be under the influence of both simultaneously.

Pedicle Velvet
Appearance: A pale, sage-colored lichen.

Taste: Like sucking on a penny.

Effect 1: The lichen heals a single point of lethal damage.

Effect 2: The lichen provides a boost to one’s Stamina (+1 for the next six hours).

Effect 3: The lichen guarantees that the character’s next sexual encounter will result in a pregnancy.

Limitation 1: Of course, said pregnancy may very well end in a miscarriage or abortion, but it’s a conception just the same.

Limitation 2: To gain the benefits, one must eat all the Pedicle Velvet upon a given beast. The lichen cannot be shared between several characters.

Extra: Pedicle Velvet grows on the antlers and horns of various Hedge goblin-animals like on the Bloodfoam Elk or the Bristleram. Pedicle Velvet never grows on benevolent, meek animals — always on those beasts that seem to embody the kind of fierce virility promised by the consumption of this lichen.

Pitt Moss
Appearance: Looks a bit like rubbed sage.

Taste: A very rich, pungent taste.

Effect: Eaten raw, in quantity (about a salad’s worth), and by itself, however, Pitt moss bestows an overwhelming dolor upon the individual.

Limitation: If Pitt moss is consumed “in the field,” a point of Willpower is subtracted from the character’s pool, and he is unable to spend Willpower for the remainder of the scene.

Extra: Used in sparing quantities in many opulent dishes in Faerie.

Serpent Gourd
A long, narrow, shiny black gourd that grows high up, atop tangled clusters of woody vines bristling with slender, vicious thorns longer than a grown man’s finger, apt to cause harm to anyone trying to pluck one of the fruits. When it is split open, the serpent gourd’s ivory-white flesh comes apart in long, thin strands (hence its name). When boiled, the gourd’s flesh has a slightly woody, savory flavor, but no special properties. When boiled with a fistful of the thorns from its vines, though, and strained, the fruit produces a thin, clear, syrupy elixir with a somewhat bitter flavor. For up to a day after consuming this brew, a changeling benefits from a +1 die bonus to all oneiromancy and oneiromachy pools. Note that the serpent gourd stubbornly resists all attempts to cultivate the fruit in any way that would make its harvest less perilous; under such circumstances, it simply will not grow.

Slumberberries
Appearance: Clumps of five or six small, dark green berries that grow sparsely on parasitic vines that spread through the Hedge.

Taste: Sour.

Effect raw: The berries cause drowsiness; if eaten just before sleeping, they will cause a character who eats them to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Effect boiled: If the liquid drunk as a tea, it will cause vivid nightmares, usually involving the character suffering immense pain or physical torture.

Trenchmint
Appearance: Fragile plant. With airy stems topped with curling clusters of violet leaves.

Smell: Trenchmint erupts with an acrid, minty odour.

Effect: Consume raw causes the changeling to lose one point of Willpower: but, this Willpower then grants him a +3 bonus to a Mental Skill of the changeling’s choice, provided that the changeling concentrates on that Skill upon eating the Trenchmint leaves. (If he doesn’t concentrate, then the +3 bonus is granted to a random Mental Skill of the Storyteller’s choosing.) This lasts for the remainder of the scene.

Limitation: After that scene is over the changeling feels tired, slothful. The character suffers a –1 to all Physical rolls for the remainder of the day, unless the character’s Vice is Sloth, which then doubles the penalty to –2 dice.

Nourishment: Requires no specific nutrients to spread; no roll required to transplant this hybridised weed.

Hybrid: Willpower-giving Coupnettle with the Willpower-taking pit moss.

Extra: Trenchmint is oddly invasive, spreading wherever it can — whole fields of the stuff spring up within a week, growing up and around the looming walls of Thorns.

Vermsap
Appearance: Amber sap that drips from trees of various types.

Taste: Flavourless.

Smell: Odourless.

Effect: If a dime-sized dollop touches flesh, after one hour’s worth of time that sap will summon any number of harmless vermin — gambolling mice, swarms of gnats, parades of ants. The vermin curse the sap-smeared victim by their very presence, incurring a –2 Social penalty and a –1 to Initiative and Defense (it can be quite distracting). This lasts for up to one hour after the person scrapes the sap from his skin — if he doesn’t notice the sap (thus failing to remove it), the Vermsap’s effects remain in place indefinitely.

Extra: It’s hard to tell if this sap comes out of trees, or they are afflicted with it like some kind of fungal curse. It probably doesn’t matter, given that the ecology of the Hedge fails to abide by any kind of scientific law.

Widowroot
This oddment can be spotted by the single, small blue flower that sprouts from it, with seven petals and long, drooping leaves. The root itself usually rests two or three feet below the surface and is a writhing tangle of hard, woody stalks about the size and shape of a football. When an entire root is chopped up and smoked over glowing coals for a few hours, it sweats a tiny quantity of a clotted amber-colored sap. If this sap should enter the bloodstream (say, on the end of a bladed weapon), it erodes an individual’s sense of conviction. Those thus affected lose two points of Willpower. A single root creates enough sap to coat a single weapon for a single strike and a person may only suffer from the effects of one dose of widowroot on any given day.

Wineberry Blush
On their own, wineberries aren’t much to get excited about. One can gain sustenance from them, but their taste puckers the lips — too tart. It’s only when left to sit for long periods of time do the wineberries break down and ferment (process takes about a month). The once-purple berries form into a seed-bogged slurry the color of spilled blood, and it provides a potent alcoholic kick. The hobs that worship Jack of the Crows drink this stuff in copious amounts, claiming it to be part of the ceremony — spiritually, they say the wineberries sprung up around his effigy as a sign of his suffering, and that each berry’s pulpy little aril contains a measure of his misery. The resultant wine, therefore, is his blood, and they gobble it up believing that it makes them one with Jack and helps to absolve their many sins. They’re not entirely far off the mark. It doesn’t really absolve the sins, but it can grant one a small measure of focus after a loss of Clarity. If a changeling drinks a draught of the wineberry blush within 24 hours of having degenerated with a derangement gained as a result, the goblin wine will cause the new derangement to fade immediately, offering a slightly clearer head about one’s decisions and perceptions.

Wyrmthumb
Appearance outside: Black, fleshy fig filled with dizzyingly sweet tar sap.

Appearance inside: A cluster of milky grubs with black mandibles

Effect 1: Eating the squirming cluster alive provides the character with impossible flexibility. For one scene, the changeling gains +5 dice to any rolls made to escape any kinds of bonds, whether from handcuffs, rope, a grapple attempt or even from beneath a fallen tree.

Effect 2: Eating the worms replenishes one lost Glamour point.

Nourishment: Gift of Attribute / Wits + Crafts has - 4 dice.

Extra: Found on the dinner tables of many Others. They seem drawn to its honeyed goo, their fingers sticky with it. Oddly, though, the True Fae always discard the very centre of these figs.

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