Rules/Goblin Fruit
Goblin Fruit Farming & Cooking System
THIS SYSTEM IS UNDER PLAYTEST DEVELOPMENT AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE.
This system details means of cultivating goblin fruits, as well as means of using goblin fruit in changeling cuisine and medicinally. Players are encouraged to use goblin fruits in their roleplay, and these methods of preparing the fruits likewise.
Reminder that Goblin Fruit only provide their benefits to those who can use Glamour or see Miens. Rumors exist of a means to prepare Goblin Fruits so their benefits extend to anyone, but these remain only rumors.
Goblin Fruit Preparation
Raw Goblin Fruit
Raw goblin fruits are precisely that. They're fruit, pulled from the vine, and kept fresh either by the Wyrd of a Changeling, or the protective properties of a Hollow. They can be transported, traded, or consumed for their various beneficial or deleterious properties. They require no preparation beyond picking them, and form the standard method of encountering hedge fruit.
Goblin Fruit Preserves
Goblin fruit preserves are jams, jellies, or concentrates of cooked down goblin fruits. This makes them easier to transport in quantity, and turns one dose of fruit from a single large fruit to a single spoon sized serving of preserves. This is often done to make long term storage easier and more viable, and as a means of augmenting changeling cuisine. The process by which raw goblin fruit is turned into goblin fruit preserves can vary fruit to fruit, but in general it typically involves heat, a large pot, possibly some sweeteners or spices, and lots of stirring. The cooking process tends to be inefficient. For every two doses of goblin preserves, three raw fruits must be used.
Changelings are still limited by their Wyrd as to what they can carry, but preserves are always considered to have been picked more recently than both goblin fruit tinctures and raw goblin fruit when it comes to deciding which fruits rot when a changeling exceeds their carrying capacity.
Method: Extended Wits+Crafts. Each success produces a single dose of perserves, consuming three raw fruits for every two preserves produced. Each roll takes one hour.
Goblin Fruit Tinctures
Goblin fruit tinctures are created by juicing or pulping goblin fruits. A medicinal tincture can be cooked down and distilled into a concentrate for easier dosing, while someone more interested in the culinary applications of goblin fruit can use the juices for out of this world fae beverages, and pulped roots and nuts for accent ingredients in breads and meat dishes. Tinctures tend to waste a good deal of the fruit's meat, skin, shell, and so on. Accordingly, creating a goblin fruit tincture requires two raw goblin fruits for every dose of tincture created. Tinctures have the unique ability to be given to an unconscious or otherwise unresponsive patient without risk of choking. They can be applied directly to wounds, dripped under the tongue, or even poured into the ears if you want to get Shakespearian about it.
Changelings are still limited by their Wyrd as to what they can carry, but tinctures are always considered to have been picked more recently than raw goblin fruit when it comes to deciding which fruits rot when a changeling exceeds their carrying capacity.
Method: Extended Wits+Crafts. Each success produces a single tincture and consumes two raw goblin fruits. Each roll takes one hour.
Goblin Fruit Cultivation
Goblin fruits are similar to their real-world namesakes primarily by appearance only. They look like regular fruit, they grow similar to roots, nuts, berries, and fruits we are familiar with in our own world. But that is where the similarity tends to end. Where real plants favor certain soil conditions and sunlight, goblin fruits tend to depend far more on concentrations of glamour and the prevailing emotions of the hedge in which they grow. A changeling can take the seed of a jalapeno, plant it, and get another jalapeno plant in the fullness of time. Planting the seed of an amaranthine in the hedge will produce nothing at all unless that plant be in a location thrumming with the despair upon which Amaranthine feeds.
In this respect, cultivating goblin fruits has much more to do with ensuring the plants are steeping in the proper emotions than making certain they have water and good sunlight. Water and sunlight may be of some benefit, but only if the plant's subsequent effects relate to those things. It's possible to grow Odinsroot out of naked stone and a drop of blood from the thorns, after all. Fertile soil has never been what this process is about.
Stable Trod Cultivation
Changelings who have invested in Stable Trod have access to a stable, consistent bit of hedge that they can control. This provides necessary area to cultivate goblin fruits, per the book. Once per month, a character may roll their dots in stable trod and collect a number of generic glamour bearing goblin fruits equal to the successes rolled. If the changeling is sharing the stable trod merit with other changelings, the changeling rolls the combined dots of stable trod up to a maximum of five. Each character sharing the merit may make this roll, too. Furthermore, if the character has access to a Workshop (C:tL, p120) that gives a bonus to Goblin Fruit cultivation, this bonus applies to the harvesting roll. As well, the Hedge Sense merit (C:tL p115) provides a +2 bonus to this roll.
Because each fruit grows in its own specific circumstances, a character may only cultivate a single type of fruit in a given month. Some fruits are harder to cultivate, and require more successes to produce than others. A common goblin fruit costs 1 success. Uncommon fruits require 2 successes per fruit. Rare fruits require 3 successes per fruit. Consult the table here. In order to perform your monthly fruit cultivation, you should open a ticket to changeling staff.
Goblin Bounty Cultivation
The Goblin Bounty Merit provides a character with access to a steady and predictable supply of common goblin fruits and oddments. Common fruits are always considered to be glamour bearing and offering no further mechanical benefit. Such fruits require careful, routine management, and that means a stable trod. However, common fruits can have all sorts of other characteristics which are not mechanical. A fruit that takes the edge off the ravenous hunger of a Gristlegrinder, for example. Or a fruit that makes you remember with fondness your first kiss, or the sensation of your childhood puppy nibbling your fingers. It can enhance taste or offer a hint of emotion, but can impart no conditions or tilts, and offer no mechanical benefits beyond these flavor factors. Staff need not be involved in you tracking your own fruit allotments, though people caught abusing the merit will be punished.
Hedge Spinning Cultivation
It is possible, though dangerous, to use Hedgespinning Paradigm Shifts to produce a single goblin fruit. Doing so outside of a stable trod you control can risk the hedge reacting against you, nevermind the potential emotional blowback of the paradigm shifts themselves. Using this system is best done on an emergency basis, and would require a ticket to be opened to staff for each single fruit you produce.
Custom & Canon Goblin Fruit Varietals
Players can submit pitches for custom goblin fruits using our ticketing system. The pitch should contain a name, the fruit's appearance, where it can be found, what emotions it tends to grow within, what circumstances may aid in its cultivation, and what mechanics or effects are experienced when the fruit is consumed. What does it taste like? What does it make the character experience? Staff may suggest changes before implementing your pitch, and may decline to add it to the game.
Common Fruits
Slumberwells
These soft, figlike fruits natively grow in places heavily influenced by hedgespinning. They are relatively easy to cultivate and provide a +1 bonus to dreamweaving rolls intended to cause a positive environment or restful sleep. This lasts for a scene, or the person who consumed the fruit can instead choose to wake up immediately without need for a roll as long as she has not claimed the bonus on a prior roll.
Dream Keys
Dream Keys resemble old-fashioned Skeleton Keys and chime gently when the wind stirs the pea-shoot-like plants on which they grow. They cannot be found in the wild and must be cultivated - Goblin Markets are one place to find these rare Oddments. They offer +4 to a single roll to navigate into someone else's dreams, or activation of a Contract which permits this.
Uncommon Fruits
Liar's Apple
Detailed in C:tL p208.
Ogre Pepper
Detailed in C:tL p208.
Vines of Bacchus
Detailed in C:tL p208.
Rare Fruits
Amaranthine
Detailed in C:tL p208.
Artemisia’s Sorrow
Detailed in Dark Eras 2 p 74, with changes as follows: this fruit grows in areas in the Hedge where a Changeling has bled to death in the Hedge. The most well-known clumps of Artemisia's Sorrow grow where Michael Zloof laid down his life.
Cerynitis’ Hope
Detailed in Dark Eras 2 p 74, with changes as follows: These fruits are a rare find in Philadelphia's Hedge, growing down near the end of the Trod which opens on to Cape May. The Changeling must find or cultivate an area of Hope in the Hedge in order to have any, well, hope of finding one of these.
Colossus’ Bane
Detailed in Dark Eras 2 p 74, with changes as follows: These fruits are less rare than others. Note that this fruit does not prevent Changelings from using Portaling as normal.
Faerie Peach
Detailed in C:tL p208.
Odinroot
Detailed in C:tL p208.