Key Concepts

Things we’ve learned about the world of Wendell’s Landing.

The Grove

A bio-corporate entity that has taken over Wendell’s Landing and much of the wider world. They fund community spaces, sponsor festivals, and employ an army of always-smiling Proctors and Greeters. Their doctrine includes “the pruning” — a term that also appears in the songs on Stevie’s Mixtape. They genuinely believe they are helping. They tried to cap a magical aquifer beneath The Old Saw Mill with grey fungal resin and freezing foam (Session 5). They are now actively pursuing us across the continent.

GrovePass

Wristbands required in the Pavilion at all times. Tracks biometrics and location. Simplified payment for rides and food. Has a faint magical ward woven into the circuitry. Works like an old-timey mood ring — changes colors. Some people get “Platinum bands.” One of ours turned black after we fought the Proctors. We now know the wristbands are alive — thin grey tentacles thread out from underneath, trying to burrow into the skin (Session 3).

The Old Saw Mill

Our childhood clubhouse, up on a hill overlooking town. Somehow resistant to The Grove’s influence — one of the few buildings not renovated in 20 years. Gives us a sense of calm. Stevie chose it because it is warded — it disrupts Grove surveillance and psychic influence. The Grove has legally purchased the land. In Session 5, the Grove began to “cap” it with translucent plastic and grey fungal resin, pumping freezing foam into the earth to seal off the magical aquifer beneath. The Bleed fought back.

Stevie’s Mixtape

A cassette tape found in the Saw Mill, labeled “Stevie’s Mix / Bivins Brothers Creative.” Each track is a mnemonic key that restores erased memories in sequence: “Gas Leak Gospel,” “Snow in September,” “Missing from Class,” “Cutting Away What Does Not Belong,” “Overwrite Protocol,” “We Were Magic.” The tape itself is a structured spell. In Session 3, the tape glitched mid-song to deliver a calm older voice’s message: “Anomaly detected. Signal lost. Go to the seaside.”

The Metronome

A towering humanoid of interlocking gears and perfect rhythm. Moves with the inevitability of time. We defeated it once through hyper-precise choreography at the cost of Stevie’s life. Whether it still exists is unknown. Stevie called it “the black wheel” and “the rot.” Mr. Wendell told us (Session 4) that the Metronome is older than the Grove — older than the Blackweald — and has been co-opted by the Grove rather than created by them.

Proctors

Grove enforcers who have surrendered their soul-essence to plug into the Grove’s mycelial-digital network. Wire-like roots run through their bodies. They might still have families and habits, but their consciousness echoes inside something non-human. Always smiling. Always.

The Boombox

Our childhood boombox, found in the Saw Mill. Powers on without batteries — the battery compartment is completely empty. Functions as part of ritual setups when positioned in the acoustic “sweet spot.”

The Leotards

Our old performance costumes, pristine despite years of storage. Fit perfectly despite body changes. Unnervingly exact. Possibly adhesive or difficult to remove. No decay, no wear. Mr. Wendell distributed them to us in Session 4.

Our Magic

Stevie “gave each of us a piece of her essence.” Our adult excellence — Foley’s martial prowess, Tarine’s gladiator fame, Spark’s systems savvy, Harmony’s hustle — are echoes of her training. Reclaiming our memories is literally reshaping how the world’s magic treats us. Spells feel less like self-harm now, more like limbs waking up. CONFIRMED IN SESSION 7: Most of us are descendants of older magical ancestries. The Grove’s “magic” was always external treatment, not a real ability. Our real magic was waking up — our spells now fire more powerfully than expected.

The C-Side

Mr. Wendell’s interference acts like a jammer against the Grove’s network. Wendell’s Landing is a “Dead Zone” where the Grove’s signal drops.

Mr. Wendell — The House on the Hill

The mysterious protector who saved Stevie’s life. Lives in the house on the hill above the bay. Crossing his threshold softens stone to moss and chases out cold. Each of us sees him as a different ancestry (a dracona, an attractive elf, an infernus, a reborn giant — we only realized this in Session 7 when we compared notes). He told us in Session 4: “You weren’t the scary thing. You were the helpers.” He is the one who taught Stevie how to teach us.

The Bleed

What the Grove calls “anomalies” — Proctor Judy called it “the chaos, the grief, the fire” (Session 5). Stevie called it the opposite: “the bleeding is not on the inside.” In Session 5, we saw the Bleed for ourselves: a sparkling magical force that burst up through the Mill roof when the Grove tried to cap it, weaving itself across the night sky into a luminous web — a Star Atlas linking our town to other dormant antennas across the continent.

The Star Atlas

The Bleed’s network — visible only to us, only when active. We captured it five different ways at the Mill (Session 5):

• Phone photos (Spark, Frankie)
• Spark’s data-bank scan (most precise; named the nodes provisionally)
• Harmony’s hand-sketched journal map (rough but heartfelt)
• Royvan’s rusty erector-set lunchbox (built a 3D model in mid-air)
• Grove records / oral memory

Six confirmed continental nodes across Calandria (the eastern continent of Sygea):

• Wendell’s Landing (coastal, west)
• Mystra’s Glen
• Arborolus
• Moonfall (far north)
• Shabba Dabba Gap
• Hollow Creek

A SEVENTH hazy node appears only in Royvan’s lunchbox model — hovering in the strait between Calandria and the next continent, possibly overwater. Nobody else’s record showed it. We don’t know what’s there.

Calandria

The continent we’re in.

The Artifacts (distributed by Mr. Wendell, Session 4)

• Royvan: a rusty steel lunchbox with brass-and-iron erector-set pieces inside that self-assemble into whatever the moment requires (a 3D map, a tool, a tripwire, a brace)
• Tarine: an industrial flashlight filled with concentrated starlight — blinds the wicked, clears stress from allies
• Harmony: a silver tuning fork that disrupts Grove tech when struck and shimmers in pitch near dormant Bleed sources
• Foley: a celestial karate belt that boosts armor and can shield allies
• Frankie: a tiny wooden toy sword that becomes effective “if you swing this with intent”
• Spark: Mr. Wendell’s red shoes which make Grove allies worse at attacking Spark and let her interact more stealthily with the mycelial network
• The pristine leotards for all of us

All of the artifacts share a single gear-symbol watermark if you know where to look — etched on Royvan’s lunchbox, on the brass cap of Harmony’s tuning fork, possibly elsewhere. We haven’t connected the dots about what the gear means. Yet.

Our Blood (Session 7 — clean)

Spark’s blood-test centrifuge in Winnie confirmed: NONE of us have mycelial threads in our system. The Grove infection has receded. Tarine’s Grove-treatment scars are visibly softening.

Proctors → Goo (Session 8, confirmed)

Proctors collapse into mycelium goo on death. Royvan killed a Proctor named Jamus at a roadside weigh station and the body liquefied to mush on the asphalt within seconds. Linda’s surviving Proctors recovered the puddle and drove off — the Grove does not leave gooed Proctors in public. Whatever a Proctor is, the body underneath is held together by Grove fungus.

Koltan/Koldonite (Session 8)

The naturally-occurring ore that has powered our world “for centuries.” Mythically called “God’s blood” — said to have crystallized when divine blood soaked into the earth after a war of the gods. GroveWell Clinic tests its patients’ blood for koldonite levels — too high or too low is “wrong”; balance is required. We don’t know yet whether the Grove’s interest in koltan is medical, economic, magical, or all three.

Mycomatons (Session 8)

Historical creatures — “a combination of mycelium and brass-and-copper gears.” Mentioned in passing during the GroveWell infiltration. We don’t know if they still exist or are extinct, but the imagery is uncomfortably close to the Metronome.

”Code Blue → Sector Eleven” (Session 8)

Every file the Grove has on us at GroveWell Clinic is stamped with “Code Blue — if found bring to Sector Eleven.” Spark deleted all our files except his own before we left. We don’t know where Sector Eleven is. We don’t know why our profiles were tagged as Code Blue. One descriptor tag we noticed: “magic, magic, magic, lead leg.”

The Gear Symbol (Session 8 — confirmed)

Every artifact Mr. Wendell gave us bears the same gear-symbol watermark — lunchbox top, flashlight base, tuning fork brass cap, Foley’s belt (sewn-on brass gear), the shoes, the wooden sword. We’ve started using the symbol as a breadcrumb cipher — wherever it appears in the world (Cousin Edward’s pocket watch, the cathedral spire’s caretaker tools, etc.) is a marker for something connected to the Antennas. We haven’t solved the cipher yet. But we’ve confirmed it’s real.

The Antennas — “Windows, Not Weapons” (Session 9)

Edward‘s framing of the hotspots/nodes we’ve been chasing. Per his research:

• The Antennas were built by the same hands that built the cities — the towns grew up around them; the Antenna is always the central focus (in Arborolus, that’s the Heartwood Cathedral spire).
• They were never weapons. They were always windows. Whether they’re meant to see out or see in, Edward doesn’t know — that knowledge is part of a “collective amnesia” that keeps wiping clean.
• The Grove fears them and is trying to cap / cover them (matches what we saw at the Old Saw Mill).
• Edward’s hand-drawn node map matches our Star Atlas (a few locations slightly off).

Seven Minds in One Place (Session 9 — the Grove’s goal)

Edward’s belief about what the Grove wants the Antennas for: to stop being “one mind in seven places” and become “seven minds in one place” — and, taken to its end, for all of us to become one mind. This lines up with everything we’ve felt about the Grove’s “wellness” and hive-like unison.

The Blackweald (Session 9)

The myth Edward thinks explains the Grove. In old religious texts it’s called the Blackweald (personified: *Old Blackweald). A force of true neutrality, wholly alien to this world — not divine, not demonic, not nature, but something else, a caretaker that only stirs when the world falls out of balance. Edward believes the Black Wheel of myth IS the Grove of today — he can’t prove it (he’s been called a crackpot for saying so.

• It can mimic. The Blackweald has always been linked to the ability to take the form of another — a person, a place, an entire street.
• The living train. Edward’s favorite story: a portion of the Black Wheel once served as a train that crossed the whole continent, shuttling people to and fro — and no one ever knew it was alive. No one knows where it started or ended. The most chilling part: mentions of the Black Wheel are tiny and surrounded by huge blanks in the historical record — memory gaps with no history, no connection. (This is almost certainly the same thing we’ve called the “Blackweald” — Edward just uses the older, mythic name.)

Pell Manor — Our Home Base (Session 9)

Pell Manor, Cousin Edward‘s estate on Arborolus’s south hill, fronted by his shop Old Tracks Antiquarian. Edward offered it to us as our headquarters and safe haven — and we accepted. It’s ivy-grown living-wood, three stories, run by his butler Arthur. Crucially: Edward owns no Grove-made products, by principle — “everyone knows this about me.” We each have a room and a key. The first genuinely safe place we’ve had since leaving Wendell’s Landing. (The catch we’re aware of: thanks to Lyndon, the Grove now knows about Edward — so “safe” may have a clock on it.)

The Tuning Fork — Mechanics (Session 8, established)

Harmony’s silver tuning fork:

• Tone sustains 6–8 seconds naturally
• Sustain can be extended by pressing the palm to the leather handle
• Disrupts Grove technology at proximity — crashes computers, distresses Grove-modified body parts
• The brass cap of the handle is etched with the gear symbol

The Flashlight — Mechanics (Session 8, established)

Tarine’s industrial flashlight:

• Cool to the touch (does not heat from use)
• Beam is sparkly starlight, not normal light
• Functions as a divining rod — pulls toward nodes / dormant Bleed sources
• Clears 1d4 stress from one ally per day
• Gear symbol on the base

Arborolus

The metropolis at the foot of the Spineback mountains, where three rivers braid together. Founded ~1,500 years ago by druids who grew the first towers from a single oak grove. Living-wood mid-rises (6 to 10 stories, organic curves, bark-skinned), streetcars on grown rails that you feel more than hear, six bookstores within a four-block radius, food carts with handwritten menus. “KEEP ARBOROLUS WEIRD” painted on a streetcar barn. The city has resisted the Grove for nearly a decade. We stayed at The Verdant Mare.

The Heartwood Cathedral

The center of Arborolus — a 200-foot living-wood spire at the top of the city’s cathedral. Tarine’s flashlight pulls hard toward it. Royvan’s lunchbox warms. This is the Arborolus Antenna. We have not entered the spire yet. Edward confirmed it’s the city’s Antenna and gave us our way in: ask for Brother Aldred Pell, the cathedral’s ancient caretaker — Edward’s name should get us an audience and access up the spire. (In this mostly religion-free world, “cathedral” reads as a grand old landmark, not a place of worship; Edward suspects that, long ago, it may have been a shrine to a nature-aligned power.) It’s also one of the larger stages for the upcoming hurdy-gurdy festival (~5 weeks out).

The Metronome — Mentioned at GroveWell (Session 8)

A Grove staffer at GroveWell Clinic used the word “metronome” in passing during the lab scene. When Spark asked Cynthia (the receptionist) about it, she went quiet and answered “did you say metronome?” — the Grove has a relationship with the Metronome we don’t yet understand. Spark recognized something about the reference that the rest of us didn’t.

Open Questions

• What is at the seventh hazy node in the strait? Why does only Royvan’s lunchbox show it?
• What is Sector Eleven? Where is it? Why are our files tagged “Code Blue” to be brought there?
• What is the modern name of the world (the new “Sygea”)? Greenlace and the Grove staff used unfamiliar terms in passing — we may have heard the new name without catching it.
• Is Star “Stevie” Stevenson truly dead, or did Mr. Wendell save her? Spark believes she’s alive.
• What is Mr. Wendell — and why does each of us see him differently?
• Why did Pyro Turbo call Tarine and try to lure her to Crescent Bay? Was Pyro coerced? Pyro was clearly scared.
• Who/what is in the Linda RV? It drove off with the puddle of what used to be Proctor Jamus.
• Is Marco safe? Lyndon used his name as a threat in Arborolus.
• Will Cynthia be safe? We left her our Mycom number — but she let strangers into the GroveWell lab and the Grove will notice.
• Can Greenlace’s mechanical finger be safely removed? She asked us. We owe her. (Still owed — didn’t get to it in Session 9.)
• Why was Spark’s file the only one not stamped Code Blue? Or was it, and Spark spared his own from deletion? (Spark deleted everyone else’s; Spark’s was either similar or worse.)
• What does the gear symbol actually mean? Who carved it first? Partly answered (Session 9): Edward says it’s an old surveyor’s mark from before the Grove had a name and that our carrying it is “an invitation.” Still open: who carved it first, and an invitation to what, exactly?
• Why does the Grove know the word “metronome” — and what does Spark remember about it that the rest of us don’t? (Edward may have answers — we didn’t ask him yet.)
• Who is Gravinali, the official owner of Linda who never seems to drive it?
• Is Cousin Edward at Old Tracks Antiquarian, and is he still himself? Answered (Session 9): YES — and he’s the realest, most-resourced ally we’ve found. See Edward McMillipede and Pell Manor.

New open questions (Session 9)

• We never told Edward about the ”Sector Eleven” file stamps or asked about coltanite — both worth raising next time we see him.
• What does Brother Aldred Pell know, and what’s inside the cathedral spire?
• Edward implied the Antennas might be meant to see out or see in — which is it?
• Is Lyndon going to make good on his threat to “pay Edward a visit”? The Grove now knows about Pell Manor.

Last Updated: Session 9