Hex24: The Wedding of the Giantess Morwenna - The Lakeside Garden

George Baxter

This hex is surrounded by a stone fence with a wooden palisade on top, eight feet high in total, except on the lake side to the north. A gatehouse protected by nine Level 0 Soldiers armed with firearms protects the western approach, and a raised causeway on the southeast side leads up the hill to Morwenna’s steading. The river flows in through a grate under the fence on the south side, and out into the lake on the north. If the gate is attacked, the soldiers use a hand-cranked alarm to summon reinforcements.

The hex is a garden full of dinosaurs, brought from Isle of Sweat by traders who heard Morwenna loved the beasts. Enormous cycads the size of trees shelter the reptiles as they lumber from their wooden paddocks to graze on ferns and primitive grasses.

The dinosaur collection numbers two ankylosaurs, a diplodocus, a stegosaur and two utahraptors. Morwenna really wanted a tyrannosaur, but it escaped in transit and the handlers weren’t able to recapture it. The creatures have no fear of humans and will come up to the path expecting to be fed greens (or meat).

Along with the prehistoric plants are a few patches of edible crops. Morwenna loves pickled vegetables so the garden has cucumbers, daikon radishes, onions and carrots for her table. The food is mixed in with flowering plants because it makes the garden look nice and stops browsing dinos from eating them.

The dinos and plants are tended by Vovek the Level 3 Gnome and the seven slaves (humans and Orcs) who work under her. A slave herself, she has the dinosaurs wrapped around her thumb and could easily prompt them to attack the soldiers, but is more concerned with protecting the people under her care than fighting back. The garden is one of the only good places for a slave to work in Morwenna’s demesne, and it doesn’t look like the Giantess is going anywhere.