Stewardship compact within the Gathered Hand · Seed halls orchards and frontier settlements
Signatories preserve seed diversity, keep emergency reserves and record what a harvest costs the soil. The Covenant’s ambition is to ensure that no region becomes dependent on a single magically productive crop controlled by one estate.
Moral character: Neutral good with hard choices. Individual members may disagree with their organization’s conduct.
Leadership & control
Each participating seed hall sends a steward; planting communities must also send a grower who is not clergy. convening steward Ossa Rootwake, a mature Orchidian, remembers orchards before the road beside them existed. She wants continuity and can undervalue urgent hunger in favor of distant futures. Authority ends outside the signatories’ agreed stores.
Faith & moral tensions
Members understand Talyss as growth held in relationship with tomorrow. They respect the Circle of the Petal’s pruning and dormancy expertise. They reject the Everflower Communion’s insistence that every limit betrays abundance. Protecting seed while people starve is nevertheless a painful responsibility, not an automatic moral victory.
Resources & membership
Voluntary harvest shares, storage services and agricultural consultation sustain the vaults. Practical growers join alongside Verdant Keepers and clergy. Depositors retain agreed withdrawal rights, preventing a benevolent vault from quietly becoming a landlord.
Daily life & internal tensions
A village receives several small seed packets rather than one miraculous sack. Public germination records reveal poor storage without exposing household details. Some stewards favor secrecy about rare varieties; others argue that distributed knowledge is safer than guarded walls.
Allies, rivals & shared pressures
- The Everflower Communion — The Communion’s endless growth consumes the future the Covenant protects.
- The Saffron Measure — Remedy makers rely on growers who can keep supplying them next season.
- The Bloomseekers — Underground ecosystems complicate claims of discovery and ownership.
Explore Erosia
Adventure seed
A failed harvest leaves enough grain either to feed the village immediately or to plant a recovery crop. A merchant offers enchanted seed in exchange for exclusive future purchasing rights. The party can seek outside relief, find another planting source or renegotiate the monopoly while a Communion preacher promises effortless abundance.
