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Fingers recalls the words of Vassar Clements, that the seed can be planted on the surface. Here in the ruins of the manor house is sufficient.

But he has pause... The Witchwood at Beith's Watch was well known to have grown up almost overnight and it covers acres. What will happen here? To Markd and his Swordwraiths?

I didn't even know all that stuff Marullus just told us until he told us.

It creates a bit of an awkward metagame situation. If Fingers knew what Marullus seems to say Fingers should have known about the seed's effects, Fingers probably wouldn't have gone into quite as much detail explaining its effects as Marullus did. He might not have explained at all, or just said it would plant a tree, or something. Beith saved Fingers's dog, so he's going to keep his promise to try to pay back that debt. If he thought Markd, as a follower of Baudh and commander of a bunch of undead, might have a problem with that...well, the sneaky roguish way of dealing with that would be either to sneak off and do it by himself or else be less than forthcoming about what might happen when the seed is planted. And if the seed ended up taking over a large portion of the ruined city, he (and I) could have just said that he was shocked—shocked!—at what happened.

That's not as viable an option what with Marullus spilling the beans to everyone in the public thread. I could still try it, but the difference between IC knowledge and OOC knowledge would be an issue.

So I'm not sure what to do now. We still don't really know how wide of an area the seed will turn into a grove. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll turn just this estate into a grove, as I had originally assumed. Maybe it'll wipe out the whole city and all its loot with it. That'd be annoying, but that's what would have happened had Marullus not stepped in to clarify things, so there'd be a certain karmic something in that, I guess.

Based purely on IC information, I still think it's reasonable to think that the seed would only affect this one estate:

"You can honor Beith by planting it in the ruins of the crypt which the djinn collapsed and returning the undeath of that place to wild purpose and new life."

(Emphasis added.) Clements said to plant the seed on the ruins of the crypt, and that it would return "that place" to wild purpose. I don't see any IC reason to think that "that place" is anything more than the crypt. If the seed really would transform multiple estates and the keep, Clements wasn't being totally honest with Fingers.

So I guess what I'm advocating is that we should ignore the DM's warnings and press blithely forward.