Roses and Roots, Recursion

Roses only grow in one place in the world - the dividing mountain range that separates the Barony from the Empire to its north (they actually also grow in the dreamlands, but no one has figured out yet how to get dream roses back with them to waking life). All attempts to propagate them elsewhere have failed, and not for lack of trying - roses are an extremely valuable luxury commodity, and many of the mountaineer communities are wealthy exclusively from their trade.

They are also important to players of the image game - roses are a sort of shibboleth for the players; a total referent that has taken on an unsupportable symbolic weight over the years, and whose inclusion in play can be gauche, disruptive, hilarious, or infuriating in ways that are subtle and unintuitive. Because of this, both amateurs and masters make heavy use of rose images, and the flowers are considered expensive-but-always-appropriate gifts for friends, lovers, colleagues, and family. 

They say that the petals of a rose are infinite, that they repeat indefinitely, that to make a proper count of them, to search for the flower's centre, is foolish. Each petal is perfect, beautiful, singular, sovereign, sufficient, and yet there are always more the further in you look. Non players interpret this strange insistence in all sorts of ways.

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The temple (none of them, by tradition, have names. If they need to distinguish between holdings among themselves, the mountaineers will use local geographic features) is carved into one of the living black rock spires that jut from the mountains. They sell mountain goods (peaches, tomatoes, coffee, and, of course, roses), or they used to - six months ago all contact ceased.

To reach it is perilous - the ascent is by way of old pilgrim trails, culminating in a ten hour climb on hands and knees up a sheer rock 'stairwell' that has been carved into the cliff. An adventurer can do this without a roll, but if you ever have to do anything that isn't just focusing on keeping your hand and footholds, you must save STR or fall. 

The wind howls and blows snow over everything. When you finally arrive, you will find the temple clean, sparse, and empty of people. The doors are unlocked. 

There are no random encounters in the temple - players can explore it at their leisure. Don't tell them this, obviously. 

The Temple. Click to make it bigger.

Rooms

1. Entrance. Entry from outside is via the doors to the west, which are iron, tall, and imposing. This is a bare stone room with a vaulted ceiling. Sunlight shows in the corridor to the north, and faintly from the east - enough to see by. A few threadbare rugs cover the floor. Sound echoes, and the smells are of clean stone.
2. Hallway. More bare stone. The cells that branch off are identical: unlocked and unadorned wooden doors, clean pallets of straw, sometimes a bucket. No other furniture, nothing to break up the poverty. One exception: the last cell in the corridor contains four bound chivalric romances next to the straw pallet, and a pack against the wall that contains two sets of fine clothes (20s each), and other necessaries inside. It looks like it was made in the southern steppe. 
3. Master's Rooms. A simple wooden bed frame and straw mattress, a wooden writing desk against the western wall, beneath a glazed window that lets in sunlight. The desk has years worth of correspondence in it, most of it to do with the sale of trade goods - studying these will show that the temple makes a lot of money. There are also two gold and pearl necklaces (each worth 150s), and two vials of deadly poison in one of the desk drawers, an expensive mountain rug (85s, but heavy and annoying to carry) on the floor, and an odd, abstract painting on the southern wall (worthless unless you get lucky with a collector and their taste, in which case 200s). A footlocker holds 4 sets of cheap clothing made from unbleached linen. The painting is on wooden panelling, about 1m tall, and seems depict rippling curtains of black fire or smoke or soot. Small, dark, indistinct shapes are visible within the obscurity. 
4. Peaches. The room has a glass ceiling and functions as a greenhouse. The floor is rich, black earth, and it has been planted with six large peach trees, currently in fruit. It is bright, green, and smells wonderful. The doors are made from iron and glass panelling, and let the sunlight through. A complicated irrigation system made from lead piping appears to use the heat of the room to melt snow that gathers on the glass ceiling, and feed the soil below, completely autonomously. The fruit are delicious, and valuable (10s each if you can get them back to civilisation without them spoiling) - there are 2d20 ripe enough to pick. 
5. Coffee. The same glass doors, greenhousing, and irrigation systems as Peaches, but this space has been sown with coffee plants. Adventurers probably don't know what coffee beans look like before drying, but if you harvest the lot you could make 300+d20s off the crop, selling to a merchant who can process them. There is also a small herbarium along the southern edge of the garden - rosemary, thyme, and other needful kitchen herbs grown in a series of ceramic pots. 
6. Mess and Kitchens. The northern half of the room is a simple kitchen, with a huge iron potbelly stove, water troughs, glass bottles of oil, urns of salt, and stacks of firewood. There are two good steel light chef's knives here. The southern half is taken up by a long wooden table and two matching benches. It looks like it would seat about 20. 
7. Chapel. The small church where the mountaineers pray. A small skylight would let in the sun, but it has been snowed over and the room is no longer warm enough to melt the obstruction away. The walls and floor are completely bare, save for a large wooden painting hung in the alcove on the southern wall, which depicts the diagrammatic timeline of the faithful - the solid, dark, opaque point of the present, the blurred and unknown future which holds God's potential instantiation, the beams of wisdom that flow backwards through time, the eyes that look on jealously from outside this bounded circuit, that would subvert God's instruction. Beneath this painting are propped 12 medium iron swords with red tassel pommels. Each sword has 2d4 names embossed into the flat of the blade. 
8. House of the Angel. A stone room without light. There is a wooden four-poster bed against the eastern wall, with shades in place that would prevent an occupant from being seen. The bed is empty. A small wooden cask by the door holds 2 doses of holy water. 
9. Baths. This room is taken up by a single central bathing area sunken about two feet into the stone floor, fed by snow melt from the greenhouses. It is close to freezing cold, but very clean. Bathing in it is good for you - save CON and gain one temporary HP on a success. 
10. Boiler. A large iron boiler and cauldron, and a smaller sunken bath area that it can be used to heat. It would take an armful of firewood and about two hours to get it heated and working, but if you do so and bathe, you gain one temporary HP (no CON check for this one). This stacks with hp from the cold baths. 
11. Latrine. Long black stone corridor with a hole at the end leading straight down into nothing. It smells faintly bad, but only faintly. Anything dropped down here would eventually emerge onto a sheer drop off a cliff, about 500ft.
12. Strawberries. The same glass doors, greenhousing, and irrigation systems as Peaches, but this space has been sown with strawberries in long wooden planters. They are ripe and delicious. Strawberries are especially prized as rare delicacies - each is worth 15s, and there are 8d20 of them ripe enough to pick. 
13. Corridor. Bare stone, threadbare rugs on the floors, lit by strips of skylight, and by the corridor to Strawberries. 
14. Storage. Wooden racking, full of needful things. You can find canvas, gardening and climbing equipment (at least 1000ft of good rope, 10 grapnels, 50 pitons), 5 pickhammers (an ice pick and a hammer in one, can be used as a medium weapon that deals your choice of bludgeoning or piercing by Fighters or God Warriors), water casks, a large barrel of dry meal (2000 rations in here, although you wouldn't want to live off it), lamp oil, vellum and ink, whetstones. You also roll 3 times on the equipment list at the bottom of this post. 
15. Dojo. Stone room with eight stone pillars, well lit from broad leaded skylights. There are reed mats on the floors, and large paintings on the walls, showing red, four-armed giants with monstrous faces wrestling, and fighting with swords, spears, and bows. At the eastern wall is an iron sculpture of an eight armed angel, winged and terrible, holding eight cruel knives, with a face that appears to fold in onto itself forever - an effect produced by the artist's skill, nothing magical.
16. Roses. Roses. The saturating smell of them. Their beautiful faces. This room has the same glass doors, greenhousing, and irrigation systems as Peaches, but has been planted with rose bushes. There are only d4 roses here for you to pick. Each is worth 100s. Test WIS when you pick one, or take 1 point of damage from its thorn. Test CHAR when you hold one or be stunned for ten seconds while you gaze at it... The petals are each of them beautiful, uniquely exquisite, but the heart of the rose is where its power is, if only you could find it, find it through all of these petals, which are each of them beautiful, unique, exquisite... There is also a bloody corpse in armour, slumped against the wall of the corridor the leads to the east. It is clutching a strange rifle (empty of ammunition), and wears ruined plate armour from the southern steppe. If you take this corridor (marked with a star on the map), something odd happens. You will find yourself in Roses +1, a room identical to Roses, but with only two corridors and two glass doors - one to the west, which will take you back to Roses, and one to the east, which will take you to Roses +2. Roses +2 also has two corridors that move you up the sequence to +3 (east), or down it to +1 (west), and so on. This series is infinite. There are other effects for moving through it, detailed below.

Roses

The Roses rooms have the following effects of those who enter them.

• The d4 roses that are available to pick in Roses +1 are (naturally) +1 roses. The d4 that are available in Roses +2 are +2 roses, etc. - it continues in this manner along the series. When you attempt to pick a rose +[number], your WIS save to avoid being pricked and your CHAR save to avoid being stunned are at -[number]. Being pricked on the thorns deals 1+d[number] damage, and being stunned lasts for 10[number] seconds (or 10[number] combat turns, if in initiative). A rose +1 is worth 1000s, and a rose +2 or more is worth 5000s. These prices are for fresh flowers - they wilt at the same rate as normal roses. 
• In Roses +1, all psychic and mathematics damage are at +1. In Roses +2 this is +2, and so on down the series. 
• The following effects are cumulative. In Roses +1, all text is illegible. In Roses +2, faces are wrong, and you cannot benefit from anything that would require you to trust your companions. In addition, no entity will enter this room, or any of the rooms after it. In Roses +3, all humans develop a gaze attack that does d3 fear damage to anyone they lock eyes with (you must shut your eyes and blind yourself to avoid doing this in combat). In Roses +4 you take 1 radiant damage per minute. In Roses +5 you take 1 radiant damage per second. Beyond that, you lose 1 max HP per second, permanently. 
• The sunlight in all of the rose rooms is terrible and wrong. If you look directly up at the sun in any of them (+1 and on, not the 'original' room), you immediately take [number]d4 fear and radiant damage, and scream loudly. 

In addition to the above, the rose rooms contain the following encounters.

Roses +1

Standing in the middle of the garden is a wounded and frightened woman in armour. She is holding a strange rifle (it's huge), and begs you in a screaming voice to stop hurting her. She will fire at you immediately on seeing you, but is not collected enough for this to be a considered ambush, so you roll initiative as normal.

Selinae, the Youth Whose Arms are Stung with Love (dying) 

1HD, medium heated cross sword and Stung with Love (1 shot remaining), armour as plate -1, movement as human with a broken leg, disposition: desperate to kill you and survive. She cannot currently be reasoned with, the rose rooms have destroyed her mind.

Stung with Love is a scoped and silenced Anti Materiel Weapon. Treat it as a musket with a doubled range profile, which does 2d10 damage on a hit. The silencer means it fires with a soft thwwp sound, and the scope gives +2 to hit if you spend a turn doing nothing but aim down it. It cannot be reloaded by you.

Her heated cross sword is a normal medium sword that adds 1 heat damage to its strikes. You can switch the heated effect on and off with a switch on the handle, and it takes a turn to go from cool to heated and from heated back to cool. When heated, the blade glows a dull red. 

Roses +2

Standing in the middle of the garden is a grim, bloody, and battered woman in armour. She is holding a strange rifle (it's huge), and tells you in an edged, brittle voice to stop this foolishness. The roses are not for humans. Turn back now. She will shoot to kill if you make any move towards her. Her face is strange.

Selinae, the Youth Whose Arms are Stung with Love (combat) 

3HD, medium heated cross sword and Stung with Love (3 shots remaining), armour as plate, movement as human, disposition: angry, scared, keeping it together. She can be spoken to here, but won't trust you, and will fire on you after about a minute if you haven't turned back, no matter what you say to her. 

Roses +3

Standing in the middle of the garden is a proud woman of military bearing, dressed in immaculate armour. She is holding a strange rifle (it's huge), and tells you in a commanding and lightly disdainful voice that you cannot pass. She doesn't want to hurt you, but she will if she has to. She can be reasoned with here, and will not attack you without provocation, but will not let you past under any circumstances. She no longer seems to have a face at all, or perhaps she has thousands. 

Selinae, the Youth Whose Arms are Stung with Love (prime)

4HD, medium heated cross sword and Stung with Love (8 shots remaining), armour as plate, movement as human, disposition: proud, immovable, sure. She can be spoken to here, and makes calm and reasonable responses. She won't let you past. It is too dangerous; the rose rooms destroy people. If you wish to pick the roses in this room she will allow you to, but will advise against it. 

Roses +4

There are 12 people in here, The Master and his 11 Rose Initiates. All of them are seated in the lotus position, looking into roses. If you disturb them in any way (touch them, address them, make a loud noise, try to pick a rose), they become immediately, mindlessly hostile. They don't have faces, and move and fight completely silently. If you make any loud noises (shouting, gunshots) in this room, Ruined Things in Roses +5 will hear you. Each turn that you make noise this way, d4 Ruined Things enter the room from the eastern doors. 

If you flee from Roses +4, the Master and Initiates will chase you out into the temple proper and fight you there. Once roused, all of them will fight to the death. 

Rose Initiate 

HD1, martial arts, those that roll max HP additionally carry two kunai, unarmoured, speed as human who knows parkour, disposition: mindlessly aggressive and extremely vicious. 

Their martial arts allows them to attack with their feet and fists, either once as a medium weapon or twice as a light weapon. They also grapple with advantage. Kunai are light weapons that can be thrown. 

The Master

HD4, martial arts, AC14 (unarmored, but with chief monk prowess), speed: twice human (and knows parkour), disposition: mindlessly aggressive and extremely vicious.

His martial arts lets him attack with fists, feet, elbows, knees, and head: twice as a medium weapon, or four times as a light weapon. He has advantage on grapple checks. If you begin your turn grappled by him, you must save STR or have a random limb broken. Roll a d3: 1 is a random leg, 2 is a random arm, 3 is your neck.   

Ruined Thing

What remains of the initiates from further inside. No longer recognisably human, they have a head like a rose and thorns growing from their skin. They crawl silently along the floor and attempt to crush you to death with their oddly elongated, boneless, serpentine bodies. 

HD3, constrict, unarmoured, speed: half human, disposition: wants you scrunched into jelly so it can be left alone. 

Constrict is a grapple that additionally does d8 damage from the crushing and thorns. This continues each turn until you break the grapple.

Roses +5 and beyond. 

Roses +5 contains 2d10 Ruined Things, Roses +6 contains 4d10 Ruined Things, and so on, with each new room rolling double the previous number. 

Notes on recursions

Each of the new instances of a thing is tangibly real when taken out of the rose rooms. You could thus find yourself with 4 corpses of Selinae (in various stages of rose decomposition), 4 of her rifle, 4 heated swords, etc. There are infinite rose rooms and infinite Ruined Things in them, but these won't actively emerge unless you make noise in Roses +4 or beyond.