Whenever I read literature from the Victorian era, I’m reminded a bit that the “repressed Victorian” is rather more a cultivated image than reality.I came across the title for this one from the Dolmenwood Player’s Book list of Inspirational Media. So far, this one is unique among “Appendix N” reading I’ve done by being a poem (though I suppose Beowulf in Pathfinder Appendix 3 is one as well when I get to it…). What I wasn’t expecting was to run into a whole bunch of inspiration for two of my favorite book series while looking into inspiration for an RPG. Though I guess the fairy tale forest RPG would share inspirations with the fairy urban fantasy (October Daye) and lost children returning home (Wayward Children) books. And then there’s, you know, the whole thing where Seanan McGuire has studied folklore enough to have based books on the actual system used for classifying fairy tales. So, yeah, what I didn’t expect is absolutely something I should have.First off, for a poem in which the two named characters are sisters, there are sections filled with such yearning that it could make a Romance author blush. Not like sex scenes, but you know those scenes of eating in Hayes Code era films where there’s a really good meal and you totally get the sense of some other emotions going on? That feeling. And that feeling gets tied into a whole central plot element revolving around addiction.Because this poem is the story of two sisters who visit a Goblin Market when it comes to town. One sister eats the fruit and cannot get enough and the more she eats the more she needs. It starts literally draining the life from her and then the goblins won’t sell her any more. So her sister takes matters into her own hands and tries to get her sister’s fix for her.As I read the whole section about the goblin fruit addiction, I couldn’t help but think of Seanan McGuire’s Chimes at Midnight, where Toby Daye is dealing with the effects of goblin fruit on the changelings of San Francisco, and also of the general situation from the mid-2010s to present with the opioid crisis. Like, Laura’s reaction to goblin fruit is the exact self-destructive drug-seeking that we see in the parts of the country hit hardest by heroin and fentanyl dependence.So, this poem definitely hits a topic that is evergreen, between addiction and the lengths family will go to for those they love.Something to Take AwayI feel like the curse of the goblin fruit and the need to cure it would make a good quest for a group of PCs. Assume the Goblin Market has been in town and some important NPC has eaten of the Fruit and is suffering the wasting effects of it. Now the PCs need to either figure out a cure for the effects or go find more goblin fruit.In my group, I can see which of these options to take turning into one of those intraparty debates between the moral compass PCs and those aiming for a more… pragmatic… approach. I think it would make an interesting session.
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