The Bone Orchard

Category: medium

Prerequisites: complete the_misty_mounds

Where the Dead Feed the Living

Behind the chapel walls lies the Bone Orchard — the order's grave-garden, where every bed is dug over old burials. It's gone wild since the old gardener passed: self-sown maples choking the rows, roots prying at the sleepers below. Clear them out and open the beds to the sky again.

Objectives:

• CHOP: Maple Logs ×100

Rewards:

• ✨ 35,000 Woodcutting XP
• 3,500 gp

Feeding the Beds

'The garden grows because the dead are content beneath it,' Maren says, pressing a bone into the loam like a seed. 'Discontent them and you'll taste it in the fruit.' Bury offerings along the orchard rows.

Objectives:

• BURY: bones_normal ×70

Rewards:

• ✨ 3,500 Prayer XP
• 3,500 gp

Oil for the Vigil-Lamps

The old gardener's herbal lists what the order once pressed for the vigil-lamps' oil — and, in the lean years, what the sea gave instead: swordfish, rendered slow over low coals. The lamps are guttering now. Bring in the catch.

Objectives:

• CATCH: raw_swordfish ×90

Rewards:

• ✨ 45,000 Fishing XP
• 4,000 gp

The Steady-Hand Draught

Grave-gardening is close work — one careless cut and you've disturbed a sleeper. The order's answer is the Crafter's Draught. The cellar still is dusty but sound; brew a rack of them.

Objectives:

• BREW: crafters_draught ×10

Rewards:

• ✨ 7,000 Brewing XP
• 4,000 gp

Trellises of Mahogany

The orchard's climbing roses — one per barrow-king, planted a century back — have crushed their old trellises. The wrights want mahogany for the new frames. Fell and haul it.

Objectives:

• CHOP: Mahogany Logs ×130

Rewards:

• ✨ 50,000 Woodcutting XP
• 4,500 gp

The Ridge-Mage's Remedy

The pyre-tenders' hands crack and burn from the fog-fires. The herbal's remedy is an avantoe salve — and the ridge-mage hoards the only stock for a day's walk, at a price Maren calls 'grave-robbery, ironically.' Relieve him of it, pocket by pocket.

Objectives:

• THIEVE: mage ×100

Rewards:

• ✨ 9,000 Thieving XP
• 4,500 gp

Root and Rite

The orchard answers you now — beds turning easier, roses leaning toward your rows. Maren calls it the garden's blessing and asks you to answer in kind: craft nature runes for the blessing-rite, one to be sunk at the corner of every bed.

Objectives:

• CRAFT: Nature Rune ×100

Rewards:

• ✨ 8,000 Runecrafting XP
• 5,000 gp
• 💎 26 gems

Fire in the Soil

One bed in the orchard's far corner steams on cold mornings and the herbal is blunt about why: 'the sleeper beneath runs hot.' Maren's answer is char — burn seasoned yew and rake the coals into the bed's borders to draw the heat out slowly.

Objectives:

• BURN: Yew Logs ×80

Rewards:

• Bones ×60
• ✨ 13,000 Firemaking XP
• 5,000 gp

The Hot Sleeper

Whatever runs hot beneath the pepper-bed, Maren means to cool its temper the old way: great bones, buried in a ring around it, each rung down with the bell. Perform the rite.

Objectives:

• BURY: bones_normal ×70

Rewards:

• ✨ 5,000 Prayer XP
• 5,500 gp

The Scholar's Shelf

The order's library holds a century of burial-records nobody can read fast enough. Maren's solution is chemical: Scholar's Tinctures, brewed strong. Fill the shelf.

Objectives:

• BREW: scholars_tincture ×8

Rewards:

• ✨ 9,000 Brewing XP
• 5,500 gp

Vermin in the Vaults

Goblins have wormed into the orchard's root-cellars, gnawing seed-stock and worse — gnawing the boundary stones. Clear them out of the vaults.

Objectives:

• KILL: kill goblin_1 ×40

Rewards:

• Bones ×50
• 6,000 gp

Silver for the Wardwater

The herbal's last recipe is wardwater — sprinkled on thresholds to keep the restless out — and it must be caught in silver, rain to basin, never touching iron. The order's basins were sold off in the lean years. Smelt silver for the basin-smiths.

Objectives:

• SMELT: Silver Bar ×50

Rewards:

• ✨ 5,000 Smithing XP
• 6,000 gp

Reading the Old Names

With the tinctures on the shelf, the records finally open up. Drink and read: every name, every mound, every debt the order still owes its dead. Use the Scholar's Tinctures you brewed.

Objectives:

• USE_POTION: scholars_tincture ×6

Rewards:

• ✨ 4,000 Brewing XP
• 6,500 gp

The Orchard Pond

The records mention an orchard pond stocked for fast-days — silted up now, but the salmon run below the weir is strong. Restock the order's fast-day larder.

Objectives:

• CATCH: raw_salmon ×150

Rewards:

• ✨ 40,000 Fishing XP
• 6,500 gp

The Unpaid Debts

The old records name forty burials the order took payment for and never completed — a shame Maren wears like a stone. Settle the debt: full rites, every one.

Objectives:

• BURY: bones_normal ×90

Rewards:

• ✨ 5,500 Prayer XP
• 7,000 gp

Harvest-Home

The orchard pond's first true haul in years comes in heavy, and the order calls harvest-home. Smoke and bake the salmon catch — enough for every offering-niche on the mound-line and the harvest-home table besides.

Objectives:

• COOK: raw_salmon ×120

Rewards:

• Bones ×70
• ✨ 14,000 Cooking XP
• 7,000 gp

Gold for the Garden Shrine

The orchard's little shrine — a stone hand holding a seed — deserves better than moss. Mine gold for its gilding; the shrine-smiths will do the rest.

Objectives:

• MINE: Gold Ore ×90

Rewards:

• ✨ 7,500 Mining XP
• 7,500 gp

The Orchard at Rest

At harvest-home, the whole order dines in the orchard under strings of grave-lanterns. Afterward, alone in the lamplight, you bury the last of the great bones beneath the oldest rose. The steam over the pepper-bed stills. The garden, for the first time in living memory, is entirely at peace.

Objectives:

• BURY: bones_normal ×90

Rewards:

• ✨ 7,000 Prayer XP
• 9,000 gp
• 💎 34 gems