The Apotropaic Garden
Location: Planes of Cordance / Nether / The Gods’ Graveyard
The Circle of Shadow druids of the Deifilers ain’t just banging around Nether for the scenery. See, when a power kicks the bucket and ends up moldering in that weird boneyard, their divine essence doesn’t just vanish into the void. It seeps into the soil, the stones, and groundwater of that cursed place.
Using water that runs off from Tlaloc’s Land of Eternal Rain, the Deifilers have created a distillation process that concentrated the liquid down to pure despair. When they use this to water soil harvested from the Gods’ Graveyard, strange vegetation grows and mutates. They call this place the Apotropaic Garden, and the plants they grow have abjurative properties—but rather than warding simply off evil, they’re seeking to ward off Gods.
Shadow Birch: Silver birch, the ‘lady of the woods’ is associated with light, new beginnings, love and fertility in Tir na Og and iss believed to to protect against evil spirits and the evil eye. When grown in the Apotropaic Garden, a silver birch plant is transformed to shadow birch, which wards off celestials, creatures of light and negates wards aganst evil.
Henboon: Henbane, also called the witches’ plant is a poisonous and dangerous herb, of dismal aspect and disagreeable smell. It’s used in rituals to summon and bind fiends. The Umbral Gardners have transformed it to henboon, which can be used to banish fiends, and bypass their magical immunities.
Witch Wiggin: The rowan tree is used by Primes to ward off witchcraft and keep the dead in their graves. When grown in the Apotropaic Garden, witch wiggin is the rest. It’s said to be able to charm hags, quell their appetites, or at least make them more sympathetic to a berk. It also repels fey creatures.
Devil’s Trumpet: The thorn apple, in the hands of the Gardeners, mutates into devil’s trumpet, which is said to fascinate baatezu, and poison them if it touches their skin.
The Deifilers are still trying to perfect a herb which negates the ability of powers to see them. Latest chant goes they’re looking for bloods to fetch them the right kind of plant from the base of the Spire. Or perhaps fungus growing from a dead god floating in the Astral. Either way, there’s jink to be made.
Source: SGreen, Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: The Deifilers are a homebrew sect. More information on the Planes of Cordance can be found here.