Video Game / The Trader of Stories

Myosotis playing her flute

The Trader of Stories (also known as The Big Old Tree That Dreams) is a series of indie Adventure Games set in the very beautiful world of Forest Bed. The games, produced by the Polish brothers Marek and Marcin Rudowski [1] are of the point-and-click sort and web-based — just click the link to play.

The Protagonist, a young woman named Myosotis, is a traveler who makes it her business to buy stories from people — because, suffering a severe case of Laser-Guided Amnesia, she hopes to find the story that is her own. In flashback / story sequences the player characters are the protagonists of the particular story told by Myo, eg. for Willow's part of Chapter I the point-of-view character is Willow.

The developers' blog is found here.

All the games can be found here, on the official site.

The series so far consists of:

• Bell's Heart (2010): When her cart breaks down, Myosotis is forced to stop in a small town with quite a romantic legend of a haunted lake. In the course of her investigation, she discovers how romantic the story really is. Since the server it had originally been hosted on had gone Among the Roots, the game was temporarily unavailable until it got re-released in 2024 with some tweaks. Play it here.
• A Grain of Truth (2012): To be able to proceed with her search of the Wiseman who might know where to find her past, Myosotis must first unravel the mystery of the Floating Rocks. Play it here or here.
• Trader of Stories, Chapter I (2016): Set before A Grain of Truth, this installment begins with our protagonist waking up in the Forest of Dancing Trees, remembering absolutely nothing about her own life. Named "Little Willow" by the locals, she makes herself more or less at home in the village. But even deep in the forest, danger lurks. Play it here.
• Trader of Stories, Chapter II (2019): After spending nearly a Blossoming in the human city of Bark, Little Willow's life seems fairly ordered. She works as a waitress and storyteller in Gofung's teashop, has aquaintances, if not friends, and generally makes do. But the amnesia still bothers her, alongside an odd sense of not belonging. Until a Tall, Dark, and Handsome mysterious guest arrives... Play it here.
• Trader of Stories, Chapter III (2023): Having finally learned her real name and that she has a sister (who's worried sick), Myosotis leaves Bark for her home village. Once there, she begins rediscovering her early life - and not everything she learns is pleasant. Play it here.

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Tropes found throughout the series:

• Alchemy Is Magic: Bell's Heart and Chapter II feature potion making. There are also potions in Chapter III, but these are non-magical (just herbs).
• The Alcoholic:
  • The drunkard in Bell's Heart. He claims it's because of having been spooked by ghosts. The innkeeper doesn't mind his constant presence much, since the guy drinks enough for six people.
  • In Chapter III (which generally features a lot of alcohol, being set during the fertility goddess festival), Fryme, whose Excessive Mourning of her son and subsequent dissapearance of her husband has driven her to drink.
• All Love Is Unrequited:
  • In Bell's Heart, Derrida had been a Chick Magnet extraordinaire, but only had the eyes for a specific young lady, leaving the other girls sighing.
  • In Chapter I, both Juni and Omorica are in love with Pinutros, who loves Juni.
  • In Chapter II, Ugo is in love with our heroine. The player can choose whether or not to reciprocate.
  • Chapter III, being lighter on puzzles and heavier on character drama, reveals how boys tended to go crazy about Myo in her youth, but none was actually loved back. Also, Reyle was madly in love with Ashur, who was madly in love with Myo.
• Alternative Calendar: The Forest Bed equivalent of a year is a "Blossom". "Breath" roughly equals a day. This is because the light in this world comes from the Great Tree, in twenty-four hour "breath/shadow" cycles resembling our days and nights, while the Tree's blossoming marks years.
• Animalistic Abomination:
  • In the climax of Chapter I, the, for lack of better word, monstrous wolfeer that somehow ends up in the Forest. Wolfeers run away from it.
  • The monsters in Chapter III are explicitly called anomalies by Rain, who explains they were not created by the First Born.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Except for the original Bell's Heart, clickable areas can be highlighted using a button, which prevents Pixel Hunts.
  • A Grain of Truth has a map that acts as a Warp Whistle. Subsequent games have maps, too, but most locations are one-room and the map is the only way of travel.
  • In Chapter I the lock puzzle can be bypassed.
  • In Chapter II you can lose your patience and simply hit the potion-making apparatus to create the explosive mixture. But only the explosive, not the star solvent, so you won't get 100% completion.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Both Wiseman in A Grain of Truth and Siavel in Chapter III advise Myosotis to stop obsessing over her past and make use of the time she has.
• Ambiguously Brown: Myosotis resembles a Romani or a Native American in looks and dress (but is actually neither, since it's a Constructed World.)
• Awful Truth:
  • A Grain of Truth hints there might be something really, really bad in Myo's past, and the Wiseman knows all about it. But won't tell.
  • In Chapter III the Messenger of Death recognises her. Sure, this may simply mean she's been present at someone's death before losing her memory, but...
• Accent Adaptation:
  • The Polish version of Bark slang is based on bałaka (with hints of thieves' cant, since several of the characters Myo meets are thieves). The English version is inspired by cockney.
  • Similarly, the speech of some inhabitants of Myo's home village is inspired by Polish Highlander dialect. The English version takes some cues from Somerset accent.
• Bed Trick:
  • In Bell's Heart a girl in the village did this to Derrida, causing said person to become the ghost in the lake. And the real father of the present-day mayor.
  • In Chapter III, Myo discovers she herself had tricked an unwanted suitor to have sex with Reyle (who was in love with him and thought Myo's just arranged for them to meet at her secret place outside of the village). This one also resulted in a baby, and in a thorough upsetting of several people's lives.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Sometimes Myosotis talks back to the player when asked to do things she deems stupid. In A Grain of Truth some characters even ask who she's talking to.
• Catching Some Z's: Whenever Myo falls asleep while Thinking Out Loud. This happens a couple of times.
• Chariot Pulled by Cats:
  • Husks, like Myo's Zephyr, fill the niche of oxen/cows, although they look somewhat reptilian, grow bigger than houses and have shells they regularly shed as they grow (also a reptilian trait).
  • The cloud eater in A Grain of Truth is... an elephant-giraffe-sauropod... whatever that carries a ship-like structure on its back.
• City of Adventure: Bark, the central city of the Forest Bed (build right around the Oak's trunk, no less, hence the name), is huge and offers many possibilities. Chapter II is set there and Myo goes to visit it again at the end of Chapter III.
• Clock Punk: Mild example — the Wiseman owns scientific equipment including a movie projector. Other than that, there's pretty advanced optics, but the general technology level of Forest Bed is pre-industrial, with animal power mostly.
• Deadpan Snarker: Our protagonist herself, especially in A Grain of Truth, where the Wiseman still matches her snark for snark. Her sister Neesan can be pretty snarky, as well.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?:
  • In A Grain of Truth, The Wiseman has a heart-to-heart with... the Messenger. He also communes with the Tree, and so does Myo, using the notes she finds in his workshop.
  • By Chapter III Myo has worked out she's literally been having tea with one of the First Born. She also, quite amicably, shares a bottle of wine with the Guardian Rain.
• Disabled Deity: In Myo's Chapter I story, the First Born Willow weeps so hard over a Dancing Tree seed that isn't sprouting that her eyes become dull and unseeing. Present day lady Willow remains blind.
• Divine Conflict: The stories Myo tells about the First Born are set not long after the world-shattering Divine Conflict has ended and recount their attempts to Restart the World.
• Divine Delegation: In a classic henotheistic scenario, there's The Great Oak, the Grandfather, creator of the First Born (the humanoid deities who deal with specific domains and generate a lot of drama), the Guardians (lesser gods, servants and messengers for the First Born) and Grandchildren (mortals).
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Both Voice (who used to be rather flighty before the War but has seen the error of her ways) and the Messenger are perfectly reasonable people, even though they don't go for bargains.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • In Chapter I, Omorica after it turns out Pinutros had an interest in her sister, not her.
  • In Chapter III, Fryme, and she has been for a couple of Blossomings now.
• Dub Name Change: The First Born Jaśmin turns into Cedar in English, because "Jasmine" would be too girly. This gets Retconned by Chapter III, where Cedar and Jasmine are definitely stated to be separate characters.
• The Exile:
  • In Chapter II, Scath was exiled by the Shadowchildren for reasons he doesn't elaborate upon.
  • The reasons for Dew's exile are unearthed by Myo in Chapter II.
  • After the Divine Conflict, those of the First Born who were on the wrong (or just the losing) side got exiled into the Void. Cedar, however, was only guilty of getting too close to Hazel.
• Expansion Pack Past: The short flashback in A Grain of Truth kind of suggests that Myo awoke surrounded by people who told her her name and so on. It turns out that she spent Blossomings with people who knew no more about her than she did, before finally meeting someone who recognised her in Chapter II.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • A mild example in Bell's Heart, as it's unheard of for humans and Butterflies to marry; while not an open hate thing, it still causes tragedy.
  • Also, the people of Bark are suspicious of Growls (Shadowchildren).
  • Growls themselves have a (very) long-standing racial feud with the hitherto unseen Hisses.
• Fantasy Pantheon: The First Born, children of the Great Oak, all named after trees. Most of Myo's stories feature them and their Classical Mythology worthy exploits in the aftermatch of the Great War. The pantheon consists of:
  • Elm, the God of Order and divine lawmaker;
  • his lover/wife Hazel, goddess of plants and fertility (Chapter III features her festival, which is fun);
  • Fir, goddess of language, the divine poet and patron of the Growls (her festival in Chapter II is celebrated with a storytelling contest);
  • Rowan, he who meddles with the mortals;
  • Birch, who prefers to be known as Voice (for the Dead), caretaker of the dead, advisor for redemption seekers and the Messenger's boss. Her priestesses, the Servants of Voice, make up the local Saintly Church, running hospitals, schools and orphanages;
  • Baobab, the divine smith and patron of the Hisses; he and Fir tend to butt heads;
  • Willow, also known as Weeping Willow, the mysterious patron of Dancing Trees who lives with them in their forest, pretending to be "just an old lady";
  • Ash, who builds things;
  • Jasmine, who was "lost" in the War and whose domain may have been sex;
  • Cedar, who created animals and microorganisms, but, as we learn in Chapter III, Elm exiled him out of jealousy over Hazel and had him erased from all the records, so Myo is the only Grandchild who even knows of his existence.
• Floral Theme Naming:
  • Myosotis is the scientific name of the "forget-me-not" flower.
  • The First Born are all named directly after trees.
  • The Dancing Trees tend to take their personal names from botanical nomenclature, if not as straightly as the First Born.
• Friend to All Children: Somehow, Myo keeps ending up looking after the kids, protecting the kids from monsters and generally being an honorary aunt. It takes her about half a day to befriend and become a Cool Aunt to her actual niece, too.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The ending of A Grain of Truth hints at the possible destruction of the world in the near future, and Myosotis' amnesia is somehow connected to it.
  • The Messenger's appearance in Chapter III is foreshadowed throughout the game.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: The anomalies have glowing red eyes.
• God's Hands Are Tied: The Red Codex, a collection of laws that bind all sentients, explicitly forbids the First Born and Guardians from meddling in the affairs of mortals. It never stopped Rowan. Voice, too, is able to establish her cult quite freely, although after Enora's Vision Quest, most work is done by mortal priestesses anyway.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking:
  • In Bell's Heart, both Myo and the town mayor smoke pipes and are good people. Smoking appears to have been dropped for Myo in later games, though.
  • The Messenger, who's a good (if a bit grumpy) guy, smokes. All the time. In Chapter III, Enti even claims a witch told him tobacco will make the Messenger kinder. Of course, being the local grim reaper, it's not like smoking can hurt him.
• Grumpy Old Man:
  • Chapter I has Fagusvat, the grumpiest tree ever.
  • Chapter II has the alchemist, mister Salammon.
  • The grump of Chapter III, Veig, has even bigger heart of gold. Hvarfa plays the role a bit, but mostly for Trickster Mentor purposes.
• Guide Dang It!: Happens sometimes.
• High Priest: Mother Superior of the Servants of Voice is the high priestess of the goddess Voice.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Apart from different measures of time, "leaf" is the local equivalent of soul both metaphysically and in idioms. The denizens of Forest Bed also swear by tree parts (or Void) and give their kids huskback rides instead of piggyback rides.
• Holy Is Not Safe:
  • The Oak's sap can send you on a Vision Quest, but you're not guaranteed to get back. The Servants typically undergo strenuous preparation before they partake.
  • A mortal can use a Guardian sword. Once. See Chapter II for how they die.
  • Touching the Messenger can deaden the nerves in your hand. People also tend to avoid his gaze, because it supposedly brings bad luck. Even the immortal Guardians prefer not to meet him.
• Home of the Gods: The High Branches of the Oak is where the First Born reside.
• Identity Amnesia: Myosotis begins Chapter I with no idea who she is and slowly rediscovers herself and her life story over the next couple of installments.
• Indecisive Medium: Intros, outros and all the cutscenes are made of static comicbook panels, especially in Bell's Heart. Probably because the demo (later reworked as Bell's Heart) was created as a side story for the comic book the creator wrote while at school.
• Informing the Fourth Wall: With full snark on.
  Myo (when asked to put roof tiles into a bucket): I might, but since my pockets are bottomless…
• Ironic Name:
  • "Myosotis" is the scientific name of forget-me-not. Also the name of our Amnesiac Hero.
  • Aislin (dream) for a dream researcher who Cannot Dream herself.
• Jerkass Gods: Some of the First Born are, notably Rowan, he of meddling with mortals For Science!
• Job Title: For the series as a whole.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Myosotis, as befits an Adventure Game heroine (in the second game, she almost sounds proud of it).
• Mini-Game:
  • Mahjong and jigsaw puzzle in A Grain of Truth.
  • Sliding puzzles in Chapter II.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Several of the wild creatures encountered throughout the series seem to be a mix of two or more different types of animals. Chapter III also features mix-and-match plants.
• Mystical White Hair: In Chapter I and Chapter II, Myo's hair is white, even though it wasn't in Bell's Heart and A Grain of Truth. And, as Adalbert says, it's not her natural colour. What makes it mystical, though, is the fact that somehow she can use a Guardian's sword, which would kill a mere mortal - Rain thinks the particular sword has been faulty, though. Also, the stories about gods "just come to her, like memories". In Chapter III Neesan dyes Myo's hair dark brown.
• Myth Prologue: From Chapter I onwards, the prologues are Myo's stories - they get interrupted for some reason or another and she finishes after having taken care of the present day plot.
• Narrator: Intros and outros (and cutscenes) are narrated by Myo herself.
• Not a Morning Person: Myo is not an early riser, no matter how much she claims to be every time she's woken up by someone who's fed up with waiting for her.
• Password Save: Long and complicated. Paste them into a text file. The games also have an autosave, though.
• Pixel Hunt: Thankfully subverted with a button that shows every clickable object.
• Plant Person: The Dancing Trees, who make up most of the cast in Chapter I.
• Point-and-Click Map: Ever since Chapter I, the main area of the game is represented by a clickable map.
• Prophet Eyes: Lady Willow. Blindness is the first thing Myo notices about her.
• Psychopomp: The Messenger of Death, who starts being talked about in Chapter III where several characters are mentioned to have met and interacted with him (usually to try bargaining for their loved ones to be allowed to stay) before Myo herself meets him, for the first time since contracting her amnesia, but not for the first time ever. We also learn how he became the Messenger in the first place. The locals seem to treat the Messenger with a sort of superstitious dread, but he himself is just doing his job.
• Quirky Town: Everywhere she goes, Myosotis meets people of unusual personalities or occupations (some more than others).
• The Sacred Darkness: Voice is the goddess of the underworld, caretaker of the dead and advisor for those who seek redemption.
• Sacred Scripture: The White Codex for Servants of Voice.
• Saintly Church: The Servants of Voice. They seem to fill the social niche of Christianity in day-to-day life of Bark, running schools, hospitals and an Orphanage of Love.
• Scenery Porn: All of the games have absolutely gorgeous graphics and exotic landscapes to explore.
• Shout-Out:
  • A possible one to Discworld's Duck Man: If you ask the wiseman about the bird on his head, the response is "What bird?".
  • Word of God states that Derrida is named after Jacques Derrida.
• Star-Crossed Lovers:
  • In Bell's Heart, Myo discovers the story of such a pair.
  • In Chapter II, Dew is set on being with her lover, Red Codex be damned. It ends sadly.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Myo gathers them as her job. She begins by Gaetana's advice in Chapter III (which is earlier in the timeline than Bell's Heart).
• The Storyteller: Myo is this, of course. There's an implication that she has such a gift for it that when she "makes up" elements of a story they're more likely to be true than the official version.
• Title Drop: Myosotis is known around the land as the Trader of Stories. The title is properly dropped in Chapter III in her conversation with Gaetana.
  • The fact that the Big Oak "dreams" is also mentioned. Its dreams form the clouds. The floating stones from the Grain of Truth are Oak's dreams in their crystalized form.
• Traveling Salesman: Myosotis. Selling and buying stories, in hopes that one day, she will meet someone who knows her story.
• Treants: The Dancing Trees, who take root and become immobile as they age.
• Undying Loyalty: Zephyr hangs around for ten years after Myosotis goes into her trance in Grain of Truth.
• Wham Line:
  • The ending of A Grain of Truth where the Messenger discusses Myo's vision.
  • For Chapter II, it's:
  Adalbert: (pushing through the crowd) Excuse me. Myosotis, is that you? Gods, it is you!
• Weird Currency: Special silver acorns, grown on pecuniary oaks, then boiled and dried to keep them from sprouting and ruining the economy (see the book in Bell's Heart).
• Weird Trade Union: The crew of the Cloud Eater in A Grain of Truth. They collect clouds, which in this world are solid (if fluffy) and used to make pillows.
• World Tree: The Big Old Oak, a mountain-sized tree that stands at the center of the world. It can be seen from everywhere, and the locals believe it created the world, so they pray to it.

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Tropes found in Bell's Heart

• All There in the Manual: Myosotis carries the manual (helpfully written for her by her sister). You don't need to access it to solve the game, it's pure Worldbuilding.
• And the Adventure Continues: Bell's Heart ends with Myo continuing on her way.
• Beneath Notice: The old lady is the schoolteacher, only some seventy Blossomings later. She's not there to make trouble, though.
• Chick Magnet: Derrida is remembered as one. He only had eyes for the schoolteacher, though, despite the racial divide.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: Ingredients for the two potions include: cat's fur, hair of the person you want to control, an amulet and a pot to boil these together — and the last two you have to swipe from the old lady's house. Okay, maybe she doesn't mind, but you only find this out if you talk to her, and you don't have to (at least in the original release).
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The original Bell's Heart was the only game in the series without an option to highlight clickable areas.
  • There's a regular cat, regular chamomile and regular water lily, instead of mix-and-match species found in later games. Also, the local steeds are called "horses" despite not really being horses.
  • Myo smokes a pipe. This is dropped in the very next game.
• Give the Baby a Father: In the story Myo discovers, the man the mayor of the town thought was his biological father actually wasn't - he just married the mayor's mother after the actual father's death.
• Love Letter: Derrida used to send them to the schoolteacher, and finally got an answer. Myo finds it in his house and it serves as a vital clue. It was not written by the schoolteacher...
• Mind-Control Device: Used by the heroine, who needs to move the village drunkard using a charm made by soaking a demagiced amulet in a potion.
• Mood Whiplash: Intro of Bell's Heart starts with a dramatic bit of narration that segues into "I would kill for a soft bed right now."
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The story Myo discovers is about Derrida's death, and she does get to meet his ghost, right where he drowned. Derrida knows he's dead, is furious about it and haunts the lakeshore like a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl, but he's male and rather hunky at that, looking for all the world like a random tanned guy on a swim. He's Barred from the Afterlife by his turbulent emotions regarding how he died and gets to move on once Myo calms him down.
• Painting the Medium: Only in the original release - the intro being made in the style of a comic book, all of a sudden Crack! goes the wheel and several panel borders.
• Railroading: In the original game's potion making puzzle, you're not allowed to put the ingredients into the pot in a different order than the recipe says.
• Supernatural Light: The drunk thinks he's seen a ghost in the birch grove, but the lady swathed in light is actually a Butterfly.
• Undeath Always Ends: In the course of learning his story, Myo helps Derrida move on.
• Winged Humanoid: The elder Butterfly in Bell's Heart only has visible wings when she is approached. They have a full spread as a regular butterfly, and glow white.

Tropes found in A Grain of Truth

• Barefoot Sage: The Wiseman. He used to be an academic, so perhaps he wore them then, but nowadays shoes just don't seem to enter his frame of reference.
• Cerebus Syndrome: A Grain of Truth is (until the ending, that is) Lighter and Softer than the whimsical Bell's Heart, but also much harder (with more classical Point-and-Click puzzles).
• Easter Egg:
  • Ask the Captain if her crew has a long-standing tradition of brewing.
  • Try asking the Wiseman (who talks like Yoda) about the Force.
• Floating Platforms: Floating rocks. They float. They can be climbed. Small ones are used to make stairs at one point.
• Friend to All Living Things: The Wiseman is unbothered by a bird nesting in his hair. Couple of years before Radagast, no less!
• Hermit Guru: The Wiseman lives in a rather remote cave, and for a good reason, as he's studying the places where one can commune with the Oak.
• Magical Guide: The Wiseman, by proxy of his notes on how to commune with the Oak.
• Rip Van Winkle: When Myosotis awakens from connecting with the Great Oak, she finds that it's been ten "Blossoms" (years).
• Science Wizard: Rummaging in Wiseman's things, Myo finds not only scientific equipment and books, but also evidence he used to be a university scholar.
• Set Piece Puzzle: The projector, once you have all the parts to repair it, needs those parts arranged in the correct order.
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: The Wiseman speaks like Yoda, and if you ask him about "force" at the end of the game, he makes a shout-out to him, saying I Always Wanted to Say That.
• Talk Like a Pirate: Part of the Cloud Eater crew.
• 3 + 5 = 4: A variant of this puzzle opens one of the doors in Wiseman's cave house.
• Twist Ending: Myo manages to connect with the Oak and see glimpses of her past, which are confusing, as well as a vision of the future (possibly), which is even more confusing. After she leaves, the Wiseman is visited by the Messenger who reminds him "the girl" can never be allowed to know... something.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: This happens to both the Wiseman and Myosotis while communing with the Great Tree.

Tropes found in Chapter I

• But Thou Must!: In Myo's story, the goddess Willow really doesn't want to cause the Oak additional pain by reopening His wound to get fresh sap, but it's the only way.
• The Call Left a Message: Dew's sword has been patiently waiting in its box since before Baccataxus came back from his travels. And that's a long time ago - six hundred Blossomings, as it turns out in Chapter II.
• Creation Myth: Myo's story in this chapter is one for the Dancing Trees: the First Born Willow, wandering the ruined Forest Bed, found the first Dancing Tree seed and watered it with her tears.
• Fanservice: Some of the poses Myosotis strikes in Chapter I are rather egregious.
• Good Bad Girl: Moralba ain't shy around boys. Or mead. This does not hinder her work in the nursery or her generally helpful personality.
• Hidden Elf Village: The forest of Dancing Trees, for all its The Lost Woods decorations, is one of these. Secluded? Check. Populated by a very traditional, yet (mostly) friendly to the lost, helpless protagonist Close-Knit Community of sentients not often met in The Outside World? Yup. The Dancing Trees generally keep to their own little corner and lead people away with Lothlorien ranger-like techniques if anyone wanders in.
• Innocent Plant Children: Subverted. The sapient, humanoid trees are shown to care for their young like a human nursery, but the focus isn't on the children but the adults, many of which have... difficult personalities (some due to the fact that they don't like the player character, a human).
• Pop Quiz: Several minigames (e.g. shooting rodents that are gnawing the trees.)
• Sibling Yin-Yang: The cutesy, perky Juni and her sister Omorica who holds everything and everyone in utter disdain, the Great Oak included.
• Small Town Boredom: Aceru is chomping at the bit to leave the forest of Dancing Trees, just like Baccataxus did in his youth.
• Stay in the Kitchen: The Dancing Trees have a traditionalist society where men typically become soldiers and guards while young women all work in the nursery, caring for the seedlings, until they take root and begin bearing seeds of their own. This probably has a strong biological component (becoming immobile is an intrinsic part of their life cycle). Still, Aceru (who has a strong wanderlust) and Omorica (who simply hates children) chafe against their role, while Moralba just takes life as it comes and Juni is cheerful about everything.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Old lady Willow loves her tea so much she has a tea merchant visit her every couple of Blossomings solely for the purpose of buying some. Or so she says.
• We Are as Mayflies: The Dancing Trees live several times longer than humans. One of the older ones even thought several generations of merchants to be the same person changing form each visit.

Tropes found in Chapter II

• Accidental Pervert: Ugo walks in on Myo while she's washing.
• Betty and Veronica: Myo's Love Interests in Chapter II are Ugo, a Boy Next Door whose only fault is Fantastic Racism towards Shadowchildren (which may or may not have to do with his rival being one) and who defends Myo with his life and limb, even if she's been standoffish to him; and Scath, an exotic, mysterious, artsy and suave Shadowchild dream thief and the unrepentant villain of the episode. Also, you are free to play a Master of the Mixed Message if you like.
• Divine Date: In one of Myo's stories, Dew eloped with a mortal guy and they hid in the forest of the Dancing Trees. That is how Dew's sword ended up in the ruined house - it's the house they built for themselves.
• Dream Stealer: An entire gang of these. Dreams are used to produce a Fantastic Drug. Losing your dreams results in a depression-like illness.
• Emissary from the Divine: One of Myo's stories in this chapter centers around Enora, the prophet and founder of the Servants of Voice.
• The Fagin: Scath is one for the dream thieves. He recruits street urchins because only a small, lightweight kid can fly a kite to catch a dream before it falls back to the dreamer.
• First Kiss: Myo can give Ugo his.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: To break out of her artificially-induced dream, Myo needs to change the pattern of things, effectively creating Glitches in the Matrix.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: Possibly. Chapter II begins with Myo's account of how Bark was founded. Later, she's told that her version differs a lot from the official history books, in which Enora was much less manipulative and more saintly. We don't know who's got it right.
• Interspecies Romance: Scath's Romance Arc, should you choose it. Optional Sexual Encounter included.
• Lovable Rogue: Scath, the cool, artsy, Troubled, but Cute Growl has this vibe about him. Except he's not.
• The Masochism Tango: Aumur and Aislin, who seem unable to communicate without verbal abuse. Aislin says they wanted to kill each other when they first met in the university, only to get married this same Blossoming.
• Nice Guy: The owner of the teahouse, Gofung. Also his son Ugo, who quite obviously carries the torch for Myo.
• One of the Boys: Word of advice - don't call Red "little girl". She's the meanest guy in town.
• Parents as People: Gofung is a bit of a Bumbling Dad, but loving and responsible. Aumur and Aislin were so neglectful that their son ran away from home, but they really, really regret that.
• Story Branching: How the Romance Arc plays out is largely dependent on player's choices, as there are two Love Interests. You can actually, ahem, play with both guys, but if you do, Ugo gives you a Did You Think I Can't Feel? and Scath, well. Spoilers.
• Street Urchin: Red, Scraggly and Sniffles. Curls, the first of their gang that you meet, acts more like The Artful Dodger. Possibly due to being The Runaway by choice, not an orphan.
• Stuff Blowing Up: One of the potions you make in this chapter is an explosive. You do get to use it.

Tropes found in Chapter III

• Amnesiacs are Innocent: Most of the messes she has to solve in Chapter III are, directly or not, Myo's own fault. Except she's sown the seeds before contracting amnesia, as a child or a constantly-acting-out teenager. Several of the villagers remember her as a first-class Manipulative Bitch.
• Anger Born of Worry: Neesan begins the argument with Myo after Myo's taken Coni to the meadows, disregarding the danger. She also scolds Myo after finding her again after those couple of days she spent at Reyle's place with a twisted ankle.
• Alternate Personality Punishment: It's obvious Myo is horrified at what an utter bitch she used to be, but doesn't try to hide the fact that she'd pulled a Bed Trick on her substitute mother's son and gets slapped hard for it.
• Bait-and-Switch: Myo's initial observations on her past self are completely off the mark (loves reading, keeps good order, pyromaniac) since she's sleeping in Coni's room. And there's no pyromania either, Coni just stays up reading until the candles burn to the ground.
• Belated Injury Realization: Myo only realizes she's twisted her ankle falling into the lake after she wakes up, orients herself, discovers she's been tied up, attempts to talk Vozi into untying her and decides to escape on her own, which involves standing up and discovering she can't.
• Black-and-White Morality: To Elm, there is the Law, those who follow it, and those who must be destroyed. Fittingly, his segments switch to a stark monochrome that's necessary to solve a puzzle.
• Blind Without 'Em: A minor puzzle is centered around discovering a certain character really needs glasses and getting them a pair.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The First Born and Guardians are emphatically not humanity's friends.
  • The most sympathetic of them invents bacteria to force survival of the fittest as a means to encourage change in the world.
  • Elm and Hazel are polar opposites, Elm adhering to rigid rules and Hazel unable to accept order. At first they're able to complement each other to solve problems, but as time goes by their differences become irreconcilable.
• Bookworm: Coni, Myo's niece, hoards books in her room, even though she knows all the books she and her mom own by heart. After befriending Vozi she spends most of her time in her new friend's house, because there are new books there, and is quite curious about libraries in Bark. Did we mention the kid's six Blossomings old?
• Cloudcuckoolander: Siavel, who carries a baby husk as a Head Pet and (by her own admission) isn't good with people. Conversations with her go straight to Cloudcuckooland, unless she's imparting advice. And then she's profound.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: In Myo's story, Elm - the divine judge who values Order above all - is so intensely jealous of Hazel that he subjects Cedar to Kangaroo Court and exile just for spending too much time with her.
• Death by Childbirth: Sljed's mother. He himself thinks this is why his father resents him so much. Myo's mother didn't die in childbirth, but the resulting complications left her in poor health and contributed to her death a couple of Blossomings later.
• Excessive Mourning:
  • Fryme has become The Alcoholic because of her son's death and her husband's subsequent disappearance. One of Myo's tasks in this episode is to help her get her life back on track.
  • Targov, who's lost his daughter about the same time Fryme lost her son, refuses to move anything in her room and will move heaven and earth to find her again, as he knows for a fact Reyle's still alive.
• Faking the Dead: Ashur actually ran away to Bark, leaving his backpack to be found in the meadows so everyone would think he'd been eaten.
• False Friend: Myo herself, back when she'd been a manipulative bitch, "befriended" Reyle specifically in order to hurt her.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Neesan had been the responsible older sibling and all around Parental Substitute to Myo, whom she's seen more like a Bratty Teenage Daughter than a sister. Now they're adults, but Neesan still tends to think ahead more.
• Former Teen Rebel: As Myo discovers in this game, she used to be a... difficult child, so to say.
• Grief-Induced Split: It seems like this happened to Fryme and Kesaj, as she began suspecting him of cheating after their son's death and then he vanished. Except Kesaj was really spending the time helping Reyle - the girl his son had a one-night stand with before Faking the Dead and running away - because she's the mother of his grandson. Kesaj's vanishing turns out to have been a fatal accident when Myo finds his dead body in the underground tunnels.
• Heroic BSoD: After learning her part in Reyle and Ashur's story, and after Reyle dies just before Myo reveals this to the villagers, she gets slapped by Fryme, who's understandably furious. Myo then spends several Breaths in bed, depressed.
• How Many Fingers?: Gaetana uses this to test Xander's vision.
• Love Dodecahedron: Young Myo was the cool, popular, pretty girl whom all the boys wanted and all the girls envied. To elaborate: Myo went out with Sljed, who was pined for by Amka. Both Sljed and Ashur were head-over-heels with Myo, who didn't really care about either of them but hated the thought of somebody else being in (unrequited) love with Ashur enough to arrange an elaborate revenge on the innocent girl and the equally innocent guy.
• Love Martyr: Amka for Sljed, being fully aware that he doesn't love her.
• The Maze: While Myo falls into the Caught Breath cave system through the ceiling, leaving it requires some careful navigation of underground tunnels.
• Nasal Trauma: Myo punches Sljed after having enough of his crap. Right in the nose. The punchee claims it's broken, but later appears perfectly fine, so either it wasn't or Hvarfa the healer did her magic.
• Nature vs. Nurture: Dr. Woolfe mentions a variation on this concerning Myo, who is essentially a blank slate post-amnesia. She certainly seems a completely different person to her teen self, and gets told that maybe it's not worth trying to find who she was since said teen self was an utter bitch.
• Orphaned Etymology: Veig mentions his proficiency in getting to the fourth base in his youth, hint, hint, nudge, nudge.
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Myo and Neesan's mother died when Myo was four Blossomings old, and their father was killed rescuing a child on the meadows not long after that.
  • Coni's father is not in the picture, period - Neesan denies both Myo's guesses as to who he is and generally just keeps mum on the subject.
  • Vozi's father went missing right after conceiving the child (in a one-night stand) and definitely never even knew he was a father in the first place.
  • Hvarfa also had a baby as a young woman, with a guy who didn't even stay for breakfast. She had to give her son up for adoption and is very sympathetic to Reyle and Neesan.
• Promotion to Parent: Due to their mother's ill health and eventual death, Neesan had little choice in the matter, especially after her and Myo's dad was killed by noxers.
• Rule of Three: The first time the heroes are on the run from noxers, they're saved by a mother husk being nearby. The third time, the husk is already being eaten by the noxers, resulting in Reyle's death.
• Seeking the Missing, Finding the Dead:
  • Technically, Reyle isn't dead when found, but dies on the way back home.
  • Played straight with Kesaj, whose corpse is found in the mountain tunnels.
• Soft Water: Myo falls from a considerable height into a small lake. She's rendered unconscious and lightly injured, but getting fished out and a couple of days of RICE is enough for her to recover fully.
• Someone to Remember Him By: Hvarfa and Reyle both got pregnant by men they loved, only to be abandoned by them; in the latter's case because of a Bed Trick (although she wasn't the one to arrange it, she understands and shares the guy's sentiment) and giving the former an understandable case of Does Not Like Men.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: Veig thinks he drunkenly slept with Neesan (though after Coni was born), Neesan never told him that she just threw up on him after they both got stinking drunk and he blacked out. Myo never brings this up with him.
• Struggling Single Mother: Downplayed for Neesan, a woman managing a small farm singlehandedly without a word of complaint. Even when you get her a bit tipsy, she still talks of her life in a very matter-of-fact way. Reyle never complains, either, despite raising a child by herself, in a cave, with the occasional help from the child's grandfather.
• Troubled Abuser: Sljed, who takes out his numerous frustrations on Amka in a rather unhealthy relationship.
• Un-person: Elm orders that no one can ever find out what happened to Cedar, which is why everyone is surprised at Myo's version of the story.
• Untrusting Community: At first, many of the townsfolk want as little to do with Myo as possible. Then we find out they're more than justified in that due to Myo's past behavior.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Sledj feels nothing he ever does is good enough for his father. Then again, he is a wifebeater...

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