Interesting. They don't feel nearly as alien to her as she might have expected- She wants to meet these strange people instead!

She attempts to figure out a faster way to traverse distance without flat-out sprinting, using bursts of motion, and heads up to the place.

As she gets close someone comes out of one of those small guard posts and positions themself in her path. "Hello there stranger. What brings you to Tarynsville?"

She pauses too, a loose ready stance. "Exploration, learning. I have never been in these lands before."

"Well then, welcome to Tarynsville. We have mostly the usual rules, only fight with people in designated areas, don't kill anyone unless they've agreed to risk lethal combat, don't siphon people, don't destroy any buildings or structures, and don't steal."

She bows. "I will strive to be a good guest. Is there anything I simply must see while I'm here? For that matter, anyone who might want small game or daywork?"

"The Heart Tree is of course what we're best known for. The canopy gardens are quite beautiful and the same goes for the sanctum. The conservatory is also quite popular we have samples or plants from distant continents and even other worlds. Some of our people have ventured through a gate and successfully returned. For more mundane bits, there are bounty boards at most guard posts and butchers shops might accept meat though most small game are common enough that they aren't worth much."

Perhaps she should have planned better and brought seeds. Or more equipment. She wasn't assuming she'd be allowed to keep any of it, but her clothes came through. Ah well.

"Thank you. I do enjoy conservatories. The last question I'll trouble you with, who rules here?"

"The Dryad Council is in charge here. Without them Tarynsville couldn't exist."

"Fare well then."

She decides the town boundary counts as sufficiently 'indoors' so as not to alarm anyone and lets her fire wink out as she crosses the threshold.

Is the bounty board obvious? What sort of things does she see, wandering first at ground level and then more vetically?

The bounty boards are large boards near each guard station with wooden plaques hung from nails. Each plaque has some task written on it.

There is a wide variety of tasks, the most common are for hunting down specific monsters or items from a resource node, from context these seem to be renewable sources of otherwise uncommon resources. The next most common after that are courier and escort jobs. From there things devolve to a variety of uncommon or obscure tasks from seeking instructors in rare skills asking to have rare artifacts repaired or in a few cases seeking companions to join an adventuring group. And of course a standing bounty to bring new unique plants to the conservatory.

Ground level has a couple guard stations and a larger number of bushes and other food plants with pathways laid out to allow for walking. There are ladders and a few bridges leading higher up but it's fairly obvious that they can all be cut away in an emergency.

The real town is mostly in the branches of the surrounding trees there are various stalls, some smaller gardens and various shops. Construction is more elaborate as you go higher or closer to the central tree.

She heads for the central tree. Her usual satchel has a couple of day old red cacti fruit in it. May as well see if they are viable.

The conservatory is obvious as she gets closer to the center it is massive structure, glowing from within with large windows, stretching up the side of the central tree and also spreading out through the canopy of several nearby trees. It's easily the biggest structure in the whole settlement.

Ooh, so many interesting plants to be distracted by. Do they have climate control?

They do have climate control. Before being allowed to enter she has to agree not to harvest or damage any of the plants. She could also offer her fruits to one of the people at the gate if she wishes.

She offers the fruit and claims to be something of a naturalist, in her original world, so would be interested to discuss plant things with a caretaker.

"Of course, let me summon someone. The caretakers are best suited to figuring out what to do with these anyway." He rings a bell.

It's only a couple minutes before a person arrives, her skin is both the color and texture of Oak Leaves in spring. Her eyes are the brown of oak bars and her and both her teeth and nails appear to be made of wood. Her clothes are made of thin bark. "Greetings, are you why the bell was rung?"

The guard holds out the fruit to the new arrival.

"Oh, excellent. Thank you for your contribution."

"I have reason to suspect it is unusual, and a great fascination for the ecology of another world. I would enjoy a good discussion, if you wish. Alas that I did not plan and bring more samples, but such is the way at times."

"You're an off-worlder then. How exciting! We don't get many of those here." She focuses intently on the two fruit she's now holding. "Ooh, your world has bioengineering then. That's still pretty rare here. Is it common on your world?"

"I would not say we 'have' bioengineering so much as we 'are bioengineered'." Sigh. "It's... A difficult subject for me, the only one who seems to understand it enough to resent it."

"Oh, my apologies. We can choose a different topic if you prefer."

"I think it might make a good story, I'm just unsure how to present it as of yet, really. The gods give both gift and shackle. I'm pretty interested in how plants work when they're not subtly designed to fit into a coherent whole and always form sharp habitat boundaries between biomes and generate extreme morphological differences from the same species between said biomes."

"It sounds like raising these fruit will be an exciting prospect then. What you're describing makes it sound a little like how Adventure changes things though it doesn't put restrictions on sapient creatures. Natural species tend not to do well outside their native environment and they also have a lot of small variations you can actually put all the natural species from a world onto a giant tree diagram mapping out when they diverged from each other all tracing back to a very small number of originating life forms."

"The plants of home do not fundamentally change. And they are all tied together into a grand system of sorts with all sorts of regulatory effects, including with microbes, to respond to faraway disruptions all at once and maintain zones. A forest fire prompting production of waxy protectant and fireproof seeds in a large area all at once, for example."

"That's incredible, natural plants can do some pretty impressive things but generally it's not that rapid or coordinated."

"I am Karakan, called stoneheart by some. I would be delighted to discuss to the limit of my memory, perhaps while seeing the gardens?"