Chapter 6: Kendaria

[back to Cloven Lands playtest material]

This chapter offers detailed information about the nation of Kendaria.

Kendaria is a land of many environments, from grassy plains and scrubby badlands, to vast and ancient forests about which countless fairy stories are told, to towering haze-clad mountains, to rolling verdant hills that seem to rise and fall as one travels like the waves of a green ocean. Kendaria is a bucolic swath of natural beauty and mostly temperate climes which has found its bounty the envy of many of its neighbors over the centuries. Nestled between mountains to the west and the roaring tides of the sea to the east, Kendaria abides in grace and plenty.

A monarchic queendom with very old roots, Kendaria is generally viewed as a peaceful nation. An old forest sprawls across most of the nation, with towns and hamlets nestled in and around the forest’s hills and dales. Kendaria occupies a temperate climate with warm, rainy summers and mild winters. The mountain range to Kendaria’s west will usually get snow caps, and while snow will occasionally fall in the Old Forest, it almost never sticks for more than a day.

This tranquil appearance hides fresh wounds and old superstitions, however. Queen Astaria Gillian III, whose family has ruled for several hundred years, only recently raised the nation out of a destructive civil war between three of her vassals. With a just and cunning reputation, Queen Astaria maintains popular support among most of her citizens, although there are whispers that she was only able to maintain her hold over Kendaria thanks to the help of a dark eldritch beast. Such rumors are always vague in nature, pointing to supposed odd changes in her behavior, and apparently accelerated aging; things the Queen’s supporters find to be dubious at best and insulting at worst.

The Old Forest and the southern steppes hold some of the same undertones of menace. Although the forest and plains are both picturesque and monster sightings are uncommon, superstition abounds in both regions, and numerous tales of inexplicable activity fuel these superstitions.

Kendarian Matters

When the heroes arrive in Kendaria, or if any wish to roll an INT check to see what sorts of things they might know about Kendaria, you may use the following table to give them tidbits of lore, or as a guideline for the sorts of things they may know about the country based on their roll. Characters native to Kendaria should know at least the first three pieces of Lore, and at least the first two Rumors below.

DC	Information
5	Kendaria is a large, heavily forested land with a capital city called Dalewright located north and east of Bridgemoor. Dalewright is a port city.
12	The Old Forest takes up the majority of Kendaria’s land, and is sparsely populated with towns and settlements. The majority of the nation’s people reside in Dalewright, though there are several smaller hamlets & villages throughout.
17	Kendaria is ruled by Queen Astaria Gillian III, who is widely regarded as a just and fine ruler. A little over a decade ago she was able to swiftly resolve a war between several of her vassals which was making large portions of the country unsafe to travel, and devastating the Kendarian economy. Though her resolution to this conflict was seen as somewhat brutal at the time, the decisive end to the fighting and economic recovery Kendaria has seen since have softened people’s opinions of her solution to the whole affair.
23	Kendaria is a land steeped in worship of the fae, and is replete with superstitions and fairy stories at every level of socioeconomic status. This is no great secret, but the degree to which the fae interact with mortal people and the commonness of travel between the Everwilds and the lands of Kendaria (especially the Old Forest) are not often understood or appreciated by outsiders. It’s speculated by some planar scholars that there are more crossings into the Everwilds in Kendaria than there are extraplanar schisms, portals, or broken veils leading to all the other planes, anywhere else in the world, combined.

The Rumors in the below table can be used as things the group overhears Kendarians saying about current life in Kendaria, such as in a crowded tavern or marketplace. If the group wishes to ask travelers coming from Kendaria about what awaits them further down the Queen’s Road, you can also use this table. This information should come from making an AWR or CHA check, such as AWR/Eavesdropping or CHA/Gossiping.

DC	Information
12	Greenvalley in the southwest of Kendaria, along the Queen’s Road, is a fantastic place to stock up on goods and equipment. It’s sometimes called the “Gateway to Kendaria”, and owing to the high quantity of trade it processes between Kendaria and Bridgemoor, it’s home to a large population of wealthy and middle-class merchants and craftspeople.
17	Queen Astaria Gillian and the dukes, duchesses, and barons that rule over the Old Forest have recently had a strange and vexing issue in the form of “Queen” Amelia Grace. Amelia is a young halfling child who has crowned herself the “Queen of the Old Forest” and, most perplexingly, has actually managed to become just that. Amelia Grace is surprisingly popular throughout the Old Forest, despite having been taken in by the flattery and tall tales of a group of mercenaries called the Merry Foresters— a group who, thanks to Amelia’s support, have spread throughout the Old Forest and behave as little more than common bandits and highwaymen.
23	People have been whispering for years now that there’s something wrong with Queen Astaria Gillian III. Ever since the end of the civil war a decade ago, some people claim she’s taken on strange behaviors and has seemed to age thirty years in just twelve. Nastier rumors say it has something to do with an eldritch being she compacted with to end the war, while more “charitable” folk say she’s just aging poorly and may not be up to the task of remaining queen for very much longer.

Life in Kendaria

Academics

Kendaria is primarily an agrarian society, so formal education is not common. There will usually be one or two scholarly folk in a given settlement, who happily teach children reading, history, and arithmetic when they aren’t helping their parents in the fields or shops, but literacy is not particularly high in smaller towns. In the handful of proper cities throughout Kendaria, formalized schooling is more common.

In Dalewright, the nation’s capital city, a number of both private and public institutions of learning can be found. Most notable is the University of Augustan, a school founded centuries ago by a cadre of forward-thinking priests of the Archfae Augustan, which has slowly flourished into one of the oldest institutes of inquiry and higher learning in the region. It is home to some of the finest collections of old manuscripts, historical inquiries, and treatises from ancient times, but has somewhat of a reputation for being slow to adopt new subjects and curricula. More modern sciences and studies like alchemy and magical theory are barely supported by the university, if at all, depending on whether or not the handful of faculty that teach those subjects happen to be on-campus for any given semester.

In Silverbranch, an old circle of druids called the Circle of Heartwood was once the ruling body of the settlement that would one day become the city. Over time, especially after the area was enfolded into the Kendarian monarchy, the Circle of Heartwood lost more and more of its overt power while resisting being wiped out entirely. The people of Silverbranch were too proud of their druidic heritage and believed the Circle stood as part of that heritage. In time, the Circle of Heartwood found its purpose going forward into the future, to serve as both an organization of primal veneration and an institute of learning from which non-druids could learn about nature, local history, and the faith of the Archfae conclaves.

Children in Greenvalley often undergo what’s called “Counter’s Culturing”, usually received at the local School of Foundationals. Counter’s Culturing is a free tutoring in the basics of mathematics, economics, and “sales etiquette” sponsored by a guild called the Coin & Measures Trade Consortium that represents the interests of several local merchant families. The goal of this program is to both build some goodwill between the guild and the locals, and to give the guild a decent pool of potential recruits from whom to hire. This tradition supposedly dates back forty or fifty years at this point, dating back to a period of existential crisis for the consortium, when their leadership and few remaining masters were dying out one after another without suitable replacements.

Institution	Area	Description
Circle of Heartwood	A day's ride northwest of Silverbranch	A druidic order turned place of learning. Mainly provides a religious education and knowledge of nature.
School of Foundationals	Greenvalley	Teaches “Counter’s Culturing”, a program designed to give young people the foundations in mathematics and economics needed to become guild merchants.
University of Augustan	Dalewright	A venerable institute of higher learning with phenomenal historical programs and a vast library boasting a great deal of ancient literature, but rather lacking in modern sciences like alchemy & magical theory.

Aristocratic and Political

Kendaria is a monarchic feudal nation implementing maternal primogeniture. As each eldest daughter of the Gillian house comes of age, her mother prepares her to become the next queen. Landed gentry serve as dukes or duchesses over multiple towns, while each settlement is managed by a baron or baroness. Dukes and duchesses report to the Queen’s court and serve as intermediaries between the monarch and the towns that they oversee.

The machinations and schemes of the Queen’s court tend to be rather tame by the standards of such things elsewhere, especially with the ignominious fates of the Queen’s warring vassals from the civil war twelve years ago still somewhat fresh in the minds of much of the nobility. While there is still bickering and plotting, as there might be in any court full of ambitious lords & ladies, Kendarian noble scheming takes on a decidedly quieter and slower aspect than would the machinations of their peers elsewhere.

Baron Callister Fendive - the Baron of County Wellhower which encompasses a wide swath of the eastern Old Forest - has been trying to expand (and ideally merge) his territory into that owned by Baroness Phelia Gilgane, who has been gaining considerable tax income from her Duke Maxwoll Cadovan’s selling off of the region now called Treegrave in lucrative logging contracts. To see this ambition through, Fendive has begun to spin a series of nasty rumors throughout the nation’s courts and whisper networks to torment Baroness Gilgane’s eldest daughter Alora Gilgane and socially isolate her, while trying to set up his son Misha Fendive to court her for eventual marriage. In particular the rumors are that Alora is a changeling, a sneaky fae creature that replaced the real Alora in childhood for an unknown, presumably nefarious purpose. Despite the relative ham-fistedness of his approach, Fendive’s schemes seem to be succeeding, though his own son has been reluctant to carry them through.

In many parts of the Old Forest, the nobility have found themselves in a difficult situation, caught between their actual queen, Astaria Gillian III, and the self-styled “Queen of the Old Forest”, Amelia Grace. The popularity of Amelia amongst the smallfolk, and the surprising power of the mercenary company, the Merry Foresters, who have thrown in their lot with hers, has made opposing this new queen a dicey proposition for the local nobility. Many of them have therefore found themselves in the unenviable position of paying taxes and tithes to both the true crown of Kendaria and the Merry Foresters when their brigandry demands the “Queen of the Old Forest’s tribute.”

Mercantile and Trade

Many of Kendaria’s internal roads between its towns - especially those networking the Old Forest - have fallen into a state of disrepair. This has proven a great challenge for many of the smaller hamlets that rely on inter-settlement trade to shore up their economies. Kendaria maintains land trade with its closest neighbors, Constel to the north and the city-state of Bridgemoor to the west. In Bridgemoor, Kendarian merchants also do business with Nalatheshi traders regularly. By sea, Kendaria keeps trade arrangements with Forsten and Derk up the northern coast and will occasionally trade with Nenva, although Queen Astaria believes that spies from Nenva were responsible for starting the civil war that so damaged her Country.

What popular support and enthusiasm there are for public works like better roads out in the Old Forest and in the badlands of the Southern Steppes are tempered by the country’s own relatively insular and centralized domains of power and wealth. Most of the trading happens in Greenvalley to the west or Dalewright to the east, with the majority of major trade in either major hub occurring as a fact of their position along the Queen’s Road or on the coast, respectively. The people of the Old Forest and the Southern Steppes may wish they could get more outside business flowing through, but their being out of the way in the first place just feeds the vicious cycle of their being ignored by the Dalewright bureaucracy as “economically inviable regions”.

Local Kendarians and outside traders alike sometimes call the Queen’s Road “the Only Road”, as a bit of wry humor about how difficult it is to reach Kendarian markets not on that one road.

Legal and Less-Than-Legal Trade

It is common knowledge amongst Kendarians, albeit only whispered by most, that if you’re looking for legal, above-board trade and goods, you go to (or source from) Greenvalley. The city’s location as the furthest west Kendarian settlement on the Queen’s Road, and the closest to Bridgemoor, means it gets ample imports from that City-State and, consequently, all of its trading partners. These are, broadly speaking, mostly regulated, taxed, and tariffed goods from all over which have been stamped, certified, and traded according to the international agreements between parties.

Meanwhile, fairly or otherwise, the city of Silverbranch has taken on the reputation of being the port of call for all things of dubious provenance and unsanctioned trade, an under-the-table paradise for everything, up to and including pirated goods from Nenva. While there are plenty of well-meaning local authorities who’ve tried to clean up this reputation over the years, few have succeeded for very long, in part because other officers of the local Baron or Duchy tend to undermine these efforts. It is widely believed (though rarely true) that anything shady you might be looking for can be found in Silverbranch.

Militant

In the wake of the civil war, Queen Astaria has begun to restructure Kendaria’s military: no longer do the gentry have the right to levy soldiers themselves, but instead they must entreat the monarchy to lend out some of its standing army in times of crisis. Queen Astaria’s top general, Ser Grendor, rigorously trains lieutenants to lead soldiers on both land and sea. While competent, the Kendarian national army is still quite small.

Pirates and Queens

Queen Astaria has been fighting against pirates from Nevna for almost the entire length of her rule. While Kendaria had a navy before Astaria took the throne, it was never so well-equipped, disciplined, or effective. Serious capital has been invested in developing newer and better ships, better-trained sailors and marines, and more powerful ballistae and arcane artillerists. The Kendarian navy is now, if not the envy of the world then at least a maritime power worthy of respect and a healthy dose of fear.

In Nevna Astaria’s reputation has developed throughout her rule, from that of an unworthy opponent, to a merciless butcher and villain, to an evil occult sorceress holding her nation in dark thrall. These opinions are particularly held amongst pirates, but also spread popularly through rumor and propaganda.

Mercenary Free Companies

One consequence of the Queen’s restructuring to a central standing national army, instead of the older model of nobles raising bannermen and peasant levies, is that many mercenary free companies came to see Kendaria as an untapped gold mine. They began to rush into the region and entered bidding war after bidding war (sometimes devolving into actual violence) for contracts with the local barons and dukes. With the Queen dissolving the nobility’s access to personal armies, some paranoid nobles took to keeping these mercenary companies on retainer, on-call but dispersed within their territories in small groups numbering no greater than nine to a group. This outwardly strange organizing behavior was kept to remain in adherence to the letter of the Queen’s new laws while oftentimes violating them in spirit.

As this practice became widespread, the Queen and her court bureaucrats worked on various ways to word their laws in order to further restrict the nobility, but every change they made left loopholes elsewhere and threatened to undermine the entire point of the effort. In the end, Queen Astaria decided to classify mercenary contracts from companies not chartered in Kendaria as a form of “import”, which levied additional tariffs against them. The mercenary companies, not eager to lose out on their income, passed these new fees onto their would-be clients, which did wonders for reducing the overall number of mercenaries being held in retainer by Kendarian nobles almost overnight.

Religious

As Kendarians tend to be superstitious, many are also very religious. Kendarian society relies heavily on the Old Forest for timber, fruits, and game, so Kendarian religious practices typically involve veneration of the Pashak Conclave of the Archfae and occasionally include prayers to the Celestial Council. On days or weeks of festivity, food offerings will often be burned in an effort to please the Pashak Conclave. As the Pashak represent vegetative life, the planting season in early spring is especially sacred to Kendarians.

Despite being a land broadly devoted to the Pashak Conclave, other fae conclaves have had and continue to have presences throughout Kendaria. Some ancient histories of the nation claim this land, replete as it is with crossings into the Everwild, was once a sort of “neutral territory” where the fae would come to discuss disputes between individuals, courts, or even conclaves. Whether or not this is actually true is difficult to ascertain, in part because different fae have both confirmed and denied this idea multiple times.

Kendaria’s people are hardy, superstitious, welcoming, and old-fashioned to the thinking of many who visit from elsewhere. Even their more metropolitan folk, those who live in the capital city of Dalewright or one of the other small cities, are said to have odd habits and eccentricities often attributed to their nation’s worship of the Archfae. “Those who live in fairy lands,” it is said, “lead fairy lives”.

The Twining Wreath

The Twining Wreath is a religious movement of mortal priests and druids devoted to the Archfae of the Pashak Conclave, in particular Amazonia, Augustan, Elpad, Junia, Relustin, Wylla, and Zenir. These seven fae lieges represent the most commonly worshiped divinities in Kendaria. It is taught that, by weaving their virtues and teachings together like branches twining into a wreath, one can live well and care best for others.

To call the Wreath a church or a religion in its own right is both inaccurate and not wholly unfair. Many of the priests who ascribe to the Wreath treat it and speak of it like it is a formal body, but there is no central authority or overt power structure. It is often contended that one cannot “be a member” of the Twining Wreath, but rather that the Twining Wreath is a path one can tread if one so chooses.

That said, it doesn’t stop people from thinking of the Twining Wreath and those who follow it as a single body of faith. And the Wreath certainly has its celebrities and evangelists, people of higher station whose adherence to its tenets and enthusiasm for its teachings have spread its influence throughout Kendaria.

Other Gods and Cults

Despite the primacy of the fae, many other faiths exist and are practiced and tolerated within Kendaria. The Celestial Council is the next most prominent after the Archfae, with Kendarians showing a particular fondness for both Niphtaral, whose teachings seem well reminiscent of many fae, and Judesaril, whose worship was most recently introduced through foreign sailors & soldiers hired to help develop the Kendarian navy. Tovare is also widely worshiped, being the chief deity of one of the more popular faiths in Ancerra.

Less tolerated are the various cults of Fiend Lords, Exiles, and eldritch entities that occasionally spring up throughout Kendaria. Of particular importance to the region are cults of Thaniakoth, which have sprung up repeatedly over the centuries of Kendaria’s existence. Most often, Thaniakoth’s worshipers disguise their cult behind names like the Languishing Lover - some have even pretended to be worshipers of Lucien as a guise for their activities.

Death and Burial

Different regions hold different sacred rites of burial, with the people of the Old Forest most often burying their dead in clearings, shrouded, but otherwise naked and without coffin or other container to cut them off from the natural world they are rejoining. A common element of belief amongst Kendarian fae-worship is that one’s body is only borrowed, made from materials which must be returned to Ancerra after the time of your life has come to an end.

Some regions practice sky burial, as well, though the practice is not widespread. The act of putting a body up high, on a stilted platform or atop a natural rise like a bare hill, for scavenger creatures to reclaim and make use of it. The body being returned to the natural world as the soul departs for the hereafter.

People in Dalewright more & more frequently practice cremation, as both a practical matter of space, and a way to keep a version of the older folk beliefs about death and burial within nature. The ashes of their dead are mixed with various alchemical solutions which turn them into vital fertilizer, which is then used to nourish plants both within the city and in special “grave-orchards” outside the city. This practice is widely promoted by the city’s priesthoods and land-owners alike, as the alchemical gravedust fertilizer has been found to be truly excellent for the quick maturation of trees— in particular apple trees.

Social

Whispered conspiracies aside, Kendarians are usually a hospitable lot. As most settlements in the nation are on the smaller side, each person in a community usually knows most of their neighbors. When someone’s roof leaks after a summer thunderstorm, the community will often take time out of their day to pitch in and fix up the unlucky family’s rooftop. Kendarians view strangers and travelers with a mix of suspicion and rapt fascination.

Kendarian life is mostly lived in pastoral landscapes in close contact with nature. The weather is usually temperate and clement, though heavy summer storms blowing in from the sea, and the occasional winter blizzard are far from uncommon. Kendarian people usually band together in times of hardship, doing their best to provide for one another when necessary, in the knowledge that others reciprocate when one’s own time of need comes.

Kendaria is mainly home to Humans, Elves, and Halflings, but Kleppin, Satyr, and Trollkin are all quite common as well. The metaphysical nearness of the land to the Everwilds and its long history with the fae means that creatures of fae heritage can be found anywhere and everywhere. Monsters are uncommon, outside of the Old Forest and parts of the Dreamhaze Mountains. People coming into contact with monstrous creatures usually do so in the darker, more haunted and inhospitable portions of the Old Forest like Wychwood, the Levidian Mists, or Bramblehollow.

Fun and Games

Being a people largely devoted to the Archfae, Kendarians are no strangers to whimsy. Games, song, and revelry are common throughout the nation, as they would be anywhere. Of particular popularity are card games making use of a deck of cards originally from Nevna called the Deck of Thirty-Seven, which has five suits of cards (Coins, Scrolls, Swords, Waves, and Whales) with seven cards in each suit (numbered 1-5, plus a Mage and a Captain face cards) and two Folly cards.

The Deck of Thirty-Seven was introduced to Kendaria through the Nevnan pirates with whom the nation has been at war for the past several decades. Due to its origin, some particularly highborn Kendarians see the cards and the games played with them as a sort of societal ill creeping into Kendaria. Scapegoated as a catalyst for moral decay, the cards have been banned in some places— particularly places frequented by courtiers and members of high society in Dalewright.

Kendaria, at the state level, observes four high holy days each year during the solstices and equinoxes, with festivals being held to celebrate each. Each of these days is surrounded on either side by an extra day of revelry— one to welcome the bid farewell to the old season, one to celebrate the change itself, and one to welcome the newly come season. These festivals are named simply, after the solstice or equinox in question: Springtide, Summertide, Autumtide, Wintertide.

Underworld

Organized crime exists within the capital city of Dalewright and a couple of the other major cities, but these are isolated gangs that stake their claim over a few alleyways and marketplaces. The smaller communities have low crime rates and harsh punishments for thieves and miscreants.

In Dalewright, the biggest “criminal organization” is actually the acquisitions network of catspaws employed by a small handful of faculty at the University of Augustan. This group, led by an individual only known as the Professor, seeks to acquire proscribed texts and forbidden grimoires from across the world, and does so with surprisingly ruthless tactics. They have, on more than one occasion, lured a foreign scholar in possession of a particularly rare text to Dalewright, only for that scholar to find themselves robbed or even mysteriously disappeared and their collections unexpectedly bequeathed to the University of Augustan in a previously unknown will.

Outside of Dalewright, the city regarded as having the biggest “crime problem” would be Silverbranch, though the criminality at play there tends to be the kind carried out by wealthy & powerful people. Issues with gangs and the like are uncommon there, but organized criminal enterprises engaging in illicit trade and smuggling are common. A particular focus of these activities is smuggling in illicit goods such as opium and other alchemical drugs from Nevna, or fencing stolen goods from throughout Kendaria.

Kendarian Side Quests

A Bit of a Bind

Queen Astaria Gilian III has need of some negotiators to solve an issue with one of her vassals. The Duchess Samanthe Gilard, whose territory encompasses a stretch of the southern Old Forest and some prairie land beside it called County Chimmond, had been withholding taxes and making it quite clear that she is doing so not because she does not have the money or wishes to keep it to herself, but as a form of protest over the Queen not doing anything to resolve the “Grace Crisis” in the Old Forest. That was enough of an annoyance in its own right, until the Duchess went and got herself captured by Merry Foresters.

The Duchess’s people have been harangued by Merry Foresters for weeks now, with the small town of Yewfield being the focus of their aggression. Despite being on the southern tip of the Old Forest, the Merry Foresters have become so emboldened of late as to have effectively taken over Yewfield, holding it in a state of martial law. Incensed by this hubris, and not inclined to pay tribute to the “Queen” of the Old Forest Amelia Grace, Duchess Gilard traveled to Yewfield in an attempt to frighten the mercenaries away with a show of noble authority. It did not go well.

Now the Duchess is being held prisoner in Yewfield’s smallish town hall by Doldram Brikk an Earth Elemental and captain of the Merry Foresters. His particular brigade is called Brikk’s Bricks. The Bricks have been treating the town as their own personal fiefdom, far enough away from Amelia Grace’s center of power to go largely unnoticed by her “court” and their ostensible leader, Tusken Sparrow.

Doldram Brikk is a bit dull-witted but exceptionally strong, and rose to his current position in the Foresters mostly through ruthlessness, and not so much cunning. He doesn’t really have much of a plan, other than to terrorize the countryside and use Yewfield’s town hall as his own personal manor (and the town’s people as punching bags) until he gets bored or the town runs out of mead and valuables for him to steal.

Resolving the Quest

This behavior by Doldram Brikk is brazen even by the standards of the Foresters, and would likely be regarded as - at the very least - a bit too openly aggressive by Tusken Sparrow. It could be seen as “bad optics”, possibly turning the people of the Old Forest against the Foresters in a much more active way if not handled correctly.

Yewfield’s location near the border of the Old Forest also puts it uncomfortably close to the reach of Kendaria’s military, but Queen Astaria is still wary of making too big of a move against the mercenaries while they still hold the favor of the so-called Queen of the Old Forest. In order to get her Duchess back and hopefully liberate Yewfield, Queen Astaria is willing to pay the heroes to negotiate with Brikk, or possibly even with Tusken Sparrow in order to rein in his mercenaries.

Currently, it’s assumed that Sparrow either doesn’t know his men have taken over an entire town, or is hoping the problem solves itself. If used cleverly, this could even form a wedge to help pry Amelia Grace apart from Tusken Sparrow by showing her that the supposed adventurous heroes she’s so fond of are actually brigands and crooks.

As a reward for returning the Duchess safely to her home manor, the Queen is prepared to pay the group 300 sc and they will gain +1 Goodwill with Dalewright. If they’re able to drive out Brikk’s Bricks, the bounty increases to 400 sc and the Goodwill bonus increases to +2. If instead they’re able to somehow parlay this situation into a way to sow distrust between Amelia and Tusken, Queen Astaria may be much more open-handed.

Foulweather Friends

A major bridge across the Amadan River which serves as the main traffic bridge connecting the north-eastern community of Pinion to the rest of Kendaria has been destroyed by an unseasonably vicious storm that blew in from the sea. The town’s main claim to fame and business is in the lightly magical tree sap they harvest from a small copse of Wychmarked trees (p. XX) that they’ve kept healthy and cultivated for generations.

The sap from the most recent harvest is just days from going bad and losing the magical properties which make it valuable in the first place, and carrying the last shipment down to Dalewright at the next river crossing several miles down the way in the wrong direction meant less of it got to market and the cost of doing business was quite a bit higher. If the sap is to be harvested and brought to market in a timely, affordable manner, the bridge needs to be repaired. Further, goods heading into Pinion have also been disrupted and made more expensive, so even if the wychsap business wasn’t suffering, the people of the town would need the bridge fixed either way.

This quest could be given to the group by either an Alchemist’s Guild in Dalewright or by someone representing the people of Pinion at large.

Resolving the Quest

The act of fixing the bridge is one of logistical issues and negotiating prowess. It’s a pretty big project that will require lumber to be sourced and craftspeople to be hired. There are plenty of people in need of some extra coin in Pinion itself, and those folks stand to benefit from the bridge being repaired anyway, so hiring workers from the town isn’t a bad idea.

For lumber, Pinion is located just south-east of Treegrave, where a number of lumber camps are currently operating. This quest can serve as a breadcrumb trail to get the heroes involved in the things happening in Treegrave, as they go there to find affordable, nearby wood to help fix the bridge.

Solving this problem could get them some money from a consortium of alchemists in Dalewright, and possibly a handful of free or steeply discounted potions. It will also earn the heroes +5 Goodwill with the town of Pinion, and can be used as entrée into things going on in Treegrave.

The Court of Hungry Eyes

Rumors have persisted for years now that Queen Astaria Gilian III engaged in a dark pact with some eldritch entity to aid her in swiftly defeating the warring vassals in the brief civil war of twelve years hence. It first circulated amongst courtiers who noticed odd changes in her behavior and a sudden outburst from the Queen at the victory feast following the conclusion of the civil war, and has spread and morphed over the years as different people have spread the rumor for their own purposes.

A small coterie of courtiers, headed by a bureaucrat named Kelmund Athora, have gathered to find the truth of the rumors - as discreetly as possible - once and for all. Most of them are not the Queen’s political enemies. Far from it, in fact. Their primary purpose for gathering is to pool resources and information in order to track down where these rumors started, determine their veracity (if any), and then find a way to quash them completely. Kelmund and his co-conspirators are moving as quietly as they are because, privately, they fear that it’s not impossible the rumors are true. And if they are, they don’t want to be found out before they can gather the evidence.

They seek to surreptitiously hire outsiders (such as the heroes) with some amount of social capital in Kendaria who can look into the rumors, starting at what they believe to be the source: a now retired scullery maid and cook named Aeva Callonas (Halfling, female, 70 years old). Callonas worked in the palace for thirty years helping to prepare, deliver, and clean up after meals and banquets, and is sometimes pointed to as the first person to report something odd or frightening happening with the Queen.

What Aeva saw, and has desperately tried to forget ever since, was the Queen in the stretched, distorted nightmare form she takes on when being controlled by the eldritch spirit of hunger that possesses her when she takes her meals, tearing into and messily devouring her dinner. The Queen was far less careful in those early days of her new affliction, and didn’t realize the door to her chamber was unlocked. Aeva, coming in to bring the Queen some more wine and take any unwanted dishes back to the kitchens, stumbled upon a horrifying scene she was never meant to see, and only by the fact of the Queen’s distraction in the moment did she escape being ripped to shreds and consumed herself.

At the same time as this investigation is going on, a cult of the Ghoul Stars, a constellation of eldritch significance related to hunger and famine, has been attracted to Dalewright by the occult energies of the Queen’s dark passenger. Every time she feeds, giving in to the abominable creature and allowing it to briefly possess her, the creature’s eldritch power pulses strongly for those attuned to that particular “flavor” of dark magic.

This cult is called the Court of Hungry Eyes, and are led by an elven man named Tenric Whitevine. They often masquerade as a charitable organization in large cities, seeking to feed the destitute, and use these services as a cover to kidnap and ritually devour people in a rite they call the Feast of the Stars. The Court of Hungry Eyes has come to Dalewright, and is in the process of tracking down the powerful source of eldritch hunger they feel pulsing through the ether every day when the Queen takes her meals. While they search, they’ve begun feeding the poor and preparing to perform their bloody sacrament.

The heroes are likely to cross paths with the Court of Hungry Eyes in the process of investigating the rumors because Aeva Callonas has just recently volunteered with the Court to help them feed people. She and a half-dozen other volunteers from the community staff the Court’s soup lines every week for the past two months since the cult’s leadership arrived in the city. The soup lines are located in a particularly impoverished part of Dalewright’s Thicket district, called Twyre Town (the cult operating in Twyre Town is the source of the DC 17 rumor in the Dalewright entry on page XX). While attempting to question Aeva about what she supposedly saw, they may learn about the Court of Hungry Eyes and her recent work with them.

Aeva is one of the Court’s marked victims, whom they intend to consume as a part of their Feast of the Stars ritual. They can tell she’s been touched by the magical hunger they’re looking for, but can’t figure out how, and will seek to interrogate her before sacrificing her to their nightmarish appetites. In a way, both the Court and the heroes are on the same hunt without even realizing it.

Resolving the Quest

There are a few ways this setup can play out: the group may end up stumbling upon the cult in the middle of their ritual interrogation of Aeva Callonas, stopping them from killing the halfling woman, destroying the cult, and thinking the whole thing more or less resolved. They might incorrectly assume this cult is in some way working for the Queen, and make spurious accusations to that end which could get them in trouble. They might also realize that this cult is not actually directly involved with whatever’s going on with the Queen, but is still somehow related.

For the bureaucrats and courtiers that hired them to look into this in the first place, it may be enough evidence to say that there was some kind of terrible eldritch cult eating people in Dalewright, and somehow rumors of this cult’s activities got mixed up with the Queen. To make this connection more strongly, one of the cultists could be a distant cousin of the Queen’s, or else one of the Queen’s more well-known detractors. In reality this would be nothing but a mere coincidence, but it could make for a sufficiently compelling explanation that Kelmund Athora and his compatriots may be content to stop looking into the matter.

They might, however, hear about Aeva’s testimony and what some surviving members of the cult might have to say about being attracted to Dalewright by the hunger pangs of a powerful eldritch abomination, and conclude that the Queen is very much afflicted by something dark and terrible. In any case, for “resolving” Kelmund’s inquiry the heroes will receive 700 sc and +2 Aristocratic Goodwill in Dalewright.

Dalewright

Read Aloud: A city of great and venerable beauty lies before you. One that is both built up - of stone and timber and brick, of smoke-curling chimneys and loudly rolling wagons - and yet somehow wholly in harmony with nature. A city at home, nestled amongst the green hills and sparse trees atop and around which it stands. The smells are those of a city, certainly, but there is a slight herbaceous sweetness to the air, like the city itself is a calming cup of tea ready to be enjoyed.

Atop the largest hill, dominating the rest of the vista, you see a palace as resplendent as any you might find in the world. Gleaming white stone blocks dangling with verdant green vines, gold-colored roof tiles and marble archways.

In the distance, above the din of the city and its people, the sea can be heard. And when the wind blows from the east, a slight salt tang can be tasted on the air.

Dalewright is the capital city of Kendaria, the home to the nation’s Queen Astaria Gilian III, and the seat of the nation’s culture and power. It is a bustling, metropolitan city by the sea, but one that is decidedly less “modern” in many ways than comparable cities across Ancerra. They have historically been slow to adopt new structures and trends favored elsewhere, with a slow walk towards mercantilism, and an aristocracy that always seems to be ten years behind the fashions of the rest of the world.

As with many things in Kendaria, Dalewright moves at its own pace.

When the heroes arrive in Dalewright, or if any wish to roll an INT check to see what sorts of things they might know about the city, you may use the following table to give them tidbits of lore, or as a guideline for the sorts of things they may know about the city based on their roll. Characters native to Dalewright should know at least the first two pieces of Lore, and at least the first Rumor below.

DC	Information
5	Dalewright is the capital city of Kendaria. It has the largest temple devoted to the Archfae in any city in Ancerra. It also has a major port.
12	Dalewright is home to five main districts— the Fane Gardens, Northquarter, Palace Hill, Sheryn’s Quay, and the Thicket. The districts have fairly distinct local cultures and milieus, but there are both residential and commercial aspects to each district (except Palace Hill, which is primarily governmental and civic in nature). For example, there is no single “market district”, even though the Thicket has the most marketplaces and vendors of various kinds.
17	The Fane Gardens has the fewest commercial areas, and is mostly given over to gardens and parks, as well as the sizable temple to the Archfae and its surrounding campus of smaller shrines. Northquarter is broadly considered to be the upper-class district, where wealthy merchants and some members of the aristocracy live in city manors. Palace Hill is the hill containing the palace and the surrounding land, and encompasses a number of civic buildings used by the Queen and her nobles and officers for various civic purposes. Sheryn’s Quay is a massive port on the eastern side of the city, along with a set of switchback ramps as wide as boulevards used to climb the short cliff drop from the sea up to the hills atop which the city stands. The Thicket is a sprawling central district that surrounds Palace hill in a semicircle. The vast majority of the city’s populace live in the Thicket, and it is host to the Thornmark, a snarl of markets and businesses connected by a zig-zagging sprawl of alleyways.
23	Dalewright is exceptionally old, dating back centuries, but civilization on this spot dates back even further. The first elements of a society to gather on this spot, on these hills, did so aeons ago. Remnants of ancient civilizations are sometimes found whenever foundations are dug for new construction, or when hurricanes blow in from the sea and destroy buildings and reveal long-buried secrets. Many of these older civilizations have been primarily druidic in nature, and so artifacts of primal magic or long-hidden underground sanctuaries are sometimes unexpectedly uncovered within the city itself.

The Rumors in the below table can be used as things the group overhears people saying about life in the city, such as in a pub in the Thicket or amongst dockworkers in Sheryn’s Quay. This information should come from making an AWR or CHA check, such as AWR/Eavesdropping or CHA/Gossiping.

DC	Information
12	Everyone in town is talking about the so-called “Queen of the Old Forest”, a little halfling girl less than ten years old who - people say - seems to be making a mockery of Queen Astaria Gilian III. Most people seem to be more bemused by this than actually offended.
17	People have been going missing in the Thicket recently, particularly poor and unhoused folks around the neighborhood called Twyre Town. Who or what is responsible for these disappearances is widely speculated about, from a cult of killers, to a sewer beast of some kind, to an unnamed aristocrat who - people hope - is just swooping in to give these people a second chance by hiring them as house staff.
23	A special preservative for healing potions that’s widely used by the city’s alchemists and chirurgeons is in short supply due to a bridge being destroyed in a particularly violent storm. This ingredient is harvested from special trees in a town called Pinion to the north-west of Dalewright. If the bridge could be repaired or more of the preservative could be sourced, local alchemists would be very grateful.

The Fane Gardens District

Read Aloud: The western district of the city is far greener than the rest, full of patches of well-tended grass and small parks full of trees, ponds, and other oases of natural beauty amidst the metropolitan sprawl and hubbub of the city. Dominating the district is a large marble temple wrapped in ivy and surrounded by large trees, with stone pathways connecting the building to a series of smaller shrines and cloisters that encircle it in a great campus of worship and reverence.

There are a few other buildings and small neighborhoods threading through and abutting this area, but the central feature of the district is definitely this temple and its network of altars and sanctuaries. A large solar calendar - an obelisk of white stone and a series of graven flagstones surrounding it - keeps the hour and date. It stands before the steps to the main temple like a sentinel, allowing temple visitors to track the time and bear witness to the sun’s daily march through the sky.

Everywhere is the quiet burbling of a stream, as a cleverly-constructed brook weaves serpentine through almost the entire district. It’s as if you are hearing the sound of the earth’s own blood rushing through its veins.

The Fane Gardens is the home of the great Temple to the Archfae. It is also a public work of sorts: a fastidiously kept parks district with few homes and businesses that is mostly dominated by displays of verdant splendor and subtle landscape engineering designed to seem as natural as possible. The local priests and druids tend to the district and keep it looking “presentable”, a tamed facsimile of the natural world that some followers of the green faiths find distasteful if not outright offensive in its falseness and artificiality.

Some NPCs the characters might come across in the Fane Gardens, or have to visit in the course of other business include the following.

Dylessa of Summer Rains, the Archdruid Apparent. There has not been an Archdruid in primacy over the temple of the Fane Gardens for at least a decade, since the last one (named Guftan) disappeared while visiting the Dreamhaze Mountains. Dylessa is an elven druid who has worked in the Fane Gardens temple for almost a century, and has taken on many of the Archdruid’s duties and responsibilities. Normally the local druids of the temple would hold a communion with the Archfae and have them bless a new Archdruid, but the fae refuse to do so, stating that Guftan is still alive and has not relinquished his station. She uses the stats of a Druid (Greater) in the Creature Compendium.

The Red Vohs, the District Mascot. The Red Vohs is a massive red and black fox about the size of a pony. He is a creature of unusual intelligence, size, and power. He is at least a century old, but still looks, moves, and acts with grace and youthful vigor. The Red Vohs is believed by many to be some sort of fae entity, and though he is infused with primal magic, he is still very much just an animal. His original “owner”, if such a word can be ascribed, was an Archdruid named Cobelle, who has been dead for at least fifty years. The Red Vohs mostly survives on offerings left by priests and visitors to the temple, and spends most of its time lounging in the grass or wandering around the little copse of trees near the temple. He uses the stats of a Lion in the Creature Compendium.

High Sacrificer Marqai, Chief Temple Guardian. The Sacrificers serve many roles in and around the great temple. Most notably, as their name suggests, they are responsible for making regular sacrifices to the Archfae, to various gods, and occasionally to spirits of nature. This ceremonial role is backed up by a more practical one, as the guardians and de facto law enforcement of the Fane Gardens district. Marqai is a rather imposing red-scaled Dragonfolk who carries a large sword-sized sickle plated in alchemical gold. She is actually quite jovial and friendly, but her appearance in ominous red robes with a giant sacrificial blade slung at her hip makes many people quite nervous. She uses the stats of a Knight Errant in the Creature Compendium, but without the Lance ability (instead gaining the Fire Breath ability of the Dragonfolk, inflicting 4d6 damage instead of 2d6).

Warden Gwilym, Cantankerous Groundskeeper. Often overlooked, old Gwilym is a halfling arborist and groundskeeper who does much of the work of tending to the Fane Gardens. He is old, but not elderly, and is surprisingly strong— as evinced by especially hot days which see him going shirtless and revealing his remarkably muscular physique. Warden Gwilym is grumpy and ill-mannered, but seems to know about just about everything that goes on in the great temple and the greater portion of the district. If he can be plied with bribes of ale and greasy food, he might be willing to share some of what he has seen and heard.

The Northquarter

Read Aloud: The northern district of the city is full of old-money houses, large, individual manors surrounded by wrought-iron fences and small gardens, in which the city’s wealthy and visiting mobility while away their days in comfort and luxury. It is home to theaters, a museum, fine restaurants and expensive inns. Fine clothiers, master artisan metalsmiths, expensive bookstores; everything a person with more money than they can reasonably spend in a lifetime could possibly need.  

The venerable old marble and ivy-wrapped stone buildings of the University of Augustan can also be found here. People walk the street in fine apparel or ride by on immaculately groomed steeds, the air in many places is pleasantly fragrant by, presumably, some unseen magical means - as if the whole district were a florist’s shop. By the looks of things, it is a seat of culture, wealth, and power.

The Northquarter district is home to the wealthy and powerful who aren't quite wealthy and powerful enough to warrant guest quarters in the Palace. It is a place where only the finest things are for sale, and everything is about three times more expensive than it probably should be. It is also historically significant, bearing many of the oldest still standing buildings in the city of Dalewright.

The city’s only real “magic shop”, or store dealing in enchanted objects, is located here. It is called Trelian’s Gallery of Trifles, owned and operated by a Satyr gentleman named Trelian Elderhoof (who uses the Lesser Mage stats in CC chapter 4). A handful of common and uncommon items are available here at any point in time, but the items are both very expensive and unusual. He will never, for example, have a magicked weapon or suit of armor appropriate to the heroes’ use (though there may occasionally be a bit of magical clothing like a Lucky Cutoff Vest or a lesser magicked robe), instead carrying stranger, less immediately “practical” curios.

Item	Description	Rarity	Cost
Amulet of Thirst	Stores the effect of a potion.	Common	500 sc
Brewer's Cask	Magically ages liquids placed within.	Common	425 sc
Crane Paper	Flies to a target to deliver a message.	Common	225 sc (per sheet)
Lesser Potion of the Fundemental	Restores 1d4+2 Spell Points.	Uncommon	650 sc
Masquerade Mirror	Change your appearance for 4 hours.	Uncommon	1,300 sc
Messenger Bracelets (1 pair)	Whisper short messages between wearers.	Uncommon	950 sc
Sea Legs	Immunity to Shaken & Sickened; remain grounded in a particular spot.	Uncommon	1,250 sc

With the exception of the Lesser Potion of the Fundamental, all of the above items can be found in the Mythcrafter’s Guide, starting on page 71.

The Northquarter is home to the University of Augustan, which has an impressive library of ancient historical texts. The library is not generally open to the public, but exceptions can be made for people with the right connections. The library would be an ideal place to research aspects of Kendaria’s past, the nobility, the fae, or the history of the Old Forest.

The University’s library is staffed by several librarians, but the Chief Librarian is a dour dwarven man named Kalder. Kalder is fiercely protective of his library, but is not unreasonable or vindictive. He does not abide people making too much noise, wasting his time, or misusing library resources. He deals with thieves especially harshly. Kalder uses the Lesser Mage stats in the Creature Compendium, but gains +8 to any Knowledge-based skill check if he is in his library.

Palace Hill

Read Aloud: A way’s east of the center of the sprawl is the biggest hill in the city. Surrounding it is a veritable army of impressive civic structures made of finely hewn stone with gold accents and lively green vines making everything look just that little bit more alive. Atop the hill is the palace, The most grandiose structure in all of Dalewright. From its gleaming towers hang long green and gold banners.

Buzzing all about this district are people of all social strata going about the various tasks which keep Kendaria, as a whole, running. Laborers ferrying supplies & construction materials from place to place, ministers and bureaucrats having lively debates as they stride from one meeting to the next, soldiers drilling in their barracks yards. The whole place has an air of purpose to it, and it is difficult at first glance to tell what is performance and what is practical necessity.

Palace Hill is the center of Dalewright’s and Kendaria’s society, though not necessarily its daily life. It is where the Queen’s palace is located, as well as most of the civic buildings for the city itself and political apparatus of the state. If the heroes have a meeting with an important person in Dalewright, it is very likely that meeting will happen somewhere in Palace Hill.

The district is shaped like a large circle, built on and around the hill from which it gets its name. The actual palace is located in the center, and a series of stone pathways radiate out in all directions from there, down to the lower buildings. The tiers of government in Kendaria are visually represented to the public both by the size and splendor of the buildings which house them, and by the physical location of those buildings— with the lowest ministries and Dalewright civic buildings being the smallest and located in the valley surrounding the hill, the higher bureaucratic offices and state shrines being moderately sized and located on the incline of the hill, and the palace and its outbuildings being the most spectacular and sitting atop the hill.

The Dalewatch is also headquartered in Palace Hill. They are a loosely-organized enforcement organization that is technically subordinate to the Royal Guard, the organization of bodyguards and knights that serve to protect the Queen and her family. The Dalewatch is a city-wide police force which serves the Magistrate’s Court (also known as the Lower Court). This means that their primary duties are to arrest people suspected of crimes, and to ensure people due to appear before the Lower Court do so, but their practical duties, jurisdiction, and powers have slowly ballooned over the years.

Some NPCs the characters may interact with in the Palace Hill district, other than obvious ones like the Queen and any ministers or bureaucrats, include the following.

Commander Avery Malleus, Commander of the Royal Guard and the Dalewatch. Avery is a middle-aged human woman with strong, statuesque features, dark skin, and a large mane of cloudy black hair shot through with streaks of white. She is popular with her troops and a frequent guest to court parties— during which she is most often technically still working. She uses the Paladin stats from the Creature Compendium.

Palace Minister Verisa, Master of Palace Affairs. When scheduling meetings with important people or asking for access to places that are normally off limits, the heroes may run across Palace Minister Verisa, a Hondu woman with short, stubby legs and arms, a cream and red-colored coat of fur, and long pointy ears that mostly project from either side of her head, but stick straight up when she’s alarmed or concerned about something. Verisa is a bit scatterbrained, but knows this about herself, so she keeps both a secretary (a young halfling man named Gedward) and a stack of notes on her at all times. She manages meetings, access to important people & places within the palace, and event planning, and is often called the “second-busiest woman in Dalewright”.

Tom Graey, the Bored Courtier. Tom is a Kettek noble of House Graey, an aristocratic family with deep ties to the Gilian royal family dating back centuries. Tom is the fifth child of his family overall, and the third son, at that, so he is mostly ignored by his family in hopes that he neither embarasses them too much or manages to somehow upstage his siblings. As such, he spends most of his time wandering around Palace Hill looking for low-grade trouble to get into. He is an avid busybody, spreading gossip and rumors, but also finding ways to annoy people (especially Verisia) just enough to get a rise out of them, but not so much that there are meaningful repercussions for his actions. He uses the Courtier stats from the Creature Compendium.

Sheryn’s Quay

Read Aloud: A wide series of docks and boardwalks and beachfront buildings stretching about three quarters of a mile down the sandy coast, the Quay before you is impressively massive. The way back up to the rest of the city is fairly steep, so in order to facilitate easy transport from the docks to the city proper, a series of switchback ramps twenty feet wide were made. These walkways themselves now host hundreds of stalls and businesses, in addition to all the buildings, shacks, warehouses, and bazaars set up along the lower boardwalks.

The sea smell is strong, and the scents of fish, tar, and salt are unavoidable. Seabirds’ lilting keens can be heard throughout the Quay, along with the quiet dong of ship’s bells and the quiet creaking of timbers and rustling of furled sails as the docked vessels bob gently up and down.

Sheryn’s Quay is named for the Archfae Sheryn of the Ashyidir Conclave, whom it is said visited this very beach millennia ago and bid the people living here at the time to build a dock capable of housing her ship the Gyremaw. Whether or not Sheryn’s Quay could actually provide berth to the Gyremaw is anyone’s guess, but the dock is at least both massive and impressive by mortal standards.

Hundreds of houses of ill repute (“sailors’ hostels”), pubs, fishmongers, pawnbrokers, blacksmiths, and other traders and tradesfolk have shops along Sheryn’s Quay. The place is alive with business, both illicit and otherwise, at all hours of the day and night.

Some NPCs the heroes might come across if they find themselves looking for passage or doing business in the Quay include the following.

The Drowned Voice, Speaker of Sheryn. The Drowned Voice is (or at least appears to be) an elven woman of uncertain heritage and past, with skin the pallid blueish color of a waterlogged corpse. She is a regular around the Quay, emerging from the sea in the morning and bizarrely wading back into it and disappearing come nightfall. While it is widely suspected, no one knows for certain that she is in fact an Undead. She is a devoted priestess of Sheryn the Archfae of stormy seas and the rage of the waves, who spends her days attempting to give advice and augur fates for people who mostly ignore or even flee from her. Most regulars around the Quay know she’s mostly harmless, and she even makes use of her limited divine magics to heal people injured in accidents around the docks occasionally. She uses the War Priest stats from the Creature Compendium.

Quaymaster Evidelis, the Surly Dockmaster. Evidelis is a Fiendblood of Cholereth heritage, with black eyes, deep blue skin, and a set of broken curving horns on his head. He has been in charge of the Quay for at least a decade now, being hand-picked by his predecessor despite many people - Evidelis included - not thinking he would be right for the job. They were all wrong, as it turns out, as the Quay has not run half as smoothly as it has under his leadership for much of the preceding quarter century. He uses the Mob Boss stats from the Creature Compendium.

Sawtooth Shoretide, the Blind Vodyanoy. Shoretide, also called Sawtooth, is a blind Vodyanoy Shaman who lives in the Quay and regularly patronizes the fishmonger stalls searching for “the diamond of pearls of fish heads”. Most people take this to mean something like “a really good fish head”; what qualifies a fish head as being especially good is unclear. While unusual to see Vodyanoy in most cities, and widely considered monsters by most folk, Shoretide is something of an icon around the Quay. They are both beloved and defended by the locals when someone new comes to town and reacts badly to the sight of a Vodyanoy walking about the docks.

Naval Gazing

As the Kendarian Navy has expanded, they have had to make use of more and more of the Quay, until the current day in which they use a solid half of the available docks at any given time, reserving them for their private use even when not every dock is or will soon be occupied. Meanwhile, civilian captains have chafed at the Quay’s long wait times to get into port caused by the navy’s use of so many docks. As lucrative and relatively safe as Kendarian waters can be for many captains, some have threatened to rethink their trade routes altogether if something is not done about congestion at Sheryn’s Quay.

A proper naval yard a few miles down the coast has been under construction for some time, but a series of failures related to construction, material procurement, and lumber availability have stalled the project. The withheld and diminished tax revenue from the ongoing issues with Amelia Grace in the Old Forest, and lumber shipments from Treegrave being attacked by druids of the Circle of Bittervine have both contributed to the delay of this project.

The Thicket

Read Aloud: You stand amongst a tangled sprawl of buildings from more modern-looking brick and stone street houses to stacked, rickety-looking wooden structures that seem to almost creak in the wind. All around you streets twist and turn, people flood past you in busy shoals of movement, children run past laughing and playing, and horses pull overloaded carts through narrow thoroughfares. This place is full of life and of living, and while many of the people look impoverished and the buildings look in poor repair, it’s clear that both are doing the best they can.

In the distance, the great manors of Northquarter and the ivory towers of Palace Hill loom large, visible from almost every angle. You are in the valley between the hills of Dalewright, and there’s nowhere to look that doesn’t impress upon you the great wealth of the city’s elite.

The Thicket is where the vast majority of Dalewright’s populace lives. In terms of total area, it is about the same size as the Northquarter, but with a population density of around twenty times Northquarter’s. People of all means from the destitute to middle-class artisans and merchants live in the Thicket, and a plurality of the city’s shopping and mercantile offerings are located here.

The heroes are likely to go to the Thicket for any number of reasons, from purchasing supplies, to finding a place to spend the evening, to just getting around the town. The Thicket is shaped such that it wraps around most of Palace Hill, sort of filling in the gaps between the other districts. This means that in order to get from anywhere to anywhere in Dalewright, you usually have to travel through the Thicket.

Despite its reputation with the wealthy of the Northquarter, the Thicket is mostly perfectly safe. Or has been until recently. A cult called the Court of Hungry Eyes has come to visit Dalewright (see page XX for the quest related to this cult), and has been abducting and cannibalizing people from the neighborhood, while outwardly presenting itself as a charitable organization devoted to feeding the poor. Other than outside dangers like that, the Thicket is mostly peopled with normal people doing what they can to survive in the city. Most people in the Thicket would tell you you are more likely to get robbed in the Northquarter and more likely to get stabbed in Sheryn’s Quay.

Some NPCs the heroes may come into contact with in the Thicket while they move about the city include the following.

Doctor Segen, the Family Doctor. Doctor Emilia Segen is a Halfling-born Raedeen with a fondness for smoking a pipe and a habit of snooping into other people’s business. She runs a small clinic in the Thicket in a neighborhood called Stachel Street, and is widely known as someone willing to work for little or nothing— depending on how much you can afford to pay her. She uses the Medic stats in the Creature Compendium, except her Medicine bonus is +9, her Alchemy bonus is +5, and she has the following action:

Medic. Doctor Segen heals a Bloodied creature within 5ft, allowing them to regain 1d6 HP. Creatures can only benefit from this action 1/Rest.

Doctor Segen also brews and sells Healing Vials for 50 sc (or 60 sc if the customer looks like they might be able to afford it). She has three such vials available at any point in time, but if the group buys all of them from her, she’ll need a couple days to restock.

Hilde Breely, the Hound Alley Bouncer. Hilde is a young human woman and the de facto leader of the Bouncers, a volunteer community defense group that settles disputes, protects their neighborhood, and investigates crimes. There is not much in the way of justice in the Thicket, and the courts work too slowly and have little or no time to handle the affairs of peasants. The Bouncers do what they can in Hound Alley and the surrounding neighborhoods to help people out, and chase off threats to the area. Officially, the Bouncers are labeled as a criminal organization, but practically speaking the Dalewatch tends to avoid the inner Thicket, where Hound Alley is located. Hilde uses the Mob Boss stats in the Creature Compendium, except that her HP is 60, and the Protect Me! reaction is replaced with the following reaction:

Not a Chance! (1/Turn). If one of Hilde’s allies within 5ft of her is damaged, she can redirect that damage to herself.

Olvin Kesh, the Storied Innkeeper. Olvin is a late middle-aged Kleppin (around 40 years old) with mouse-like features who spent the better part of the last fifteen years as an adventurer before settling down with the surprising amount of money he was able to save up. He bought an inn in the Thicket that he renamed the Storied Storeys and does everything he can to specifically cater to adventurer clientele. Olvin uses the stats of the Tomb Raider in the Creature Compendium. He is friendly and affable, but has a tendency to carry on in his tales. He is very much the type of person that everything someone says or does seems to remind him of a time from his past when…

Dustdale

Read Aloud: A half-hour’s journey from Bridgemoor, the Kendarian village of Dustdale clings to an appropriately named dusty fold between a couple stony, shrubby hills. It has only one major road, with a handful of public buildings forming a town square and a smattering of townhomes arranged in a jumble around these buildings. Shockingly, the village is so small that there isn’t even an overnight inn, although a small taproom still serves as a stage for social mixing. There is no town fence or wall to speak of, but on either side of the village, the main road has a clump of dark, thorny brambles that look like a poor effort at growing a hedge wall.

If the heroes have been to the florens’ grove, they can immediately recognize these brambles as the same kind of corrupted vegetation that they encountered there. Each entrance to the village is guarded by one Bloodoak Brambles.

If they ask around town, they can interact with the following NPCs. Without too much difficulty, they can determine that the apothecary is up to shady business and is responsible for creating the brambles outside town.

Remb, the Village Constable. The only guard in the village is an elderly trollkin named Remb. He is quite friendly, but not particularly cunning. If he feels that he or his friends have been insulted by strangers, he demands that the strangers leave the town. He has the stats of a Guard (CC p. 222).

Widget, Baron of Dustdale. A ridiculously self-important halfling who is at most eighteen years old, Widget demands to be called “Baron Widget of Dustdale” every time he is spoken to. Failure to comply will result in him calling for Remb to throw the offender out of town. In private, Widget knows nothing of running a town, even one this small, and takes directions from his mother, the barkeep. He has the stats of a Merchant (CC p. 229).

Leda, the Apothecary. Leda is an older human skilled in herbalism and horticulture. She dodges questions about her personal life, and if confronted over growing the corrupted plants, she will try to flee. She has the stats of an Underbridge Cultist.

If the party searches Leda’s herbal shop, they can roll an INT or AWR check and add any relevant skill. On a roll of 13 or higher, they find a strange coin that is not any recognizable currency. It is a medallion that seems to be made of solid gold. It has a skull and scythe on one side and an indecipherable glyph on the other. On a roll of 19 or higher, they also find the remains of a letter in her fireplace. It is burned beyond legibility, and the broken wax seal has melted, but the seal’s wax is a striking pitch black. This is an Underbridge Medallion, which may help the heroes in any future dealings with the Underbridge Cult. Dan, the General Store Owner. A middle-aged human who doesn’t like to talk about his past, Dan runs the general store in Dustdale. Any mundane items can be found here, though he has no weapons or armor in stock. If pressed about his past, Dan will reveal that he is a failed adventurer: he and his twin brother set out to become heroes, but his brother died to a dire chicken, and Dan has since resigned himself to this quiet life. He has the stats of a Merchant (CC p. 229).

Dorta, the Barkeep. A matronly halfling woman who runs a small and pleasant taproom, Dorta has no aspirations in life other than getting her son to become a competent leader. She knows all the most current gossip out of Dustdale’s population of almost one hundred inhabitants. She has the stats of a Noble (CC p. 231).

Grace Grove

Read Aloud: A lively beat of drums and ring of song can be heard echoing through the forest. Below you in a wooded valley and snaking up the surrounding hills from there is a small town built at two separate levels of elevation. First there are ground-level stilted buildings with raised plankways over the gnarled roots that cover the entire forest floor of this area. Then, above these, are buildings built into the trees, either cleverly supported and perched, or else somehow carved directly into the larger trees in a way which seems to have not killed the tree. These higher structures are connected by a criss-crossing web of rope bridges and ziplines.

While some people below seem to be going about the normal business of daily life and work, many more seem to be lost in revelry as if the city were celebrating some festival day. You can tell by the weary expression on certain people’s faces as they try to maneuver around the revelers, however, that it seems this party has likely been going on for quite some time.

Grace Grove is a newer town being built atop and around an older settlement in the heart of the Old Forest. That settlement’s original name, Foresthart, is seldom used these days, as it greatly appeases the ego of the new ruler, Amelia Grace, to have the town named after her. Amelia is a young halfling child around eight years old who has, through a confluence of luck, political will, and the enthusiastic support of many hangers on who find her politically expedient, found herself in a position of significant power.

She calls herself the Queen of the Old Forest, and is broadly popular with many of the people who live there. She lives in a large palace she just calls the Tree Fort, which sits on a hill overlooking the valley bowl that contains the majority of Grace Grove, which is built just as the rest of the city is, cleverly making use of and blending in with the trees all around it. Parts of the Tree Fort are suspended in the trees around it, and the four turrets making up the corners of its outer walls are actually carved into still-living trees by means of primal magics.

Amelia has managed so far to rule with an unexpected efficacy and efficiency, as her proclamations frequently fall into the category of “the wisdom of children”. She sees most issues with little or no nuance, which means she’s able to find direct, immediate solutions to problems brought before her, even if those solutions are wildly out of step with the status quo or matters of taste. This has made her popular with many of the smallfolk, who are typically exhausted by the machinations and corrupt dealings of the aristocracy. It has also, however, caused no end of havoc in matters of coin, legal precedent, and the fair application of justice.

Above all else, Amelia Grace loves stories of excitement and adventure, and is enraptured by tales of derring do and the lives of adventurers. The commander of a mercenary company called the Merry Foresters, a charming trollkin named Tusken Sparrow, has used this predilection of hers to his advantage, regaling her with tales of his and his company’s exploits and behaving in obsequious servility around her, tending to her every whim. This in turn has provided Sparrow’s Merry Foresters with an unprecedented degree of power and backing, which they use to engage in all manner of brigandry and thuggery all throughout the Old Forest.

Any who speak out against the Foresters are intimidated into silence, killed, or else brought before Amelia, who is told only a twisted version of the truth by Tusken Sparrow which paints the detractor as a jealous or deceitful person looking to undermine Amelia’s authority. Such people are usually jailed or exiled into Bramblehollow or the Wychwood, at which point they tend to meet an untimely demise without further intervention by the Foresters being necessary.

The barons, baronesses, dukes, and duchesses of regions located in and around the Old Forest find this whole situation to be intolerable, but the threat of violence from the Merry Foresters is enough to keep many of them paying taxes to both Queen Astaria and “Queen” Amelia.

Grace Grove is full of people enamored with Amelia Grace - Queen Amelia Grace, as she will insist upon being called - but it also harbors some (increasingly quieted) dissenting voices as well. Some people who lived in the town when it was called Foresthart find the whole affair tiresome and, over time, legitimately terrifying. Even some people who appreciated Queen Amelia’s rule and the shake-up it brought to local politics at first have come to view Tusken Sparrow and his position of influence with her as a major threat to their livelihoods and personal safety. Such people tend to fear for the future, as their new Queen’s whimsy and caprice are that of a child, and none know what the next new day will bring.

Areas of Grace Grove

Grace Grove is built into a valley bowl surrounded by hills on three sides - north, south, and west - while the eastern side is home to a small lake. The town is split into three main districts, with the Tree Fort, Amelia Grace’s palace, as the fourth major area of the town.

Lakeharbor

Lakeharbor is the eastern edge of Grace Grove which houses the small lake, called Lake Arcadio. Lakeharbor is mostly home to the docks for the fishing boats which ply the lake, and businesses which supply those farmers or from which they sell their catch. There are a few homes and non-fishing-related businesses in the area, but not many.

Since Lake Arcadio is rather long (from west to east) and its banks are rooty silt that are very hard to travel with mounts or carts, Lakeharbor is also home to a large flat barge which is used to ferry passengers and carts from one side of the lake to the other. The barge is run by a large wooden golem named Bolebranch, who has lived in the area for at least three hundred years. He has no opinion of Amelia or the current happenings in the town and still calls it Foresthart, but is still careful to refer to her as “Queen Amelia”, as he endeavors to find the path of least resistance in all things.

The Low Planks

The Low Planks is the central portion of town which encompasses most of Grace Grove’s neighborhoods and the majority of its residents. It is a large sprawl of homes and businesses which spirals out from the center of the valley. Almost everything in the Low Planks is connected via wooden plankways which create an artificially flat surface on which to walk, raised above the tangled snarl of tree roots which otherwise cover the entirety of the valley floor.

The Low Planks is home to many businesses and individuals the heroes are likely to interact with, such as:

Melio Flit, a squirrel-like kleppin who owns the Magpie Messenger, a courier business which moves parcels and messages around town and to nearby towns. Many of Flit’s couriers have been tempted into joining the Merry Foresters lately, so he’s currently understaffed and overworked.

Coros, a Dreamer raedeen born to elven parents. Coros is a scout and forest guide who also owns a hunting supplies shop called the Blacktail Bowyer which sells mostly ranged weapons, camping equipment, dried meats from his hunts, and so on. Coros detests the Merry Foresters, but generally approves of Queen Amelia and her rule of the Old Forest. He has come to know the Merry Foresters’ routes, behaviors, and personalities fairly well, and could be hired to help the heroes sneak past them through the forest. He may be recommended to the heroes by others who dislike Tusken Sparrow’s mercenaries. He uses the stats of an Elf Archer (CC, p. 233), but with the addition of a +6 bonus to Nature and Sneaking. Coros will not put himself in significant danger (even for paying customers) but may help in battle if he can find a decent hiding spot from which to fire arrows unseen.

Hemda Omyashter, a bhrunai witch who has served as one of the town’s main healers and magical experts for decades. Her hut is rather large and ramshackle, actually being composed of a single primary, sturdily-built building and half a dozen haphazard additions Hemda made herself over the years. She is strongly in favor of Amelia Grace’s rule, and seems to be even more enamored of Tusken Sparrow and his mercenaries than the young Queen is, flirting with most of the Foresters she meets either in the course of her daily business or while out on the plankways.

The High Hills

The High Hills are the western and southern reaches of the town which, as the name implies, mostly comprise the hills overlooking the valley of the town. Even before Amelia Grace came to power in the town, these were mostly the more well-off individuals like wealthy merchants, master-level artisans in local guilds, and people involved in local politics. As a district mainly comprising the “old guard” which Amelia’s rule has significantly disrupted, many of the people in the High Hills are greatly resentful of her hold over the town.

Many of these people were indeed corrupt or selfish, the causes of a good deal of exploitation and misery throughout Foresthart over the years, and long overdue for some comeuppance. But just as many were no villains, just people who had spent their lives in the forest and lucked into or worked their way up to living in the “richer” part of town. Once it became clear to Amelia that the main local opponents to her rule lived in the High Hills, she asked Tusken Sparrow if he wouldn’t mind “keeping an eye on them to make sure they’re not up to anything funny”.

The Merry Foresters have taken to this assignment with great aplomb, choosing to interpret the Queen of the Old Forest’s command as orders for them to post up in the manor houses and treetop mansions of the district’s nicest homes. Many High Hills residents have therefore been forced to either vacate their homes or else try to live alongside the mercenary captains that make up the Foresters’ leadership. Most attempts to protest this state of affairs have been met with mockery or a twisting of their words at court, with the plaintiff being sent away with nothing but a bruised ego.

Characters that the heroes might encounter in the High Hills include the following:

Atherton Shneebly, a halfling nobleman who once served as the seneschal to the area’s previous baron. He is used to being unctuous and sycophantic, which has allowed him to escape outright exile, but made his life in the town fairly miserable as he gets repeatedly taken advantage of by the Merry Foresters. Atherton’s mansion has been taken over by a squad of higher-ranking Foresters whom he has tried his best to live alongside amicably, but who have driven the poor man to the brink of a nervous breakdown with their uncouth behavior and unsanitary habits. He has the stats of a Noble (CC, p. 231).

Captain Jeryan Ashwood, a human captain of the Merry Foresters who serves as one of Tusken Sparrow’s closest lieutenants. Jeryan is a middle-aged man who has lived in the Old Forest his whole life and taken great personal satisfaction in getting an opportunity to put a proverbial finger in the eye of people who have looked down on him during that time. He is vindictive and spiteful, but also a strong fighter and accomplished woodsman. He uses the stats of a Ranger (CC, p. 233). He carries a Yarrow Sparrow (CC, p. 195) cruelly trapped in a specially made cage which allows him to forcibly extract its healing balm up to 3/Rest.

Borog Thistlebark, a trollkin scholar who is distantly related to Tusken Sparrow, a second cousin on his mother’s side to the commander of the Merry Foresters. Borog used to be the chief scrollkeeper at the Vellum Hive, a library that occupies a building which was once an old monastery in the woods which was here before the town ever began to form. The Hive is shut and locked, with the keys to get in being kept by several of Captain Ashwood’s men. Tusken Sparrow deemed the archive a potential risk to Amelia Grace’s rule, until such time as a thorough survey of its contents could be done. This was partially out of a fear of genealogical information that might be housed within, and partially in fear of any magical resources (like spell scrolls) that might be stored within and could be used by hypothetical rebellious elements in the city. He uses the stats of a Trollkin Lorist (CC, p. 236), and possesses the Awakened Spellbook, Spell Scribe, and Spell Scribe II talents (CR, p. 113). His spellbook is a large floating scroll he has named Byblos, and he speaks to it frequently as if it were an old and trusted friend.

Greenvalley

Read Aloud: Emerging from around an obscuring crag of the mountains is the sight of a city partially built into and along the high rocks, a trail of homes and buildings strewn down the mountainside like a handful of scattered seeds. Massive, gorgeously ornamented walls surround all accessible points of entry, while the rockier elements of the mountainside form a natural barrier to protect the rest. A wide and well-tended road with long stretches of stone easing the path cuts along and through the city.

The buildings of the city are mostly dominated by large structures made of white stone and pale timbers, capped with forest green roof tiles. Life and motion are everywhere apparent, with the sounds and smells of city living surrounding you like a warm - if somewhat cloying - embrace after spending so long on the road.

Greenvalley is one of the larger cities in Kendaria, second only to Dalewright itself in terms of both economic power and population. The city is partially built onto and into the mountains on which it sits, and uses the craggy topography and natural cliffs to its defensive advantage. The Queen’s Road cuts through part of Greenvalley, and the city’s position between Dalewright and Bridgemoor means that it serves as the hub of westward trade for Kendaria.

The city is ruled by the Sutian family, a powerful and widely respected dynasty of nobles who have served as the region’s Barony for generations. The current ruler, Baron Desmond Sutian, is a human man who has cultivated a persona as a stern but fair man with a strong personal presence and air of authority. He is often upheld both within Greenvalley and beyond as an example of leadership and even-handed treatment of smallfolk and his fellow aristocrats alike— an even-handedness that is occasionally to the annoyance of one or both parties in any given dispute he seeks to mediate.

The rest of the Sutian family are a varied bunch with differing levels of involvement and interest in politics, trade, and making use of their family’s influence & resources for their own projects or livelihoods. Lisa Sutian is Desmond’s wife, the Baroness of Greenvalley, and the mother of his four children: Winnifred, Blaise, Melody, and Dandelion, from eldest to youngest. Brimmel Rockwall is the husband of Elarion Sutian - Desmond’s younger brother - and the pair have two adopted children, one dwarf son named Garen Rockwall, and one bhrunai daughter named Renga.

The town is home to a mercantilists guild called the Coin & Measures Trade Consortium, often shortened to just ‘the Consortium’. The guild wields considerable power and capital and is not shy about swinging its weight around when it feels it has something to gain, which has seen it rise to a level of significant influence in Kendaria and Bridgmoor. The Consortium is headed by a small council of grandmaster merchants called the Counting Table who are responsible for the organization’s regulations and high-level trade agreements.

The Consortium doesn’t own or operate all trading venues in the city, but it’s certainly doing everything in its power to close that gap. The organization has weathered accusations of corruption, market manipulation, racketeering, and even piracy, but any guilty parties found in such cases always either swear on their lives that the organization as whole had no part in their misdeeds, or else end up throwing themselves off of one of the city’s largest cliffs, Whitewhisper Drop. The Consortium also does several things to clean up its image with the general populace, such as running the School of Foundationals, which provides free basic education in letters and arithmetic to any who wish for it.

Greenvalley is a relatively prosperous city where all manner of goods, services, materials, and equipment can be found. Even rarer desires like the services of a talented mage or the purchase of certain enchanted objects can be fulfilled in Greenvalley. The majority of the town’s architecture and tradesfolk work in what is noticeably a dwarven milieu, and a fair sixth or so of the total population is made up of mountain dwarves.

The mountain just north of Greenvalley is called Selgar’s Stand, and many wealthy individuals and organizations within the city operate mining operations in and around the Stand. Selgarite, a rare formation of quartz found in the mountain and almost nowhere else in the world, is very popular in Greenvalley jewelry and crafts. The stone is the color of emeralds with small shining star-shaped inclusions inside called ‘asters’, which cause light shone through it to prismatically refract into seven different shades of green. The Sutian family sometimes gifts selgarite daggers to individuals in recognition of acts of great service to their city, their family, and their nation.

Notables of Greenvalley

The city of Greenvalley is separated into many different neighborhoods and districts, several of which are separated by simple geography and elevation— being either higher or lower-set into the mountainside on which much of the city stands. The main districts are Tumbledown Town, Edgewall Markets, Boldrock, and the Lanternlight District. These four are arranged in a roughly diamond shape relative to one another, with the furthest points of the diamond being arranged in the northeast (Edgewall Markets) and southwest (Tumbledown Town). Boldrock is to the northwest of the rest of the city, and the Lanternlight District is to the southeast.

Boldrock

Boldrock is a well-to-do area dominated by tall white and light gray stone structures with deep green roofs. It’s the home of many of the city’s wealthier residents, as well as the Sutian family’s baronial estate. In Boldrock, the heroes will find higher-end shops and inns, like the following.

Titania’s Towers is a former temple to the Archfae of the same name, with a trio of tall spires that has been turned into a fancy and expensive inn. The Towers cater primarily to wealthy travelers such as the friends and favored servants of local nobility. It is run by Ebrund Crimph, an elderly human with a servile and fawning demeanor which quickly turns acerbic and biting if he believes someone may be lower in social station than he, or else seeking to waste his precious time. A one-bed room in the Towers costs 15 sc per night, while a four-bed suite costs 50 sc per night. Meals are not included in this price, costing an additional 4 sc per meal, and are only provided at strict times (mid-morning around 9 am, mid-afternoon around 2 pm, and evening around 7 pm).

The Shimmerstone Goldworks is a high-end jeweler and metalsmith that makes many of the fine rapiers and much of the selgarite jewelry worn by the local elites and aristocrats. The Goldworks is owned and operated by a pair of dwarf women named Taliona and Salga Shimmerstone who opened the storefront portion of their workshop on their wedding day, claiming that forging fine works was the finest honeymoon they could ask for. Salga, in particular, tells that story often and serves as the primary salesperson of the Goldworks while Taliona works in the workshop and manages their fellow artisans. The two are still very much in love, but Taliona does not share Salga’s boundless enthusiasm for working and really does wish they could take a real vacation now and then.

Edgewall Markets

Edgewall Markets is located on the northeast side of Greenvalley. Despite the name, the district is as much a residential area as it is a mercantile one. The Markets are a busy, densely-populated, heavily urbanized area with modern stone infrastructure, a purposefully laid-out grid pattern of streets, and a remarkably sophisticated sewer system. Most people live in large brick apartment buildings called “stackhouses” which line the streets and form the primary face of the district.

The Markets are also home to the Coin & Measures Trade Consortium’s headquarters and many of its operational locations, banks, and warehouses. The Consortium does much to “uplift” the district with its support of public works, but does little to actually pay for these projects themselves, instead leveraging their influence over local trade to convince the Sutians and their advisory councils to invest their own money into the district.

This allows them to claim to be working for the good of the locals, while not spending nearly as much silver as they’d need to actually renovate the district themselves. It has also made Baron Desmond Sutian increasingly aggravated with their constant demands, as he has realized only too late that he’s given too much ground to the mercantilists. “If you give a rat a biscuit,” as the saying goes, “he will next ask for your milk”.

Edgewall Markets is home to many businesses and individuals that the heroes may find themselves interacting with, as it's far more affordable than Boldrock and caters to a more varied clientele.

The Crooked Clock is a renovated clocktower which had fallen into disrepair after its creator, a remnant named Kachi, went missing almost half a century ago. The tower itself has been renovated and repaired, though the clockwork mechanisms inside have not, due to the expense and complexity of the task. It is now owned by an urkou woman named Brejika who was once good friends with the tower’s creator before their disappearance. The tower has been renovated to include a series of four rooms on each of its four floors, each of which are cozy and very well apportioned (if a bit small). Rates for rooms are 5 sc per room per night, which includes either breakfast or dinner in the cost of the room.

Branton’s Armory is a mostly secondhand weapons & armor shop that does repairs and light blacksmithing work on the side, but does not take commissions for new pieces of equipment. It’s run by a human named Adelvara Branton, who does her best to remain easy-going and upbeat despite actually being quite stressed. She has run the shop ever since her father, Adelbert, had a minor stroke last year and has been unable to work ever since. Some people complain that the quality of the work has gone downhill, but this is due to the works no longer being made in-house, and instead being primarily resales of refurbished and repaired arms sold secondhand. Everything is sold as-is, with no refunds. The few remaining pieces of original Adelbert Branton arms & armor are marked up by +20% from the cost seen in the Core Rulebook, both because Adelvara thinks they’re worth the cost, and because some part of her is sad to part with them.

Torgust’s Treatments & Tinctures is an apothecary in the Edgewall Markets run by Hamish Torgust, a dwarf alchemist whose true passion is in volatile and explosive compounds, but whose parents convinced him to open a druggist’s shop as it has “more market value”. Hamish wishes to one day perfect a compound for what he calls “thunderous triple-nitrated toluene”, though he will sheepishly admit the name needs some work. It’s a hypothesized explosive compound he thinks will revolutionize large-scale mining and demolitions, if he can ever find the time and resources to get it to work.

Torgust’s Treatments & Tinctures mostly sells mundane medicines for things like indigestion, insomnia, pain and fever relief, and antidotes for mild poisonings (each of which costs 1 sc for a dose or 4 sc for five doses). He will also sell Healing Vials (50 sc) and Healing Potions (250 sc), but he only regularly stocks two Healing Vials at a time, as stocking more is risky. He will make Vials and Potions on request, which takes him two hours of work to produce one Healing Potion or two hours of work to produce two Healing Vials.

Lanternlight District

The Lanternlight District is on the southeast side of Greenvalley and is home to many of the city’s temples, as well as the Colbren Lichyard, a vast necropolis where most of the city’s dead have been buried for generations upon generations. The Lanternlight District is partially above-ground and partially below, extending underground in places through ancient tunnels carved into the rock of the mountain by the forebears of the city’s modern dwarf residents.

The Colbren Lichyard is owned by the powerful and somewhat notorious Colbren Clan, a family of dwarves who, despite not being technically aristocratic or noble of birth by the legal definitions of Kendaria’s system of nobility, are nonetheless significantly more wealthy than many “true” nobles. The Colbrens’ current leader is Matriarch Ezoria Colbren-Reeth, a woman well into her 200s who is rumored by some to be a necromancer or occult witch of some kind.

These rumors are actually true, to some degree, as she and many members of her family are technically cultists of an eldritch entity called Orr’Kmaath which dwells within the mountain and requires that they continue “feeding” it the bodies of the dead. It does not appreciably “consume” these bodies - much less their souls- and instead seems to be content with bodies being simply buried in the soil which it haunts. None of this is known to anyone outside the Colbren Clan, except for the Sutians, who keep this secret for them out of respect for the dead and the sense that Orr’Kmaath seems to be an ultimately harmless entity as long as it is regularly appeased— a feat which is easily accomplished as long as people within the city continue to remain mortal.

Those unable to afford one of the rapidly shrinking number of available plots in the Lichyard are brought to Deadrop Chasm, a glacial vault located somewhat underneath the mountain on which Greenvalley was built, accessed via the tunnels of the Lanternlight District. These bodies are cast into the chasm where they are consumed by slimes which live hundreds of feet below the drop— not that most people above know this. A memorial shrine used as the de facto grave marker for those laid to rest in the chasm exists higher up in the tunnels which lead to it.

Other businesses or points of interest within the Lanternlight District include the following:

Temple of the Moon, which venerates the Archfae Oberon and certain other members of the Stravon Conclave. In recognition of Kendaria’s official alignment with the Pashak Conclave, there are smaller shrines near the Temple of the Moon venerating several of these Archfae as well. The Temple of the Moon is staffed by several priests, but its leader is Lunofficiant Yondel Keliriam, a Star Elf woman who has spent several hundred years tending to the temple and serving as a spiritual guide for the people of Greenvalley. She has close ties to the Sutian family, though her long-term perspective and penchant for getting lost in dreams, divination, and reveries means that she barely knows the current Sutians, and frequently calls Desmond by the name of his grandfather, Markos Sutian.

Tumbledown Town

Tumbledown Town is located at the lowest level of elevation relative to the other districts of the city, and is the part of the city that directly intersects with the Queen’s Road. It is the second most populous district in the city, but is by far the busiest with foot traffic and trade. Where the Edgewall Markets district is advanced, carefully organized, and industrious, Tumbledown Town is a chaotic rabble of work, joy, hardship, and life in all its natural colors. Far less organized and without many of the more advanced amenities of Edgewall Markets, Tumbledown Town is more familiar territory for travelers coming from places like Bridgemoor or Silverbranch.

There are a dozen or more inns and places of lodging operating in Tumbledown Town, owing to the large number of travelers who come through on their way elsewhere. These range in quality from flophouses (such as Madame Breeklin’s Commons) to hostels (like Deepgorge Tavern & Lofts) to proper inns (including The Steepled Nook), with prices ranging to match.

The Road-a-Day Tavern is a massive and popular drinking establishment which doesn’t operate with rooms to rent but does allow patrons who have paid over a certain amount (usually at least 5 sc worth of drinks) to pass out peacefully in their common hall and sleep off their indulgence. Those who don’t quite meet this limit are asked politely but firmly to leave come closing time a couple hours past midnight. The Road-a-Day is run by an odd couple of former adventurers (a Melaneth fiendblood woman named Morien and a muscular, cantankerous human man named Oster Fellhand) and their unofficially adopted teenage children, Fastor, Meera, and Tallowick.

The Road-a-Day Tavern, as in the building itself, is a large circular stone building that is believed to have once been a dwarven temple, and was one of the first buildings built above-ground on this particular mountain. It fell out of use by those who built it centuries ago, and has been several other things since, but Morien & Oster bought the place about twelve years ago and it’s been a Tumbledown institution ever since. It’s a rowdy place of loud music, louder laughter, and quiet, shady deals often made in what is ostensibly plain sight. Oster and Morien look after their regulars and don’t take kindly to people asking strange questions, but if they feel like the heroes are there to do good in the city they are a wealth of information about both Greenvalley in general and Tumbledown Town specifically.

The Old Forest

The Old Forest. The Old Forest sprawls across most of Kendaria.  The Old Forest sprawls across most of Kendaria and Forsten, and was once a major feature of Constel as well. While monster sightings are rare in these picturesque woods, travelers and locals alike are often left with a vague sense of unease after hiking therein. Children tell each other ghost stories that seem a little too real, somehow, and even skilled hunters have occasionally gone missing with no explanation. Although much of the Old Forest in Constel has been chopped down, these feelings of unease persist even when people spend time where the forest used to loom.

Location notes

• Treegrave. Lots of deforestation here which has angered the forest spirits.
• The Western Wallows. Some kind of magical marsh.
• The Wychwood. A haunted part of the forest that has a big blight of some kind. Magical insect swarms, trees oozing toxic sap.
• The Levidian Mists. An area that is always misty no matter what. Old ruins of a hamlet and a keep deep inside the mists, overgrown with vegetation. Maybe used to be a vampire haunt? Maybe still is? Maybe something unrelated just brainstorming
• Oldstone. Stonehenge basically but the stones have runes that can allow people to travel to other planes if they have powerful enough magic and an understanding of how to activate the stones
• Bramblehollow. Densely overgrown area of the woods, lots of magically animated plants. It’s hard to navigate and easy to get lost. People may lose track of time here, may find a portal to the Everwilds, may get completely turned around and spend weeks finding their way out. Most folks avoid it and stick to the Queen’s Road or other well-marked roads, but a skilled navigator can cut travel time by days if they know the secrets of Bramblehollow.

A Forest Deep and Ancient

Read Aloud: You’ve seen it from a distance for some time now, a vast ocean of trees that seems to rise and fall like rolling waves as the hills and valleys of Kendaria stretch out into the distance. The Old Forest, an ancient, powerful, and verdant bastion of natural beauty. This forest is primordial; seeming almost to regard you even as you regard it. The air smells subtly sweet and fills with the sound of a gentle breeze rustling a thousand, thousand branches.

Coming to the Old Forest’s edge, you feel a potent sense of standing on a threshold. Like you stand before the closed doors of a lord’s keep, preparing yourself to step inside. Despite the undeniable beauty of the light pouring down in slender rays through the canopy, of the dancing leaf-shadows on the forest floor, and in the song of birds and rustle of life within, you cannot help but feel that you are being watched by something or someone that hasn’t quite yet made up its mind about you.

The heroes can make an INT check to learn any of the following information about the Old Forest.

DC	Information
5	The Old Forest covers a large portion of Kendaria, especially in the west & north of the country. It is a temperate forest with one or two swampy areas throughout its breadth.
12	The Old Forest is held as a sacred place by many druids and worshipers of the Archfae conclaves, in particular the Pashak Conclave. It also extends into Forsten, and once covered a fair amount of Constel, as well. Though the Constellan reaches of the Old Forest were cut down long ago.
17	Throughout Kendaria, children tell ghost stories about the witches and spirits that supposedly inhabit the Old Forest, and even skilled hunters and explorers go missing amidst the sea of green— utterly vanished with no trace or explanation. The people who live in and near the Old Forest know that as much as it is a place of beauty and bounty, it should be treated with ample respect and a healthy dose of fear.
23	You are aware of many of the points of interest within the Old Forest, including: Bramblehollow (the deep heart of wilderness which all paths in the forest take great pains to give a wide berth), the Levidian Mists (a supposedly haunted area shrouded in eternal mist), Oldstone (a circle of ancient standing stones that some claim are magical), Treegrave (a relatively recent site of mass deforestation that some say has angered the local fae & nature spirits), the Western Wallows (a large, humid swamp and source of many medicinal plants), and Wychwood (a dark, blighted reach of forest about which many frightening tales are told).

Heroes can make an AWR check to notice the following things.

DC	Information
12	This place is a mainly deciduous forest, mostly temperate in climate, though somewhat humid. There are the sounds and smells of life everywhere— birds, beasts, flowers, trees.
17	There is a well-worn path before you which seems like it sees a good deal of foot traffic. In the distance you even see signposts and timbers laid in particularly muddy or steep portions to ease the traveler’s passing. It is very well-tended for a forest path. There are other paths, however, which seem far less well-kept, snaking off into the forest in all directions.
23	There is a strange sense of… wrongness all about you. It’s hard to put your finger on, but everything sounds, smells, and looks somehow… too much. The background of various birdsongs is too cheerful and seems almost like it’s following a distinct melody, the flowers smell too sweet and the air far too crisp, the colors are all somehow too vivid. As quickly as these realizations come to you, they pass again. Must just be your imagination.

The Old Forest is a massive blanket of ancient woods that swaddles much of the length & breadth of Kendaria and Forsten. Once, it even reached into and covered much of Constel, though most of that stretch of the Old Forest has long since been cut down. While proper monster sightings are quite rare in these verdant woods, folk who venture into the woods are often struck by a vague sense of unease, even for hours or days after leaving them.

It is a place of bounty and beauty, but there is a tang of wrongness to the air for those with a tongue to taste it. In much of Kendaria, children tell ghost stories about the witches and spirits that supposedly inhabit the Old Forest, and even skilled hunters and explorers go missing amidst the sea of green— utterly vanished with no trace or explanation. Even in Constel, in the places where the Old Forest once stood, there is a subtle, uncanny dread that occasionally strikes those receptive to it.

The Old Forest is ancient beyond reckoning, and though it provides so much to the people who live in and near it, those people know to treat it with a healthy dose of respect and fear.

Old Forest Random Encounters

As the party explores the Old Forest, feel free to make use of the following tables to generate random encounters, or give yourself seed ideas from which to improvise adventures or strange occurrences. The Old Forest is largely harmless— if you stick to the well-worn roads and show respect for nature— but is also full of fae magic and trickery, and is highly reactive to its treatment by people.

These encounters are meant to fill in the gaps of travel, give you something interesting to work with, and introduce a bit of danger and intrigue into the party’s lives. They are also meant to give you a taste of the Old Forest’s particular flavor of adventure as it differs from the rest of Kendaria.

2d6	Combat Encounter
2	Pair of Hostile Creatures
3	Pack of Creatures
4-5	Curious Predator
6-8	Fae Trickery?
9-10	Fleeing Prey
11	A Stalking Shadow
12	Solitary Hostile Creature

2d6	Oddity Encounter
2	A Grisly Sight
3	Talking Animals?
4-5	Tangled Effigies
6-8	Faerie Houses
9-10	Disembodied Singing
11	Bleeding Wychmark
12	A Lavish Feast

Combat Encounters

The Old Forest is a fair bit more dangerous than most of Kendaria, and is one of the few places you’ll actually run into monsters. When you roll on the Combat table above, consult the matching subheading below to build your combat encounter. Follow the standard encounter balance rules found on page 5 of the Mythcraft Creature Compendium: add up the total level of all adventurers, then divide that number by two to find the total Monster Level budget for the encounter.

Pair of Hostile Creatures

The Pair of Hostile Creatures encounter should include two relatively powerful creatures that could pose a threat to the party. Assuming a party of four, here are some example encounters of this type:

• Easy: Two Grizzly Bears driven mad by some kind of blight infection, or two Dryads (or Fungal Dryads if the group is in the Western Wallows or the Wychwood) roused in anger over some logging or forest destruction.
• Hard: An enraged Stoneshark bearing a Primal Spark within it, which emerges from it when the Stoneshark is defeated. The Primal Spark is not a creature of the Pashak Conclave commonly worshiped in Kendaria. With a DC 17 INT check, a character can learn it is a servant of Halam of the Stravon Conclave. Halam is in a period of manic rage— believing the Pashak to have failed in their stewardship of the Old Forest ever since the “massacre” of Treegrave. Perhaps there are actually many Primal Sparks spreading through the forest as a part of this Stravon “crusade”.

Pack of Creatures

When the party encounters a pack of threatening creatures, it should usually be about four individually-weaker enemies. Assuming a party of four, here are some example encounters of this type:

• Easy: A Queen Dire Ant and two Warrior Dire Ants. The Queen Dire Ant’s Call ability can only be used to call Worker Dire Ants, not more Warriors. The lot of them erupt out of the ground after the adventurers stumble into a sinkhole caused by the ants’ tunnel collapsing.
• Hard: An Elder Floren, two Dire Spiders, and two Wilderguard. The Elder Floren has been tasked by a powerful fae spirit with finding a group of humanoids responsible for defiling a nearby sacred grove (by lighting a campfire within it), and set off with the spirit’s hunting spiders and Wilderguards.

If you wish, you could also use this result to represent a group of forest bandits, perhaps some of Tusken Sparrow’s Merry Foresters (or a group of highwaymen operating under Tusken’s banner with tacit permission) looking to shake the party down for cash as they travel through. In such a case, use a Bandit Captain and five Bandits (for an Easy encounter) or a Bandit Captain and three Bandit Marauders (for a Hard encounter).

Curious Predator

This encounter sees a powerful single predator, though not one that’s actively hungry or hunting, stumble upon the party and, depending on the adventurers’ posturing, possibly trundle away without attacking. This should be a single creature capable of challenging them (with an ML equal to their encounter budget), and it should be a Beast or other creature of animal-level intelligence.

The characters should have an opportunity to hide from it or make AWR/Animal Handling checks to ward it off. The DC of these checks should be appropriate to their level or the stats of the creature. Assuming a party of four, here are some example encounters of this type:

• Easy: A Dire Bear or a Lepidloth (especially in the Western Wallows).
• Hard: A Basilisk or a Carrion Worm (especially in Wychwood or the Levidian Mists).

Fae Trickery?

A strange trick of the light, a bizarre quirk of shadows & movement, or maybe even a flash of the Old Forest’s ancient fae magic toying with the adventurers’ senses. One moment, the group sees the indistinct shifting forms of something in the dark of the forest— something uncanny and frightening and undeniably hostile, coming for them! Hearts race, hands leap to unsheath weapons, but then… nothing.

The shapes dissolve into the waving of branches, the strange foes’ footsteps are nothing but the forest echoing the party’s own footfalls as they crunching leaves. They’re certain there was something there a moment ago, but now there’s nothing. Magical attempts to probe for invisible assailants will turn up nothing, as there was never any danger to begin with…

Fleeing Prey

A large and powerful prey animal like an especially large elk bursts through the underbrush, tearing past the group. You may roll an attack against their REF, if you wish.

Mad Dash. 15-foot line. +3 vs REF. Hit: 3 (1d4+1) blunt.

The creature continues tearing off into the woods past the group, as if something terrible is right at its heels. A moment after the creature leaps & bounds past the group they feel a rush of cold air pass them and swear they can hear a low growl on the wind. Fifteen minutes after having this encounter, the group hears a distant shrieking death rattle. Whatever it was, it seems to have caught its prey.

A Stalking Shadow

The adventurers should get an opportunity to notice a strange gathering of shadows that seems to move out of the corner of their eyes. It follows them as they travel during the day, but is maddeningly impossible to pin down. Over the day, several of them should roll opposed Perceiving vs. Sneaking, with this creature getting a +8 to its Sneaking. If they succeed, they are certain they see a vaguely humanoid shape just out of the corner of their eyes. If they fail, they see vague movement that’s gone when they turn to look.

The exact specifics of the creature are left up to you, but a good candidate is a Slaugh. It should silently follow the group during the day, hiding in bushes and under the canopy of especially thickly-leaved trees, careful to remain out of their sight and reach with its ability to hover. It will wait until they decide to try to camp in the Old Forest, then strike shortly after most or all of the group have gone to sleep.

If you wish, you can connect this encounter to the encounter in The Levidian Mists (page XX), with the Slaugh here being one of the Dergue Valean’s spawn. A simple way to make this connection (and give the heroes a path to follow) would be to allow the heroes to follow the trail of black ooze the Slaugh dripped as it floated out to wherever they met it, leading them back to Fort Levidia.

Solitary Hostile Creature

This encounter works like the Curious Predator, except that the creature is both hungry and willing to engage the adventurers in combat. Use one of the suggested creatures from that encounter, or pick your own using those guidelines of creature type and ML. This creature immediately attacks the party when it comes upon them, both out of territoriality and a desire to feast.

Oddity Encounters

The Old Forest is a place of fae magic and mystery. Many strange things can be found by striking out into its wilderness. You can roll for these while the group is traveling to use between encounters and to build a general atmosphere of mystery, danger, and whimsy within the Old Forest. When you roll on the Oddities table above, consult the matching subheading below to find details of the odd encounter.

A Grisly Sight

The beauty of nature is often tempered with the undeniable evidence of its cruelty. While traveling, the group comes upon the bloodstained carcass of a now unidentifiable animal. It is (or was) quadrupedal, but its head is missing, its flesh is torn and flayed, and its trunk has been completely hollowed out of organs. Despite the totality of its destruction, it is still wet and not yet bearing much in the way of decay— this creature’s demise and devouring were recent, and whatever may have slain it may still be nearby…

Talking Animals?

The adventurers hear what sounds like a conversation happening between two people with unusually high-pitched voices. The specific words are difficult to make out at first, but as they draw closer they hear snippets of the following (perhaps by means of a DC 12 AWR check):

• Voice A: “— just sayin’, if She wants us to arrive a’faster, maybe She should hold court somewhere closer by.”
• Voice B: “Oh hush, you know the trees are listening. I won’t be a party to your blasphemies.”
• Voice A: “We’ve got a deal, me ‘n’ them trees. I don’t piss on ‘em and they don’t snitch on me.”
• Voice B: “Anyso, we should hurry-hooves. Nowt good about leaving the Birch Lady waiting.”

If the party draws closer to the source of the chatter, either with a DEX/Sneaking check or otherwise, they will find an unremarkable yet still odd scene: a squirrel and a deer standing just feet apart. The squirrel quietly chitters to itself and flicks its tail while scrabbling in the dirt, apparently looking for something to eat. The deer impassively stares into the distance while absentmindedly munching on some berries from a nearby bush. Neither shows any indication of being intelligent or capable of speech, and both will flee if the adventurers draw too close. If the party watches them flee into the distance, they might see (DC 17 AWR/Perceiving check) the squirrel appear to climb up the deer’s leg and begin riding atop its head as the animals tear off into the forest.

Following the animals beyond a certain point becomes impossible, as if they’ve simply vanished.

Tangled Effigies

As the party travels along, they’ll run into a strange and off-putting thicket of vaguely humanoid-shaped bundles of sticks tied up with grass twine. Each effigy dangles from the boughs of a single, massive tree, hanging by a knot of vines. The effigies seem warm to the touch and give any who draw near them the distinct feeling of being alive, like the character has just stumbled into a room full of people, but none of them will look at or acknowledge the character.

The odd feeling passes as quickly as it comes, and the effigies are once again nothing but dead twigs and twine— the feeling of warmth from these objects remains, however. If a character takes an effigy, they have the feeling that something is watching them, and is very displeased with them. If they keep the effigy, they will be plagued by strange nightmares of being wrapped in vines and left to dangle from a tree, surrounded by countless others but unable to speak or move.

If a character destroys an effigy, they not only get the feeling that something is watching and is upset with them, but that they are actively being hunted. Roll on the Combat random encounter table immediately. If an encounter begins, the character that broke the effigy is the primary target of the creatures’ aggression, and they are Demoralized for the duration of that encounter.

Faerie Houses

So-called “faerie houses” can be found all over the Old Forest, but especially in places where tragedy has struck and people have disappeared. They are small “buildings” made of stacked stones, river rocks, daubs of mud, and sandstone chips, often constructed by the loved ones of people who have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The tradition dates back centuries and is described by some scholars as an offering to the fae, in hopes that they’ll release the people they’ve supposedly kidnapped.

Destroying a faerie house is said to be very bad luck, and if a particular character knows about this superstition and believes it to be true, they will suffer a −1 penalty to all skill checks after knocking one over— even by accident. This penalty lasts until the character's next rest, but can be removed early if they either rebuild the house they destroyed, or build a new one that’s taller than the original. Building a faerie house requires a skill check using an appropriate Crafting skill (e.g. INT/Masonry) or an INT/Engineering skill check. The DC is 12, unless you’re looking to create a house larger than the average size (all houses found in the environment will be of this “average size”), in which case it is DC 14. The characters will find that the stacking of unworked stones in this way is surprisingly difficult to get right.

Disembodied Singing

While traveling, the group comes upon a stream while traveling that emits a faint, barely audible sound like the singing voice of a humanoid creature. The source of this sound is unclear, but the song itself is melodic, mournful, and beautiful, albeit seeming to be quite sad. If the stream gathers in a deeper pool somewhere along its path, the sound will be much more audible there, sounding like a small chorus of three or four distinct voices all harmonizing to hum the same tune.

Sleeping near the stream or a pool of this strange singing water will cause characters to have very vivid dreams— the content of the dreams is no different from what they would normally dream, but they awake remembering every detail of the dream in a way that is unusual for most people.

Bleeding Wychmark

A strange symbol appears to be burned into the bark of a tree, at about eye-level for the average adult humanoid creature. The same pattern also appears beneath the tree, spreading out to surround its erupted roots as if the tree was a demon summoned into a protective circle. The wood of the tree where this scorched mark is located oozes a strange red sap that smells and tastes both coppery and sweet, like blood mixed with sugar maple sap.

The cause of Bleeding Wychmarks is uncertain, and it apparently cannot be artificially reproduced. A tree is simply un-marked one day, and marked the next. Normally these trees are located far from anything resembling civilization, but there have been some that appear as far as the outer edge of the Old Forest. The odd bloody sap of these trees is prized by alchemists and healers for its ability to significantly preserve the healing properties of healing potions (to say nothing of its ability to improve their flavor).

Sap gathered from the marked tree can be added to any healing potion. Doing so doubles the potion’s expiry time (e.g. from 12 hours to 24 hours, or from 7 days to 14 days). Bleeding Wychmarks only yield enough sap to affect 1 potion every 7 days. If the sap of a Bleeding Wychmark is harvested for three consecutive 7-day periods, rather than letting the sap remain on the tree, the affected tree withers and dies within an hour of the third harvesting. Attempting to tap a tree to directly harvest more of the unusual sap will get you enough sap to affect 3 potions, but then cause the tree to immediately wither and die within an hour of the tap being installed.

A Lavish Feast

While traveling, the party’s nostrils suddenly catch a waft of something delicious on the air— cooked meats, fresh-baked fruit pies, butter and cream and sugar and starch, and all the things people tend to crave. If they choose to follow the scent with a successful DC 12 AWR check, they will come upon a most bizarre sight: a lavish feast set out upon the finest porcelain and silver dishes, on a long banquet table made of beautiful, polished dark wood. The table sits in a smallish clearing, ringed by trees whose canopies still hang above it, but with just enough space to accommodate the table and the plush chairs which surround it.

The feast is made up of food of all sorts, but mostly features dishes that the characters recognize from their homelands, or even from specific meals they have strong memories of in their childhood, recreated in perfect detail. Even characters with unusual dietary requirements will find something they recognize as edible, and which seems at least passingly enticing to them. If the characters sit down to eat of this meal, they find that it is not only very real, but also very nourishing. However, as the characters eat, they may hear very quiet chuckling and giggling coming from somewhere just outside the table’s clearing. If they try to search out the sources of this laughter, they will find nothing.

The main trick of this meal is the paranoia it instills, as it is a manifestation of fae humor, but the “punchline” is that the food is actually completely safe, real, and offered with no ulterior motive… other than the humor of watching hungry travelers twist themselves into knots over whether or not they should eat the suspicious, clearly magical food.

Bramblehollow

Read Aloud: Leaving behind the well-marked paths and roads, it doesn’t take you long to find deepest, truest wilderness. The semblances of civilization, the barest hints of having tamed these ancient wilds all melt away— no signposts, no paths, not even so much as a pile of cairn stones to mark a crossing. You are now truly alone with nature, beyond the reach of mortal artifice.

The forest around you is even more vigorous and alive than any you’ve passed through yet. It is overgrown in the most extreme ways possible, and seems spitefully resentful of your passing. Every tree you lean against to catch your breath is wet with clinging sap, every copse of shrubs is replete with brambles, every ravine is slick with mud and threatens to send you tumbling head-first.

And yet, as the maps show and as the crow flies, this vast primeval hollow is by far the shortest distance between many points of interest in and around the Old Forest, shaving hours or even days off of journeys by-road.

Bramblehollow is one of the most overgrown, primeval, and untouched sections of wilderness in the Old Forest. It is full of magic and fae trickery, both active and left over by long-departed tricksters. Long ago the people of the Old Forest and its surrounds decided that Bramblehollow would be left to the fae. After countless minor conflicts, disappearances, and admonishments from the spirits of nature therein, paths were begrudgingly blazed in wide circles around Bramblehollow instead of through it.

Most of this history is lost to folktales and superstitions which preserve the ultimate outcomes of these conflicts (that mankind should not step foot in Bramblehollow without chancing consequences) without accurately preserving the reasons for those outcomes. However, even with the knowledge of locals that the place is dangerous, that people go missing there often, or else get inexplicably turned around and spend the next few days or weeks trying to find their way back, people still sometimes take the risk.

The phrase “taking a Bramble-risk” is common in some parts of Kendaria. It means that someone is risking terrible consequences for a fairly minor gain, and comes specifically from the idea of risking a trip through Bramblehollow in hopes of getting to your destination faster.

The Winding Path

Read Aloud: Traveling the thickets and tangles of Bramblehollow, you eventually come to a hillock overlooking a particularly steep fall down about fifteen feet into a surprisingly open and sparsely-treed area. One towering tree every twenty feet or so, with naught but a strangely misty forest floor between them. When compared to the nearly impassable tangles of vegetation and claustrophobically close growth you’ve been traveling through, this seems almost like a wide-open field.

For a moment you breathe a sigh of relief, believing that, just maybe, you’ve found the edge of the sharp and miserable wilds of Bramblehollow. But then you hear a voice come from the “valley” below. It’s… counting? It sounds… afraid?

Bramblehollow is notorious for its uncanny ability to get people turned around. The Winding Paths are one of the many areas that have led to this notoriety.

The person counting, down in the area that’s currently below the players, is a raggedly dressed hunter named Amowick. Their clothes are muddy and torn, their hair is wild, their beard overgrown, their fingers raw & bloody. Amowick has been trapped down in that inviting-looking valley for two weeks now, stuck in an illusion of primal magic created by the odd confluence of primal currents blowing through the unusually-spaced trees, and the hallucinogenic mushroom spores that puff off of the very ground of the area (the odd “mist” described in the Read Aloud section as clinging to the ground is actually a cloud of spores).

The Winding Paths are a roughly elliptical “bowl”-shaped area about 150 feet long and 100 feet wide, with about 15 to 20 foot-high walls surrounding it on all sides. Any creature that jumps, falls, climbs down, or otherwise enters the Winding Paths is immediately attacked by the following two effects, in this order:

Sporemist. Poison. +3 vs FORT. Hit: The target’s ANT, LOG, and WILL all suffer a −2 penalty for 5 minutes. Affected creatures also suffer a −2 penalty to AWR checks made while affected. If the target is not hit by this effect, but remains within the area (or exits the area and then returns), they are attacked again 5 minutes later.

Winding Magics. Primal Spell, Illusory, Extrinsic. +3 vs WILL. The world around you is enshrouded in an impenetrable fog, causing all creatures and objects to be considered Concealed from you for 5 minutes. While suffering this effect, if you reach the outer edge of the area called the Winding Path, you must attempt an AWR check against DC 17 or else immediately turn around to face the center of the Winding Path and be convinced that you have not just done so, but that the path simply continues on before you. If the target is not hit by this effect, but remains within the area, they are attacked again 5 minutes later. The attack also repeats if a creature exits the area and then returns.

Amowick has been stuck in a loop of wandering back & forth in the Winding Paths for days, subsisting on their (now expended) rations, and on mushrooms they’ve found on the ground (the very same mushrooms responsible for the Sporemist effect, which is much intensified due to their having eaten them). If the party watches Amowick from the ledge above the Winding Paths, they will see them counting on their fingers and touching each tree as they walk past it, coming to the edge of the Paths, and then turning around to do the circuit again.

If they call out to the ragged person, they will look up, vaguely blink in the direction of the group without making eye contact, and then go back to their wanderings. By this point, Amowick is convinced they cannot trust their senses, and the quiet shouting they hear from outside their illusory haze must just be the Winding Paths playing more tricks on them. Helping Amowick out of this situation may be exceptionally difficult, but the hunter will be immensely grateful for their aid if they can actually get to them without getting lost themselves.

The Levidian Mists

Read Aloud: For the last half an hour or more of travel, the air has been getting steadily colder and wetter, and slowly a haze has overtaken you from all directions. Visibility is low, but not terrible, as you’re still able to see one another as long as you remain within a few yards. Sources of light like torches and lanterns seem to do more harm than good, turning the mist opaque and greatly reducing your ability to see the vague shadows of trees that surround you.

Eventually you find a short hill that rises at least partially out of the mist and are able to get a decent look at your surroundings. In the distance you spy the shadow of a large structure, tumbledown towers and crumbling walls evoking the image of a once mighty keep that has since fallen into considerable disrepair. The mist seems thinnest in the areas surrounding this abandoned keep.

The fallen keep the heroes spy in the distance is Fort Levidia, a long defunct fortification that was built after this portion of the Old Forest was clear-cut in an attempt to expand an old lord’s domain. The forest has since reclaimed this territory with a vengeance, roots threading through the keep’s crumbling walls and trees growing up within its very towers. It’s a good idea for the group to reach the Levidian Mists near the end of their adventuring day, so that they have a good reason to seek refuge within the keep. After all, just because it’s spooky doesn’t mean it’s actually haunted (although it very much is). It may be an easily defensible location at which to rest (it’s not)!

Alternatively, if the group has run afoul of the A Stalking Shadow random combat encounter, they may have been led to the Levidian Mists in search of where the Slaugh could have come from. In this case, the group most likely made a successful INT check of some kind to identify that creature as a Slaugh, and realized that these creatures are the product of another monster called a Dergue (they may have also realized that Dergues are themselves the product of Sporebat infections).

In truth, a group of mercenaries were tasked with recovering both living and dead Sporebats by an alchemist in Dalewright some number of years ago. About half the group got infected by the creatures in the process of capturing their “samples”, but had no idea how dangerous the creatures actually were. Suffering fevers and other symptoms of the infection, the group ran afoul of some particularly vicious dire wolves and were, sadly, killed before they could escape the forest.

Half a day later, three of the mercenaries awoke as Dergues— two human siblings named Valean and Timare, and their Trollkin friend Urdak. Urdak fled into the forest, half-mad with grief and fear over her transformation. The two siblings wandered the woods, looking for any clues as to what had befallen them. Eventually their hunger led them to kill and drink the lifeblood of a pair of travelers along the road, accidentally creating their first Slaughs. This crime in turn prompted a group of hunters to track them down, eventually leading to Timare’s death when one of the hunters got a lucky crossbow shot directly through her eye.

The remaining Dergue, Valean, was able to overpower the hunters and kill them all, creating yet more Slaughs. These ghastly creatures were all he had left with his sister’s death. He wandered the forest with his monstrous entourage, until eventually he found the ruins of Fort Levidia. He chose to set up in the old keep, overcome with loneliness and despair over what he’d become, and— from his perspective— how his hunger had led to his sister’s death.

Since setting up shop in the fort,Valean has discovered some of what led to the fort’s abandonment in the first place. The keep’s original owner, Duke Gram Schaffenhände, had contracted with a group of supposed arcanists calling themselves the Council of Furcitur to weave a ritual which would prevent the Old Forest from growing or exerting its strange influence within a certain distance of his territory. In reality, the Council of Furcitur were occultists in service to a fiend lord, who spent the next several months slowly warping the Duke’s mind, experimenting upon, converting, and sacrificing his servants.

In the keep’s basement dungeon now resides a Churlock that the Council occultists summoned from the dark realm of Melaneth, which has been trapped in the circle created as a part of its summoning for centuries at this point. Shortly after the Council of Furcitur began their ritual to summon the fiend, they were interrupted by the Duke and his soldiers, who had broken free of the occultists’ illusions and enchantments when the occultists turned their attention to the ritual and let their focus on the magics which bound the keep to their control. The battle that raged was fierce and led to the deaths of all involved, with the large amount of spilled blood and proffered death only adding to the power of the interrupted ritual and allowing it to complete despite its practitioners being slain.

From the still partially-open gateway to Melaneth in the basement pours an otherworldly, cold mist and a wintery draft of cold air, which pushes the mist through the keep’s lower drains and out into the surrounding forest. The source of the Levidian Mists, therefore, is ultimately not some trick of primal magic or fae mystery, but a botched ritual to conjure a fiend from Melaneth.

Exploring the Ruins

The ruins of Fort Levidia can provide an opportunity for a short dungeon crawl, or you can choose to scale down the explorable area to just include a partially-collapsed inner keep and the blighted courtyard before it, perhaps with one or two towers that are too crumbled and unsafe to meaningfully explore.

If you choose to make Fort Levidia a fully explorable mini-dungeon, there should be at least four or five areas of note, including:

The Crumbling Walls. The heroes can explore the gatehouse that once allowed access to the fort. The portcullis’ winch system is no longer working, so the group must climb over a partially collapsed section of the outer wall, or up to a second-floor balcony of the gatehouse overlooking the forest. There are some passable sections of wall that still stand (DC 12 STR or DEX checks to leap over or carefully stride across), which should provide access to both the inner courtyard and possibly one or more of the towers that make up the “corners” of the outer wall. Within one of these towers, you could put a pair of Slaughs; more victims of Valean, the keep’s Dergue.

The Withered Courtyard. The heroes can explore a courtyard filled with brambles and overgrowth. When attempting to follow the cracked stone path leading from the gatehouse to the keep’s front door, the group can be attacked by a pair of Blightweeds which are threaded through the more common plants in the area. You can withhold this encounter if you think the group has already used up too many resources and don’t want to tax them further.

The Inner Keep. The Inner Keep is home to Valean the Dergue of Fort Levidia. Unless the group has been especially stealthy in their intrusion upon his keep, Valean will already know they’re coming and will begin any encounter with the heroes already having hidden somewhere in his “throne room” at the center of the keep (he has a total +6 bonus to DEX/Sneaking checks, unlike the Dergue in the Creature Compendium).

• Valean starts a fight by using his Shadowy Thrall action to summon Slaughs to keep the heroes busy, followed by trying to Mesmerize whoever looks to be the biggest & strongest (prioritizing characters in heavy armor or with large weapons).

The Food Cellar. The food cellar is completely overgrown in mushrooms, which are linked with a half-dozen Dergue that now call this fortress their home. See the Forest Rot (Slaughter) quest in chapter 4.

The Keep Basement. Valean bears a key to the locked dungeon, a set of stairs down to which can be found within the same room in which the heroes fight him. At the bottom of these stairs, just before the door to the dungeon, is a pool of mist like that found outside. Within the dungeon are a number of empty cells, and a circle of skeletonized remains surrounding an occult circle.

Huddled inside this circle is a Churlock, which will use its Unassuming Form feature when it hears people fiddling with the door to its dungeon. It will take a form it assumes the group most likely to take pity upon, something small & defenseless like a child or elderly person. It will use the +8 bonus to Disguising and Deceiving it gains from this feature to try to convince the heroes to release it from the circle by marring the runes which make the circle up, explaining that the “horrible man upstairs” is keeping them prisoner within a magic circle, because he didn’t trust the rusty bars of the dungeon’s other cells to keep them.

• The group can use appropriate AWR or INT checks to learn about the circle, see through the creature’s lies, or even notice that… oddly… It looks like the mist covering the floor here is actually coming from inside the circle!

Oldstone

Read Aloud: You come to a massive clearing of unearthly quiet and stillness, a vast ring of open sky amidst the trees of the Old Forest, which bears within it an unusual sight: a ring of enormous standing stones, menhirs made from ancient cyclopean rock of unfathomable aeons.

Each stone stands more than fifteen feet high, and several bear cross-stones of nearly equal size which lay atop them lengthwise. The stones themselves seem almost like gods, titanic, weighty things largely plain and devoid of any clear signs of having been worked or sculpted. Except… in the center of each of the vertical stones’ faces is a primeval glyph - unrecognizable as belonging to any known language - graven into its face.

The menhirs stand an abiding vigil over this silent clearing. Though nothing moves to look at you or scowls at your approach, you can’t help but feel as though you’re somehow intruding by being here.

The standing stones of Oldstone are old indeed, dating back to the earliest days of mortal magic. The magic infused within these stones is incredibly ancient and powerful, and abides within them to this day, though it slumbers deeply and is very difficult to draw forth. The stones serve as anchor points for planar travel magics (similar in function to the Planar Portal occult ritual), and allow particularly skilled primal and psionic spellcasters to travel to other planes, albeit in a relatively imprecise fashion.

Learning about the stones requires an INT check of a relevant skill, such as History or Arcana. Reliable information about the stones has a fairly high DC, as what little scholarly knowledge there is about Oldstone is esoteric and rarely taught, and speculation about them is rampant.

DC	Information
12	Oldstone is a site of deep magical & religious significance to certain people in Kendaria, as it’s widely believed to have been constructed as a place to worship the Archfae.
17	The common belief that this place was constructed to worship the Archfae is actually incorrect, but that is indeed how Oldstone has been used by many circles of druids throughout the aeons. The site actually predates most primal magical traditions and known cultures in the area.
23	Oldstone actually dates to the First Supereon, with the menhirs being thought to have been constructed by early practitioners of psionic magics. In those earliest of days, mortals cast their minds out into the great void between planes in search of gods, of meaning, of power, and of new realms to explore. These stones are believed to be one of the sites— likely the only surviving one— they used to enable such explorations.
30	The standing stones of Oldstone were actually constructed by early psions atop an existing nexus of primal magics which acted as natural crossings into and out of various planes of existence. These primal gateways were unstable, unreliable, and at times even dangerous. The psions found a way to resonate their minds with the primal vibrations of these gateways in order to stabilize them, though the process exacted a terrible toll on those who tried. The psions who anchored the primal gateways at what would become Oldstone began to petrify into psionic statues of living crystal. Once this was discovered as an inevitable, irreversible consequence of the magic required to stabilize the pathways, the psions began to see it as a great calling. They venerated those who chose to sacrifice themselves to build bridges between the worlds. In order to protect their fragile crystalline bodies, the Bridge-Psions were merged with massive stones— the menhirs of Oldstone— to ensure that they would not be damaged by accident or malice.

In order to make use of the Oldstone menhirs, a character must have a Psionic Power or Primal Power of 16 or higher. Each of the standing stones in Oldstone is keyed to one specific outer plane, and determining which is which requires an INT/Arcana check DC 30. This DC is reduced to 23 if you have personally been to the plane to which a given stone is keyed at least once. If a character fails this check they cannot try to figure out a stone’s connected plane again for at least 24 hours.

Any character that meets the requirement for Primal or Psionic magic can attempt a lengthy Primal or Psionic spell as if it were a spell they knew, but only after they successfully identify at least one of the stones using the Arcana check described above.

Oldstone Planar Journey

Primal or Psionic Spell, (Extrinsic, Altering, Nature) or (Psychokinetics), Conjuring 10

Prerequisites: Primal or Psionic 16

APC: 30

SPC: 50

Range: 15 ft (an Oldstone menhir must be within this range)

Requirements: Verbal, Gesture

Duration: 12 hours (see text)

In order to use this spell you must begin casting it within range of a specific Oldstone menhir whose destination plane you know, and have a location on that plane in mind while casting. You and up to 6 other willing creatures within range at the time the spell finishes casting are teleported somewhere near the location you chose on the targeted plane. In order to determine where on that plane you actually end up, roll 1d20, the result is the number of miles away from your intended target you end up. You cannot accidentally appear inside of a solid object or person, and are shunted safely adjacent to any such obstacles. You can, however, appear in the ocean (at its surface), in an unsafe area, or otherwise very far from your intended destination.

Your presence on this plane is tethered by an invisible thread of magic which connects you back to the material plane and to the Oldstone menhir through which you traveled. This tether can be sensed by all creatures native to the plane you’re visiting, making them aware of your status as an outsider. At the end of the spell’s duration, you and all creatures with whom you originally traveled to this plane are immediately teleported back to the material plane, appearing beside the menhir through which you traveled.

If any of the spell’s original targets have died since the ritual was first cast, their remains (if any) are brought back beside the menhir when its duration ends. If you or any of the spell’s original targets are transported to a different plane before the spell’s duration ends, your tether to the Oldstone menhir is severed and the spell effectively ends without teleporting you back to the stone.

Upcharge: At any time during the spell’s duration, you may spend 30 AP and 15 SP as though casting a spell with the Conjuring 10 property. Doing so allows you to choose one of two effects:

Sever your connection to the menhir, becoming adrift on the plane to which you traveled. You will have to find your way back through other means, but will no longer be pulled back at the end of the spell’s 12-hour duration.

End the spell early, causing you and all creatures with whom you originally traveled to be teleported back to the material plane, next to the menhir through which you traveled.

Treegrave

Read Aloud: Before you stretches a field of stumps, of churned-up earth, of burned brush. It is a clearcut stretch of what was once ancient, primeval wilderness. A sense of anguish flashes into your mind for a moment— not your own, instead it feels almost like someone else’s pain intruding upon your psyche. As quickly as it comes, it is gone again, and you’re left with an odd feeling like you’re looking at an abattoir or the twisted mortal wreckage left behind on a battlefield when the armies march on.

In the distance are several small clusters of buildings, like tiny villages, each built around a large central mill. Even from this far away, you can hear the sounds of sawing, shouting, and hard work.

The area now called Treegrave is a point of contention between the region’s Duke Cadovan and a group of druids called the Circle of Bittervine. Duke Maxwoll Cadovan was just a landed knight before being raised to his current position by marrying the previous duke’s only child, a daughter named Eredwina— followed by that duke’s sudden abdication of his station and retirement to Dalewright five years hence.

Cadovan took the section of the Old Forest that was technically under his jurisdiction after claiming his dukedom and let a handful of different lumber, shipwright, and construction guilds bid on parcels of the land. The only stipulations were that he, Cadovan, was not responsible for those guilds’ workers, their safety, or any “unforeseen consequences” that may arise from their activities in the Old Forest, and that he be tithed 7% of all lumber processed from trees in the area. He was planning to use this wood to add onto his manorhouse and build up additional fortifications in the area once the trees were cleared.

The region was once known as Bittervine, though the new duke chose to rename it “Eredwanne” after his wife. A group of druids who had used the area for their rites and worship for centuries initially struck out at the loggers, attacking them with primal magics and beasts, compounding the usual lethality and danger of logging, and making the whole thing seem like a cruel folly.

Enraged at the unadvertised dangers of the contracts, the guilds prepared to bring Cadovan before the local Baroness to discuss refunds. Cadovan relented before that became necessary, and proposed that, instead of renegotiating the contracts he could simply hire and post a large mercenary army to guard the logging endeavors. He did so, and the added presence of heavily armed soldiers in the area seemed to do the trick. Only a handful of skirmishes occurred, each of them ending with more and more of the Circle of Bittervine slain and unceremoniously buried amidst the stumps of the trees they’d sought to protect. More & more forest was cleared, and sightings of irate druids grew fewer & fewer.

Eventually, nearly all of the Circle of Bittervine was slain, and their few remaining members fled the area entirely in search of a new grove. What seemed to be a total victory over this “menace” was short-lived, however. It wasn’t long after the last battle with the druids was fought that sightings of strange & ghostly creatures began to spread throughout the mill-camps, and people began disappearing in the middle of the night.

The heroes can attempt an INT check to see how much information they’ve heard about the area.

DC	Information
12	Duke Cadovan sold out a large section of his territory in the Old Forest to a cadre of different guilds, mostly from Dalewright. The guilds have spent the last couple of years clear-cutting this area of forest for use in construction, shipbuilding, and other carpentry tasks.
17	The region Duke Cadovan sold was previously called Bittervine, and once was home to a group of druids called the Circle of Bittervine. Cadovan renamed it Eredwanne, after his wife Eredwina, though the far more commonly-used name for the area is Treegrave, after the pejorative name that the Bittervine druids gave to the clear-cut area of former forest. The guilds clear-cutting through the area each have their own miniature villages built around large central mills, which they use to process the lumber they’ve acquired. This has unexpectedly led to trade, housing, and all sorts of the common hallmarks of “civilization” popping up amongst these lumber camps. They now call this area of tiny townships “County Treegrave”.
23	Duke Cadovan dispatched a sizable portion of his army to protect the lumber camps from attacks by druids of the Circle of Bittervine. This has led to the Circle’s nearly total slaughter, with most of them now dead or having fled the area entirely in search of a new home. Recently, strange occurrences in the region have been on the rise— from disappearances, to strange deaths, to what people assume are manifestations of fae magic & illusions.

The Bittervine Beast

The leader of the Circle of Bittervine at the start of their conflict with the loggers of Treegrave was a Forest Elf named Mikania. She died leading one of the first proper assaults on the logging camps that her people embarked upon after months of failing to get them to leave through (somewhat) more peaceful methods. She was a generally well-liked leader, with a viciously protective streak that has ended up extending even past her death.

The blood of the druids, dying with curses against the invading loggers on their lips, has slowly seeped into the mud of Treegrave for the past year of conflict. Their souls have twisted in their torment, and blended with the agonized cries of the nature spirits who once inhabited this region to form a potent and wretched blight which now festers beneath the surface of Treegrave. One of the many manifestations of this blight is the Bittervine Beast, a unique Hollow Arborean that burrows through the soft earth and emerges in a burst of mud to attack loggers and drag them below the earth to suffocate.

The Beast can be used as a battle to spice up the heroes’ travel through the region, as a powerful enemy to drive home how dangerous Treegrave has become for the people of the logging camps, or as a sort of boss enemy at the end of a quest to resolve several local disappearances in the area. When the Bittervine Beast emerges to attack the heroes, read the following:

Read Aloud: The earth beneath your feet rises and falls in unnatural undulations, like the cresting and falling of ocean waves. A terrible smell escapes from the bubbling muck and mulch, the reek of both plant and animal rot and a sharp tang of coppery blood mixed with wet earth. The ground rumbles with a deep, guttural roar. Giant wooden appendages erupt from below, oozing black-red muddy sap and wrapped in writhing prehensile vines that lash out in all directions like cornered snakes.

A vaguely humanoid face with eyes like burning coals in black pits heaves itself up out of the churned earth, regarding you with a look somewhere between rage and terror. It howls mournfully as it lurches forward to strike, still half-submerged in the dirt.

Treat the Bittervine Beast as a normal Hollow Arborean, except for the following:

• The Bittervine Beast has a burrow speed of 20 ft.
• The Bittervine Beast does not have the Spirit Burn action.
• When the Beast uses its Slam or Sweep attacks, on a hit, it may choose to Grapple one target.
• It gains the following special reaction Drag Below:

Drag Below (1/Round). If the Bittervine Beast begins its turn with a creature Grappled, it can choose to spend 10 feet of its burrowing movement speed for the turn to end the Grappled condition on that creature and drag them 10 feet below the ground. The creature immediately begins Suffocating. Creatures affected by this that don’t have burrowing speeds can spend 2 AP on their turns to make a STR check DC 12 to move 5 feet towards the surface.

The Bittervine Beast could be an especially difficult encounter if the group is closer to level 5 than level 7. For such lower-level groups, it’s recommended that you reduce the Beast’s HP by −20 and remove its ability to summon Blightweeds. Alternatively, a group that’s too low level can get some help from a trio of particularly brave loggers— run them as a Bandit Marauder and two Bandits (page 218 of the Creature Compendium).

The Western Wallows

Read Aloud: The air has been getting steadily more humid the further west you travel through the Old Forest. The ground has grown softer, too. What was once hard packed dirt and the underbrush of the forest floor has given way to muddy pits and, eventually, full swampland where one has to watch one’s footing carefully lest they suddenly find themselves submerged in three feet of muck and water.

The air here is alive with strange smells and birdcalls very different from those heard elsewhere in the Old Forest. The droning of insects is everywhere, as dragonflies flit from one tree to the next, and biting clouds of gnats waft slowly along, barely visible in the shafts of light cutting through the canopy.

DC	Information
12	The Western Wallows is a mucky, horrible place to have to travel through, but is replete with a vast array of plant life— from herbs to mushrooms— that are invaluable to alchemists and healers of all sorts.
17	Stories claim that the Western Wallows were once a beautiful stretch of woodlands much like the rest of the Old Forest, and the domain of a Satyr king who married a powerful fae creature. But when the king’s many infidelities came to light, his queen cursed him and transformed his realm into a swampy mire of muddy bogs. Most of these stories claim that the Satyr king was utterly unmoved by this, and has come to revel in his new morass kingdom.
23	The Western Wallows is home to a dubious house of healing called the Leechpit. Run by witches whose minds have been warped by a steady diet of the local hallucinogenic fungi and influence from the fae creatures that inhabit the area, the Leechpit is said to be capable of curing any disease, magical or otherwise. But always, it seems, with a terrible price attached.

The Leechpit

The witches of the Leechpit are excellent healers, specializing in the curing of magical diseases and afflictions. They are also, unfortunately, completely detached from reality and obsessed with the kinds of wheeling & dealing engaged in by the fae. They do not usually accept money in exchange for their services, instead asking for something far more precious. The relative preciousness of that thing depends, of course, on the severity of the patient’s affliction.

If a patient would die without their intervention, the payment the witches of the Leechpit request is likely to be something truly dire indeed: a firstborn child, one’s memories of their family, one’s own name. The prices they ask range from the monstrous to the strange & existential. Payment is always negotiated up-front, though not claimed until after the treatment has been administered. The agreements are bound by fae pact magics, ensuring that any who seek to renege from these deals are cursed and haunted by primal spirits and fae beasts until the payment can be extracted. Likely, at that point, with interest added.

You can use the Leechpit as a linchpin for any number of stories— such as a traveler sick with a terrible magical disease who needs the heroes’ help in reaching the fabled healers of the Leechpit, only to hesitate once the cost of their treatment is revealed to them. Alternatively, the group could find themselves unraveling the disappearance of a child, only to find that one of the kid’s parents sold them off to the witches in exchange for healing without telling their spouse that they’d done so. Lastly, the heroes might stumble upon the Leechpit in their travels and find the witches to be strange but obliging hosts, willing to sell them all manner of tinctures, elixirs, and potions (for which they actually will accept coin).

If, for some reason, the group finds themselves having to fight the witches of the Leechpit, each counts as a Forest Witch (Creature Compendium page 223) who have the Nature’s Remedies spell in addition to her other primal spells, usable (1/Recoup). The witches of the Leechpit are as follows:

• Galea the Gilded — Galea heals +1 HP to any creature (including herself) whenever she restores HP with a spell or action (such as Drink the Earth).
• Melisande the Morient — Melisande inflicts +1 damage with all of her damaging actions.
• Pasiphona the Pallid — Pasiphona has +15 more HP than her sisters (for a total of 50).

These three “leechsisters” will not tolerate people attempting to steal from them or back out on a deal, and will prioritize a single target at a time whenever possible, starting with the one they perceive as the physically weakest of their opponents.

The Wychwood

Read Aloud: While much of the Old Forest is dark and its thick canopy has made day seem dim and night seem pitch black, there is something altogether different about the gloom of where you are now. You’re not sure exactly when it happened, there was no noticeable threshold, but sure enough at some point along your travels you seem to have entered a land of deepest umbra.

As if the dark weren’t bad enough, the ground has become soft & wet, the air is thick with veritable clouds of stinging insects, and all around you are the mournful croaks of unseen amphibians. The trees here bend and twist in ways that seem almost unnatural. Their gnarled bark tends towards jet black or stark, bone white. They ooze a noxious-smelling purple sap that makes your face feel numb just by smelling.

The vague sense of wrong you’ve experienced in flashes throughout your time in the Old Forest is pervasive here. Everywhere you go you feel unwanted, watched, a trespasser. The woods stretch on before you in a dark expanse. At first, the darkness is overwhelming, all-consuming, but then you see tiny motes of light in the distance. Lanterns & campfires, perhaps? Maybe a settlement up ahead?

The heroes can attempt an INT check to see what they know of the Wychwood upon entering them.

DC	Information
12	The Wychwood is widely regarded as a haunted, frightening place about which many horror stories are told throughout Kendaria. The specific causes of the region’s supposed curses and hauntings vary from source to source, but most agree it has something to do with an ancient coven of hex witches (though at least one popular folktale insists there’s just one “wych” in Wychwood at the rood of all the ghost stories).
17	Several centuries ago, a group of soldiers from an invading army were routed and fled into the forest, pursued by outriders from the local defenders. The locals chased the invaders all the way up until they saw they were heading into Wychwood. The defenders quickly fled, leaving the invaders to whatever dark fate the woods had for them. It’s said those invaders were never seen again, with some ghost stories claiming that they’ve been enslaved in undeath by whatever dark forces rule the Wychwood.
23	A mage named Leliam Kindros intended to spend a year living in Wychwood to study the local magical and spiritual phenomena and unravel the region’s mysteries. She delivered her notes to a colleague in Dalewright every week via magical means, and at first her findings were surprisingly mundane. By the third week, her notes were becoming noticeably disorganized and confusing. By the fourth week, it was nothing but a stack of scribbled, manic poetry about someone or something called the Thorn Queen. By the fifth week, the only note she sent were the words “She has found me. Do not look for me. Do not come for me.” Her assistant organized these notes into an odd tome called An Inquest Into Wychwood, with Annotations and Warnings.

The Hungry Marsh

The lights the group is seeing are Will o’ the Wisps which hover around a swamp inhabited by a number of Purple Slimes, which wait just below the surface of the water. A series of wooden boardwalks rise up from the marsh water, criss-crossing out into the darkness of the swamp, but little gatherings of Will o’ the Wisps try to use their Entice action to draw creatures into the water to be devoured by the slimes.

If the heroes spend too much time looking out into the water trying to see what might be out there, the slimes will slowly float over to them and come up through the gaps in the boardwalk using their Malleable Form feature. The Will o’ the Wisps are scavengers who feed on the pockmarked bones the slimes leave behind, forming a symbiotic circle with the creatures by drawing meals to them.

In the water of the marsh, the heroes may see the glint of many coins & treasures left behind by travelers and adventurers that were previously attacked by the slimes— especially if the characters have sources of light which might reflect off of the metal. If they go down into the marsh to retrieve this haul, they’ll find 250 sc and a Common magical item of your choice; a Woodcutter’s Axe or Ring of Illumination (Common) would be good choices. The rest of the equipment found below the water amongst the bones is too heavily corroded to make use of.

Lurkers Amongst the Leaf Sentries

At several points throughout Wychwood, the heroes may find odd humanoid-shaped topiaries, frozen and recoiling in positions of fear, or else with weapons and shields drawn like they’re facing down a terrible foe. These hedge sculptures are surprisingly well tended, and look very green and healthy despite the dark and blight of Wychwood. These are what are commonly called leaf sentries, and the truth of them is that they are the victims of a fae creature called the Queen of Thorns.

One particularly vast field of leaf sentries (around two dozen or so) can be found near the southern edge of the heart of Wychwood. If the group comes upon this thicket, read the following.

Read Aloud: You reach a smallish clearing where the ground is unusually firm and the tangled roots of the trees give way to a surprisingly wide space of open forest floor. The broad, enmeshed canopy still reaches out above you to make sure that even this loose clearing is as dark as every other part of Wychwood.

At first, in the gloom, you think you see people standing there. Dozens of them, in fact. But it doesn’t take long to realize that none of them are moving. What you’re looking at is a field of topiary, leafy bushes meticulously trimmed in the likeness of humanoid creatures, each standing frozen in a dynamic pose of action or fear— brandishing weapons or recoiling as if to shield themselves from something. An acrid stench like long-rotted plant decay mixed with alchemical acid wafts out from the clearing.

Amongst these topiary is a Fetid Lurker, spread out like a thin coating of filth and decay around the center of the clearing. It will gather itself up into a single mass to attack when it senses creatures enter the area, waiting to do so until they’ve walked a decent way into the clearing. Two of the leaf sentries are also actually cursed scarecrows left in the clearing to attack curious visitors; use the Bloodoak Scarecrow stat block to represent these creatures. If the group is closer to level 7 than level 5, you can make the two cursed plant creatures into the more powerful Bloodoak Hosts instead of Scarecrows.

Redleaf Dale

Read Aloud: Dark bark and deep crimson leaves— the distinctive trees of this section of the forest have been slowly overtaking the more common green trees of the Old Forest as you’ve traveled, until at last you enter a grove containing naught but a sea of red-leafed sentinels as far as the eye can see. Like a forest in an eternal state of autumn color, the sight is striking and evocative.

A town appears amidst the field of red, mostly smallish buildings of local dark timber with the occasional larger stone structure, all nestled in amongst the trees such that there seems almost not to be a distinction between what is forest and what is town. Like many Old Forest towns, this one seems to be doing its best to exist in harmony with its surroundings.

Redleaf Dale is a town built amidst a stand of unusual trees not found elsewhere in the Old Forest. It is located in the south-west corner of the Old Forest, south of the Levidian Mists. The town has a very long history, dating back to before this area was considered a part of Kendaria. Its people proudly work the scarlet and deep brown colors of their unique trees into their local livery, fashions, and crafts.

There are many folks stories explaining the unusual appearance of the trees here, the most common of which says that the Archfae Oberon did battle with the red moon Primor, and when Rometta went to collect the moon’s blood it overflowed from her chalice and spilled upon the face of Ancerra, and where it fell, red trees bloomed.

A Sanguine Cabal

Secretly, Redleaf Dale is also the home of a small cabal of Dergues, spore-born vampiric creatures created by the parasitic undead infection of Sporebats. The first person to be transformed into a Dergue was an apothecary named Chardeth Ilvaless, formerly an elven alchemist and physician that served both the local community and Baron, Baron Herrivald Mordrake. Ilvaless was initially infected some years back when some experiments with the spores of a dead Sporebat - which he believed to be inert - went horribly awry. The alchemist was trying to isolate the causal mechanism of the Dergue Plague, both in hopes of creating a cure, and with an eye to learning more about how corporeal undeath functions.

After getting infected and transforming, Ilvaless became obsessed with his new condition and experimenting with the “miraculous gifts” of the Dergue Plague. Ilvaless used his position as the town doctor to infect others, starting with the chief constable and a local mage, both of whom he worried may be able to figure out what he actually was. Eventually when the opportunity presented itself Ilvaless infected both the Baron and his wife Lady Cadence Mordrake. Bringing the Baron into the fold changed the power dynamic a bit, with Baron Mordrake assuming control of the cabal. This was fine with Ilvaless, as it freed him up to continue his experiments with the Dergue Plague and the spores which cause it.

Eventually Baron Mordrake had amassed a coven of Dergues made up of influential individuals all over, allowing him to have eyes more or less everywhere. The cabal’s latest inductee was Mother Adria Toll, Redleaf Dale’s priestess of Tovare, though she has not actually been transformed yet. Discovering that the leadership of her beloved town has been corrupted and transformed has caused a bizarre theological and philosophical inversion in the priestess. Mother Adria now sees Dergues (and certain other forms of undead) as divine beings, creatures that Tovare has nurtured to the point of physical and spiritual perfection, which she calls the Living Ascended.

Her twisted perspective made some in the cabal nervous at first, but she has proven herself capable of discretion and a willing servant to their agenda on several occasions. She wishes to one day join the Living Ascended, but she believes that her connection to what she calls “lesser divine magics” may make the transformation difficult or possibly even fatal. Whether or not she is technically correct on this point can be left up to the MC. It could be that her magic would simply abandon her, or it could be that at the moment of her transformation, the divine magic within her would cause a small explosion of radiant energy and grievously injure or kill her.

The list of people in town that are infected or otherwise a part of the cabal are as follows:

• Baron Mordrake (He/Him) & Lady Mordrake (She/Her) — Formerly Human (Dergue). The local nobility.
• Chardeth Ilvaless (He/Him) — Formerly Elf (Dergue). The local physician and the former owner of an apothecary shop, recently abandoned, as he now spends all of his time in the Baron’s basement. Chardeth Ilvaless performs experiments on both Sporebats and the Slaughs created by the group’s murderous method of feeding.
• Chief Constable Treyden Fathoms (He/Him) — Formerly Water Elemental (Dergue). The chief of the local constabulary. One of his constables, Talis Huph (a female Halfling) is suspicious of Chief Fathoms and convinced that he’s a part of some kind of criminal enterprise.
• Temmet Gemlathe (He/Him) — Formerly Dwarf (Dergue). Master blacksmith and one of the heads of the Redleaf Dale Guild of Tradesfolk. He tries to influence the local artisans towards whatever the conspiracy may need of them.
• Denrose Candor (She/Her) — Formerly Satyr (Dergue). A mage who worked as a local tutor, with access to and some amount of influence over many families in town.
• Mother Adria Toll (She/Her) — Human. The priestess of Tovare in the town’s impressive and beautiful dark wood stave church. She has not been turned because she’s fairly certain it would kill her, and for now the cabal finds her too useful to risk it.

There are plenty of other people “involved” with the coven in one way or another, but almost all of them believe that it’s simply a strangely secretive grouping of the town’s elite. Most of these lower-level individuals are unaware that they’re serving a group of undead monsters, but many of them are aware that their masters and superiors are up to something shady that may or may not have to do with a rash of disappearances over the last couple of years.

A Dangerous Weapon

One of the reasons the Dergues eventually decided to see if they could bring Mother Adria into the fold is that her church houses a potentially devastating magical device called the Scarlet Thurible which was consecrated by the stave church’s founder, Father Anton Cenderine over two centuries ago. The thurible can be used as a powerful weapon against the undead, and upon learning of its properties, the Dergues decided it would need to be destroyed. Their plan to transform Mother Adria ran into a problem when it was determined that the transformation might kill her. Mother Adria’s warped faith allowed her to continue serving the cabal’s needs, but she has so far refused to destroy such a holy object, instead deciding to keep it locked in a strongbox to which she has the sole key.

Scarlet Thurible

Rare, Unique, Essence 25

This censer, when filled with charcoal made from the redleaf trees and burning their scarlet leaves, emits a smoke that is lethally poisonous to undead creatures. 1 pound of charcoal and leaves can fuel the Scarlet Thurible for up to 1 minute (6 rounds). Woodsmoke from these trees does not produce this effect normally, it is a special function of this specific thurible. The thurible occupies one hand when in use and must be swung back and forth in order to proliferate the cloud of smoke.

For 2 AP a character can light the thurible and for 1 AP they can swing it. Each turn that it is swung it creates a 15 ft area of smoke around the carrier. When an undead creature starts its turn within this area, its DR is reduced by −5, and it suffers 1d6 poison damage (even if it is normally immune to poison damage). Damage inflicted by this cloud is not reduced by any DR the creature may still have. The DR reduction effect continues until the start of their next turn, even if they leave the area of the smoke. The smoke produced by this thurible is unusually thin and wispy, and does not obstruct or obscure vision.

Silverbranch

Read Aloud: Silverbranch is a confused city, having come into prosperity without any organized plans for how to develop. Its roads and alleys jam together at haphazard angles, and major, well-cobbled streets turn to winding dirt paths unexpectedly. Neighborhoods fan out from a large city center like petals blooming from a flower.

The city center itself looks much like any other city of moderate size: large permanent shops, like tanneries, inns, and smithies, loom over wide avenues and town squares where cart merchants hawk their wares. One detail does set Silverbranch apart, though; it has a large and bustling warehouse district that pumps imports and exports to and from the nation of Nevna with the regularity of an organism’s heartbeat. The baron’s estate looms on the tallest hill in the heart of the city, overlooking this cycle of trade with Kendaria’s southern neighbors.

Why is it Called Silverbranch?

Nobody knows how this city got its name. Once a very small town, some claim that there was a tree of silver around which the town was built. Whether the tree was literally silver, or figuratively sparkled with silvery light, is debated.

Other folk say that in the occasional wars between Nevna and Kendaria, a peace treaty was signed in this town. A metaphorical silver branch, a peace offering of sorts, led to the name of this town as the location where peace was achieved.

Still others declare that it is simply a practical name. Silverbranch is a hub between two nations and several large towns, with roads branching out in all directions and silver flowing freely.

Rulers of Silverbranch

The Chaerid family rule Silverbranch directly, but Silverbranch is also home to the Bruneau estate, where Duke Reston rules over the whole region of central-south Kendaria.

Hemrith Chaerid

A nonbinary elf named Hemrith is the baron of Silverbranch. They have a daughter named Edeia, who helps them run the affairs of the city. Edeia is about two hundred years old, and Hemrith in their late three-hundreds. Hemrith has been the baron of Silverbranch for over a century. Their steady hand brought Silverbranch from obscurity into prosperity over the first eighty years of their governance, but in the past thirty to forty years, Hemrith has grown complacent. Their more hands-off approach to governance over the past few decades has caused crime in Silverbranch to fester into a large, international hub of black market trade. Whether Hemrith is unaware of these activities, willfully ignores them, or participates in the activities themself is unknown to the public.

Reston Bruneau

Duke Reston Bruneau lives a half hour outside of Silverbranch proper. He is on good professional terms with the Chaerids, although he is as interpersonally abrasive as ever. You can read more about Reston Bruneau in Appendix A.

Overview of the city

The heart of Silverbranch contains the city center, with a variety of residential neighborhoods fanning outward from it. A river named the Silverstream winds through Silverbranch from the northwest to the east.

Roads and Navigation

Silverbranch’s horribly chaotic roads and city layout mean that it can be very hard to find specific stores or residences. If the heroes are looking for an inn, that’s easy to find; if they’re looking for The Budding Rose Inn and Tavern, that’s another matter. Unless any of the heroes are native to Silverbranch, finding a specific building first requires an AWR, INT, CHA, or LUCK check. Subtract the roll from 20; the difference (minimum 2) is the number of hours it takes to find the building. If the heroes have already been to this building once before, they must still make the roll but halve the time it takes. After having been to a building twice, heroes no longer need to roll for this.

Residential Areas

The fanning spread of residential neighborhoods that radiate outward from the city center have occasional storefronts, but these are mainly small, local eateries.

City Markets

Within the urban sprawl of the city center, the heroes can find any spread of accommodations and mercantile goods ranging in price and quality from very poor to finely crafted. Very fine items, and the most highly luxurious inns, might suit a baron or duke’s fancies, but would not be considered high enough quality for royalty.

Silverstream Lodge

The largest inn in Silverbranch, the Silverstream Lodge has a large boardwalk that overlooks the Silverstream and offers private gondola rides along its calm waters. The land-facing front of the Silverstream Lodge looms over one of the largest town squares in the city. The Silverstream Lodge is large enough that it is exempt from the Roads and Navigation attribute challenge.

The Silverstream Lodge’s rates are luxurious, but its food and accommodations are top notch. You pay a lot, but you get what you pay for.

Textile Factory

One of the largest buildings in the city center is a massive textile factory. Flax gets spun into linen, cotton processed into usable cloth, and sheep wool woven into soft, warm fabric. Powered by enormous waterwheels that churn from the steady current of the Silverstream, the textile factory is a massive economic asset. It is also a front for the opium cartel, though most of the folk that work at the factory are not aware of this.

Warehouse District

The Warehouse District is a maze of long, large buildings that are usually one or two stories high and as long and deep as several inns lined up. These warehouses store all kinds of goods and are very well guarded by the local city watch. Most warehouses are used daily as traveling merchants deposit and refill their caravan goods en route to Dalewright, Bridgemoor, or Nevna.

Baron’s Estate

The Chaerid estate overlooks the heart of Silverbranch. The Silverstream Lodge, Textile Factory, and Warehouse District are all in clear view from the estate’s balconies. The Chaerid estate is quite luxurious as the Chaerids have enjoyed the financial benefits of raising a successful town into a blossoming city. Now, they primarily lounge about inside their estate, leaving the city to run itself.

Nevnan relations

Relations between Kendaria and Nevena are always fraught. Nevna does not believe in such a thing as sovereign territory on the ocean, so they claim that any Kendarian ship they pirate - even within eyesight of Kendarian shorelines - is theirs by right of might.

However, Nevna also trades prolifically with Kendaria through Silverbranch, which serves as a kind of a cultural buffer zone. People of Nevnan nationality are commonly seen in Silverbranch and are simply treated as paying customers or businessfolk, while they might be treated with fear or hostility in Dalewright and other Kendarian towns.

Nevnan beliefs on sovereignty are less combative where land is concerned and they respect Silverbranch’s legal system. Kendaria only officially trades with Nevna via Silverbranch, therefore, utilizing what has become known as the “Silver Road.” This is a series of well-marked trails through the Nevnan desert that connect various towns in Nevna to Silverbranch.

Opium Cartel

Silverbranch is, of course, prosperous as a massive trading hub between two nations. However, it has also developed a tremendous amount of wealth as the center of power for a drug cartel that exports opium to Nevna, other Kendarian towns, Bridgemoor, Nalathesh, and beyond.

The Pollen Breeze is the name of the opium cartel operating out of Silverbranch. It has members in all levels of society, from common laborers to international merchants to minor nobles to warehouse property owners.

The Chaerids are completely unaware of the cartel. Both have become quite complacent, allowing their long years to turn them careless rather than wise.

Reston Bruneau himself is aware of the drug trade, but as long as he keeps getting his large and regular sums of sc added to his treasury on a monthly basis he doesn’t intend to investigate.