The Basics
When the First Prelate, Arliss Castillar saw the great forest of StroudHaven for the first time, with the World Tree towering over the rest of the wood like a Titan, he called it an Emerald Cathedral and declared it a Holy Site. It was later named a Province and given over to the Church to administer. Since that time, it has become something twisted and awful.
From a distance, it looks much as it always did. A solid wall of green with the Great Tree in the center of the forest, some 400’ in diameter and towering more than a thousand feet high, dwarfing everything else and every other tree in the forest, but now, there is a shadow flitting at the edges. Something that can only be seen from the corner of one’s eye, and something that fills most viewers with a sense of dread. A sickening foreboding.
No one can point to a definite year with the change began, though many claim it was the ascension of Cardinal Crestmore to the role of Duke and Administrator of the province. As the powerful, charismatic leader of the Church’s most conservative, fundamentalist faction, the fear is that some portion of his twisted essence became fused to the forest in a way not quite understood, and changed it forever.
Cardinal Crestmore formed the Order of the Pine Cross and used them as his personal shock troops. For a time, they were the finest bowmen in the Realm, and before the Furies broke them at the Battle of Hennesby, in Hlo’Haas, they were responsible for some of the greatest atrocities ever committed by men against other men in the Basin.
The survivors of that last, disastrous battle fled back into the wood, and the Furies let them go, being none too eager to venture too far into the shadow-laden wood. Upon their defeat, the Leader of the Pine Cross and the Men of the Steading beseeched the Queen of Fraine to accept them into her fold, which she did gleefully as it greatly expanded both her holdings and her power.
Although the Queen of Fraine lays nominal claim to the Wood, even she and her impressive armies dare not enter it. To this day, only a handful can say with any certainty what the dark interior of the forest is like, and those who know have retreated within it.
The addition of large swaths of territory has made the Kingdom of Fraine the most powerful force in the fractured Basin. Arguably, with control of the Sister Cities, they already were, but now there is no question about it. No other single force can stand against them and as for StroudHaven itself, none dare enter it save for the surviving members of the Pine Cross, and they’ve all fled to the interior, protected by the growing menace of the wood itself.
Prominent People & Places
Unknown. While the original settlers the Church sent to investigate the World Tree and learn more about its nature did indeed do so, no formal reports have ever been filed with the Church, or at least none that they admit to having. Whatever secrets the men who later formed the Order of the Pine Cross learned about the tree, they have kept to themselves.
What is known is that Cardinal Crestmore still lives and is now missing. He had been stripped of his rank, demoted to a simple Monk bearing the title of “Brother,” and exiled to a small monastery in Trentare. He is now gone from the monastery, and many fear that he has returned to the vast forest he once ruled. Absolutely nothing is known about the interior of the forest. It’s the ultimate blank spot on the map.
Plot Threads
Uncovering the dark truth about the forest of StroudHaven could easily be the focus of an entire campaign, although the party would almost have to be based in either Kell or the lands of the Furies (either Cerilon or more probably, Trentare, which directly borders the Great Wood. It would be a cool campaign, given the atrocities Crestmore committed in the novels, and it is left to the DM’s discretion exactly what caused the forest to change. Was it, as some suggest, the evil of the Cardinal, rubbing off on the forest, or was it the other way around? Maybe in their explorations of the forest, they unleashed a dark, primordial spirit which is now slowly corrupting and poisoning the land? Either way, that’s the stuff of high adventure!
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