The Wicker Crown

Earth's Circlet

The bark of many types of trees are imbued with magical energy and come to hold incredible and oftentimes unpredictable properties. Sometime toward the end of the 1300s, the druids of the Canterlund pineywood developed a deep understanding of this phenomenon. With the help of the wood's satyrs, nymphs and undynes (those varied creatures known as the Hekkauthra), they set out to develop one of the most powerful and dangerous artifacts ever known.

History of the Wicker Crown

From its creation by the druids to its abductions and subsequent losses, the Crown has a long history spanning over a millennia. It is known in songs and stories under many names and a thousand people have left their fingerprints on its twined barkskin surface.

The Weaving of the Circlet

The druids' sought to create an item which would grant superior perception of the natural world and a oneness with earth's creatures. They postulated such a thing could be woven from the bark of trees and set about identifying hundreds of candidates from different tree species. The process of researching, gathering, and processing the bark samples took years even with the aid of the Hekkauthra, whom they were on excellent terms with. Fairies and undynes traveled as far as Aposfabr to scrape samples from its unique willows and pines. Once the one-hundred-and-forty samples had been gathered, they were carefully dried, separated into threads, and woven together. In 1438, after nearly fifty attempts, the item they called the Earth's Circlet was completed.

Dark Powers

The Circlet possessed many properties, not all of which the druids could have predicted. Their original goals were achieved though they found the effects persisted on the wearer even after the circlet had been removed. The druids also found their creation to be near indestructible and impervious to rot, both dangerous properties when they recognized the circlet's other unintended effect: its ability to steer the forces of nature.
The revelation came one day when the druid Neifil, who harbored animosity toward one of her fellows, spoke spitefully of him while in possession of the circlet. She then watched in horror as two fairies, armed with rope, descended to strangle the man. After this incident, the druids broke into a frenzy over what to do with the artifact. A series of meetings bred only more indecision and the months went by with the dangerous artifact locked away. In 1440, the clamor reached the ears of the future lords of Lutol who descended upon the druids with an army and seized the circlet, declaring it as their common crown.
The Hekkauthra saw betrayal in the druids' actions and turned on their old friends in a bloody slaughter. Shortly after, the great majority of them fled Canterlund for fear of the controlling artifact while those who remained were quickly trapped beneath the spell of their new masters. In the absence of their protectors, the forests and rivers sickened and southern Canterlund forever became a desolate place.

In the Hands of the Lords

The band of young lords seven strong gathered a legion of ruthless Hekkauthra. In 1443, they took the city of Lutol without a drop of blood. Cantra was won in 1445 after an onslaught lasting only a few hours. After their victories, they gathered in the woods to the west of Lutol for they had discovered the Crown's properties of immortality. Having selected an imposing juniper tree, they used the crown to bind their lives to it: thus if any of them would fall, they would be reborn from the juniper.
The Lords ruled under the common crown for nearly 600 years with always four present in Lutol and the other about the land, switching places every few months. But a weariness of life came over some of the Lords and they began to question the purpose of their immortality. Tensions rose and trust thinned and in 2021, the Lords turned against each other. In a slaughter that lasted three days, they killed one another and were reborn again and again in the hopes that the binding juniper tree may be cut down. At last, under the stress of constant rebirth, the tree withered and the Lords collapsed all at once transforming into young junipers themselves.

Wickerwood

With the Lords dead and the crown's location a mystery, peace returned to the Canterlund for a time. Returned to its natural environment, the Crown set roots into the soil and began to grow. But the hundreds of trees comprising it manifested in a tangled wood that grew "as thick as wicker," as the locals called it. By 2100, the Wickerwood covered thousands of acres and stretched all the way to the Fracture. The woods were an eerie place where the myriad properties of the tree barks mingled in unexpected ways. Otherworldly creatures wandered its depths, growing stranger and more twisted the deeper one ventured.
Most folk suspected the origin of the woods to be tied to the disappearance of the Eastern Lords. Those who recalled the ancient crown from over 700 years ago had their own suspicions. Every expedition to the wood's center failed until a group of Paladins serving Othigil, daughter of Aunon and Casmura, succeeded in 2433. They retrieved the Crown which--it having gained sentience and speech over the years--protested violently. Only two of the group of twenty made it out alive. The crown was restrained and put away deep beneath the city of Aunumeres for the time being. After this, the Wickerwood withered and its beasts died and disappeared. When a wildfire swept through southern Canterlund in 2614, the forest died and never recovered. The place called Wickerwood became known as Daudmyre, the Withered Wood.

Loss and Destruction

The druids and botanists of Sulghury, learning of the crown's recovery, set out to bargain with the Othigil Paladins for it. But the paladins were staunch in their refusal. They continued researching ways to destroy the tightly woven crown which called out to them in their sleep and pleaded for its release. Desperate for an artifact of such history and worth, the Sulghurians stole the crown from Aunumeres in 2440. But the Crown manipulated its saviors and convinced them to run off with it into the wilderness instead of returning to Menguir.
From then on, the crown appeared in a hundred different places. Various organizations sought to pinpoint and retrieve the artifact but it moved from place to place with uncanny ease. Once, it had bound itself to a woodcutter in a village near the old Wickerwood. The man, desperately afraid of his immortality, cut down the very tree he was bound too, killing himself and releasing the crown. It appeared years later in Redgate where a cult of women were using it to bless cows with litters of a hundred calves so the city feasted on veal for weeks.
At last,

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in 2932, it was tracked to a place deep within the Thistlefield where it had begun to grow again into a vast, untamed wood. But the wood was already withered and absent of life and when the crown was located at the center, it was found shriveled, unwound, and rotted to the core. The remains were taken to the school of Durte Sulyha in Menguir and researched extensively. Every year attempts have been made to revive or replicate the great artifact but to this day none have succeeded.

Powers of the Crown

The Wicker Crown (originally called Earth's Circlet by the druids who fashioned it), possessed numerous powers, some of which were not discovered until years after its making. Some druids propose the crown absorbed energy from its surroundings and gained these new abilities over time. This theory seems likely as shown by the crown's development of sentience and speech over the years it spent in the Wickerwood.
The crown's original intent was to bestow upon the wearer a strong bond with nature: speaking with animals and Hekkauthra, perceiving the long cycles of the earth, and gaining a finer control and understanding of the Earth Impel. These abilities were indeed granted by those who wore the crown but in a way that also gave them leverage over the natural world. Hekkauthra and beasts would impulsively obey the wearer's every command and, with enough concentration, one could beckon the forests and the mountains.
Perhaps the most dangerous ability of the Crown, discovered by the Eastern Lords, was its ability to bind life to life. Used expertly, a creature (or group of creatures) could live forever by binding themselves to a tree or spring. Having died, they would be reborn from their chosen site again and again. But since the Lords, many fools have found themselves bound into maddening eternity. The bond can only be broken with great magical effort or a rapid straining on the crown's resources.
The crown is nearly indestructible and does not fray or rot. However, many years later, under mysterious circumstances, this was proved to be false.

An Unprecedented End

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How the Wicker Crown, found deep within the Thistlefield, was unbound remains one of the world's greatest mysteries. Some theorize the influence of the Mysmians who have powers to bind and unbind which rival even those of the crown. The anomalies of the Thistlefield cannot be discounted either and perhaps the crown was brought into the field and found itself unable to escape its clutches. More disturbingly, the destruction of the artifact coincides closely with the rise of Mautism in scattered locations all about the continent. The religion, infamous for its emphasis on suicides, perhaps was able to touch even the crown's troubled mind.