The Realm of Life
The World Tree – The Realm of Life (The Wild Gods & the Eternal Cycle)
“Life is not still. It grows. It changes. And it defies.” – Druidic Teachings of the Verdant Grove
The World Tree is the oldest living force in existence, governing the cycle of nature and evolution. The Wild Gods rule this realm, ensuring the eternal balance of life and death.
While the World Tree is neither good nor evil, it often finds itself in conflict with those who seek to disrupt the natural order.
Power Ranking of World Tree Primordials
- The Verdant Mother Nature – The very embodiment of life itself, she is the first guardian of the World Tree, a force of boundless creation and nurturing power.
- The Wild Gods – Primal deities who forsake traditional divinity to embrace the untamed, raw power of nature. Each Wild God represents an elemental force of the natural world.
- The Wardens – Spirits tasked with safeguarding the balance of nature, ensuring that the World Tree’s influence is never threatened by imbalance or corruption.
- The Verdant Kin – Druids and creatures who become one with the World Tree, dedicating their lives to maintaining its will and the harmony of the land.
The Wild Gods
Born from the primal forces of the natural world, the Wild Gods are ancient beings who embody the raw, untamable aspects of nature. They have forsaken traditional divinity to exist as pure elemental forces, each governing an essential part of the world's life force. Together, they maintain the delicate balance of life, growth, and destruction. Each Wild God plays a vital role in maintaining the balance of the natural world, ensuring that no single force dominates and that life remains a dynamic and ever-changing force.
- Sylas – (God of Storms) embodies tempests and violent winds, reshaping the world with destructive storms that bring both chaos and renewal.
- Gorath – (God of the Hunt) represents survival, predation, and the unyielding laws of the wild, ensuring balance between predator and prey.
- Vaelora – (Goddess of Roots) governs forests and plant life, embodying the interconnected web of growth and ensuring all life has its foundation in the earth.
- Krathos – (God of Flames) controls fire’s destructive and transformative power, embodying both chaos and rebirth.
- Althuna – (Goddess of Waters) controls oceans, rivers, and rain, giving nourishment while shaping the world’s waters to sustain life.
- Thyrix – (God of Stone) represents mountains and earth, ensuring stability and enduring the test of time, shaping continents through slow-moving forces.
- Selara – (Goddess of the Skies) embodies the sun and dawn, nourishing the world with warmth and marking time through day and night.
- Irith – (God of Winds) governs air currents, representing freedom and change, carrying seeds of life and altering fate with each breath.
- Nyxira – (Goddess of Shadows) embodies the balance between light and dark, maintaining harmony between life and death.
- Zoran – (God of Chaos) represents evolution and constant change, pushing nature to adapt and evolve, defying order and control.
The Wardens
The Wardens are ancient, powerful guardians who maintain the delicate balance of the natural world. Each embodies a unique aspect of nature’s force, protecting the World Tree and ensuring that the cycles of life, death, growth, and decay remain unbroken. Each Warden is a guardian of a vital aspect of the natural order, ensuring the harmony of life and death, growth and decay, and upholding the World Tree’s sacred balance.
- The Twins – A colossal frog the size of a city, with a smaller frog perched atop its head. One speaks only the truth, and the other always lies. Neither knows which is which, and their riddles leave even the wisest lost in a tangled web of deceit and revelation.
- The Time Cricket – A being beyond realms, the Time Cricket is the living embodiment of temporal flow. It weaves the fabric of past, present, and future, ensuring time remains steadfast and unbroken, unaffected by the chaos of the world.
- The Sporrior – An ancient mushroom samurai, this guardian is believed to be the very spirit of nature itself. With silent grace, the Sporrior defends the wilds, preserving nature’s will and ensuring the ancient balance of life thrives untouched by time.
- The World Tree’s Sapling – Once a man, now a mighty tree, the Sapling has surpassed human limitations by fusing with nature itself. Its consciousness has evolved, thinking in the slow, timeless rhythms of the forest, and guiding the World Tree toward eternal stability.
- The Lion Turtle – A massive lion-headed turtle that roams the seas, carrying a whole island upon its back. The island is a self-contained ecosystem, a sanctuary in the ocean's vastness. The Lion Turtle ensures the delicate balance between land and sea, safeguarding life in all its forms.
- Fenrir – The queen of beasts, a great wolf with the strength to slay gods with a single bite. Fenrir rules over the primal forces of nature, her power ensuring the cycle of life, death, and rebirth is never interrupted by even the greatest of threats.
- The World Eater – A gargantuan serpent with an insatiable hunger for all that lives. It consumes everything in its path, devouring both the weak and the strong, its mindless destruction representing the force of chaos that threatens the balance of nature.
The Verdant Kin
The Verdant Kin are not individual beings but a collective consciousness bound to the World Tree, existing as an interconnected hivemind. Each member is an extension of the Tree’s will, working in perfect harmony to protect and nurture the natural world. Their forms vary, but all share a deep connection to the essence of the Tree, and their actions are guided by its ancient wisdom. As a hivemind, the Verdant Kin act as a singular entity with countless voices and forms. Their every thought, action, and intention is in perfect unity, ensuring that the will of the World Tree is executed with precision and grace across the realms.
- The Rooted Chorus – A group of druids who have merged with the Tree’s roots, their minds unified in purpose to nurture and protect the land.
- The Greenveil Collective – Fae spirits who relinquish individuality to become part of the Tree’s will, shaping the land with seamless harmony.
- The Vinebinders – Sentient plant beings, fused with the Tree’s magic, they act as both guardians and healers, bound by a shared purpose.
- The Sproutmind – A vast consciousness formed from nature’s life, guiding the Verdant Kin through the collective will of plants and animals.
- The Evergrowth – A network of interconnected trees and spirits, stretching across the land, ensuring the Tree’s influence reaches every corner.
- The Bloomweave – Nature spirits bound to the pollen and seeds of the Tree, spreading its essence and influence throughout the world.
- The Woodbound – Creatures who have merged with the Tree’s essence, now existing as one entity, shaping ecosystems and nurturing nature.
- The Thicketheart – Spirits of the wild, now part of the hivemind, watching over nature’s borders to maintain its balance.
- The Seedspire – The collective will of the World Tree’s young shoots, constantly growing and adapting to spread nature’s influence.
The Withering World Tree: The Core Conflict
The World Tree, once the vibrant source of life and growth in the realms, now faces an unprecedented threat. A creeping corruption—known as the Blight—has begun to infect its roots, spreading from the deepest soil to its highest branches, threatening to unravel the very fabric of life it sustains. The Blight is a manifestation of entropy, a force that seeks to bring all growth to a halt and turn flourishing ecosystems into barren wastelands.
The Verdant Kin, bound to the World Tree’s hivemind, struggle to contain this corruption, but their unity is being slowly eroded by the Blight's influence. As the Tree weakens, so too does the power of nature itself, causing a disturbance in the balance between life and decay. The Wild Gods, primal forces of nature, are divided over how to confront the Blight. Some seek to purge it through destruction, while others believe the only way to restore balance is to allow nature to reclaim itself in its own time, even if it means sacrificing parts of the world.
Meanwhile, the Wardens, ancient spirits who guard the natural order, face an existential dilemma. With the World Tree in peril, they must decide whether to uphold their sacred duty to protect the Tree or seek new means to combat the encroaching Blight. Some Wardens, like the Time Dragon, see the Blight as an inevitable part of the cycle of existence, while others, like the Sporrior, see it as a force that must be eradicated to preserve the sanctity of life.
As the World Tree’s roots begin to rot, the fight for the survival of life itself intensifies. The natural world is on the verge of collapse, and the Verdant Kin’s unified consciousness is slowly fraying. The core struggle lies in whether life can adapt to the Blight’s encroachment or if it will be consumed by it, leaving a withered, lifeless shell where once vibrant forests and flourishing ecosystems stood. The future of nature itself is at stake, and all must choose a side in this war between life, decay, and rebirth.
