The Lord of the Woods Plot in The Shadow of Waxwing Slain | World Anvil
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The Lord of the Woods

   

This powerful, enigmatic being makes for a dangerous neighbor

 

Information

  You slew ZOMBAR KING OF THE JUNGLE who, despite not living in a jungle as Quintus Bartholomew Marion pointed out, was one of Fangear 's favorite creations.   Your audience with the Lord of the Woods impressed upon you his power.   The Lord of the Woods turned one of your hunters into a tree and butchered the other.   The Lord of the Woods demanded 30 sacrifices to be brought to him.   Cole brought the 30 and they wandered off blindly into the woods.   A great tree sprouted in the center of your settlement, bearing many fruits to the wondrous settlers. You believe the Lord of the Woods is behind this.   The tree has appeared to rot, sending forth rotten fruit which stink up the central meeting area of town   The tree has created 15 gashes that leak a crimson sap that reeks of morbidity   15 Lost Seekers have returned to the settlement, with vague dreamlike memories of spending time in an idyllic green paradise  
  Quintus Bartholomew Marion watched out the window as the last lights of the night time revelers faded and dark finally fell, the center of town illuminated now only by the dim reflections of firelight from the inn and the constant yellow glow that hovers around the great grove. At last he took a turn down to the floor, empty but for his guards and the few men cleaning, with a brief nod he went down further, into the wine cellar, to the back rows - with a quick twist of a 872 Windmere Grove a small panel reveals itself. Beyond, The Magi D'Invocati and a study safe for the research he would be at tonight, and many night to. come.   The book continues to resist yielding its secrets, guarded behind maddening scribbles, disjointed structure, and a tangle of languages that may or may not even be real. Through it all the strange runic language that structures itself so concretely across the pages, as if enforcing even in your incomprehension a compelling alien logic. Desperately you look for aid in the ward near the Orc Embassy, hoping to find someone to make sense of the tome's secrets.   Fortunately for you Venimen the Ratoy merchant is here dealing in his bizarre sundries, and he is happy to lend you what aid he can. You spend many nights seeking meaning, but fail continually in your task. An idea strikes you, a phonetic breakdown of the strange words Venevia Sil Galachus says at night, whspering into the moonlight as she gazes at the grove. With the help of Venimen you identify a page, or a sheaf of pages awkwardly combined, with a word, or sound, 'Fangear' written on the top.  

The Page Contents

  The only passage written in a language you can fully decipher is a small tear from a piece of paper crudely jumbled onto the greater whole 'All Kings have a Throne,' Venimen says that a rambling passage along the western edge is High Plains, an older language spoken by the Drakari and the other creatures that live beyond the Rim Mountains. He knows it somewhat and gives you a rough translation of what he can :  
"This one diffuses in form, inheritor of earthern rites, lost to time but can new replace the old, may need the sigil, or to find a mean of its own essence."
  All across the page are numbers, written down and then crossed out, often in a swift, angry slash that tears the paper itself. The only number not scratched out is 147   The page contains two runic passages that you, with difficulty, link to two other pages - one of them a very professionally written, and very old, page written in undecipherable runic and the other to a page with many more notes, including a strange recurring phrase with slight variations :   'to be beholden to its nature'   A drawing, a crude but eerie depiction of a skeletal form pinned under a boulder, most of its skeleton buried and out of sight. The hand clings to the rock, and is slightly inset into it, as if being absorbed while the skull itself emanates from empty eye sockets a red and blue aura, the page almost seems to twist when you look at it. The only other oddity to the piece is that the entire thing is wavy, distorted, as if being obscured or twisted by some intervening substance - a clearly deliberate choice by the artist.  

Story Time

  Venimen shakes his head when you ask about The Lord of the Woods but as you run through the terms you have heard he stops when you say 'the Bloom' a story comes to mind, which he relates to you.   "Pardon me, this story is an old Aelfinn tale and my Aelfinn is rusty - it may sound like it was just randomly typed out but I assure you this is an ancient epic tale"  
"Caoul and Lerrala married beneath the old birch, and the birds sang. A yellow mair of their number alighted on their hands once joined, and it was one with their life. One day, as the years went on and their love strengthened, Lerrala heard a voice from the woods, it whispered to her of a blooming, and that she must be a part of it. She spoke with Caoul, who told her no good could come of such things, but she went, for she was a friend of the forest, and would know its ways. With the tiny yellow mair she went, and with it she vanished.   Caoul went to find her, but her tracks went in circles. He swore to check every tree in the woods, and check he did - after two years he had seen each tree, but could not find his love. Then, on the last day, the yellow mair sang to him, and dropped a rugged hide on his shoulders.   Encouraged, he went through the woods again, looking at each tree and under every bush. After three more years, he was dejected, but then the yellow mair came again, and dropped a sharpened raptors tooth in his hands.   Encouraged he returned again to the woods, checked every tree, looked under every bush, and lifted every leaf, five years later he again completed his task, but dejected, sat on the ground bemoaning his lost love.   The mair came again, tweeting, and dropped a magnificent egg of coraled silver. It then sang to him, and lead him, back into the woods where he had been many times - he followed it and suddenly came upon a cave, a glorious site he had not seen, and the yellow wair flew on ahead.   He entered the cave, but his passage was arrested, the brambles grew out and reached for him, hungry for his flesh. But the boar's hide was thick, and the thorns could not grasp him. He continued on, and came to a magnificent verdant valley shining with light from a hidden sun. There he searched for his love, but upon reaching the lake in the middle a horde of silver serpents emerged and attacked - but he showed them the egg, and returned it to their nest, and they let him pass. Eventually he arrived at glade filled with creatures - animals, aelfinn, iron clan, all.... and there was his love, but she was twisted up in vine, unfeeling. The vines were tough, his blade could not penetrate them, but then he took out the Raptor's Tooth and it cut away the vines with ease.   He returned with his love to their village, and they, and the yellow mair, lived happily ever after."
  You learned that the Lord of the Woods has a "paradise" somewhere to the NW in the Great North Woods, which the Grovekeepers claim to visit   You learned that the Cult continues to flourish on the outer regions of the settlements, with several settlements especially one called 'The Land of Plenty' in the northern part of the Outer Settlements   You place the Mischievious Lizards sigil into the glowing light of the Bloom, echoing a great change over the world  
  The cult seems to remain popular amongst the inner and out settlements, particularly in areas around the rim of the Great Northern Woods

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