Blackroot Ridge
Tucked along the windswept northern edge of the Moonsway Highlands, where the pines grow gnarled and the ridgelines fall into glacial mist, lies Blackroot Ridge — a place of sorrow, song, and unforgotten fury. To outsiders, it is a graveyard. To Clan Faolán, it is sacred ground, forever linked to one of the darkest and proudest days in their history.
It was here, five winters past, that the Kaldurreach descended without warning under the cloak of a new moon — a calculated raid aimed at breaking the unity of Faolán’s scattered hearth-circles. What they found instead was swift resistance and a gathering storm. The warbands of Faolán moved like wind through pine, harrying and biting, drawing the invaders up the ridge into unfamiliar terrain. At their head rode High Druid Caolan Frostspine, staff in hand, his cloak dusted with ash from the Circle of the Stars. Though he was old and half-blind, he stood at the summit of the ridge and called the spirits of the wolves to him with a final, wordless chant. It is said the moon rose red that night, and that even the trees bent toward Caolan’s voice.
He died before dawn, pierced by three spears but still standing when the sun touched the ridge. His body was burned with pine and salt, and his ashes were scattered across the battlefield by the survivors, who drove the Kaldurreach back to the sea in a campaign that became known as the Ashwake Hunt.
Today, Blackroot Ridge is both a memorial and a warning—the bones of the fallen lie buried beneath blackwood cairns. The slope is scarred with ceremonial scars from countless oaths of vengeance sworn since. Wolves are never hunted here, and when their howls echo across the ridge, the hearth-circles fall silent to listen. Each year, on the eve of the new moon in early frostfall, the Faolán gather at the ridge for the Night of Silence — a ritual vigil where no words are spoken, only drumbeats, windchimes, and the long, mournful howls of warpacks old and new. High Druid Maerla Windbound leads the procession herself, placing fresh blackroot upon the cairn each year and painting her face with ash.
To the Faolán, Blackroot Ridge is not a place of mourning. It is a place of memory and promises that have yet to be broken.
“They thought we would scatter. Instead, we circled them. One howl. One fury. One clan.” — High Druid Maerla Windbound, speaking at the first Night of Silence
