D20 SYSTEM✦ Normal

The Greatwood Toll: Sap and Sawdust

# Intrigue# Wilderness

The ancient Greatwood, a forest of sentient treants and primal spirits, has sealed its heartwood paths with a living barricade. The Council of Boughs, led by the ancient treant Galeroot, demands tribute from the Logger's Guild, not out of malice, but to heal a spreading blight that poisons the soil and their kin. The Logger's Guild, facing starvation and a harsh winter, has resorted to forging 'Passes of Binding'—illegal enchanted documents that mimic the authority of a long-dead archmage to bypass the toll. Neither side is purely right; both are desperate. The players are caught in the sap and sawdust, tasked with navigating this standoff where every choice bleeds moral consequence.

Chronicle Prelude

The campaign begins in 'Stumpsend', a grim logging town on the edge of the Greatwood. The air smells of sawdust and desperation. Guildmaster Haldor Thicketshorn, a haggard man with sawdust in his beard, pleads with the players: 'The treants are strangling us. Our passes are our only hope. Find a way through, or we starve.' On the other side of the barricade, a delegation of dryads and a young treant named Willowheart can be seen, their bark scored and sickly, silently begging for aid.

Environmental Traits

The Greatwood is dying. A creeping, fungal blight called 'Grayrot' is spreading from its core, turning vibrant life to petrified, gray stone. The treants believe only a massive infusion of vitality—sacrificial energy from living beings or potent magical items—can halt it. The Guild believes the treants are hoarding the true heart of the forest, a source of life they could use for themselves. The victory condition is not to pick a side, but to uncover the true source of the Grayrot and decide who, if anyone, deserves the power to stop it, and at what cost.

Legendary Archetypes

Rayan

HP:45

STR:16

WIS: 12

CHA:11

Key Factions & Autonomous Nodes (8)

Haldor Thicketshorn
A rugged, weathered man in his late 50s with a thick, graying beard and the calloused hands of a lifetime of labor. He wears a heavy leather jerkin adorned with the Logger's Guild badge—a stump and axe. His eyes are tired but sharp, and he carries the weight of his town's survival on his slumped shoulders.
Galeroot the Ancient
A colossal treant, its form a grotesque blend of living wood and gray, petrified stone. Half of its massive trunk is still sheathed in bark and moss, while the other half is frozen in eternal, stone-like agony. Its eyes, deep-set in a knothole face, glow with a dim, pained green light. Vines of gray rot snake across its body, and its movements are slow, accompanied by the grinding of stone on wood.
Willowheart
A slender, young treant, no taller than a large human. Its bark is supple and shows clear signs of damage—gashes filled with gray, stone-like growth. One of its branch-arms is petrified and hangs limp. Its 'face' is a simple arrangement of knots and a single, large, sorrowful amber eye that drips sap like tears.
Rootwarden Bramblethorn
A hulking treant of twisted, angry wood and thorns. Unlike the others, its corruption seems active and aggressive; patches of its bark are split, oozing a viscous, gray fluid that hardens into stone on contact with air. Its eyes burn with a feral, reddish-orange light, and it moves with a jerky, violent speed, roots snapping and re-forming as it walks.
Mira Sootfoot
A nervous, ink-stained woman with hunched shoulders and darting eyes. She wears a soot-stained apron over simple clothes, and her fingers are stained with a dark, red-brown substance. She constantly wrings her hands and avoids direct eye contact.
Dryad of Sorrow
A faint, translucent figure of a woman made of swirling motes of pale green light and gray ash. Her form flickers in and out of visibility, her face a mask of profound grief. She seems rooted to a single, petrified stump, from which her essence visibly drains. Her voice is a whisper carried on a cold breeze.
Grayrot Logger Scout
A human man in the tattered remains of a Logger's Guild uniform. His skin is pallid, and his eyes are wide with a mixture of fear and grim determination. Gray, stone-like patches creep up his neck from his collar. He carries a heavy axe and moves cautiously, scanning the twisted trees.
Grayrot Manifestation
A swirling, amorphous mass of gray spores, petrified wood splinters, and condensed sorrowful energy. It moves with a grinding, slithering sound, leaving a trail of petrified grass and small stones in its wake. Within the cloud, faint, anguished faces of forest spirits seem to form and dissolve.

Chronicle Prelude

Environmental Traits

Legendary Archetypes

✦ Related Cases ✦

The Goblin Plight of Rivervale and the Cryptic Mine

The Lost Workshop: Heart of a Raging Core