D20 SYSTEM✦ Normal

The Smoldering Heart of Greatwood

# Wilderness# Intrigue# Fey# Magitech

The ancient forest of Greatwood, long protected by a slumbering Treant Guardian, awakens not to defend its children, but to burn them. A creeping, venomous smog rises from the heart of the woods, sickening the land and driving its fey creatures to madness. The source is a brutal conflict between the desperate loggers of Greatwood Village and the vengeful, ancient druidic circle that guards the heartwood. Veteran adventurers will find no easy answers, only a choice between a community's survival and a forest's soul.

Chronicle Prelude

The frontier village of Greatwood is a place of desperate industry. Buildings are patched with mismatched lumber, the air smells of fresh-cut pine and anxious sweat, and the logging yard's machinery groans day and night. A pall of unnatural, greenish-yellow haze clings to the treeline, and weary villagers eye the woods with a mix of fear and avarice.

Environmental Traits

The regional crisis is the spreading Venomous Smog, a magical blight that poisons flora, fauna, and the fey realm alike. The ultimate goal is to reach the Greatwood Heart—the ancient Treant Guardian—and end the conflict that is fueling the smog. The choice of how to end it—by reinforcing the logging yard's expansion or by restoring the forest's primordial pact—will define the fate of the region.

Legendary Archetypes

Rayan

HP:45

STR:16

WIS: 12

CHA:11

Key Factions & Autonomous Nodes (8)

Foreman Garrick
A weathered man in his late fifties with a thick, grey-streaked beard and hands that are a map of calluses and old scars. He wears a heavy, patched wool coat bearing the axe-and-stump insignia of the Logging Collective. His eyes are tired but fiercely determined.
Archdruid Sylara
An ageless elf with skin like pale birch bark and hair the color of deep moss. Her eyes are pools of liquid green, and she moves with a silent, unsettling grace. She wears robes of woven leaves and vines that seem to breathe with her.
Theron the Woodsman
A nondescript man of average height with a perpetually worried expression. He wears the simple clothes of a villager, often with wood shavings clinging to his sleeves. He is always seen near the edge of the village, supposedly gathering kindling.
Engineer Brilda
A stout dwarven woman with soot-stained goggles pushed up on her forehead. Her leather apron is covered in tool loops and pockets. She carries a massive, well-worn wrench and has a constant, critical squint, as if measuring the structural integrity of everything she sees.
Fey Matriarch Lirael
A tall, slender dryad whose form is a twisted parody of natural beauty. Her bark-skin is cracked and weeps a clear, viscous sap. Her hair is a tangle of dead, brittle vines, and her eyes glow with a sickly, flickering light. She moves with spasmodic, unnatural jerks.
Corrupted River Elemental
A churning, vaguely humanoid shape composed of dark, oily water and alchemical sludge. Glints of corroded metal and poisoned vegetation swirl within its form. It roars with the sound of rushing toxic rapids and broken stones.
Scholar Maren
An elderly woman with sharp, intelligent eyes peering out from a deeply lined face. She is hunched over a stack of crumbling books, wearing spectacles that magnify her gaze. Her small cottage is overflowing with scrolls, artifacts, and maps of the region.
The Agonized Treant Guardian
A massive, once-majestic treant, now a horrifying monument to suffering. Its bark is split and blackened in places, oozing a thick, dark sap that sizzles where it touches the ground. Its branches are twisted into anguished claws, and its hollow eyes weep streams of the very Venomous Smog that chokes the forest. It groans with the sound of a thousand splintering trees.

Chronicle Prelude

Environmental Traits

Legendary Archetypes

✦ Related Cases ✦

The Lost Workshop: Heart of a Raging Core

The Reignited Forge: A Crisis of Iron and Will