Story
The sun hung high as Leira stirred the cooking pot, the scent of root broth drifting through the village platforms. Bees hummed near the herb baskets. Below, the river whispered through the trees.
Children chased each other along the rope bridges, their laughter echoing like birdcalls. A squirrel stole a berry and fled with pride. One of the young druids coaxed a vine into weaving tighter around a splintered railing, his brow furrowed in focus.
Across the way, Old Brek napped in his hammock, a hawk perched on the railing beside him like a silent guard.
Nothing urgent. Nothing strange.
Just the hum of a village breathing, the forest alive with it.
Leira tasted the broth, smiled, and added one more leaf.
Far below, beyond the roots and mist, two men in dark leathers watched from the shadows. One marked a map. The other nodded.
Then they turned and slipped back toward the coast.

Description

Elarune is a long, narrow country nestled between two jagged outcrops of The Spine of the World and the coast. The land is dominated by the dense, mist-covered forest. Here, ancient trees rise skyward like green pillars, their roots gripping the stone like claws. Mists drift between the branches, thick with the scent of moss and sap. Light filters down in scattered rays, painting the forest floor in gold and shadow.

The forest itself is alive, not just biologically, but spiritually. Every glade, every tree, and every breeze is believed to hold a spirit. The people of Elarune see themselves not as owners of the land, but as its family, its siblings.

Society

There is no central government. The people live in scattered village-clusters, each built within the trees. The villages are not constructed so much as grown, carefully shaped over decades by druids who coax living wood into homes, walkways, and towers. Rope bridges and vine-grown lifts connect platforms across vast branches.

Each village is self-sufficient, guided spiritually and communally by female shamans, who act as priestesses and counselors. Shamans commune with forest spirits, ancestors, and dream-beings through ritual, trance and sacred fungi. Their word is law, not by force, but by trust and deep reverence.

Druids and Shamans

The two roles are strictly divided by tradition:

• Druids are guardians of life and growth, male-only, trained from childhood to speak with the plants and listen to animals. They tend crops, grow homes, and serve as healers and scouts. The druid wears wooden masks during their rituals, symbolizing their connection to the forest.

• Shamans are the voice of the unseen, female-only, chosen by visions or signs. They wear masks in ceremony, carved to resemble beasts or spirits, and are responsible for rites of passage, burial, and inter-village communication. The shamans are tattooed with symbols of spirits important to them.

Traditions

The Rooting Ceremony: When a child reaches seven winters, a druid plants a tree for them. This tree is bonded to them, and they are taught to care for it. They call it their tree-twin, said to protect them in their dreams. When they die, their body is buried beneath its roots, uniting them with their tree.

Spirits' Breath: A ritual where shamans inhale the spores of the Lumeclad Mushroom, entering a trance to walk the spirit paths and speak with ancestors. This allows their spirit to wander what they consider to be the true forest, seeing and talking to the spirits.

Recent Events

Over the last three decades, the outside world has pressed hard against Elarune. Slave hunters, especially from, or working for, The Great Empire, attack villages to capture slaves. The Twin Cities, always looking for slaves, is also raiding deep into Elarune.

They survive through retreat and concealment, slipping deeper into the forest's heart. It is a hard thing for them to leave their home, as that also means leaving their tree twin, and possibly their place in the spirit world after they die.

Some sacred glades are now lost or corrupted. A few villages have vanished altogether, leaving only ghost-whispers and blackened bark.

Possible Secrets

The Spirits Are Dying

Some shamans have noticed a change in the spirit world: fewer voices answer their calls, and ancestral paths in dream-rituals have gone silent. The balance is breaking, but most refuse to speak of it, fearing panic, or worse, blame.

A War Tree Sleeps

Deep in the forest lies a colossal, half-sunken tree, blackened with age and bound in spirit-wards. Older shamans know it was once a Sylvanth, a living war-beast grown by druids in a time long forgotten. Some believe it still dreams, and could be awakened, but only through sacrifice.

One Village Has Taken Slaves

In desperation, one isolated village, cut off by bandit raids, has begun capturing outsiders and using them as barter and labor. Their shaman justifies it as spiritual justice. If the other villages knew, it could tear what little unity remains.

The First Shaman Was a Man

According to hidden oral traditions kept only by the Owl-Who-Knows line, the very first shaman was male, and exiled. His descendants still live, wandering the deep forest, calling themselves the Forgotten Lineage. They claim the spirits speak truer to them, and they may be right.

The Forest Itself Hungers

There are places in the Greenveil where plants grow too fast, too twisted. Vines that whisper in dreams. Blossoms that bleed. Some druids believe a spirit-god once trapped beneath the roots is waking, and that the forest's will may not be gentle much longer.

The Slave Hunters Are Working With a Shaman

At least one shaman has betrayed the others, offering secrets and spirit-maps in exchange for protection, or power. Their identity is unknown, but the spirit trails around some raids suggest an insider's hand.

A Hidden Grove Holds a Gate

Buried under layers of roots and forgotten prayers, there is a place where the spirit world overlaps entirely with the waking one. It is said that those who enter may speak directly with gods, or become something else entirely.

The Final Retreat Has Already Begun

One secret order of elder shamans is preparing a ritual to seal off the inner forest completely, cutting it off from the outside world forever. If completed, the entire forest may vanish from the map-taking everyone inside with it.

Adventure Hooks

Stranger Beneath the Roots

A wounded outsider has been found hidden in a root hollow, badly burned, carrying unfamiliar weapons, and speaking a dialect no one recognizes. They beg for protection, but their presence may draw something worse.

The Maskless Shaman

A shaman has disappeared during a night ritual. In her place, only her mask was found, cracked in two. Without her, her village is spiritually blind. The druids are reluctant to act without a guide, but something must be done before the village falls into despair, or madness.

The Sky Beast

Something has been spotted flying above the canopy, large, silent, and vanishing into the clouds. The last time anything like this was seen, a mountain village was found crushed beneath broken trees. Now it's circling again.

The Spirit Trial

An adolescent in a nearby village has entered the forest alone to complete the coming-of-age spirit trial but has not returned by the third night. According to tradition, no villager may follow. Outsiders, however, are not bound by such rules.

Whispers in the Rain

During a week-long rain, several villagers have reported hearing voices in the water. A young child now speaks in tongues, claiming to be a river spirit that has "forgotten its name." The shamans are unsure whether to listen or fear.

The Festival of Echoes

Once every year, distant villages meet for the Festival of Echoes, a great gathering of song, story and sharing. This year, one village has not responded. No birds. No runners. No wind-chimes. Silence.

The Animal That Should Not Be

A druid returns from the woods with a broken body and a whispered warning: he saw an animal with no shadow, walking upright, wearing the skin of a bear but the eyes of a man. It looked at him. And smiled.

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