Elarune
Druids and shamans
| Story |
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| The mist clung to the upper canopy like breath on a drumskin. Araya moved with it, her feet steady on the slick bark, her skin cold with dew. She lightly touched the tattoo of a moon-eyed owl, feathers etched in sap ink. Owl-Who-Knows, they called it. A name older than memory. |
| Below, the forest murmured. Leaves shifted. A squirrel's warning cry snapped short. Outsiders. Again. |
| Araya knelt beside a withered vine-basket, once filled with healing roots. It dangled now from a crumbling platform, her apprentice's home. Marei had not returned from her gathering path. A single braid bead lay in the moss, carved with the symbol for "renewal." Araya took it gently and tucked it into her belt. |
| No body had been found. No blood. Just the hush of the forest turning inward. |
| She closed her eyes and reached through the veil. The scent of spiritbark burned in her memory. She felt the presence of the old ones-shifting, restless. The spirits whispered in gusts and groans, but not words. Not warnings. Longing. |
| "Guide them. Hide them. Keep the seed." |
| The trees bent with the wind. Somewhere, in the distance, the call of a horn. Metal feet were coming. Loud, clumsy, blind. |
| Araya stood and raised her hand to the bark of the great skywood. She whispered the old sounds, the ones the druids had long since forgotten. The tree shivered, then shifted, drawing its limbs up and away, swallowing the home above into a cocoon of leaves and silence. |
| She gave one low, hollow note through her bone-horn. A warning, passed from spirit to spirit. |
| The forest would not fight. Not yet. |
| But it would listen. And it would remember. |
| Story |
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| 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.