Forest Clans

The Glade Lord commands a Clan, no more. The Sylvestrins do not acknowledge a supreme king; they meet at the solstices in the Council of Lords, listen to what the Forest has grown over the year, depart. He speaks little. He wears bark-and-leaf armour, the longbow cut from the heart-ash, the short spear for close work when the bow no longer suffices.

He lives five hundred years, sometimes a thousand. He has watched Albéens pass at the edge for three or four generations; he names them by first name and forgets they are dead. On the field he guides his Clan with a sign, never a cry. When he draws, the Clan draws; when he pivots, the Clan pivots. The forest itself seems to move with him. Cerunnos, they say, visits him in dreams on moonless nights. He neither confirms nor denies.

The Spellweaver is no wizard as the humans understand the word — she is a voice lending her tongue to the Forest. She has spent two centuries learning the root-songs in a Glade-Sanctuary, then two more serving the local-spirits of a particular grove. She does not cast spells in pitched battle — she invokes the Way of Spirits, makes brambles rise beneath enemy feet, makes the Mother-Tree's voice heard to a horse that hesitates and rears.

Her magic is slow, deep, unspectacular. No bolt, no discharge — the sap rises, the root pushes, the branch falls. The enemy without the Forest's eye sees the ground close in and does not understand. The Astréens of old called it minor magic; the Sylvestrins answer that they have mistaken silence for absence. The Weaver hears the scorn without reply. The Sap rises in turn.

The Treeman Ancient is the father-spirit of a particular Forest — not quite tree, not quite spirit, but the living-pact between the two sealed a thousand years ago. He stands twelve metres tall, his roots still plunge into his Glade-Sanctuary of origin, and he moves only at grave occasions: Albéen Crusade against Vampires, Ereban assault upon the Mother-Forest, Imperial industrial sacrilege.

When he walks, the Clan follows. When he strikes, the bark of his fist splits stone. His Virtue is Memory — he recalls the Age of Legends, the broken Pacts of the Astréens, the human spilling at the First Convergence, the Wars of Albion. He bears these centuries as a man bears a wrinkle, without complaisance or regret. The whole forest holds him grandsire. When he falls, which has not happened in two thousand years, the Clan will scatter — an Ancient's Sap does not rise again.

The Glade Captain is a Lord's field officer, chosen for path-reading and the true shot. He commands in the Lord's absence, leads bands on deep patrol, speaks with the local-spirits of the groves crossed. He wears the same bark-armour, lighter, and the swift bow rather than the longbow.

Captains live half-between Clan and edge — they know the human and the Astréen, read banners, sometimes trade words with an Albéen at the verge. The traffic makes them useful and suspect at once. On the field they manoeuvre the flanks, harry the enemy who cannot tell where the shaft will come. When a Lord falls, it is a Captain the Council elevates — and the Glade, then, takes another hue.

The Spellsinger is the Weaver's apprentice — still in training, still in listening. She has spent her first century memorising the root-songs, recognising local-spirits by their breath, serving an elder Weaver in a Glade-Sanctuary. Her magic is modest: one spell, perhaps two; a single Way of the Sap; a voice still hesitant.

On the field she attends a more experienced Weaver and learns by watching. She can raise a bramble, make a branch sing, set a leaf trembling — small spells that suffice when the enemy is at the edge. When a Weaver falls (rarely, but it happens), the Singer takes up — not by formal elevation but because the Sap then has no other voice in the Clan. She learns fast.

The Shadowdancer carries the rite of the Wanderer — the trickster-spirit of the Sylvestrin pantheon, patron of dance, illusion, and the kindly lie. She has spent her youth in a Wandering-Glade, followed the rites of leaf-mask and short-step, and bears now the ritual paint on face and hands. Her short blade is forged of salmon-scale (a precise salmon, taken by rite at the new moon), graven with sap-glyphs that light only when the dance lights them.

On the field she does not fight like other Sylvestrins — she dances. Her formation is loose, her steps irregular, her enemy sees two of her, sometimes five. When the blade strikes, it strikes from behind, from the side, from above. No armour holds. When she falls, the Wanderer laughs elsewhere; she reappears in another Wandering-Glade a season later, not quite the same. The kindly lie includes death. She accepts it and dances.

The Waystalker is the solitary archer of the Sylvestrins — the one sent when an enemy Clan has a hero who must be brought down without pitched battle. She lives at the Clan's edge, sometimes isolated for years, reads paths, learns the ways of beasts and men, strikes from great distance with a longbow reinforced with stag-bone.

She has no formation — she is alone, or paired with an apprentice. On the field she takes a tree, a crest, a stone, and looses one shaft a minute, sometimes fewer, never more. Her Virtue is Patience. When the enemy advances, she does not pick the mass — she waits for the hero, the banner-bearer, the exposed wizard. One shaft. One target. Then she is gone before the second can be conceived. Astréens admire in silence. Albéens make tales of them. Beastmen howl with rage.

The Branchwraith is the young and wrathful spirit of a fallen tree. She is born of a dryad who has watched her tree felled by human or beastman, and the fury of that death has changed her — less woman, more bark, swifter, sharper. She has not the patience of a Spellweaver nor the slowness of a Treeman. She wants the blood that spilled the sap.

On the field she accompanies Treemen, leads Dryads in frenzied charge, strikes with bark-claws. Her spells are brief and burning — a Breath-of-Beast blow, a rot-curse, a call to the Pack. She does not last long: her fury consumes her, and after ten seasons of errantry she collapses into dead wood in some forgotten Glade. The Clan burns her remains; smoke rises; the Sap takes her. Another Branchwraith appears elsewhere, in another fallen tree. The cycle does not stop while there are axes.

Cerunnos, the Wild Hoof, is the mythic-mystic figure of the Mother-Forest — seen three times in two thousand years, never identified, never named in his own right. Some Sylvestrins say he is the Hunter-spirit clothed in flesh for the span of a battle; others a millennial Glade Lord fused with the living-Pact; others still the Treeman Ancient himself walking in stag-form. No answer has been given. No Spellweaver knows.

He appears at the edge of a decisive battle, mounted upon a great horned stag of the Forest, two lances at his sides, the sacred antlers at the temples. He fights as a Glade Lord but with the sacred frenzy of a Wild Rider and the authority of a Forest Warden. He chooses his foe (a hero, an Aspect, never a mass), undoes him, and is gone into the Deeps before the engagement ends. No Albéen has dared confuse him with their Green Knight; no Sylvestrin would lend himself to the comparison. Cerunnos comes when the Mother-Forest wills. He leaves when She calls him back.

Idriel Dawnstep, Blade of the Deepwood, is the most illustrious living Waywatcher. Born in a Glade near the Albéen edge, he spent his century of youth learning the paths, his century of maturity serving as a Waywatcher, and his present century bearing a unique charge: the joint Sylvestrin-Albéen defence during the major Crusades against the Vampires of Solmarche.

He is one of the few Sylvestrins the Albéens acknowledge — not by acquaintance, but by repute. He saved the Crusade of the Seven Dukes by felling three Vampire-Masters in a single evening. He bears a longbow forged from the Eldermere-Ash, arrows graven with dawn-glyphs — the fruit of a rare ritual exchange with an Albéen Damsel. On the field he posts where he can loose unseen, and brings down enemy heroes one by one. His Virtue is Precision. His blade is silence. He lives in errantry between Deeps and edge, acknowledges no Lord, refuses no summons. He will come when the Council calls.

The Glade Guard is a Clan's ordinary archer — bred in the Glade, trained to the bow from childhood, fitted with longbow and short blade. He forms the mass of the Sylvestrin host, delivers the volleys that decide battles before the mêlée begins. His Virtue is Precision: he aims at the heart, not the mass.

He fights in open formation, uses cover, withdraws the moment the enemy closes the distance. The Sylvestrin does not hold ground — he holds range. When a Clan engages, it has already killed a quarter of the enemy with arrows before contact; the rest is for the Sisters and the Riders. The Guard then returns to the Glade, dresses wounds, tells the young what he saw. He lives long. He will forget half the enemies he has killed before dying himself of age.

The Deepwood Scout is the wild brother of the Glade Guard — trained in the inner Deeps of the Mother-Forest, at absolute edges, where no mortal enters without rite. He wears foliage and ash, paints his face with tree-resin, and moves without sound where others would crack the leaves.

He scouts ahead of the Clans, reads enemy paths, strikes by ambush when the chance opens. His formation is singular: three Scouts, a Champion, no more. On the field he appears behind an enemy line, looses a volley, vanishes. The enemy turns: nothing remains. The next shaft comes from another point of the Forest. The Beastmen dread them above all — a Beastman knows a Sylvestrin when he sees one, but never sees one before the bow speaks.

The Eternal Guard is a Clan's defensive elite — shield against enemy charges, heavy infantry when the Forest lacks the heights for archers. They bear a long worked-bark shield, a spear, and the thick bark-armour that withstands a beastman's blow. Their formation is dense, their discipline absolute, their Virtue is Holding.

They move little: they are posted, and they hold. When a Clan engages in pitched battle, the Eternal Guard is the anchor — around them the Clan pivots, the archers loose, the Riders charge. They themselves do not charge. If they fall back, the Clan falls back; if they hold, the Clan holds. Many Guards die where they stood, never having moved a pace. The Glade mourns them a season, plants a tree at their place, and gives the tree the fallen Guard's name.

Dryads are the female-spirits of trees — not quite tree, not quite elf, but a third thing that no mortal word can name. They live in the Deeps, bound to a specific tree they never leave. When the tree falls, the Dryad dies; when the Dryad dies, the tree withers within the decade. The pairing is ontological.

On the field they advance in disordered hordes, bark-claws raised, mouths wordless. Their frenzy is not devotion — it is pure anger, natural, conceptless. When a Clan goes to major war, Dryads follow by thousands, each having left her tree temporarily (a painful rite that will take seasons to ease). They strike in mêlée, tear, bite. When the battle is won, they return in silence to their tree. When it is lost, they die on the spot, and the Mother-Forest loses as many trees as Dryads.

Glade Riders are the Sylvestrin light cavalry — mounted on elven steeds, descendants of the same Breath-horse as in Astréen times, but bred for swiftness rather than presence. No plate; a bark cuirass and a short lance. Their Virtue is Speed.

They scout the vanguard, harry the flanks, flee before an enemy charge to draw it too far. When the enemy is broken, they wheel, loose, and ride out before the riposte. They do not receive a charge — they leave one. On the field they are the Glade Lord's eyes. Without them, the Lord advances blind; with them, the enemy advances blindly. The whole Forest breathes with their hooves.

The Wildwood Ranger is a Clan's mêlée elite — chosen of a Glade-Sanctuary, schooled in the great-axe, clad in thick leather and ancient bark. His Virtue is Implacability. He does not loose — he strikes, he cleaves, he does not stop while the enemy stands before him.

He fights in close formation at the mêlée's edge, where the archers can no longer loose without risk to their own. His great-axe is forged of a rare tree's essence, tempered with the black sap of a tutelary spirit; it does not dull, does not break, does not forgive. When a Ranger is killed — which happens — the axe returns to the Glade-Sanctuary, and another Ranger is chosen by local-spirits to take it. This may take a season, sometimes a decade. The axe is not hurried.

Wardancers bear the full rite of the Wanderer — the trickster-spirit, patron of dance, laughter, kindly lie. They are kin to the Shadowdancer, but in company rather than in pair. They fight in light formations, painted with sap-glyphs, two short blades to a hand, no armour.

Their dance is not figure: it is their Virtue of combat. They turn, leap, slip, strike at an unexpected angle. No enemy armour holds long against a Dancer — seams give, straps part, the shield slides. A group's Champion — the Bladesinger — keeps the rhythm aloud. When the Mother-Forest sends a Crusade against a major horde, the Dancers stand in the first rank. Many die laughing. It is the only laughter the Wanderer truly hears.

Sisters of the Thorn are the female cavalier order of the Sylvestrins — formed exclusively of Spellweavers who ride the Steeds of the Mother-Tree, sacred mounts born of a living-pact between Glade mares and the Sap itself. They serve as magic-cavalry, thorned lance in hand, leaf-veil at the face.

On the field they charge in half-circle, lance high, and release a spell at each contact — a Sap-blow that turns enemy skin to bark, a call of thorns rising from the ground, a rot-curse. The steed itself bites, strikes with hoof, crushes. The Sister never fights without him; the steed never without her. The pair is ontological, like the Dryad and her tree. When one falls, the other goes out the following night. The Clan has found no way to prevent this twin death, and seeks no longer.

Wild Riders bear the full rite of the Hunter — the spirit of hunt, path, true blood. They ride the Steeds of the Hunter, tawny-eyed mounts of fierce gaze, and charge at the cry that wakes the whole Forest. Their frenzy is sacred: while the Chase is open, they cannot retreat or yield.

Their formation is dense at the gallop, loose at rest. They charge in wedge, lance low, strike to blood. Beastmen fear them — a Wild Rider does not stop before the Beastman is dead, sometimes not before the Forest has swallowed the body. The Champion bears the Hunter's horn, sounded at the charge's dawn; the others answer the cry. When a Rider falls, his steed stays beside him three days without straying, then returns alone to the Glade. The Forest buries the rider; the steed accepts another rider the following season.

Warhawk Riders ride the great hawks of the Deeps — raptors the size of a horse, trained from the egg by Spellweavers. No saddle; the Rider keeps his balance on the back, gripping feathers shod with sap-iron. His bow is short, his arrows many, he looses on the dive.

They fly above Sylvestrin hosts, mark enemy siege engines, fell standard-bearers, harry the rear. Their aerial formation — four Riders and a Wind-Rider (Champion) — pivots in half-circle above the mêlée. The hawk itself bites and clutches in the dive; the talons cut plate. When a hawk falls (it happens — Astréen arrows know how to pick them), the Rider falls with him; the pair never parts. The Sisters say the Mother-Tree bears the dead in her high branches. They lie only to the young.

Tree Kin are the male-spirits of centenarian trees — not as old as a Treeman Ancient (who has passed the millennium), not as young as a Dryad (who is of the year). They stand six metres tall, have the patience of a century, and the vigour of a tree still in full growth.

They serve as monstrous infantry — charge at heavy pace, strike with bark-blows that crush plate, withstand arrows that slide off living matter. Their Virtue is Persistence: they do not stop while the sap runs, and the sap runs long. The Elder bears the ritual marks of a century's service to the Mother-Forest — healed gashes, sap-glyphs carved into the bark, sometimes even bird-nests in the shoulders he refuses to disturb. When a Kin falls, the Clan plants a young tree in his spot, which will grow over the centuries to come.

The Treeman is the father-spirit of a centenarian tree — younger brother of the Ancient, more mobile, still in full vigour. He stands eight metres tall, his roots plunge into a Glade of origin he leaves only on important occasions, and he fights beside the Tree Kin when the Clan needs him.

His Virtue is Strength. He strikes with bark-fists that crush horse and plate, smashes siege engines, treads the earth as a sea treads the strand. On the field he advances slowly, but nothing halts him — the lance shatters on the bark, the arrow sinks without reaching the sap, the Imperial cannon leaves a scar that will heal in five years. When a Treeman falls (twice in a thousand years), it is because a Chaos Aspect has come in person, and the Mother-Forest herself has trembled.

Waywatchers are the hidden elite of the Sylvestrins — trained in the absolute Deeps, never seen at the edge, scarcely speaking even among themselves. They wear foliage grafted to the skin (a painful rite of a whole season), are painted in dark resin, and move through the canopy as another walks the ground.

They do not fight in pitched battle — they lay ambush. When an enemy Clan enters the Deeps, the Waywatchers have awaited it for weeks, perched in silence above. The volley comes without warning, strikes the heroes and standard-bearers, then is gone. No enemy has seen a Waywatcher; none knows how many they are. The Astréens, who hold an equivalent Discipline, acknowledge their craft in silence; the Albéens make poems. The Beastmen who venture into the Deeps rarely come out, and never whole.

The Great Eagle is the wild ally of the Sylvestrins — neither mount nor living-pact, but a wild-spirit that has chosen a particular Clan for some seasons. He lives in the Deeps, nests at the highest tree's crown, and comes down when he senses the Mother-Forest threatened. No rider sits him; he fights beside them in full independence.

On the field he dives upon enemy flanks, fells standard-bearers, tears siege engines. His cry rings through the canopy and routs horses without the Forest's ear. When an Eagle falls, the Clan mourns three seasons and plants a tree where he was nested. When he leaves (it happens), the Clan does not hold him — the Pack belongs to no one. Another Eagle will come, or it will not. The Mother-Forest does not dictate. She leaves.