Camae · Sector 272 Nostvary · Rekrar · Dragantwood
Dragantwood
Overview
Dragantwood is an ancient forest four days' walk north-east of Rekrar — a place of towering old-growth trees, dappled light, and dense undergrowth that conceals more than it reveals. Streams wind through the verdant floor and the air carries pine, moss, and birdsong, yet the woods keep a will of their own. Loggers and hunters who came to exploit them have a way of turning up mutilated, or never turning up at all.
For centuries the forest belonged to the Dragant family, until the last of that line lost his title and land to Rav the Fair over a game of cards. The new Duke means to tame its lawless reputation and tap its dagma trees for a magical sap prized by the nobles of Rekrar for its healing properties. Sacred to the pilgrims who follow its paths toward the Temple of the Arlen, Dragantwood guards its own quiet magic — subtle, patient, and protective of what is hers.
Within Dragantwood
Sub-locations
8 locations contained here.
Recorded Activity
Location Log
15 chapters recorded at this location.
- Ch. 1→
The Troll Under the Bridge
The Ranger's Return·06/06/0478 11:00amWarden Thorn drags a stubborn troll from the brook and greets the pilgrims on the road, among them the couple come to take over his late wife's inn — while his old comrade Vigdis returns with news that won't wait.
- Ch. 3→
A Second Pair of Eyes
The Ranger's ReturnThe morning after, Thorn wakes to a transformed inn and its warm new keepers, Cass and Amara. As he prepares to return to the ravine, the Duke's charming man Lucet Linder offers to ride along and lend a huntsman's eye to the hunt.
- Ch. 4→
The Beast's Trail
The Ranger's ReturnIn daylight, Thorn and Lucet retrace the dead woman's last moments and find the tracks of something that walks upright on clawed feet — a creature that circled her as she lay dying but would not cross the ward of a forest shrine.
- Ch. 5→
The Duke's Court
The Ranger's Return·07/06/478Lucet brings Thorn to Dragant Manor and the Duke's dissolute court, where he meets the kindly Lord Pemberton, the calculating Duke Rav, and the cruel Count Nork with his silent giant, Brak'ma. The Duke wants the beast in his forest dealt with before it costs him his precious sap.
- Ch. 6→
Sacred Waters
The Ranger's Return·07/06/478Thorn leads Duke Rav's noble guests to the sacred pool where Count Nork attempts to drown Pembleton in the waters.
- Ch. 7→
The Cleansing
The Ranger's ReturnThorn carries the ether-poisoned Pemberton into the Temple of the Arlen, where Sister Vetali and the gentle arlen Moss work to draw the sacred water's magic out of him before it remakes his flesh. Amid the incense and the quiet, Thorn feels just how much the temple has changed under Darson Colden — and comes face to face with a ghost from his soldiering days.
- Ch. 8→
Ghosts of the War
The Ranger's ReturnThorn buries himself in building his cabin until Vigdis rides in from the road with a haunted figure at her side — an old comrade long thought dead. The reunion is cut short by violence at the inn, and by a strength in his returned friend that no man should possess.
- Ch. 9→
The Sister
The Ranger's ReturnIn the grey calm after a brutal night, Thorn coaxes his returned comrade Korvash into one hour's help and leads him to a hidden camp deep in the forest, seeking the sister of the woman who died in his arms.
- Ch. 10→
A Death in the Grove
The Ranger's ReturnThe village wakes to a body: Lord Pemberton, torn open in the eastern dagma grove. But the wounds are too neat and the beast's tracks stop short at a forest shrine — and in the carefully hidden bootprints leading away, Thorn reads the work of a human hand made to look like a monster's.
- Ch. 11→
A Simple Story
The Ranger's ReturnSummoned to a manor in mourning, Thorn finds Lucet undone by grief and Duke Rav incandescent — a nobleman is dead and the Duke wants a beast hunted, a head on his wall, and no awkward questions. As Rav warns him off the temple and Count Nork, Thorn sees how badly everyone wants a simple story in place of the truth.
- Ch. 13→
Two Hunts
The Ranger's ReturnDawn brings the Duke's grand hunt — a mob of armed nobles crashing through the forest for a trophy. Thorn lets it wash past him and hunts a subtler quarry, watching for the man who moves wrong, until the beast itself erupts from the trees and the hunt becomes a rout.
- Ch. 14→
Masks at the Feast
The Ranger's ReturnThorn limps back to a manor drunk on false triumph, the failed hunt recast as victory. In the servants' shadows he finds Salis in disguise, and by the night's end he has begun to grasp something darker beneath the celebration — the marsh elves hunted, a guardian imprisoned, and his own lost comrade caught in the midst of it.
- Ch. 15→
Still Waters
The Ranger's ReturnBattered from the hunt, Thorn stops at the sacred pool to let its waters ease his wounds before facing the temple. But he is not alone at the water's edge, and the figure that finds him there means him dead — leaving him bleeding into the sacred pool as the storm washes the tracks away.
- Ch. 18→
The Reckoning
The Ranger's ReturnThorn slips into the manor's glittering gala to force answers, but the night belongs to Salis. Amid the silk and candlelight her patience finally breaks, and the Duke's hall erupts into blood — a bodyguard felled, a count's throat opened, and the vengeance she came for, taken at last.
- Ch. 19→
The Warden of Dragantwood
The Ranger's ReturnIn the storm's wake Thorn carries the pool's fire to the Temple of the Arlen for a final reckoning with Darson Colden — to free the guardian held in his own sanctuary, to face what has been done to his old comrade, and to answer for the dead. By the end, the man who wanted only to leave the forest has become its warden at last.