First of the Grove, Broken by Blood

Yewen, the Withered was once the first tree of Eryandar, a sacred giant whose roots drank from the oldest memory of the forest. Before kings, before clan, before even the songs of the elves had taken shape, Yewen stood as a living witness to the birth of the wyld. An emissary from the deep elves once visited Eryandar to meet the Leafsong elves. The dogmatic Leafsong murdered the emissary by skewering him to the tree in a heated fight. This blasphemous act corrupted the tree. That spilled blood seeped deep into root and heartwood, twisting reverence into agony and life into ruin. To the Witherwood, Yewen is not merely their leader, but the wounded soul of the forest itself: ancient, wrathful, and hungry for all who would call their cruelty civilization.

The Forest’s Crushing Grasp

Stranglethorn is no true dryad, but a cruel mockery of one, a thing grown where beauty, hunger, and rot have fused into a single monstrous shape. From the waist down it is a writhing mass of roots and vine, spreading outward like a nest of serpents through leafmold and bone, each tendril seeking warmth, movement, breath. Crowned in twisted branches and fungal growths like some blighted queen, Stranglethorn does not hunt with speed, but with certainty. Its living coils lash out from the dark underbrush, seizing prey and crushing the life from them before dragging the broken remains into the gnashing hollow beneath its body. To stumble upon Stranglethorn is to learn that the forest does not always kill cleanly. Some corners of the Wyldwood prefer to hold, to tighten, and to feed.

Husk of Bark and Bone

Rotcore Dryads are born from one of the Witherwood’s cruelest rites. When a warrior, traveler, or trespasser dies within the blighted groves, the forest does not always surrender them to the earth. Some are chosen instead to be bound into the rot and made part of its living will. Wrapped in roots, sealed in bark, and fed upon by the slow hunger of the corrupted wood, the dead are kept in a state between burial and rebirth. To the Witherwood, this is not desecration but inheritance, a way for the forest to reclaim the slain and fold them into its vengeance. Each Rotcore Dryad stands as a reminder that in Eryandar, the dead do not rest kindly. They are taken by the woods, remade in bitterness, and returned to the world with the patience of roots and the malice of rot.

Raging Maw of Endless Hunger

Gnarlmaw Stalkers are among the first hunters the Witherwood sends into the dark, grown for pursuit, slaughter, and the quiet work of stripping the fallen clean. They move through the blighted forest with unnatural ease, slipping between root and shadow as though the woods part willingly before them. Where greater Witherwood horrors embody the faction’s hatred and ritual, the Gnarlmaw serves its hunger. It is drawn not only to flesh, but to the skull, gnawing through bone as if searching for the last trace of thought, memory, or fear left behind in the dead. They are not glorious beasts, nor sacred ones, but necessary carrion-lords of the hunt, sent to harry the weak, finish the wounded, and feed the forest with whatever remains.

Harvester of the Unblessed

Graveweavers gather where death has lingered too long and burial has been denied. They rise from the old slaughter-sites of Eryandar, from heaps of unblessed dead left tangled in root and moss, where grief, sacrilege, and corruption have had time to steep together. Graveweavers are drawn to relics, charms, and sacred remains, not out of reverence, but to profane them, twisting the tokens of old faiths into tools of blight. Priests are among their favored quarry, for the Graveweaver delights in silencing prayers and smothering miracles before they can take hold. What they gather is not merely carrion, but memory, ritual, and desecrated holiness, all woven into the cursed work of the faction. In the wake of a Graveweaver, it becomes a harvest, and from that harvest, the forest is fed.