The Heartwell Stakings

Overview

Dark Elves and Dwarves first stake the water of The Rootstone Heartwell.

These are the years when the Heartwell becomes worth dying for. The Dark Elf survivors are gathering their strength after the catastrophe, as told in The Founding of the Gloamroot Covenant, and face an older Stonewake Compact hardened by the same flood. The open fighting that follows is told in The Heartwell Struggles.

A Site That Cannot Stay Neutral

The first stakes come after the flood, when the deep is harder and hungrier than before, but not yet at open war over this one place.

The Rootstone Heartwell comes through the Roothollow catastrophe as more than one thing: clean water when the flood has fouled the rest, an unbroken way between root and stone, a living knot of root that props the cavern roof, and the last living remnant of the old root-cavern world. Survivors stagger to it out of the drowned chambers above; Dwarven wardens reach it from below and brace it before it can fall. As soon as either side has the strength to think past the next day, it is too precious to leave to the other.

Claim Before War

The stakes are driven before the war comes.

For the emerging Gloamroot Covenant, the Heartwell is proof that the deep Elves still have holy ground and a history below. For the older Stonewake Compact, newly hardened by the catastrophe, it is water, a crossing that must be held, and a wall the holds' survival rests on. Neither side is inventing an excuse. Each has found the one place it cannot live without, and found the other already there.

The site gathers the two worst memories of the flood into one feud. The Gloamroot remember shelter sworn and refused, and ways barred while their kin still beat on the far side. Stonewake remembers seals closed to stop the water taking the whole deep, and wardens who drowned bracing them. Each side's claim is also an accusation.

Historical Significance

Between the new powers that rise after the flood and the famous fighting at the Heartwell, these stakings are the step that is easiest to forget.

The Heartwell Struggles do not break out over nothing. Before the feud came the claim. Before the inherited grudge came the moment when one surviving place became too precious and too holy to leave alone.

What these years leave is a habit both sides still keep: the claim spoken aloud before the confluence, the marks cut into the basin doors, and a spear at every crossing. The bones of the first lost water-parties still lie in side-galleries that nobody has gone back to clear.