A Bestiary of Caeldon

Plants and Fungi

On this shelf stand the trees, plants, fungi, and crops of Caeldon and of the planes and zones. The crops come first in the peoples' lives: the bread wheat of the basins, the flax and hemp that clothe and rope the river country. Beneath the Elderweald the Dark Elf houses live under the living root of the forest, whose faint glow, the gloam, is the only light their country makes of itself.

Thorn grows into the hedges that judge who may approach the Briarreach; in the Verdant Expanse a seed can become a forest in an hour, and the herb-hunters who go there for the rare kinds are a short-lived trade. Under the lord’s gallows grows the root that poisoners prize and the clergy burn. The spores of the Dark Entities stand here too: they are not fungi of this world, but they behave enough like fungi that people name them so.

Most Named in This Part

Humans PeopleThe young, fast people of the cradle-web's basins and headwaters, of the balanced adaptive field, who emerged c. 300,000-c. 220,000 BR; what marks them is pace, and they form regional peoples rather…
Elves PeopleOne of the oldest peoples of Caeldon, stabilized in the Elderweald from an inheritance marked by the Verdant Expanse that shows in presence more than in anatomy; their branches are the Wood, Thorn…
The Elderweald RegionThe old-growth forest at the centre of the Elven world, home of the Wood Elves and the Rootcrown Concord; it has no roads, only paths walked open.
Dwarves PeopleOne of the oldest peoples of Caeldon, a dense and durable people stabilized under the Ironspine from an inheritance marked by the Iron Backbone; their branches are the Ironspine and Stonewake Dwarves.
The Confluence Basins RegionThe broad lowland heartland of Humans: wide valleys, deep fields, and linked rivers gathering towards the Serath.
The Crownboughs RegionThe cultivated canopy forest in the south-eastern corner of the old Elven world, where trees have been trained into halls and terraces, homeland of the High Elves and the Crownbough Courts.
Reedfolk PeopleA secondary species of the wet threshold, at home where land and water never settle which is which, and no branch of Humans, Elves, or Dwarves; their strongest country is the lower Confluence Basins…
Halflings PeopleThe far-side people of sheltered measure, who live where plenty has to be kept rather than taken; their first homeland is the Leeward Folds and their civilization the Foldward Commons.
Gnomes PeopleThe far-side people of fine craft and exact measure, who read an unstable coast truly and make others keep to the reading; their country is the Tidelace Coasts and their civilization the Gaugeward…
The Headwater Marches RegionThe foothill country between the Human farmland and the Dwarven mountains, the oldest shared country of Humans and Dwarves, living by the escorted exchange roads to the hold gates.
Goblins PeopleA ruin-adapted people, not a malicious one, who live well in abandoned works, failed towns, and road shadows and know every gap and culvert in them; their strongest country is the Broken Marches and…
Wood Elves BranchThe first Elven branch, a grove-bound people of the Elderweald whose continuity is kept by growing within a living landscape, not by redesigning it; their civilization is the Rootcrown Concord.
The Briarreach RegionThe belt of thicket and wet ravine at the forest's harder edge, home of the Thorn Elves of the Thornbound Circles, where Troll houses keep the ravine crossings.
The Greyford Reach RegionThe wide gravel valley where the Headwater and Broken Marches meet and one river breaks into many, with its patched bridge, its two banks, and its quarrel over who owes the crossing what.
The Ironspine RegionThe long mountain belt beside the forest and the oldest Dwarven homeland, its holds cut into the mountain faces and its mines and underways running down into the rock.
Orcs PeopleThe far-side people of harsh-land endurance, escorted roads, and sworn passage, neither twisted Humans nor mere raiders; their homeland is the Windscar Expanse and their civilization the Windscar…

Terms

The commons · The cradle-web · The Festival of the First Flow · The Festival of the First Sheaf · The gloam · Orchard leagues · The Reedmere · Rimward Orcs

Plants and Fungi

Most Named in This Part

Terms

In the Writers’ Guide