The Chroniclers
A society of adventurers newly banded together in the outer city of Castle Brackenwold — long on nerve and short on coin, funded at their founding by a mere hundred silver. They take their expeditions into the wold one at a time, chronicle what they find, and split what little they earn.
This archive follows its members who are drawn in full — Fitchwick Peckhold, Grendilore Forlocke, and Longtittle Snodgrass. They ride alongside fellow Chroniclers whose deeds are recorded in the Chronicle but whose sheets are kept by their own hands: Braemble Lockehorn (a breggle vagrant knight), Shank Burl, and Dallan Vinder (hunters both).
The Pluritine Church
The faith of the one true God, and the dominant power of the settled lands — though it has seen better days, and many are quietly turning from it. Its seat in the region is Castle Brackenwold, and it keeps thirteen holy orders. Older things than the Church still peer out from the wold’s edges.
The Order of Saint Faxis & Sanctus Primus
One of the thirteen orders, commanded by Sanctus Primus. He lately sent clerics of the order to apprehend or slay a witch near the Whispering Caves, north of the city — for she is said to be blackmailing him, though he keeps the nature of it silent. The clerics returned empty-handed, and he is still agitating over it; a bounty may be there for the taking.
The Witch of the Whispering Caves
Accused of holding some secret over Sanctus Primus, and sought by his failed clerics. The Chroniclers reached the Whispering Caves that are said to be her haunt, but found only the caves’ strange fae echo — and no witch. Yet.
The Wandering Friars
A company of twelve hooded friars met in the north-eastern eaves, chanting in Liturgic. By their own telling, they were once highwaymen on the King’s Road, turned to the Church by a vision and set to wander in penance — a quest they pursue “centuries after our natural deaths.” They are barred from entering settlements, keep a hidden bramble-choked chapel of Saint Clewyd, and leave no footprints upon the ground. The party took them for friendly, and left their alms box untouched.
The Saints of the Wold
Saint Benester
His shrine — an elegant mausoleum among the trees — was lost somewhere to the north-east of Castle Brackenwold, and may yet hold a reliquary. It was the Chroniclers’ first goal; a full expedition into the wold has not yet found it.
Saint Clewyd
One of the most popular and well-known saints of Dolmenwood. His Abbey is a ruin, which the Church wishes to restore — though no one seems to know why, or how, it was destroyed. A small hidden shrine-chapel of his still stands in the eastern wood, kept by the Wandering Friars; its altar bears a triptych telling the friars’ own tale of sin and penance.
Lord Malbleat & the Lankshorn Conspiracy
Through the fae echo of the Whispering Caves, the Chroniclers overheard a hard-voiced man — addressed as “captain” — tell a deferential companion that the atrocities of harsh longhorn rule in Lankshorn have made war unavoidable, and that Lord Malbleat will be “neutralised.” Malbleat is the current (and ill-reputed) breggle ruler of Lankshorn, seated near Redwraith Manor. Who the captain serves, the party does not yet know.