January 12th, 974
Wolfpine Left to Its Own Devices
With Horace Bell defeated, the party found themselves confronted not by another battle but by an altogether different challenge.
The grateful villagers of Wolfpine quickly concluded that anyone capable of overthrowing their government (a rather generous interpretation of Horace Bell’s rule) was surely capable of replacing it. Before long, the heroes found themselves besieged by questions. Who would inherit this apprentice’s contract? What should be done with Thomas Weaver, the innkeeper who had collaborated with Bell? How should confiscated food be distributed? Should the village raise a militia? Did Wolfpine now require a constitution? And, perhaps most importantly, who was expected to govern until normal life resumed?
The party’s answer proved remarkably consistent.
Don’t look at us.
Having spent the previous several weeks being repeatedly “voluntold” into solving everyone else’s problems—from Hollowmere to Mira’Thar and now Wolfpine—they declined the invitation to become founders of a new government. Rather than remain for a long rest and allow the villagers additional opportunities to recruit them into public service, they settled for a short rest, politely but firmly gave the increasingly persistent villagers “the Hand,” and departed before anyone could press a constitution into their backpacks.
Behind them they left Horace Bell, four surviving guards, one captured clerk, and Thomas Weaver in the custody of the people of Wolfpine. Precisely how the villagers ultimately resolved those matters—and whether they rediscovered the art of governing themselves—would remain a question for another day.
Cassyndra also found time to study the spellbooks recovered from the Revenue Mage and his clerk, successfully adding several useful spells to her own growing collection:
- Comprehend Languages
- Detect Magic
- Identify
- Alarm
- Unseen Servant
- Hold Person
- Locate Object
- Detect Thoughts
- Arcane Lock
With Wolfpine behind them and Mukden still accompanying the party under Colonel Varnes’ orders, the heroes turned west along the old logging road toward Briarfell Forest. Their official mission remained unchanged: locate the isolated Orc tribe, seek out Laveleen, and present the Reclamation’s case. None of them yet realized that they were riding toward a mystery far stranger than the diplomatic mission they believed they had been sent to undertake.
Into Briarfell
The journey west from Wolfpine carried the party back into familiar country. The old logging road wound beneath snow-laden branches toward Briarfell Forest, where only a few weeks earlier they had uncovered the Cult of the Unmaking’s attempt to destroy General Sherman—the colossal tree whose existence, they had since learned, constituted one of reality’s mysterious Rivets. That earlier expedition had introduced them to the Circle of the Second Growth and the isolated Orc tribe they had now been sent to contact on behalf of the Reclamation.
Winter had settled over Briarfell. Snow rested heavily upon the boughs, a light fog drifted quietly between the trees, and the forest seemed unusually still. The road itself showed no obvious signs of recent violence, yet the deeper the party travelled, the stronger the impression became that something was wrong.
Their first destination was the headquarters of the Circle of the Second Growth.
The settlement appeared deserted.
The cottages stood silent with their doors still locked and their windows intact. Nothing suggested panic, looting, or battle. Rather than allowing Hunkle to solve the mystery with his increasingly celebrated maul, the party elected to preserve whatever evidence might remain and quietly opened the buildings with lockpicks instead.
Inside, the mystery only deepened.
The cottages appeared orderly. Beds had been made, furniture remained undisturbed, and personal belongings still rested where their owners would normally have kept them. Yet one category of possessions was conspicuously absent. Weapons had disappeared. So had backpacks, travelling gear, and other equipment one might carry on an expedition. Whatever had happened, the druids had neither fled in panic nor simply wandered away from home. They had apparently departed together, properly equipped, and fully expecting to return.
They never had.
With daylight fading and no immediate clues to pursue, the party elected to spend the night in the abandoned settlement. Whatever had overtaken the Circle, exhaustion seemed a more immediate threat than whatever had carried its members away.
Morning, however, brought an encounter no one could possibly have anticipated.
A lone woman emerged from the forest carrying notebooks and botanical specimens, apparently engaged in some sort of survey of the local plant life. She greeted the party cheerfully and, to her eyes, appeared to regard them as little more than an unusually enthusiastic group of historical reenactors.
She mentioned, almost in passing, that her survey today had become unexpectedly interesting. Many of the plants she had been monitoring appeared to be growing at rates she had never before observed. At the time, the party dismissed the remark as an obscure point of botanical scholarship. Only later would they realize she had unknowingly described the earliest outward signs of the corruption spreading through Briarfell.
The ensuing conversation proved both surprisingly productive and thoroughly bewildering.
The stranger spoke casually of unfamiliar places with names such as Fresno, Merced, and something simply called the 99. She wore curious waterproof clothing manufactured from a mysterious substance she called Gore-Tex which was secured by some curious linear arrangement of interlocking teeth whose manner of functioning no one present could satisfactorily explain.
Eventually the botanist continued on her way, disappearing quietly into the morning mist.
Merrythought attempted to follow her almost immediately, only to find nothing beyond but the ordinary forest.
Only after she had gone did the encounter’s most unsettling implication become apparent.
The woman herself had never behaved as though anything extraordinary had happened. She had not seemed frightened, lost, or even particularly surprised. As far as she appeared concerned, she had simply enjoyed an interesting conversation with some unusually dressed hikers before continuing her survey.
The party, however, had reached a different conclusion.
Whatever had happened to General Sherman had done more than disturb Briarfell Forest.
It appeared to have weakened the boundaries between worlds themselves.
And those crossing between them often seemed completely unaware that they had done so.
Following the Trail
With the headquarters of the Circle offering no immediate answers, the party began systematically retracing the route they had followed during their previous visit to Briarfell, hoping that familiar landmarks might reveal what had become of the druids, Laveleen, and the Orc tribe.
Their first stop was the paper mill and its adjacent logging pond.
Like the druid settlement, the mill stood deserted. Yet here too there was no sign of panic or violence. The machinery had been properly shut down, tools neatly stored away, and the great waterwheel sat motionless beside the stream. Outside, however, fresh-cut logs continued to drift quietly against one another in the logging pond, accumulating in the absence of the workers who would normally have processed them. Like the cottages of the Circle, the mill looked less abandoned than interrupted—as though its workers had expected to return within hours rather than vanish altogether.
It was only after searching the area surrounding the mill that the party discovered their first casualty.
Lying just beyond the building was the body of a man they believed to be one of the saboteurs who had fled during their previous visit to Briarfell. Time and the elements had already begun their work, but the circumstances of his death proved far more revealing than his identity. His body bore numerous deep scratches, abrasions, and a massive wound to the abdomen. Most curious of all, many of those injuries were contaminated with fragments of bark. Mukden quietly observed that the wounds were inconsistent with Orcish weapons, while the absence of bite marks argued against any ordinary predator. Whatever had killed the man, it appeared to have been made of wood.
If the saboteurs had indeed returned to Briarfell, they had encountered something considerably more dangerous than the druids they had originally come to attack.
The nearby animal pens painted an equally unsettling picture.
The enclosure lay in complete disarray. Fences had been broken, gates stood open, and it appeared that terrified livestock had stampeded in every direction. Many of the animals had escaped into the surrounding forest. Others had not been so fortunate. Their bodies lay scattered throughout the enclosure in various stages of decay, bearing the same long lacerations, deep puncture wounds, and bark-contaminated injuries the party had already observed upon the dead saboteur. A handful of surviving animals remained hidden among the nearby trees, watching the party warily rather than approaching for food or comfort.
Whatever had attacked the mill had not confined its attention to people.
The party next turned toward the experimental grove where, only weeks earlier, the druids had proudly demonstrated their efforts to persuade living trees into useful forms. They had previously found carefully tended experiments: trees shaped into ladders, beams, and other practical structures that might one day be harvested without felling ancient forests.
Those experiments had changed.
The grove remained alive, but its careful purpose had vanished. Trees twisted into grotesque and irrational shapes with no obvious function. Branches coiled back upon themselves, trunks bulged in unnatural directions, and orderly rows of experimental plantings had become a tangle of uncontrolled growth. The strange acceleration of plant life the botanist had casually remarked upon earlier no longer appeared merely unusual.
It had become corruption.
Only then did the investigation once again give way to combat.
The party was attacked by a towering creature resembling an awakened tree, far larger and considerably more aggressive than anything they had encountered during their earlier travels through Briarfell. Whether it had once been an ordinary tree or something transformed by the same mysterious influence that had emptied the forest remained impossible to say.
Whatever its origin, however, it proved unfortunate enough to encounter Hunkle.
His maul—already affectionately nicknamed the Smasher of Wood—demonstrated once again why trees should regard it with profound professional concern. Joined by Zborch’s relentless assault, the two quickly reduced the creature to little more than splintered timber. Not before, however, it unleashed a devastating storm of razor-sharp bark splinters that wounded several members of the party and demonstrated that the corruption spreading through Briarfell had produced enemies considerably more dangerous than animated shrubs.
The battle confirmed what had previously been only suspicion.
Something had awakened the forest itself.
Worse still, it appeared to be twisting the forest’s very purpose. The druids had sought to guide nature toward useful ends. Whatever now held Briarfell in its grip was taking those same living creations and transforming them into bizarre forms and even instruments of destruction.
What that something might be—and whether it was responsible for the disappearances—remained unanswered.
The Orc Camp
Continuing deeper into Briarfell, the party’s investigation was interrupted only briefly by another inexplicable encounter.
A small boy wearing unfamiliar clothing emerged from the trees with complete confidence, a badge upon his chest identifying him only as a Junior Ranger. Without introducing himself or explaining what a Junior Ranger might actually be, he walked directly up to Mukden, solemnly handed him a folded pamphlet and reminded him that visitors should remain on the marked trails. With that important duty accomplished, the child continued on his way as mysteriously as he had appeared.
The pamphlet proved almost as bewildering as its young messenger.
It described the regulations governing a place known as Sequoia National Forest, prohibited an unfamiliar practice called littering, reiterated the request to remain on trials, and provided paragraph after paragraph of earnest advice about preserving forests.
Following the carefully concealed trail Wolfgang had shown them during their previous visit, the party finally reached the settlement of the isolated Orc tribe.
Here, unlike the druid headquarters, the signs of violence were unmistakable.
The camp had been devastated.
Several Orcs lay dead throughout the settlement, their wounds bearing the now-familiar combination of splinter punctures and great slashing injuries consistent with enormous wooden branches. Yet despite the violence, the scene retained a curious sense of order. The fallen had not been left where they fell. Instead, surviving members of the tribe had gathered the bodies together and arranged them with obvious respect before departing. Weapons, packs, and other useful equipment had likewise been taken. Whatever survivors remained had not fled blindly into the woods. They had withdrawn in an organized manner.
The attackers had not escaped unscathed.
Near the center of the camp lay the shattered remains of another animated tree, considerably smaller than the creature the party had defeated in the experimental grove. The Orcs, it seemed, had exacted a price before abandoning their home.
Careful examination of the scene yielded still more clues.
Judging by the condition of the bodies, the battle had taken place approximately ten days earlier—roughly halfway between the party’s departure for Hollowmere and their return to Briarfell. More intriguing still were a number of boot prints left by later visitors. They belonged neither to Orcs nor to druids, nor even to the oddly dressed Junior Ranger they had encountered moments before. Whatever party had investigated the battle afterward consisted of adult humans equipped with unfamiliar footwear who had examined the scene and left it undisturbed before continuing deeper into the forest.
By now the pattern had become unmistakable.
The druids had vanished.
The saboteurs had died.
The Orcs had fought.
Then they too had vanished.
Only one place remained unexplored.
General Sherman’s grove.
The party expected many things upon reaching the ancient tree.
An empty clearing was not among them. The colossal tree that had stood watch over Briarfell for untold centuries had simply… disappeared.
In its place yawned an immense pit where General Sherman’s roots had once gripped the earth. Great furrows carved through the forest floor stretched away into the distance, while shattered trees and overturned boulders marked the passage of something unimaginably massive.
General Sherman had not been felled.
Somehow… he had walked away.
The Forest Rangers
Following the trail left by the wandering General Sherman, the party soon encountered another visitor from beyond Archea.
Unlike the botanist or the earnest Junior Ranger, this man immediately recognized that something required official attention.
Introducing himself simply as Tom, a ranger responsible for protecting a place called Sequoia National Forest, he politely but firmly explained that visitors were not permitted to carry swords, axes, bows, or similar weapons beyond the Visitor Center. He therefore requested that they either surrender their weapons or accompany him back to the Visitor Center.
Hunkle’s answer was immediate and unequivocal. “No.”
Tom accepted the refusal with admirable professionalism. Rather than argue, he quietly spoke into a small device clipped to his shoulder.
Cassyndra watched the exchange carefully.
“A Sending Stone,” she concluded. “A very small Sending Stone.”
Within moments two additional rangers—George and Judy—emerged from the forest.
By now both groups had begun to appreciate that something far stranger than an argument over park regulations was unfolding.
The Rangers found themselves facing a halfling, a dwarf, an Orc, and what appeared to be a wizard whose owl familiar possessed a disconcerting habit of appearing, disappearing, and carrying on conversations. The party, meanwhile, confronted three strangers dressed in unfamiliar clothing, carrying inexplicable equipment, and speaking casually of places and institutions no one in Archea had ever heard of.
What followed was one of the more unusual diplomatic conversations in recent Archean history.
Every explanation answered one mystery while creating two new ones.
The Rangers explained that they worked for the United States Government, specifically something known as the Executive Branch. Zborch considered the surrounding forest before asking, quite reasonably, which of the many branches around them happened to be the executive one.
The resulting silence suggested that the phrase meant something rather different in the Rangers’ world.
The mysterious clothing worn by the botanist finally received an explanation. “Gore-Tex,” the Rangers called it. It kept the rain off.
Cassyndra considered this carefully before arriving at what seemed to her the only logical conclusion. “You have a small Sending Stone,” she observed. “You have Gore-Tex. You have a lot of magic.”
One of the Rangers laughed, “A little Arthur C. Clarke going on here.”
This immediately prompted several entirely new questions concerning who Arthur C. Clarke might have been and why his opinions appeared sufficiently important to quote.
Gradually, however, the conversation shifted from explaining civilizations to explaining realities.
Merrythought described the strange phenomenon known as Rivets—people, places, and objects that somehow existed across multiple universes and appeared to anchor reality itself. General Sherman, she explained, was one such Rivet. Another, rather improbably, was the musician Elvis Presley, known in Archea as Elvys Pressley. She went on to describe the Cult of the Unmaking, whose members sought to destroy Rivets in the belief that doing so would ultimately unravel reality itself. Only weeks earlier they had attempted precisely that beneath General Sherman’s branches. She also produced the list of Rivets they had captured from the cult.
Rather than dismiss the explanation, the Rangers immediately began testing it. They too knew of General Sherman. They too had an Elvis Presley. Even the Titanic, it appeared, existed in both worlds, albeit in much better condition (for now) in this one than in their world.
The pattern was difficult to ignore.
A disturbing possibility slowly emerged.
If General Sherman truly served as a bridge between worlds, then perhaps the damage inflicted by the Cult had weakened that bridge. The botanist. The Junior Ranger. Tom, George, and Judy. None of their appearances in Archea might have been accidents at all, but symptoms of a wound in reality itself.
Gareth quietly observed that if people could unknowingly wander from one world into another, then the reverse must surely also be possible. Could the party eventually find itself in some other world without realizing?
No one could prove the theory.
It was, however, the first explanation that accounted for everything they had collectively witnessed.
By this point the original dispute over the party’s weapons had quietly evaporated.
Several members of the party even expressed a sincere willingness to accompany the Rangers to this mysterious “Visitor Center,” partly out of curiosity and partly because they strongly suspected no such place existed anywhere in Archea. As both groups gradually accepted that they were from entirely different universes, the suggestion became unnecessary.
For several moments no one attempted to explain anything further. Tom sat heavily on a fallen log while Judy leaned thoughtfully against a nearby tree. George simply stared at the spot where General Sherman had been
“I have to admit,” Tom finally said, “I’m about as confused as you are.”
Oddly enough, that admission accomplished more than any explanation either side had yet attempted.
The conversation had ceased to be one between an authority and a group of suspicious strangers and more of a meeting between fellow investigators.
The Rangers had begun the encounter attempting to enforce park regulations. They ended it confronting the possibility that their own world and another had somehow become entangled.
The party had expected to meet only an ancient tree. Instead, they had gained three unexpected allies.
No formal agreement was ever reached and none was necessary.
The Rangers had no obvious way home. The party had no obvious explanation for the catastrophe unfolding in Briarfell.
So together, they continued following the trail left by the wandering General Sherman.
General Sherman
Following the immense trail of torn earth and shattered timber, the combined party eventually emerged into another newly formed clearing… one that had not been created by druids or other loggers.
Instead, dozens of enormous pits scarred the ground where equally enormous trees had once stood. Judging by the torn earth surrounding each cavity, the explanation appeared almost impossible.
Much like General Sherman, these trees had uprooted themselves. Many had departed in different directions, leaving behind only churned earth, broken roots, and long furrows disappearing into the surrounding forest.
At the center of the clearing stood the party’s quarry.
General Sherman.
He appeared even larger than before, elevated upon a vast root ball that had carried him across the countryside like some impossible wooden colossus. The great tree showed no outward sign of aggression, nor any indication that he even acknowledged the party’s arrival.
Calder Voss, reasoning that a tree capable of walking might also appreciate simple kindness, attempted diplomacy in the form of several gallons of water poured onto the enormous root ball.
The gesture was undoubtedly well intentioned but whether it was appreciated remained impossible to determine as General Sherman continued his long-established tradition of being the strong, silent type.
The party attempted conversation.
“General,” someone observed helpfully, “you moved.”
Another assured the ancient tree that they wished only to help and would gladly return him to wherever he belonged.
The General remained unmoved by these arguments.
Quite literally.
Careful examination of the surrounding clearing suggested that the migration had not followed any obvious pattern. The awakened trees appeared simply to have departed in many different directions rather than marching as an organized force. If there had once been purpose behind their movements, it was no longer evident from the marks they had left upon the forest floor.
Before the party could decide upon another course of action, movement among the trees announced yet more arrivals.
This time they came from Archea.
The Crown Patrol
A small detachment of Crown soldiers emerged cautiously into the clearing. Their leader paused upon seeing the extraordinary gathering before him: adventurers, Forest Rangers from another world, Mukden the Orc, and, towering silently above them all, General Sherman himself. The patrol spread out carefully, clearly uncertain what they had just stumbled into.
They identified themselves as a Crown detachment carrying out confidential orders within Briarfell Forest. Two weeks earlier they had been dispatched to rendezvous with a Crown operative working somewhere in the region. The rendezvous had never taken place. Assuming their missing colleague had encountered difficulties, they had begun searching the surrounding forest instead.
When asked to describe the missing operative, however, it quickly became apparent that they were searching for someone other than Laveleen. Whatever business had brought the Crown to Briarfell, it represented an entirely different mystery.
The party, meanwhile, recognized something else. The soldiers’ distinctive boots matched the tracks they had discovered earlier at the abandoned Orc settlement. The patrol confirmed that they had indeed investigated the camp several days previously, finding only the dead, evidence that the survivors had withdrawn in good order, and no indication where they had gone afterward.
Unlike their earlier conversation with the Forest Rangers, the party made little effort to conceal what they had discovered.
They described the deserted headquarters of the Circle of the Second Growth, the dead saboteur whose wounds had been contaminated with bark, the devastated animal pens, the increasingly aggressive awakened trees, the abandoned Orc settlement, and finally the astonishing discovery that General Sherman himself had uprooted and wandered away from his ancient grove.
The soldiers listened in growing disbelief.
By now the scattered clues had finally begun to resemble parts of a single mystery rather than several unrelated ones.
The missing druids. The missing Orcs. The missing Crown operative. The awakened forest. And General Sherman himself. But no one yet understood how the pieces fit together.
One additional detail gradually became apparent during the conversation. The patrol had entered Briarfell before the outbreak of the war and had remained there ever since. Entirely occupied by the disappearance of their operative, they seemed blissfully unaware that the Crown and the Reclamation were now openly at war. Before anyone could decide whether—or how—to break that news, the conversation came to an abrupt end.
Without the slightest warning, General Sherman moved. Massive branches lashed outward with astonishing speed.
Judy managed to bring her weapon to bear and fired.
The Crown soldiers barely had time to begin drawing steel or preparing spells.
None of it mattered.
Hunkle, true to form, resisted with characteristic determination.
General Sherman responded by wrapping one enormous branch around the barbarian’s legs, lifting him upside down into the air, and repeatedly driving his head into the ground until he finally stopped struggling.
Everyone else fared little better.
Within seconds the clearing had fallen silent. The party, the US Forest Rangers, the Crown patrol. All lay unconscious beneath the ancient tree.
When they finally awoke, they found themselves no longer beneath the open sky but inside a dimly lit cavern with their weapons, armor, and equipment were gone.
Around them sat the answer to at least one of Briarfell’s mysteries.
The missing Orcs.
The missing druids.
The Crown’s missing operative.
And, at last…
Laveleen.