Elmhollow

Elmhollow is a lumber town at the northern end of the Meadowlands road, the last friendly shelter before the foreboding depths of the Eldenwood. It trades timber from the forest’s edge for food and metal from the towns and villages downriver. The town survived the Unraveling, laregly thanks to the efforts of the druid Vanaex and while the Freeholds consider it among their holdfasts, Elmhollow holds itself apart and keeps the Freeholds at arms length.

Elmhollow is a town of log — cottages with stone chimneys and steep, wood-shingled roofs, grown building by building. Only the smithy and the old temple are stone, where fire will not suffer timber.

Governance

Elmhollow is ruled by a council of guild leaders called the Standing. Each guild chooses its head and the Standing elect from among themselves a Reeve—who speaks for the town and breaks tied votes in the Standing—and a Marshal—who oversees the guard. Each office serves for two years and is elected in rotating annual elections.

The eight guilds that hold seats are:

• The Fellers’ Guild, who fell and mill, led by the Timber-master.
• The Bargemen’s Guild, the boats and the downriver trade, led by the Riverwarden.
• The Grovekeepers’ Guild, who tend and replant and hold the balance the forest demands, led by the Grovewarden.
• The Factors’ Guild, the imports and the market, led by the Market-warden.
• The Colliers’ Guild, the charcoal-burners, led by the Overman.
• The Tarwrights’ Guild, pitch and tar, led by the Dean.
• The Crafts Guild, covering the smith, cooper, wheelwright, and ropewalk, led by the Provost.
• The Victualers’ Guild, the inns, alehouses, bakers, and brewers, led by the Steward.

While Vanaex holds no official authority in Elmhollow, his word is treated as binding law. He rarely intervenes in town politics but has, on two occasions, unseated a sitting Reeve he felt needed to be ousted, and in one of those instances, dissolved the entire Standing.

Defense

Elmhollow is protected to the west by a timber palisade at the forest’s edge. The town guard patrol the palisade, and keeps order in the town, answering to the Marshal. A group of specialized rangers within the guard works the cut and protects the workcrews when they go beyond the palisade.

Faith and Society

Faith sits lightly on Elmhollow. The people keep the Old Faith more from habit than devotion. What they truly hold sacred is not a god but a practice—the stewardship of the land, taking only what the forest can regrow.

Society is craft, top to bottom. You are what you do, and what you do you were mostly born into. A child comes of age by entering an apprenticeship, then journeyman, then master, and perhaps a guild’s chair on the Standing. Rank is skill and standing within a guild. The unguilded outsider has no place in the order at all.

Smuggling is an open secret at the dockside, and Elmhollow blames Vyrelin upriver for it.

Goods and Services

Elmhollow imports nearly everything it does not cut from the forest, and prices run a little higher than downriver for the haul. Its smiths are the finest axe-makers in the land, forging weapons of a quality found nowhere else. Beyond swords and axes there is little to be had, and no one in Elmhollow works magic. The Old Gods temple, under Momir Hardale, can tend a wound or a fever; anything grave must be carried downriver to the Freeholds.

Three things are Elmhollow’s own, all out of the wood: Sapwine, a pale resinous drink fermented from the sap of the great trees; duskboar, the forest hog, roasted or stewed; and grovecap, a mushroom from the old-growth floor. A fourth is illicit — witherleaf, a bitter chew the crews use to push through a hard shift, and that ruins those who lean on it.

Places

• The Long Landing. The dockside inn, beds and meals for travelers and rivermen laying over. Where news from downriver first comes ashore.
• The Wet Boot. The dockside tavern, rough and cheap, where the boat crews drink.
• The Sawtooth. A market tavern, loud and plain, where the fellers and cutting crews spend their evenings.
• The Green Bough. The other market tavern, quieter and better kept, where guild folk and the Standing settle things over a table.
• Corwick’s. The general store and provisioner, rope and oil and iron and salt, most of what comes upriver.
• Temple of the Old Gods. The established faith of Elmhollow, older than the Freeholds, quietly losing ground of late.
• Temple of Orrenthal. A new house, arrived within the year, welcomed by a frightened town for the comfort it offers the grieving.

People

• Vylda Cordale. The Reeve, elected chair of the Standing and the voice of the town.
• Hida Kessdale. The Marshal, who commands the guard and the rangers.
• Crylys Dene. A ranger who roams the cut and knows the near reaches of the Eldenwood as well as anyone living.
• Odis Denn. Keeper of the Long Landing.
• Sena Crarke. Keeper of the Wet Boot.
• Bannan Varke. Keeper of the Sawtooth.
• Rhalen Hallovel. Keeper of the Green Bough.
• Crymir Corwick. The provisioner, who runs Corwick’s store.
• Momir Hardale. Priest of the Old Gods, a cleric of modest gifts who tends the town’s hurt and sick.
• Dorath. Leader of the Temple of Orrenthal, a stranger to the Freeholds who came with his order in the spring.
• Sern Merke. A dockside idler forever at the Wet Boot, known to everyone and minded by no one.

The druid who watches over the town and the cut keeps no name the townsfolk will speak lightly, and is not seen in Elmhollow often.

Adventures in Elmhollow

• The crews have stopped working a stretch of the cut and will not say why.
• Something in the deep wood, past the safe line, has the whole town uneasy after dark.
• Wagons on the northeast plains road are coming in short, and the caravans want an escort.
• A newcomer faith is winning the grieving of Elmhollow faster than the old temple can answer.
• The druid who keeps the balance has gone quiet, and the Grovekeepers are worried.
• An old ruin deep in the Eldenwood, spoken of only in bar-talk, that a crew swears they found and will not return to.
• The witherleaf trade is spreading through the crews, and the Marshal cannot find its root.