The end of the first Epoch

Where Al-Kanishian elves came from trees were a rare sight. When they saw the forests of Bataf they believed them to be infinite and quickly forgot the sustainable logging practises that allowed their ancestors to thrive in the old world. It was this method that they passed on the other peoples of Bataf when they thought them the ways of agriculture. For ten thousand years the people of Bataf had been cutting away at the lush forests, slowly diminishing them until only a few meagre woods remained.
The damage done to the forests was severe enough to weaken the Heaven of Wood. Many wood spirits were discussing what to do, some advocating on re-educating the Batafians, others on letting the Primal Plane rebalance itself like they have always done. But none of the voices were as loud as that of the ent Cipresso Muscari. They advocated for a total invasion of the Primal Plane to eradicate the fleshy vermin around the forests natural boundaries, creating a new living space for the wood spirits in the process. Muscari's ideas took root within the mind of a dryad named Arbor Heather. They became a firebrand for Muscari's ideas and convinced the demons, devils, and fey of the realm to put themselves behind the plan. To cross the planes Arbor Heather made their way into a forgotten part of the Heaven of Wood were the mad magi Yucca Holzwalt lived in banishment. Holzwalt had been experimenting with crossing the planes for long centuries and with the aid of Heather's followers Holzwalt finally completed their ritual and opened a portal for the invasion.
== The initial invasion ==
Heather's legions stepped out of the portal for the first time, in a place known as Birchridge Forest. It wasn't long before they saw a group of elves cutting down a birch tree. In a flash the elves were skewered upon branches; their blood running down the furrows of the tree spirits and dripping down into to feed the soil of the forest. The kingdoms around the forest were easily obliterated. Their walls were turned to rubble and their people were turned to nitrogen feeding the thousands of saplings the wood spirits planted across the lands. 
Muscari lead his own legion. He arrived in a struggling forest in the north where his forces were very successful for a while. The forest quickly healed and Muscari tried to push westward towards another forest to connect them together. But his legion was caught by an army of the Batafians, who had united against the invading wood spirits, and they were surrounded. The majority of the wood spirits were slain and send back to the Heaven of Woods but for Cipresso Muscari and his closest followers the Batafians had something else planned. A cabal of humanoid shamans performed a ritual that entrapped Muscari and his followers into a crystal orb. They build the temple-fortress of Paulownia on the place of Muscari's entrapment to contain his crystal prison. The green dragon Sandro Audisio and his conclave of Dragon-kin were charge with defending Paulownia, and as such the Paulownian Conclave was formed. 
Heather was unaware of Muscari's fate. Their victory attracted more followers to join their legions. Heather was able to leave behind a protective force and move to another forest using Holzwalt's planar portals. When they arrived there they found that some of the fleshy Batafians were willing to ally themselves with Heather. Heather gladly accepted their aid but would soon learn about the sheer stubbornness of their enemies. Armies would travel hundreds of miles to attack Heather's legions, just for a chance to gain glory. To ensure that the forest grew tall and strong, several armies were send out in Heather's name to crush these Batafian Savages. They believed that they made significant progress but the endless hordes of flesh and bone kept either throwing themselves at the heavenly armies or sneaking behind them to burn recently reclaimed woodlands to the ground.
With each battle the wood spirits conquered more forests to regrow, and with each forest their frustration at the verminous inhabitants of the Primal Plane grew. Their determination to charge into battle for some vague concept called "honour", and their strange urges to threw shimmering pieces of metal at Heather's forces. In exchange for these pieces of metal the fleshy ones asked Heather's forces to attack their enemies.The spirits found this wishywashy behaviour of the Batafians beyond strange. The wood spirits had no use for these trinkets with some of the more firebrand members of the legion arguing that they should destroyed these heretical symbols of the hated Heaven of Metal. But one ent, Glauca Sitka, with his ancient wisdom saw the value the inhabitants of this realm put in them. Sitka grabbed a large bag, and kept the discs save with him for during the long campaigns: asured in the knowledge that one day these strange discs would come in handy.
== Sitka-Audisio Pact ==
After defeating another of the thousands of suicide charges by the fleshy ones the wood spirits were releasing some of their frustrations out on their captives. A group of demons picked out an old general to torture. While he was slowly being pushed into the prickles of one of the trees the general blurted out that they had captured Muscari, in a final attempt to taunt his torturers. Arbor Heather was photosynthesising near the edge of a cliff, overlooking a close by nest of great eagle chicks, when one of the demons came rushing towards them. The demon informed them of what the blood bag had told them and Heather immediately sprang into action. They rounded up their best soldiers, including the wise Sitka, for a rescue mission called the Oaken Recovery. To defend the latest forest they had been healing Heather left behind a skeleton force, tasked to ambush any intruders that cross the local river.
Heather's rescue force made its way to the temple-fortress of Paulownia and began sieging it down. They send large awakened trees against the fortress to slam their trunks against its walls and to dig their roots into its foundation. In respond the defenders rained down flaming arrows upon the awakened trees, as wood imps flew up and began harassing them. With the violent strength of the natural world the trees ripped a breach into the Paulownian Conclave's defences. As the wood spirits tried to push themselves into the opening the dragon-kin brought fort pots of acidic liquid that burned the barky skin of the attackers and send many of them screaming back to the Heavens. But the endless brown tide of the legion was to much for the defenders, and the forest spirits pushed their way inside.
There the wood spirits came face to face with Sandro Audisio and his fellow green dragons. It seemed to be a foreclosed conclusion that the dragons and wood spirits would fight. But it was then that Glauca Sitka entered the room with a proposal. He had studied the creatures of the Primal Plane and learned the dragon's love for strange gold discs. As such he proposed a pact: the dragon-kin would receive all the gold discs that the wood spirits found, and in exchange the dragons would fight alongside the wood spirits to help heal the world. As Sitka dropped his back of gold on the ground, the noxious green serpent's mouth began to drip in anticipation. The idea of getting his claws on a steady stream of gold was too much for him to refuse and the green dragons made their pact with the forest spirits which was to be known as the Sitka-Audisio pact. The dragons undid the spells that had trapped Muscari and his elite troops within the crystal orb, and together they returned back to report to Arbor Heather.
== Beginning of the end ==
Every time a forest was healed by the wood spirits they had leave behind a defensive army, to protect against the greed of mortals. This slowly had began to thin their numbers. Their numbers got further reduced when the spirits were caught out in open plains where, without the protection of the forest, the creatures of flesh and bone were able to easily strike them with flaming arrows and spells. The forest spirits fled up a nearby cliff, the ents using their prodigious size to carry those who couldn't fly up before climbing up themself. The fleshy ones went into pursuit, hopping to cut the wood spirits down as they fled. To scale the cliff they had to walk through a thin path that was only wide enough for four-man-wide ranks. As the Batafians reached the top of the cliff a flight of green dragons flew over, breathing down their noxious breath of toxic gas. over five-hundred Batafians were slaughtered upon the cliff, grasping their hearts as the dragon's gas filled their lungs. Those remaining tried to flee down again, but now it was the wood spirit's turn to chase them down. Of the two-thousand warriors joining the battle, only thirty-three escaped.
Their pyric victory revealed to most wood spirits that in truth they would never be able to bring a large enough legion to hold the battlefront between the forests against the endless hordes of meat. Arbor Heather however had become delusional from spending too long in this realm, still believing that the total colonisation of the primordial plane for the heaven of wood was a possibility.
One of the younger dryads, Valangin Tannen, betrayed the invasion when he met in secrets with the humans of the Saba tribe. He thought them dryadic magic, including the ancient art of grafting multiple living things together into a single being. Under Tannen's guidance the humans learned how to extract essence from heavenly spirits. After months of experimentation the Sabi Magi created a creature capable of consuming essence. They managed to put it to sleep and stuffed it into a vase. They gave this vase to their strongest warrior, Bartholomew the Shrewd, to carry into the upcoming battle, ready to be released when the time was right.
== Fall of Heather ==
When the Saba tribe attacked Birchridge forest they overwhelmed the defending wood spirits. As they began to set their axes to the trees Arbor Heather was forced to return from the front to defend the forest. As the vanguard of green dragons flew unto the battlefield vines of earth shot out from amongst the trees to bind them to the ground. Those dragons that survived the initial crash were slain by the human spearman. Glauca Sitka had avoided the earthen vines and saw what had happened to his brothers afterward. He fled the battle to save his own live, abandoning the Sitka-Audisio pact.
The area the Sabans had cleared out before Heather's arrival allowed them to resist against the initial push of the wood spirits through a volley of burning arrows. Some of the magi released fireballs that, before stopping, cut through twenty ranks like butter. Yet the raging spirits didn't stop coming and sword met branch.
Cipresso Muscari duelled with Bartholomew the Shrewd between the clashing waves of flesh and wood. With swift steps Bartholomew avoided Muscari's slugish attack, for he knew that a single strike of Muscari would be enough to break every bone in his body. His blade was able to hit Muscari several times, but the blade wasn't able to dig deep enough into the ent's bark to do any serious damage. For half an hour Bartholomew outmanoeuvred the giant, until fatigue made him slip upon the forest floor. As Bartholomew felt the twigs and leaves stab into his lower back he saw Muscari's arm come down. Thinking on his feet he quickly turned and deflected the blow upon the vase on his back. The impact shattered both Bartholomew's body and the vessel, and the creature inside was let loose. As Muscari raised his hand back up a blob of pink ooze came up with it. Within a minute it had consumed both Cipresso Muscari physical body and essence.
The bloodfire ooze was loose.
An amorphous pink blob raged over the battlefield, consuming man, spirit, and tree alike in a whirlwind of fiscus ooze. Valangin Tannen and his disciple Saban magi stayed to observe the power of the bloodfire ooze while the rest of the Saban tribesman fled for the hills. The wood spirits attempted to contain the monstrous ooze, before it could destroy everything they had fought to protect from the greed of the creatures of flesh and bone so long ago. The defiant spirits were gone in a pink flash. Arbor Heather tried to retreat with their remaining forces back into the portal they had come, but the bloodfire ooze's pseudopod was too quick.
Heather was able to dodge out of the way just in time, but the rest wasn't as lucky. With blinding speed the pseudopod grew over the wood spirits and flooded into the open portal. Yucca Holzwalt, who was holding the portal open on the other side, was grabbed by the ooze and dragged into the primordial plane for the first and last time in their live before the portal even had a chance to close.
Only Arbor Heather, Valangin Tannen and his disciples, and the bloodfire ooze now remained. Heather rushed for the traitorous dryad. The ravenous ooze launched pseudopod after pseudopod at Heather. Heather jumped, dodged, and sidestepped each growth, driven by a single desire to slay Tannen who had betrayed the Heaven. With each pseudopod that missed Heather the ooze grabbed onto another tree to consume, causing it to grow with frightening speed.
Heather was within twenty steps of Tannen as they jumped over a pseudopod coming.
Fifteen when they turned their dash into a mad charge.
Ten when they stepped out of the way of another pseudopod attack.
Five when they raised their branches.
Four when they opened their wooden clawed hands.
Three when they saw Tannen's face infuriatingly calm face.
Two when they began to bring their arms down to strike.
One.
Suddenly Heather's stopped. No matter how much Heather tried, their arm would not come down to strike Tannen. Only when they felt the ooze pulling its pseudopod back did Heather realise what had happened. Thoughts of all the lost wood spirits, the death of the forests, and the broken dream of a second Heaven flooded Heathers mind. Arbor Heather let out a single bitter amber tear which fell upon the forest floor in the moment before the bloodfire ooze could consume them.
== Aftermath ==
With the death of their leaders, and with no way getting back home, the spirits that had remained behind to protect the healed forest went onto the defensive. The spirits hid themselves amongst the trees they had help grow, slaying any mortal foolish enough to come within thirty kilometres of the heart of the forest. There were a few armies managed to push beyond the thirty kilometre line, but as soon as they would cross any bridge or river their fates would be sealed. The Batafians kept on throwing entire glory-hungry armies at the forests, but as the decades went on without making any progress they began to slow down and an uneasy peace began to set in.
Decades flew into centuries, and with each one passing the wood spirits had less and less reason to move from their hiding places. Slowly they became like the trees they had helped grow; their legs took root into the soil, and their arms grew leaves that became a part of the great canopy above. Some went to sleep, only waking up when the forest needed them. Others stayed awake, using their magic to protect the forest from the foolhardy or dispensing wisdom to those rare mortals who showed proper respect for nature.
Legends began to form about the now ancient depths of the forests, warning of the dangers that lay ahead when crossing the vine-overgrown bridges. Some communities would try to placate by leaving offerings on the old bridges, others by building shrines on their side of the river.
Category:History
Category:Bas
Category:Religion