Wood War

The Kingdom of Arkland is the largest shipbuilder of Indagar due to their monopoly of ironwood which allows their ships to be stronger and longer lasting than ships built with ordinary wood. But ironwood is a limited resource that has to be carefully managed with virtually every tree in the Ironwood Forest already having a planned harvest date. This limits the number of ships built and their size since the Ironwood Forest can only produce so much timber fit for ships every year. The Arkland shipyards could produce more ships using ordinary wood, just not as good as ironwood ships, if they had a steady supply of suitable lumber.

It would appear that the endless Great Forest would be a solution to these problems, but Arklanders have had the belief that the effects wild magic must have a mage responsible for it. After all, the spirits of the Republic and the Light Magic of Arkland’s Priests and Paladins do not simply happen, someone has to summon and direct it, which is not true for Wild Magic. While the Great Forest Tribes are isolationist, at the same time they are not particularly fond of the Great Forest where they make their home. The wild magic of the Forest turns some of them to Wilders, twist ordinary creatures into monsters and regrows the forest to overrun cleared farmland overnight. If outsiders wish to risk their lives by going into the forest, select the largest and most filled with wild magic trees to cut down, that is their choice. But when the wild magic inevitably lashed out at the Arkland woodsmen and surveyors, they would look for someone to blame which usually ended up being the local Tribe.

This misunderstanding meant no matter how well-intentioned the Tribes were or how accommodating Arklander felt they were, conflict would always result. At times Arkland would try to reach formal agreements with the Tribes in order to collect timber but the decentralized structure of the Tribes meant that it was hard to make the agreements last, as new Tribes would move into the area that never heard of any agreements. Since the master shipbuilders that selected the wood for the ships were considered valuable resources, they were often escorted by Men at Arms. It takes very little for a casual encounter with tribe warriors to turn violent.

This turned into a pattern. It became a tradition for a new Baron of King’s Landing, where the Capital Shipyards are based, would make some sort of attempt use the Great Forest as a source of timber. Some attempts were small, others were large but they all ended with Arkland forces and woodsmen being chased out of the Forest, either by the Tribes or by the wild magic of the Forest itself. These conflicts are collectively called the Wood Wars, though by no stretch of the imagination were they actually wars, maybe at most an energetic set of skirmishes. The most recent Wood War was interrupted by the Cataclysm. The Arkland woodsmen and craftsmen, unable to reach any of the Gates due to the Tribes being riled by the Cataclysm fled to the City on the Lake where they remain to this day. Since they include several master shipbuilders, Arkland would desperately like them back.

What is not widely known is that the Cataclysm shook the whole Spine Mountains, creating not just the Broken Pass but also several smaller passes throughout the Spine Mountains into the Great Forest. The Barony of King’s Landing is using at least one of these secret passes to harvest timber. The Great Forest Tribes, when they discover this will no doubt use it as an excuse to attack Arkland, especially since these new passes would allow them to bypass the Gates.