Wosswood

### Location

The Duchy of Bregate/the County of Vinwall; Lake Loinnir/the Lake of Darkness; the Black River/Lake Rann

### Inhabitants

Malaemarux, the Emerald Terror; Miradan, guardian of the Crypt; Sorzek, the Goblin King; Strommuth Bronzebrand, the Seal's warden

The forest of the **Wosswood** stretches from the Black River to the east to the shores of Lake Loinnir to the west and north, bordered to the south by Vinwall. On the outskirts of the forest lie the former Bregatian villages of Newstone and Blackbridge. After the Sunscourge Heresy, the Black River was flooded and became Lake Rann.

The Wosswood is a cursed and ancient forest. Its old, gnarled trees are thousands of years old and filled with magic. Legends tell that the forest itself is alive, moving its branches and paths to confuse travelers. Other legends tell of ancient ruins, dwarven and elven, from before the rise of man, lying within the forest and in the dank caverns of Mount Rann, the crown of the forest. The Wosswood has long been infested with humanoids, under the power of various kings and tyrants. Rumors of fiends lying deep within its trees are likely due to the presence of the former Tripartite Temple of demon cultists, along with the strange presence of a grove of Malgarian trees.

## History

In the year -610 and the years leading up to her fall, the Wosswood was ruled by an ancient green dracolich called Malaemarux, the Emerald Terror, who usurped the previous reign of the goblin kingdom of the sorcerer king Gexeluks after his failed invasion of Valennian Naonend and his defeat by Sir Leonor in -660. The forest kingdom of the Queen of Terror drew the ire of her neighbors with her kobold armies, attacking Morlaix and Naonend, and so the warrior-maiden of Gilariel, Ilythyrra, took up her spear Oathkeeper and took an alliance of dwarves, elves, and men to defeat the monster. Yet even then they could only seal her within her lair, the caves of green Mount Rann; so the forgotten company, called the Emerald Alliance, became the defenders of the Seal. The dwarves built the Crucible to protect the Seal while the elves enchanted it.

Some 700 years later, in 150, under the reign of House Terminus, Imperator Drakon of the First Empire refused to uphold the tenets of the Emerald Alliance. The elves and dwarves were forced to contend alone, this time lead by a paladin called Lusalor. Lusalor lead his men against Zudagog, an orc warlord from the Savage Mountains who had heard the call of the Emerald Terror, capturing the Dwarven Crucible and seeking to free the dracolich. The elf-paladin Lusalor managed to slay the orc chieftain, yet died of Zudagog's fell poison shortly after. Nonetheless victorious, Lusalor was buried in a Crypt in the Wosswood with his blade, Orc's Lament, to memorialize his victory. Elven grave wardens established themselves in that same Crypt, to both watch over the Seal and to protect the tomb itself.

In 5E.1485, the Wosswood was ruled over by a goblin chieftain called Rast the Baneful. The ruthless humanoid overlord gathered the tribes of the forest and formed a kingdom, striking out against the humans who dwelled on the border of the weald. The goblins were defeated, narrowly, by an adventurer named Gareth Donnelly, who founded the Cat & Chicken in Blackbridge and married a local maiden with his reward from Baron Denholm. Rast the Baneful's son, the goblin prince Kogtam, was too weak to rule, and in the goblins' defeat the rival kobolds of the wood had grown stronger. The kobolds overtook the Dwarven Crucible, along with Mt. Rann, Rast's seat, for several years, learning of the Emerald Terror trapped within. Their occupation ended when Kogtam's own son, the future Goblin King Sorzek, rose up and ousted the kobolds' leader, then Kobold King Yiktaz.

### The Heroes of Blackbridge

In 5E.1521, the Wosswood became the central battlefield of a raging war between the two humanoid kings, Sorzek and Yiktaz. Yiktaz had retreated to the Shambling Temple, an ancient hidden ruin in the northern forests of the Wosswood, where the Tripartite Cult once practiced demon worship under the Shadowmaker's rule. When Father Tihomir was sent west through the forest on a relief mission to the plagued village of Newstone and subsequently disappeared, the Heroes of Blackbridge, composed of Lemuel of Ryfall, Aldus the Inquisitor, Peredur Gower, Volkarr the Exile, and eventually Silas Rooke, departed into the forests to find him. They tracked the priest to his fallen caravan, where the priest had fallen some two weeks before, lying dead by his curate's side. Three of his four guards were found as corpses around the ambush site. Father Tihomir was slain by Markus Aldhard, an assassin of the Esoteric Order of the Gargoyle and servant of the Court of Locusts, disguised as an Infernal Pact assassin. Markus Aldhard himself was wounded in the encounter, and left a trail of blood leading to the Lost Crypt of Lusalor, where he was found and killed by one of Sorzek's lieutenants, Nagzem the Killer. Meanwhile, the guard who mortally wounded him, Pierrick Blackhair, wandered into a kobold ambush. The kobolds took the human to Yiktaz's throne room in the Temple, where he would await sacrifice to Malaemarux. Two weeks later, the kobolds conducted a raid on the village of Newstone to gather nine additional sacrifices.

Although the tyrants of the Wosswood tried their best to maintain their rule in the face of the Heroes of Blackbridge, the adventurers slew Nagzem the Killer and his underlings within the Lost Crypt, afterwards journeying to the Dwarven Crucible, where they freed Strommuth Bronzebrand and bargained with the Goblin King, who had taken the Infernal Pact medallion from Nagzem the Killer, who had himself stolen the necklace off Markus Aldhard's corpse. Ultimately, the Heroes of Blackbridge agreed to slay the Kobold King, although they failed to rescue Pierrick Blackhair and the nine humans kidnapped from Newstone, and Newstone itself ultimately fell to the Rasping Pox. With Yiktaz dead, the Heroes of Blackbridge completed their deal with Sorzek and learned the supposed identity and affiliation of Father Tihomir's assassin. Leaving the Wosswood behind, the Heroes of Blackbridge departed for Bregate.

The inquisitor Aldus, meanwhile, had engendered plans before his death to see Sorzek unseated. Strommuth Bronzebrand gathered several dwarves and ousted the goblin king from his former home. The Emerald Terror would remain in her prison, even after the Sunscourge Heresy, the opening of the Worldwound and the Deluge; although much of the forest was flooded or consumed by the Lake of Darkness, the Dwarven Crucible and Mount Rann still stand high, although the dwarves that protect it have lost much of their honor, virtue, and perhaps even their souls.