Nai'Eath History

Nai’eath is broken into small territories, each commanded by a different great house seated in a small tree manor. A series of roads in the understory connect the territories. These roads are protected by rangers associated with each house that are stationed in trees (wolf trees) along the road. The road is lit by lamps and bent trees mark the way. Different regions of Nai’Eath bend the trees in their own way and favor different species, and all are marked with the sigil of the house.

The many great houses of Nai’Eath were unified after a wood elf invasion. The leader of the unification, Trio’danis of House Dagwood—“The Lash of Nai’Eath”,  became king of the gray elves. In his elder years his power waned with the threat of invasion quelled. To firm up the seat for his children, he garnered support of the great houses by establishing the parliament in Routhi, the ancient home of the gray elves. Different houses have held the throne through marriages and peaceful transitions of power since then until….

Nai’Eath recently had a succession crisis when all the children of the current rulers, House Go’olmord vanished. Several factions vied for supremacy. The conflict was mostly political save a few small border skirmishes, half-hearted and botched assassination attempts, and fisticuffs at parliament meetings. Eventually the remainder of the houses not vying for the throne banded together with a show of force that quelled the threat of violence. Then, they essentially elected a new house to rule the throne (under the guise of determining the most correct lineage assessment). They picked a fairly small and weak house with some second cousins related to House Go’olmord, House Wick (The Wax Kings), firmly establishing the supremacy of the parliament. This house has remained in power since, bending and molding to the will of the most powerful houses in parliament.

### Bone trees

The gray elves of Nai'eth honor their dead by hanging their bodies at sacred bone trees, where the deceased find their place in the branches of hereditary lineage like a "family tree" on paper. Each great house has a bone tree buried deep in the forest. These bone trees are nominally secret, and one can only visit the tree of their own family. Long existing houses have expanded into groves. The poor of Nai'eath—the underbranchers—are hung in public groves adjoining Routhi and other tree cities.

Gray elf bone tenders hang the bodies in cages called bone baskets made of the supple and robust stems of young musclewood sapling. They construct the spacing of the branches to allow crows and vultures to feed on the flesh while preventing the bones from being carried off. The integrity of the skeleton is retained by training the vines of flowering and fruiting plants to lash together the joints. Families conduct maintenance on the skeletons in a sacred, secretive rite on the Summer solstice. In the Fall, during the Autumnal equinox, the family again visits the bone trees for the ancestor feast, when legend holds the ancestors are closest to breaking the plane from the spirit to the corporeal world. Traditionally, the youth climb to the highest branch of the bone tree and whisper of a problem or question, looking for guidance.

### Sap-still / sap-run festivals

In the city of Routhi is a great maple on the outskirts of the southern boundary. In the tree is an ornate carved wooden tap engraved with imagery of Nai’ Eath. Beneath the tap is a large glass flask that collects sap. Since time immemorial, the gray elves have used the sap flow from the tree to tell the change in seasons: the first sap marks the end of winter and the last drop marks the end of summer. Eventually, these events came

to be marked my great festivals.

Sap-still: Fall is a time for preparation. The forest is no longer full of food and winter provisions must be fortified. Vines must be boiled for baskets, grapes smashed for wine, nuts pulverized for flour. To combat the drudgery, a number of exciting nighttime events became tradition. Children gather fall leaves of every color from their home trees and place these in a large circle on the great platform (see below). Concerts are is held. The festival concludes when the best hollow ball teams play a match on the hallowed grounds of Whispering Ridge.

Sap-run: Spring is a time for getting fresh air and cleaning. At first, when the great flask rang out with the first drop of sap, the rangers descended to the forest floor to clear the roads from Routhi and tend to the lamps that mark the way in the dark understory. As time passed, more and more of the city followed the rangers down to stretch their legs. Eventually, this yearly jaunt became a great parade, with gray elves of neighboring territories meeting at their boundaries to parade before heading home.