The Circle of Growth and Decay

The Circle of Growth and Decay is a book uncovered in Whittengrove through use of Study-related Inquiries.

## Description

Arnica's history is inescapably tied to that of the Wood Weald, and entity of many names that served as the patron of the hags that sought to transform her. Upon uncovering evidence that her family - or at the very least her twin Elína might still live - she grew fearful that she may be trapped within the Dirgevale, on account of the entirety of Covengrove being pulled into the Domain of Dread. To that effect, she travelled to Whittengrove, home (at the time) of the adventurers involved in the Wood Weald's banishment, and sought further information about the wretched locale.

## Reading

### Completed by Arnica

Much of my research comes immediately following the disappearance of the forest known as Covengrove, for it was my intent that my people would have a place to call home, and so in response to the return of foliage - tree and shrub and grove - where once the accursed place stood, I took it upon myself to investigate the matter of a lingering influence, and in doing so found myself learning far more than I would will upon any individual. Nonetheless, with aid from a friend and colleague who funnelled a fair sum of coinage generated by their mercantile company into funding my efforts, I learned far more still, and thus am able to offer up this tome as the gravest of warnings. To understand the Dirgevale, an understanding of Covengrove serves as a marvellous foundation. Life, for all the sinister connotations associated with the forest, flourished around the woods of the Covengrove, nestled as it was between the Realms of Lachlen, Sunstone and Codorne. No sooner would the forest be lumbered, milled and used for all manner of purposes did the trees once more within the coming of the next full moon, and so the region would steadily supply resources as needed. Within the forest itself, life of all kind multiplied and grew, and while this included those of more malign intent - none more so than baleful fey such as hags - this remained a fundamental truth of the forest. Medicinal herbs to both aid and assail bloomed in misty clearings and the crooks of fallen logs, growing amongst shrubs and vines that readily threatened to trip those passing by while being ideal for weaving to those with the skill to collect and manipulate them.

To understand the relevance of this, an understanding of both the Domain of Dread, and how this is directly linked to the so-called Darklord bound within. A Domain of Dread is an act of balancing on the cosmic scale, a place intended to contain great forces of evil and malice in a plane of their own torments, their own failings. They are a prison that reflects the worst of their Darklord, the malevolent blight that lurks at their heart. For the Wood Weald, the Dirgevale was that prison, until they were sprung free by the capricious trickery of the Feywild-emboldened greatwyrm Velun, who was said to have beguiled the Dark Powers that forged the Domain into believing the Wood Weald to have been redeemed. It was noted by scholars that the lands around the Covengrove did not immediately match its surroundings, and thus assumed to be a fragment of the Dirgevale brought to the Material Plane with their escape, stretching into the soil beneath the roots, and to the skies of gloom and grey overhead. After their subsequent rebanishment by the aforementioned sorcerer Hassk, the path of their escape was definitely sealed, and Velun bound in a pact with an Inevitable of Yaldin in their renouncement of the Glorious Eye. With it, the Covengrove vanished, along with all contained within it - flora, fauna, souls of the living, remains of the dead. I travelled the lands left in the wake numerous times, and can say with certainty that no such trace of the splintered Domain of Dread remains, and thus there is no risk that one walking where such landmarks as Dirgevale Crypt, the villages of Boonmourn, Festertarn, Hazelglen and the Woading Walk once existed - for they too now presumably exist within the Witch's Vale. No such borders and boundaries hide within the mornings' mists, or the evenings' fogs, and so passage inwards seems entirely divorced from the Material Plane.

And yet, travel is still perhaps possible - even if it may be for all the most capable of wanderers possible only to travel into such a wretched place, such do the Mists entrap and entomb, but to do so is in itself a wretched task. Scattered throughout the Shadowfell, hidden in corners considered remote, dark and destitute even by the standards of the muted Echo of the Prime, reside such demiplanes, numerous and terrible. If the peril of travelling the Shadowfell, oppressive by its very nature and capable of overwhelming the unresolved with a drowning weight of ennui, was not enough, there is seemingly no way of telling the Domains apart from their outside, and thus only discoverable from within, wherein escape is nigh impossible in such a case that the wrong location awaits beyond the haze. Beyond the Dirgevale, I have identified six other Domains in my travels, that of Golden Cay, Lanrood Bale, Moonfell, Talonmoure, The Cascade and White Angel. To enter a Domain of Dread is to gamble with the nature of one's eternal torment, uncertain of whether this will occur in blasted wastes riddled with craters, ruins ritually cleansed by divine light, an archipelago of bloody violence, or many other foul environs besides.

Covengrove represented but a fragment of the true Dirgevale, though allows for further speculation on its true nature. The Wood Weald delights in decay, emulating and encouraging it with every action, and so the Dirgevale teeters in a perpetual state of such. Stone crypts crack and creak, threatening to collapse any moment, trees grow and proliferate and yet appear decrepit and dead all the same, gnarled and wizened, with branches like looming claws. The morals and dispositions of the residents likewise falter and failure with time, twisted and rotten and yet therein lies the nature of the Wood Weald's perpetual torment. Whenever a tower collapses, instead of eventually continuing the cycle of entropy to be sundered into rubble and then dust and then nothing, it returns the following month with the next full moon. Trees that rot through and fall to the undergrowth grow anew in the lunar light, and those tormented souls that face perpetual hardship and horror find themselves more often than not bound in community, growing to support each other more than they would ever tear each other down. For every village massacred with the utmost terror and brutality, another will take their place, the souls of the residents likewise trapped in a cycle of death as pawns to the Domain, but one that serves to torment the Weald Witch in a cycle of cruelty never quite enough, ferity never enough to truly overwhelm, ruination never definitively achievable - a perpetual circle of growth and decay.