[center][color=007236][h2]Glimmerdeep, North Wood[/h2]

[h3]Harvest of the Whispering Moon[/h3][/color]
[url=https://youtu.be/5uX36_DX8bg?si=8Q8pj8UZG3ZLbsuK]Songs of the Wood[/url][/center]

The rain fell hard enough to blur the jungle into streaks of green and shadow; in the stagnant heat, the clinging touch of water was the only semblance of respite. Colossal fronds and dripping roots trembled the bright crests of small cassowary steeds as they slinked through the forest like haunted spirits. The jungle fowl and their small gnomish riders appeared from many paths like streams into a freshet. Their number was hard to count, perhaps two score. Among their saddled packs hung the bright fronds of tropical fruits, the ruffled masses of small monkeys, thick bladders of fresh saps. They were returning. Arriving. A feast was nigh. 

Amidst their flow, [b]Jeenuk Splitbeak[/b] joined: his face patterned in yellow-mud sigils, his hair tangled with feathers and stones, his arms tattooed from old shamanic rites. Even now, in the storm-dark, his eyes gleamed with visions no one else could see. As his name betrayed, his jaw had been cut by an orc axe seasons ago, sealing back in a jagged weld. He spoke rarely, and never loudly, yet every gnome leaned toward him when he whispered. Jeenuk carried the air of one who walked with ancestors, but in this hunt he was weighted with something heavier. 

Like his kin, Jeenuk had set out for the harvest. The Whispering Moon was rising in the night sky, and likely with it a funeral. [b]Big Chtuk[/b] had grown old. His once strong arms had become so knotted with trichinella that his hard, dark bark looked knotted and twisted like that of the trees he so loved. Jeenuk had sought to find his chieftain's favorite meal, okapi, to gain his favor, and in hopes to gain Chtuk’s last song; to become the next Big Man of the tribe. He had traveled deep into the northern wood. The cursed place.

There he had heard it. A sound—felt more than heard—trembled through the roots under his feet.

Amongst the theatre of still trees it was a deep, rhythmic tone that made the water ripple in the puddles around him. A sound that resonated in bone and stomach, a sound that felt like the pulse of the earth itself grinding awake.

He had seen nothing, to be seen in this forest was to be dead. But the woods were awake with sounds and signs of giants stirring. Streams were dammed, stones were laid. Yet no fires. No refuse. No scents of prepared meats. These were not the loud invaders of the southlands who defiled the forest with their metal and ash. It [i]was[/i] the forest. Moving, building, singing. 

—
For days the band slinked through the dense jungle. The shadows and brambles were becoming familiar again. Armies of ants scurried into their mounds where luminous gemstones cast moongaldes on leaves from beneath. Jeenuk knew that news of what he had heard –had felt–  would arrive before them. As the band traveled they sang songs that twinkled through the forest. Like firetowers these songs found distant ears who fed distant ears. It was a story, on this night especially, that traveled fast. 

As they neared, other songs met their ears. The gathering at home was large. Blue oiled smokes laced the canopy of trees as the fats of the night's meal simmered. Above the small domed huts and wet smudgy fires arced a colossal baobab tree. It was out of place in these woods. But that was because it was a time long before the storm. When Glimmerdeep had fallen, the great mountain to their south, little of the old world was spared. But the baobab trees, holding the gnomes of these woods deep beneath their roots, had kept their people alive. They had survived off her sap as the world above them shattered away the magic that had ravished it, enslaved it. 

Tonight, when the moon was high, Big Chtuk would rise to the baobab tree’s crown branches and ask the sky to never bring magic again. What Jeenuk also knew, what the tribe knew, was that Big Chtuk would be buried under its roots –like his ancestors before him– by sunrise. 

Jeenuk crested the camp's border hill, their hunting band in a bubbling ethereal song. It was an encroaching baseline, expectant of melody from homebound women and elders to match. 

Jeenuk longed to see the darting, laughing figures of gnomish children; the strong arms of the reedweavers; the old wrinkled faces sitting in low roots, eyes opalescent but with grins that followed cherished sounds. 

Instead, his weary eyes saw the [i]creature[/i].

Towering. Meters away. Noise cut from the air. 

It hunched, watching, like a hungry mapinguari, but it did not appear to look at the small folk below as prey. It perhaps did not look at all, as its fungoid features only hinted at form and function of life. Yet it was alive. Like Jeenuk had heard the woods become. And here it was. In front of him. Caught in a trap the gnomes had never hoped to lay. 

Atop his cassowary steed, Jeenuk raised both palms to the sky. He began to sing. A different song. An old song. 


[b]Summary:[/b] 
- The northern indigenous tribes of Glimmerdeep (gnomes) hear the Verdant Loom awakening. 
- Their people resent magic and the industries reforming post-Storm. Reverent of the woods.
- Tribesmen stumble upon a peeping-tom Sporewarden. @Timemaster