This is part three of You Enter the Forest Deep. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here.
These are the 10 factions within the Forest Deep. Each has goals, virtues, and resources. These are all conflicting, which brings these factions into conflict. I have a post on factions and conflict that you can read here.
The Wolves.
Like wolves, but larger and more primal. The platonic ideal of a wolf. They can speak. They prefer their own tongue, but can snarl out human words if demanded. They actually dislike the name wolf, as it is a reminder of their less civilized kin. They prefer to be called Protectors or Guardians.
They are noble and proud. Take a medieval knight and remove any possible angle of corruption. Those are the Wolves, the pure essence of chivalry and nobility. They are the Forest Deep's charged protectors, something they do with pride and grace and joy. In return, the Forest gives them all that they could ask for. A Wolf in good standing never goes hungry.
They are wise, and far smarter than the average human. They build societies, family-clans where the eldest leads, thought they lack the ability to construct homes or tools. They would make fabulous allies, friends of the Forest as they are, but they are slow to trust and impossible to bribe.
Goals: To protect the Forest Deep no matter the cost.
Virtues: Nobility, chivalry, and kindness. They act on an invisible moral code.
Resources: The protection of the Forest Deep. The Wolves and their allies have no fear of the Forest's more dangerous aspects.
To use the Wolves in combat, take a dire wolf and add a hit die. Then, roll a d4 to determine which of these once per battle abilities the Wolf gets:
- Howl - All enemies that can hear it save or are demoralized (-1 to hit)
- Rabid Bite - Wolf bites, enemy saves or takes additional damage equal d6's times the Wolves hit die.
- Go For the Throat - Wolf bites, enemy must save or be pulled prone
- Skirmish - Wolf bites then leaps back its movement. Another Wolf can move for free.
For elder wolves, add 2 more hit die (adjust other stats as necessary) and roll for abilities twice.
The Ants.
A
perfect working order guided by chemical trails and instinct. They are
ants, giant ants. Workers the size of horses and soldiers the size of
elephants. They act like normal ants, a perfect biological machine
transporting materials back to the hive. The hive must grow. The hive
must always grove. Such is the Queen's demand.
They can't communicate with you, not unless you can understand their chemical trails. The only way to communicate with the hive is to follow them back to the their hive. The princesses (and the Queen) can talk. Well, they can communicate through psionic telepathy. They're psions, all of the intelligent Ants. The Ants survive day to day with chemicals, but they can all be ordered instantly through telepathic messages in the chemicals.
They don't understand you. They're Ants. They think of you as female. You'll have to explain things to them. The princesses only know what the other Ants see through the chemical trails. They can learn, and will inscribe this knowledge in the chemical trail. Then, all Ants will know it. They've been all over the Forest. They can find anything, given time.
Goals: The hive must survive. That means more resources, more food, always.
Virtues: Subservience and endless work.
Resources: Manpower.
The Ants number in the thousands. You think you've seen a lot when you
see them harvesting food. This is nothing compared to the Ants in the
hive. Connecting yourself with the chemical network would give you
control over the lesser Ants.
Ants come in 5 varieties. Workers are the size of horse. Stat them the same, but give them a low chance of capturing an enemy in their pincers (Around 20%). Soldiers are huge. Stat them like elephants. Princesses are like workers, but with psionic powers of a level equal to their hit die. Male ants are a rarity. They are like workers but winged. The Queen is immense, the size of a castle. She has too many hit die to count.
The Ettercaps.
A thousand thousand years ago a human city sunk into the earth. They worshiped the Eight Eyed Mother. They continued to worship her in their home in the dark world below. She protected them in exchange for secrets. One day they came back up, changed. They had eight eyes, skin like chitin, and could speak to spiders. They were no longer human. They were ettercap.
Ettercaps are a religious cult dedicated to the Eight Eyed Mother, but you wouldn't know this by looking at them. Most are shepherds and hunters, tending to flocks of giant spiders. This itself is an act of worship, a collective secret of their species. They are thieves and assassins and bandits. No one likes them.
The ettercaps do not deal in coin. They deal in secrets. They can trade you many things for a secret, the more horrid the better. The Eight Eyed Mother prefers things unspeakable by a normal voice. They deliver these secrets to their temples in the dark world below. Woah befall you should you stumble into one of their temples.
Goals: To gather secrets for the Eight Eyed Mother.
Virtues: Spiders, for one. The collection of unspeakable knowledge, for another.
Resources: Secrets. Lots of them. They will trade them. Spiders and their products as well. Silk is rare and valuable and the ettercaps have it in droves.
I
imagine your game already has stats for ettercaps and giant spiders.
They will never fight fair. They prefer to assassinate quietly, with
garrotes made of spider silk. Priests can cast spells like a cleric of
at least 5th level.
The Aes Sidhe.
The fair folk of the Fair Court. Those that rule the other, more fair, world. These are the Aes Sidhe. These are the fae.
They feed on entertainment. For the fae, to be bored is to starve. They find no entertainment more sweet than that of mortals. It is why they play at mortal ideologies, kings and queens and courts and nobles. They have no need for this, for a fae's place in the court is an objective truth. Titania and Oberon must always rule.
There
are many kinds of fae. Spriggans and faeries and sprites and brownies
and boggarts. These are all lesser fae, the servants of the Fair Court.
They spend much of their time in the mortal world, causing minor
problems and annoyances for mortals to feed on their delightful
reaction. The true sidhe would remind you of elves. Pale and impossible
fair with hair like that of copper wire. They dress like nobles, in
flowing silks and linens, and wield needles, fanciful rapiers of
enchanted steel. This is not their form, not truly, but is a costume
they wear in their eternal play. They rarely step into our world, and
when they do it is most often in the Forest Deep.
The Aes Sidhe will never lie. Warp and twist the truth, yes, but the fae will never lie. They are incapable of doing so. At the same time, the fae take every comment as a promise. Any offer, no matter how small or non-genuine, is a full and complete contract that can never be broken.
Goals: To feed on mortal reaction to their pranks.
Virtues: Anything fun! Of course, a fae idea of fun is not a mortal idea of fun. The fae cause chaos. They consider this good.
Resources: Gifts from a more fair world. All cursed for mortals of course. You'll never get a fair deal with the
Use whatever lesser fae stats you think are fun. For the fae nobles, they have 5 hit die and fight using needles. Needles sap your emotions (consider something like charisma damage). They also have random illusion spells. Whatever sounds funny. They aren't here to kill you, just to feed on your reactions.The Eoten Moot.
In the Forest Deep, some trees are more than just trees. They are sapient and can move and speak. They were once confused with giants, thus their name.
The lowest of their kind are the dryads, like humans but with skin the color of bark and moss. They are shy, but find humans and their ilk fascinating. Next are the bark ogres, immense golem-like entities made of logs. They walk like gorillas and are impressively dumb. The greatest are the eoten themselves, immense walking trees.
They want peace and quiet for the most part. To relax and pretend to be a plant for decades on end. Every century, they meet in a grand moot to discuss the coming years and cycle places of rest. They do this so that one eoten does not hog the quietest part of the Forest to themself.
Goals: To relax in peace and harmony in a Forest that is healthy.
Virtues: They value friendship and knowledge. Though they wish to relax, they will gladly make a new friend.
Resources: They don't have much other than stories. They spend 90% of their time resting.
Stat dryads like, well, dryads, and eoten like treants or walking trees or whatever works. Bark ogres are like ogres but resistant to slashing weapons and extra weak to fire.
The Wealden Court.
The druids. It might come as a surprise to know that the Forest Deep dislikes the druids. Many think of the druids as anti-civilization and pro-nature. This is wrong. Druids are pro-civilization and pro-nature. They are priests of nature who believe in harmony between the two halves, and that both are better for the other. There are anti-civilization druids out there, but they are extremists. You may make the Wealden Court anti-civilization. I do not.
The druids of the Deep.are there on behalf of civilization. They hope to find common ground with the Deep. They believe there are places within the Deep that require mortal hands to grow stronger and better. The Deep disagrees. It would rid itself of them if it could, but they are like an infection. The druids and the Wolves are natural enemies. It is no wonder the most common shapeshift of a druid is the bear.
You can hear them singing, if you listen. The great verses of all the druidic knowledge. It is the only way for them to spread their teachings. Druidic knowledge cannot be learned by reading.
Goals: Find common ground with the Forest Deep. Allow civilization to prosper within its bounds.
Virtues: Combining
nature and civilization is good. Taking from nature without giving back
is bad, as is wasting part of what nature gives.
Resources: Druidic magic. They can heal or resurrect the dead. They are also some of the best at finding their way through the Deep, second only the Wolves.
They are druids. They have the powers of the druid class, be that magic or shapeshifting or summoning or whatever. Pick what you want. Druids are versatile. They travel in small groups, never staying in one place for too long.The Bolemen.
Yellowed eyes, frantically darting from one shadow to the next. An axe with a handle of gnarled wood and a head stained with blood and sap. A quiet life where all involved have no trust in each other. These are the bolemen.
The bolemen lost their minds. They are owned by the Forest Deep now. It ignores them, perhaps amused by their state. They are paranoid. Fearful of each rustling leaf and skittering insect. They live in small communities, steadings carved from the Forest Deep. They don't trust outsiders (they don't trust anyone or anything) but can be bargained with. They're still people deep down.
Bolemen logic makes no sense. A family of bolemen could be loving and sweet one day and the next the daughter has murdered her parents because she believed that they were going to turn her into soup. Paranoia is a deadly virus. Their paranoia often represents itself as superstition. The bolemen will believe anything if they think it will protect them. Their homes are covered in trinkets said to ward darkness. They salt their doors and windows at night. To understand the bolemen, find a list of various superstitions. The bolemen believe in all of them.
At times, larger groups of bolemen will form villages. With guidance, they can work together and do great things. An elder boleman, or at times an elf or Wolf or eoten or druid can get them to cooperate, to lay aside their fears. The second this figure of peace is gone, they will rip each other apart. Such is the curse of the bole.
Goals: Survive.
Virtues: Whatever normal humans find virtuous. They're still humans just, a little lost.
Resources: What you'd expect from a homesteader. Food, wood, pelts. Superstitious trinkets designed to ward away evil.
Stat bolemen like bandits, but give them lumberaxes (like a battleaxe or greataxe). An elder gets an extra hit die or two. There are bolemen clerics and wizards, but they only appear in larger boleman villages.
The Elves.
They are the elves of the wood. The elves of the high canopy, haughty and proud, have long since abandoned these woods, and the elves of the roots below, jealous and cruel, have long since descended to the dark world below. Only the wood elves remain.
Most think them xenophobes. This isn't necessarily true. The wood elves fear outsiders like they fear the Forest. Outsiders are a threat to their guise. The elves are not welcome within the Deep. They survive by hiding from its eyes, sitting at the peripheries of its vision, like blurs on a camera. Outsiders risk this. Outsiders know not of their ways of hiding and sneaking. This is a danger.
Elves build villages and roads through the Deep much like any other species, but they do so in a way that denies their existence. Their homes only appear like homes if you know what you're looking for. Their villages are mirages, their roads an easily denied falsehood. If something made by the elves is obvious then it was made like that on purpose, as a trap. It is not uncommon to walk through an elf village with no idea you were ever in one.
Goals: To stay hidden and stay safe. To tend to their families.
Virtues: Elves love those that are good at stealth (especially their kind) and good hunters.
Resources: Their
stealth. Bow and arrows designed to wind through the trees. Ample
supplies. Elves have some of the only healing magic in the Deep.
The Sporelings.
Where there is fungus there are sporelings. They are dumb and slow and short-lived, with stumpy bodies made of fungal chitin. Each sporeling is unique, like a pastiche of a mushroom. They have eyes, but they barely work. Most navigate via the subtle disturbances in the air as things move. They don't live long. A week at most. When they uproot, they loose their connection to the mycelia network that feeds them. They slowly starve. They're a mobile propagation method. A way of spreading the fungus. They don't know this. They'd hate the knowledge.
Due to their short lives, sporelings learn fast. They can become masters in days what would take others years. Sometimes they fail. They die and their body is absorbed by the fungal network that originally created them. The network absorbs their knowledge, and the next cycle of sporelings is better. This repeats forever. Eventually the fungus could know everything. instict fights this. The sporelings desire to leave their host far behind.
Yet, there are sporelings out there with a grasp on complex topics. Complex language, kingdoms, cities, culture. They are all born of a single fungal super-network: The Ur-Fungus. Every mushroom is an offshoot of the Ur-Fungus. In the end, every mushroom will once again be a part of the Ur-Fungus.
Goals: Grow. Survive. Eat. Propagate.
Virtues: There is no time for morality when you live a week. All is fair in the eyes of the fungus.
Resources: You can eat them. They store things, valuable things, deep in the mycelia. They will trade it for food. Only food. They don't keep knowledge that isn't useful for survival. It's a waste.
The earliest form of the sporeling was the spore pod, a floating ball of toxic spores. They have 1 hit point and explode when hit, and all nearby creatures must save or take light poison damage. This explosion explodes all nearby pods too. When they appear, roll a d6 for how many appear. This dice explodes. It keeps exploding. Let them grow into the thousands. For normal sporelings, use whatever stats your game has for mushroom people. 25% of all sporelings are born of the Ur-Fungus. They are intelligent, use human language, and can have armor and tools and tactics. If you encounter Ur-Fungus sporelings again, they will remember you.
The Owls.
You've seen owls, perched on high branches, ever vigilant in the dark hours of the night. They aren't real. Sure, they have flesh and blood and eat, but they're a lie. They are but scouts and messengers for the Owls.
Take a barn owl. Make it the height of a human with a wingspan to match. They speak in our tongue (they learned it from their lesser ilk). They watch and wait for things to die, so that they might carry them to their next life. You believe Death to be a skeleton? No, death is an Owl, with bone white face and dark wings draped over it like a cloak and claws like a harvesting scythe.
The Owls worship death. The concept of it. They believe that death is pure and blessed and that is a great honor that all are destined to it. This does not mean that they go out of their way to seek death. All things have their time and place. It is, however, a blasphemy to run from it. The entire Canopy is their cathedral, decorated with bones and offerings. Every moment of their lives is worship. Think of the most strict cult possible. Make it stricter. That is the life of the Owl.
Goals: To maintain death.
Virtues: Accepting death is good. Necromancy and prolonging life are horrid sins to be purged.
Resources: Bones. Lots of them. They are master diviners. They keep the magic items of the fallen. They will trade these things for death.
Take the stats of a giant bird. That's an Owl. They can use weapons in their talons, but why would they, they have talons. 50% of Owls can cast spells as a cleric of a level equal to their hit die. When in danger, they will fly into the air, and if necessary pelt those below them with stones and magic and only swoop in for the kill. Some Owls are bishops. They have 7 hit die, are clerics, and use a staff made of entwined wicker. The staff can turn undead 3 times a day.
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