The Nightwood
Forest so dense and so old it has gone dark at midday, running along the Twilight Veil's far border. Bugbears hold it, along with a great many things that are not bugbears and have never been catalogued.
The Kingdom's maps mark the Nightwood as empty. That is the kind of error that comes from never sending anyone back a second time.
The Land
Unmapped in any useful sense. What surveys exist disagree with one another about the extent, and the 90 km² figure is a Leprechaun estimate made from altitude, at night, from outside.
Where the NoneTwilight Veil is a cathedral, the Nightwood is a lung. It is wetter, older, and thicker; the canopy does not merely close but layers, four and five deep, and the floor is a soft, warm, decaying mass that swallows sound. Nothing here is arranged for a traveler. There are no roads because there is no reason for roads: bugbear territory is measured in sleeping minds, not ground, and a people who navigate by whose dreams they can reach do not need a path.
- The dark. Not dusk. Dark — absolute, at noon, in summer. Faerie lights work and are a terrible idea, since the one thing the Nightwood's residents agree on is that a light is a statement.
- The sleep. Everyone sleeps more here. Visitors sleep enormously, dream vividly, and wake with the strong impression of having been spoken to. This is not a hazard, exactly. It is simply true, and it is how the province is governed.
- Rot-floor. The ground is decomposing matter thirty feet deep in places, warm, and it will take a wagon whole. Bugbears walk it confidently by knowing where the old fallen timber lies beneath.
- Spore-bloom. Twice a year the fungal mass fruits and the air fills. It is not poisonous. It is vivid: everyone dreams for three days, awake and asleep alike, and the Nightwood's entire calendar and much of its politics is organized around what people saw.
- The unrecorded. Bugbears are sixty thousand of the province's population. Nobody, including the bugbears, will estimate the rest.
Flora and Fauna
| Feature | What it is | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| The layered canopy | Four to five closed levels of it | The dark itself; a physical structure with residents at every tier |
| Rot-floor | Warm decomposing mass, thirty feet deep | The ground, the soil, the hazard, and the province's larder |
| Dreamer's-cup | A pale fungus fruiting in the rot; mildly psychoactive | Bugbear ritual, Duskmarket contraband, and a real medicine |
| Spore-bloom fungus | The great mass; fruits twice yearly | Three days of shared dreaming. Nobody outside believes this |
| Pale ivy | Colorless climber that grows toward sound | Which means it grows toward you. It is not dangerous. It is not pleasant |
| Bats | Large; the canopy's owners | Hunt by sound in a place with no light. The apex, comfortably |
| Gigantean centipedes | Huge; thirty feet, no natural enemy | Come down from the tiers. The bugbears know their routes |
| Cave crickets | Small; blind, leaping, everywhere in the rot | The province's protein, and its early-warning system |
| The uncatalogued | Whatever else is in there | Bugbears do not discuss this with outsiders and are not joking |
Society
Bugbear society is spread thin and organized around sleep: they claim territory by dream-range rather than by ground, and a bugbear's holdings are the minds that fall asleep within reach. This makes their borders unmappable and their politics incomprehensible to outsiders.
It also means the Nightwood is the only region in the world where the ruling power knows what its subjects are afraid of, in detail, every night.
Settlements
There is no capital, because a capital would be a claim about ground. There are gatherings — places where several dream-ranges overlap and it is therefore convenient to be physically present.
Hollowgate's Far Side (2,000) — the Nightwood end of the NoneTwilight Veil border town: warehouses, a market, and the only place in the province with a street.
Ursk's Deep (uncounted) — a hollow beneath the roots of a fallen giant where Ursk sleeps, and around which perhaps eight hundred bugbears live in loose arrangement. It is the closest thing to a seat of government and it is, literally, a bedroom.
The Overlap (~1,500) — where six dream-ranges intersect: a genuine town by Nightwood standards, with disputes, trade, and a permanent argument about whose range takes precedence at the center.
Fell Ninth (400) — a gathering built in a Kingdom-style ruin, like those in the Hollow Marches, which the bugbears occupy without curiosity. Visitors find this maddening.
Factions
Ursk's Reach. The largest dream-range in the province by a wide margin, which is what "ruler" means here. Ursk sleeps almost continuously and governs by knowing what everyone is afraid of, which is either the gentlest form of surveillance ever devised or the most complete.
The Waking Party. Bugbears who have concluded that dream-range politics cannot deal with an army, and that the Kingdom will eventually send one. They want ground held, borders drawn, and Hollowgate fortified. Their elders consider this a category error.
The Border Trade. Hollowgate's commerce with the Spriggans: foolsfire in, dreamer's-cup out, and a mutual understanding that neither crown is to be informed. Profitable, old, and warmer than either people admits.
The Unmet. Not bugbears. Whatever else lives in the deep wood, with which the bugbears have arrangements: routes not taken, seasons not entered, gatherings that are always sited a certain distance from certain places. Ask a bugbear about the Unmet and they will change the subject with a courtesy that leaves no opening.
The Hunt's Outriders. The Great Hunt rides the Nightwood's edges and does not camp inside. Its outriders maintain contact, carry messages, and have standing orders never to sleep within the treeline, which the bugbears find both prudent and mildly insulting.
Sites of Interest
Ursk's Deep. A root-hollow under a fallen giant, warm, dry, and dark, in which a very large bugbear has been mostly asleep for a very long time. Visitors are received — Ursk wakes for guests, which is considered a significant courtesy — and everyone who has spent a night in the Deep reports the same thing: that they dreamed clearly, that they were asked something, and that they answered honestly. None of them agree afterwards on what the question was.
The Overlap. Six dream-ranges crossing at one point, which produces an effect nobody has explained: sleep at the center and you dream what the others are dreaming. It is used for arbitration, for diagnosis, and — increasingly, and controversially — for interrogation, since it is very difficult to lie in the Overlap and everyone present knows it.
The Blind Tier. A level of the canopy, roughly two hundred feet up, that the bats do not use. There is no obvious reason for this. Bugbear climbers who have gone up report that the tier is clean, open, and unusually quiet, and that they came down sooner than they meant to and could not afterwards give a reason.
Fell Ninth. A Kingdom-style ruin deep in the wood: worked stone, a hall, a gate, boundary markers with names on them — identical in every particular to the ruins of the Hollow Marches, ninety kilometers away, in a province the Kingdom says was never settled. The bugbears live in it. They have no interest in what it was. This is the most useful attitude anyone has taken toward the ruins and the least helpful to anyone investigating them.
Hooks
- A Spriggan factor at Hollowgate needs a package delivered to a gathering three days into the wood, has no map, and is offering the party a bugbear guide who will only travel at the guide's pace and will not explain the detours.
- The spore-bloom comes and everybody in the province dreams the same thing — not a shared mood, a shared scene — and it is a scene of the Kingdom's border, and it is recognizably from the Kingdom's side.
- The Waking Party wants Hollowgate fortified and needs Leprechaun engineering. Getting a Rimeward engineer into the Nightwood is a smuggling job with diplomatic consequences in three directions.
- Ursk has not woken for a guest in four months. The Reach is fraying at its edges. Somebody needs to go into the Deep and find out whether the Dreamer Beneath is still dreaming.
- A Kingdom survey expedition entered the wood eleven days ago with a Chancery writ and an escort. The bugbears did not stop them. The bugbears would now like them collected, and are being noticeably careful about which route they suggest.
Relations
Quietly good with the Spriggans across the unmarked border. Formally uninvolved with the Great Hunt, which rides the Nightwood's edges and does not camp in it.