Meadows and rivers

The Greenwold

Wheat to the horizon, a slow river, and a village that has never lost anything. Home.

World lore and story plans. Some places, characters and events are still in development.

The landscape

Rolling farmland in the western lee of the Caldera Sea: hedged fields, orchards, beech hangars on the low hills, one slow river with a mill on it running east into the sea. The safest ground in the world and the greenest.

On the horizon

The Standing Hedge: a ring of boundary stones older than the village, each the height of a man, half a mile across, with the fields inside it. From the hills it reads as a ring drawn on the land.

Places in the Greenwold

9 places

Hearthhome

Settlement

A village on a green with a stone bridge, a church, an inn and a smith, all inside the ring of stones.

Bram Haywood, Old Wynn Ashby, Pip, the Bracken Arms, the smith, the healer, the market; the Legion reaches here

The Mill Run

Landmark

The river, the water mill, and the wheat either side of it, running east to the sea.

Ivy Weir's mill, eel weirs, geese on the road, the Tithe Wagon crossing

The Old Cellars

Dungeon

Eight descending depths beneath the mill: flooded ossuaries, tombs and a buried cathedral.

The Legion's advance party: bandits and goblins; Sergeant Oram Blackhand guards the first depth with the stolen sack. Undead and giant wardens haunt the deeper vaults

8 dungeon levels · Boss: Sergeant Oram Blackhand

The Beech Hangar

Wild country

Old beech on the ridge above the village, deep leaf litter, badger setts.

Old Grist the boar, foraging, the first wolves after dark

The Kingsroad

Road

The Legion's paved road entering the Greenwold from the north east, milestones every mile.

Legion patrols, the Tithe Wagon, Captain Serle Vane's first camp

The Chalk Pits

Mine

A white scar in a green hill, copper and tin in the chalk, a yard trodden flat.

Copper and tin seams, a foreman who sells pickaxes, rats in the old cuts

The Standing Hedge

Great landmark

The ring of boundary stones half a mile across; nine of them hum at dusk, each twinned with a stone in another realm.

Fast travel between stones you have touched; the Legion cannot use them

A rule of this place

Touch a stone and it is yours; from then on any waystone carries you to any other you own, once a day per stone. The Legion has tried for a century and been refused.

Highwayman's Hollow

Camp

A bandit camp in a chalk hollow off the Kingsroad, fires under an overhang.

The Miller's Son and his six, a stolen tithe, a bounty board in Hearthhome for each of them by name

A rule of this place

The camp moves to one of three hollows after every raid; tracks on the Kingsroad the morning after say which. Talk your way past with the mill's name, or fight.

The Sunken Chapel

Ruin

A chapel the river took, its roof a foot under the water, the bell still on the beam.

Swim in through the west door; a drowned congregation that wakes if the bell is rung; the first Skeleton Sexton

A rule of this place

Ring the bell under water and the dead sit up for one minute and give up what they were buried with; ring it twice and they do not sit back down.

Encounters and events

Old Grist, a boar the size of a pony
The Tithe Wagon, a Legion convoy every third day
The Fox That Is Not, a wolf that walks like a fox at dusk
Legion scouts in pairs on the Kingsroad

Story and people

The story outline for the Greenwold, including its characters, secrets and the dragon’s journey.

Read the story outlineContains story spoilers

Arrival

Wheat to the horizon, a river with a mill on it, a village with a green and a stone bridge. A farmhand asleep against a haystack. An egg the size of a loaf in the straw beside them, cracking. The camera goes into the crack.

The feel

Home. Hedges, orchards, geese on the road, church bells. The safest place in the game and the one every act comes back to.

The story here

The egg hatches on your arm, and the village has a problem in an hour: the Wyrmking's men, the Ashen Legion, have been searching every farm on the continent for it and they are two days away. Act I is the Greenwold learning to hide a dragon, and you learning to be hidden. You meet the Legion's scouts, your first Bond fills in a barn fight, and the village's oldest resident tells you the one thing that sets the whole journey: the riders' Eyrie in the Stormpeaks is not a legend, and it is where a Dragonsworn goes to learn what they are.

The cast

Bram Haywood. Farmer, fifties, your employer, a man who has never left the Greenwold and has opinions about everywhere else. Signature: he chews a straw and takes it out to disagree with you. Secret: he was a Legion soldier as a boy and deserted after Malachar's ninth dragon; he knows the Legion's ways and has been waiting forty years to be asked. He teaches the first sword lesson in the barn with a hay rake. Returns in Act IV leading the Greenwold's farmers to the Throne with that rake.
Old Wynn Ashby. The village's oldest, ninety, blind, sits on the green and tells lies to children. Signature: every story starts "when the sky had wings." Secret: none of them are lies; she was a girl at the Eyrie when it fell. She names the dragon's egg for what it is, says the word Dragonsworn first, and tells you where the Eyrie is. She does not survive to see you come back, and her chair on the green is empty in Act II.
Captain Serle Vane. The Legion officer hunting the egg, thirties, correct, courteous, the first face of the enemy and the most reasonable man you meet. Signature: he removes his glove before he speaks to you. Secret: he does not believe the Wyrmking is a monster. He believes he is order. He lets you go once in the Greenwold because you saved his sergeant from a boar, and the favour costs him in the Stormpeaks. Returns in every act, one step behind, and at the Throne he is the one who opens the door.
Pip. The miller's daughter, nine, the first person the hatchling likes. Signature: she carries it in a bread basket. She is the game's measure of the dragon's growth: in each act she is a year older and the dragon is bigger than her by a new margin, and in Act IV she cannot lift its head.

Underground and the boss

The Old Cellars under the mill, where the Legion's advance party has holed up: bandits, goblins in the Legion's pay, and Sergeant Oram Blackhand, a Bandit promoted, who has the egg's shell fragments in a sack and means to bring them to Malachar. Beating him is the first fight Bond fills in, and Wyrmsoul's first call is here, by the game's design, in a cellar too low to fly in.

Out in the open

Old Grist, a boar the size of a pony in the beech hangar. The Tithe Wagon, an event: the Legion's tax wagon crosses the Greenwold every third day with a Goblin Warrior escort and can be robbed. The Fox That Is Not, a Wolf that has learned to walk like a fox at dusk and takes geese.

The dragon here

Eats eggs and mice. Hatchling. Takes back nothing yet; the Greenwold gives Wyrmsoul its base.

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