Gorvenash

Gorvenash was born of an old grove planted over the founders of Ritheld Graveyard. When a plague took the village two centuries ago, the living begged the grove to hold the dead safe and unviolated. A bereft conclave of morticians and hedge-priests bound a protective oath into a single sentinel tree. Time and grief, however, warped that charm. Mourning became hunger; protection curdled into possessiveness. The sentinel's spirit bent, becoming a jealous watcher that answers desecration with strangling roots and bitter curses. Scholars of the Order of the Stone Lantern debate whether Gorvenash is animate wood or a spirit trapped within lignified bones. The archivist Berren of Hallowfen recorded three separate exorcisms that failed, each leaving the tree more vengeful. Graveguards from nearby hamlets will ritually leave small offerings at the base—coins, lamb's wool—to soften its notice. Bands of tomb-robbers tell tales that Gorvenash can sense the weight of unresolved grief and will sometimes allow grieving relatives to pass, while tearing mercilessly at those who seek to profit from the dead.

Gorvenash stands as a massive, twisted trunk 18–20 feet tall, but hunched so its crown rarely towers above a doorway. Its bark is cracked and pocked with old nail scars and the imprints of headstones pressed into its roots. Where a face might be, a concave hollow forms a maw-like cavity from which a faint phosphorescent lichen spills pale green light. Its lower limbs have thick, root-like fingers able to grip a human torso; secondary twiggy branches fringe its shoulders like ribs. Moss curtains hang from its arms and its surfaces are freckled with fungal growths, brittle ivy, and embedded funerary tokens (ribbons, bone fragments, and rusted name-plates). Scale reference: Gorvenash should be drawn next to a standard human (6 ft.) leaning against its root—its trunk is broad enough for a person to sleep inside the hollows, and its reach can span the width of a small cottage doorway. Texture notes: heavy crosshatched bark, scratchy root fibbers, small stippled lichen, and thin, stringy hanging moss.