Elyrakroot
Open neighbourhoods
Bugbear, Harengon, Fairy, and Aetherborn households are visible in grove watches, gardens, and the night economy; see City Diasporas.
A living ecosystem that was not built in a forest, but was persuaded to become a city over centuries. Its border ends not where the buildings end, but where the roots of the Throne Tree cannot reach.
City ID
Function: capital, sacred center and foreign diplomacy. Population: 1.2–1.8 million; root-level homes account for the wide official band. Peoples: Wood Elves, Firbolgs, Thorns, and Wood Gnomes; The human, Satyr, Drow exile, and Fey communities are a minority. Faith: Root Covenant.
Tiers and districts
High Branches are the visible life of embassies and nobles; The Trunk Levels carry markets, living staircases, and crafts; Root gardens are water pockets and passages where official maps are unreliable. Crown Branches, Throne Canopy, Horn Root, Undercork, Underbranch, Guest Shells, and Blind Roots are the main records of the city.
Government, economy, and faith
Despite Queen Elyra, power is shared among the Crown Council, Root Listeners, Staggate Command, Underbranch Networks, and Grove Emissaries. Medicinal herbs, rare seeds, living wood, fey items, and passage shares generate income; metal, salt and grain come from outside. A new home requires acceptance of the tree; so religious authority is city planning.
Current crisis
As Elyra transforms, no successor has been announced. Signs resembling human names appeared on the Throne Tree, the Hornless Army demanded equal representation, and the Red Hunt targeted humans in the Blind Roots. Without intervention, the Crown Council will declare interim rule and the Crown of Thorns will be effectively divided.
Location in Avarra
| Field | Record |
|---|---|
| Continent | Nareth |
| Regional threshold | The living grove belt along the Thorn Meridian |
| Physical site | Rises connected by root and branch bridges around the Throne Tree |
| Main approaches | The Staggate road and root-water passages open only to treaty caravans |
| Nearby ties | Yabanocak, Staggate, and the outer groves of the Crown of Thorns |
Elyrakroot’s coordinate cannot be cut into stone: the city seasonally extends and withdraws with the Throne Tree’s far roots. Travellers first cross the thorned boundary of the Thorn Meridian and then the open road at Staggate. Beyond that point, movement follows grove law rather than streets—some routes close after rain, while others exist only when night beetles are lit.
Daily life in Elyrakroot
There is no hard boundary between “city” and “forest” in Elyrakroot. Homes are not built: suitable trees are guided as they grow. Opening a new room for a household is not carpentry, but a religious and legal process that requires permission from the Root Listeners.
The city has no morning bells. The fading of light beetles set among the Trunk Levels, birdsong, and coloured ribbons tied to branches mark the hours. The High Branches begin earlier; people in the Rootbelow follow the light cycle of mushrooms more than the sun.
Housing
- Nobles and foreign envoys live in broad, shaded dwellings in the High Branches.
- Artisans, healers, and merchants occupy bark houses linked by bridges in the Trunk Levels.
- Labourers, exiles, and refugees share crowded lodgings in the Lower Branch and Mushroombelow.
- People not formally accepted cannot own a home inside the city without the sponsorship of an elf, firbolg, or grove representative.
Elyrakroot’s class divide is not horizontal but literally vertical: the higher one lives, the more visible and esteemed one is.
Food and the hunt
Its cuisine relies on fruit, mushrooms, bark spices, honey, nuts, river fish, and regulated game. Large herds are uncommon because they damage the forest. Grain, salt, and metal arrive from outside, so bread is costly: common folk eat dark mushroom-flour flatbread, while white grain bread signals status at diplomatic tables.
Hunting is regulated, not free. The Root Listeners decide which animals may be taken, in what number, and in which season and territory. Poaching is not theft; it is a crime against the forest’s sovereignty.
Trade and craft
Within the inner districts, service debts, seed rights, and seasonal shares can replace money. Foreign traders deal in silver coin and guild notes. Exports include medicinal plants, rare seeds, cultivated living wood, fey fruit and spirits, poisons and antidotes, memory resin, and trained trackers.
Metal goods cannot be carried below the Trunk Levels without permission. Fire may be lit only in designated stone hearths.
Law, death, and mourning
Land is not private property in Elyrakroot. Its use is a temporary trust managed in the forest’s name. Three forms of evidence are accepted in a dispute:
- The testimony of the living.
- Physical traces left in the forest.
- Testimony recovered by Root Listeners from the memory of trees and spirits.
The third method is powerful but imperfect. Trees clearly remember pain, flame, cutting, and blood, while confusing names and intentions. The dead are not buried in coffins. Bodies are placed between roots in garden-graves, and a tree chosen by the family begins to bear the deceased’s name. If a body cannot be recovered, the family receives a handful of soil, hair, bloodstained cloth, or a sealed vial believed to hold the final breath.
Foreign visitors
Every visitor receives a coloured bark token:
| Token | Status |
|---|---|
| White | Diplomat or protected guest |
| Green | Merchant or temporary worker |
| Yellow | Religious visitor |
| Red | Armed but licensed person |
| Grey | Asylum seeker whose status is undecided |
Most humans carry grey tokens. The token offers protection, but also makes the bearer visible and trackable.
Settlements tied to Elyrakroot
Elyrakroot is not a conventional feudal capital; not every village belongs directly to the queen. A Root Village is administered from the capital, a Treaty Grove is autonomous in domestic affairs, a Watch Settlement answers to military command, and an Unregistered Settlement is known to exist but not legally recognised.
Staggate
Watch Settlement · 2,400–3,200 people · Wood Elves, Firbolgs, Shifters. Staggate guards the widest land road to Elyrakroot. Its homes stand on rises beside the road so as not to block the passage of great deer herds. Its command searches the caravans carrying grain, metal, and salt to the capital. Whoever controls Staggate’s provisions will gain an immense advantage if the Crown of Thorns falls into civil war. The command is loyal to the Crown Council, while the Hornless Army is strong among young scouts.
Rootspring
Root Village · 1,100–1,600 people · Firbolgs, Wood Gnomes. Built around a sacred spring where one of the Throne Tree’s furthest roots reaches the surface, it supplies much of Elyrakroot’s drinking water. Loud arguments and lies beside the spring are grave insults. Its elders claim that the water’s taste changed before Queen Elyra’s transformation.
Barkbond
Root Village · 1,800–2,500 people · Wood Elves, Thornbloods, Wood Gnomes. The centre of living-wood cultivation, where trees are guided into beams, bows, ship keels, and bridges rather than cut. Its masters are both artisans and gardeners; shaping a tree wrongly may be treated as cruelty to a living being. Thornblood masters were the first to read Elyra’s transformation as evolution rather than illness.
Whisperreed
Treaty Grove · 900–1,300 people · Firbolgs, Grungs, several Sea Elf families. This settlement stands on reed islands at the forest’s marshy edge. It produces poison, antidotes, fever-reducing moss, and incense that calms spirits. The reeds whisper even without wind; locals believe the sound is made of unfinished sentences from the dead of the marsh. Whisperreed must send healers to Elyrakroot, but governs its water and hunting grounds itself.
Hornbreak
Treaty Grove · 3,000–4,200 people · Shifters, Satyrs, Wood Elves. A herding and hunting village in one of the forest’s natural clearings. It supplies much of the capital’s milk, hides, and game. Its people oppose the elf nobility’s claim to rule the forest as though it belonged to them alone, making it the Hornless Army’s strongest rural base. The Crown Council calls it a rebel nest, but punishing it would cut the city’s meat and leather supply.
Mushroom Well
Root Village · 1,500–2,100 people · Wood Gnomes, Myconids, Svirfneblin traders. It surrounds a natural sinkhole connected to the Rootbelow passages and is an official entrance to underground trade. Mushroom flour, medicinal spores, phosphorescent dyes, and subterranean salt change hands here. Agreements between the Myconids’ Silent Council and Elyrakroot officials are made through shared spore dreams rather than speech. Some smuggling routes into the Blind Roots are thought to begin here.
Ashmere
Watch Settlement · 700–1,000 people · Wood Elves, Thornbloods. Founded in the black soil left by an old great fire, Ashmere holds fire-watch towers, water reserves, and controlled-burn specialists. While most Elyrakroot residents fear flame, its people argue that banning it entirely leaves the forest less prepared for disaster. They are therefore necessary and mistrusted. Recently they have found unnatural trails of cold ash in the forest.
Silentbough
Treaty Grove · 600–900 people · Firbolgs, Kenkus, several Aarakocra families. This treetop settlement runs Elyrakroot’s bird, signal-mirror, and leaf-code communication network. Kenkus can preserve and carry heard speech, so the words of a Silentbough messenger are accepted in many courts as the direct words of the sender.
Wildhearth
Unregistered and sovereignty disputed · 22,000–35,000 people · Humans and mixed refugee communities. Wildhearth is not a village but a hidden human city within the forest. Crown of Thorns maps either omit it or mark it as abandoned hunting ground. If Elyrakroot formally recognises it, humans gain claims to land and representation; if it does not, the city can deny responsibility for protecting them from the Red Hunt. It is not subject to Elyrakroot, yet remains the capital’s invisible neighbour and a force in all its politics.
Balance of the settlement network
| Settlement | What it provides the capital | Political tendency |
|---|---|---|
| Staggate | Caravan control and soldiers | Crown Council |
| Rootspring | Drinking water and sacred authority | Root Listeners |
| Barkbond | Living wood and craft | Pro-Elyra |
| Whisperreed | Medicine and antidotes | Neutralist |
| Hornbreak | Meat, hides, and scouts | Hornless Army |
| Mushroom Well | Underground trade | Lower Branch Networks |
| Ashmere | Fire defence | Military neutrality |
| Silentbough | Communications | Grove Representatives |
| Wildhearth | Smuggling and human population | Demand for recognition |