Bronzewood Lodge

The ring of crumbling menhirs on the bluff overlooking Diamond Lake is a remnant of an ancient human druidic culture that once inhabited the region. They too came to the hills for the ancient cairns, seeing them as monuments to great ancestors of the invisible past. Although modern humans displaced the native druids during great migrations over a thousand years ago, pockets of indigenous architecture and culture remain.
Foremost among these near-forgotten practices is veneration of Obad-Hai, the Shalm, the brooding patron of wilderness and natural order. Druids and rangers who honor the Shalm and a host of minor nature deities and fey spirits (the so-called Old Faith) routinely congregate in great moots three hours northeast of Diamond Lake, at an ancient megalithic structure called the Bronzewood Lodge. Devotees of Ehlonna or the elven pantheon are welcome at these meetings, if a bit gruffly, but all other attendees must be invited personally by someone already within the circle of trust. At these great moots, the woodsfolk observe rituals from long ago, celebrate with great contests of strength and wit, and debate policy regarding the natural affairs of the region.
A small permanent community inhabits the Lodge itself and the wooded copse surrounding it. Perhaps 30 assorted druids, rangers, and scouts protect the sacred site and keep watch on the nearby roads and valleys. Occasionally, they step in to rescue a traveler from some natural menace, but just as often they warn explorers to stay on the roads and let the wilderness take care of itself.
Their leader is Nogwier, an aged proponent of the Old Faith who strives to keep the focus of his community on preservation of a near-extinct way of life and away from anger at the Free City and its operatives in Diamond Lake, whose avariciousness continually rapes the land. Nogwier urges cautious cooperation with Lanod Neff via a former Bronzewood man named Merris Sandovar, who now works as the garrison’s chief scout, but he wishes that the Free City would have given him a more reasonable governor-mayor than Neff, and knows he won’t outlive him.
The Lodge itself is a twelve-chambered structure composed of piled megaliths covered by earth. The cairn’s central gallery contains a huge uprooted petrified bronzewood tree planted upside down so that its roots are exposed. Nogwier and his three servitors use the tree as a massive altar. Other chambers contain the sorted, commingled bones of generations of druids as well as priceless natural treasures accumulated over the course of centuries.

Type

Lodge, Cabin

Owner

Nogwier