The Bane

As told by Guide Lorioh, of the Black-shine Guide Comapny, around a campfire on the Firelit Trail, to pilgrims wishing to visit the Glass Volcano's crater

You've heard of the Bane. It's short for Jonna's Bane. The Jonna Empire thought the forest was an easy shortcut to victory over Suvec, which we know today as Suvan. They thought they'd cut a road through the thick trees, surprise the enemy at their sparsely-protected southern border, defeat them, and race across the country to the Sea of Condioh and those so-important ports. They thought it would be easier than navigating the dangerous mountain passes in Soline. They thought creating such a shortcut would get resupplies and troops to the front lines in Illena and Mackdregh faster.
The Empire ignored the warnings of the Leandrein and the Scard, whose ancestors had lived in the Bane's shadow for millennia. "Don't go through the forest," they told them. "Even the Condi will fall to its hunger. It eats the living. No traces remain."
The soldiers thought they were invincible, and their general laughed at the superstitions. The Leandrein and the Scard, they crossed their foreheads to ward off ill-luck, and tucked themselves into their hovels and their cottages and prayed to their sylfaodolon that the Condi would not retaliate against them when their men died.
The general, Cordenion, was a tall man, a stern man, as sharp as his gleaming metal plate armor. He had no time for rural superstition, he needed to bring Suvec to heel. His king demanded it. So he gathered his force, ten-thousand strong, and sent scouts into the forest for reconnaissance while the bulk of his company arrived. His people waited, sharpening axes and preparing destruction wieldings to remove the trees.

I must ask, have you been to the Bane? Let me tell you, it's not a place most want to visit. The trees are tall, they cast long shadows. They're squeezed together, their boughs hiding the forest soil from the sweet touch of the sun. Some bushes grow there, ferns and mushrooms, but no animals walk among the trunks. Birds won't to fly over it, and even the wind refuses to blow.
It is dark. It is cold. You can hear a whisper desecrating the silence a moonmark or two away.
The Empire had no care for dark and cold and silent. They had other concerns, like fitting wagons to haul the trees away, because Jonna needed the wood for their defensive walls around camps and occupied towns. The soldiers laughed and joked and worked and waited for the scouts to return.
And waited.
The sentries listened, looked, but they heard nothing, saw nothing. An eight-day passed, and not one scout had returned. Cordenion was annoyed, and snapped at the scout's captain. Had they lost their way? Was that not what the spelled compasses were for?
The captain had no answer, and sent more scouts to hunt for the lost. Another eight-day passed, and neither group returned. The soldiers stared at the shadows, watched the mottled grey depths surrounding the trunks while they patroled, but no scout walked through them, ready to report. Cordenion ordered two units and two wielders to find the missing scouts. Uncertain, uneasy, the soldiers armored up, took their swords and their shields, and reluctantly entered the still silence. Uncertain, uneasy, the wielders wrapped themselves in magickal shields and reluctantly followed them.
They did not return.
Annoyed, wondering if Suvec saw the forest as a shield for their stealthy approach, wondering if enemy snipers picked off his people, Cordenion ordered the entire company to the forest. Random snipers had no chance against the full might of the Jonna army.

But, you say, scholars and storytellers speak of Suvec sending their troops into the forest to pick off the invaders. They talk about how half the company fell to the archers, who used the close-knit trees as shields and who disappeared into the shadows without a trace. They used the forest to advantage, historians claim. It's why Cordenion had to retreat, go back to Soline and through Shell Pass. They encountered heavy resistance in that narrow passage, but won through perserverance. And Suvec paid the price for their resistance.
But that's not why Cordenion left the Bane.
The Bane hides more than random archers. The Bane is dark, silent, because the Bane is death.
Jonna learned that the hard way.

It began with the axemen. All needed breaks, at one point or other. All went into the trees, searching for a bush to water. All never returned. Confused others picked up those axes, but they, too, eventually needed a break. They, too went into the trees.
They disappeared.
The soldiers at the peripherals, they noticed movement in the shadows. They would charge into the trees, intent on the assumed Suvec enemy, and they never returned. Those who went in search of them never returned. The trees swallowed them, their weapons, their armor. Soldiers stepped behind trees, and never stepped back out. Their fellows would call to them, and when they did not answer, they would retrieve a wielder to shield them and hustle to the trees, but the damp earth showed no signs of footprint. No tack left behind. No weapon, no armor. No sound of attack. No screams or yells for help.
Cordenion lit the Bane. Fire streaked through the forest, but the dampness mitigated the spread. Only small swaths of land burned, leaving behind blackened trees without needle or leaf, sticking up like sad skeletal fingers above the ash. No one disappeared from the burned areas. Those who stepped outside them did. Just one step. Their companions would turn away to speak with someone, and when they turned back, they had vanished.
Soldiers became angry. They looked for Suvecans between the trees, eager to find them and punish them. They saw nothing but shadows, heard nothing but silence. No birds flew overhead. No wind blew. The cold became fierce, the further they proceeded. The fires died under it, and burned only a few paces ahead. Flames born of wieldings and backed by magick prowess turned more trees to ash, but only a handful at a time.
Cordenion was furious at the delays. The arch-general was breathing down his neck about his lack of progress. The Suvecans should have been defeated days ago, yet his men hadn't gone more than a few 'marks into the forest. So the arch-general sent General Nordenas to help.
Nordenas was Cordenion's rival. He was a tall, florid man of exceptionally terrible humor. His abuses were legendary, his mutilations in battle moreso, and Cordenion's people hunched down, ready for a heavy hand to strike. The famed general noted the lack of progress, scoffed at the soldiers and their fear, and marched into the trees with his aides, two stout soldiers and an acclaimed siojhetioh. He blustered and snarled and mocked.
The ground swallowed the sound of his footsteps. His ranting faded away. The soldiers waited.
He and his aides did not return.
No soldier wanted to search for them. If the Suvecans captured a general as experienced and vicious as Nordenas, then what chance did they have?
Cordenion waited the rest of the day, the hair on the back of his neck beginning to prickle. He did not think Suvecans had much to do with Nordenas's disappearance, and he could not guess what the man and his aides encountered.
Night fell, cloaking everything in the same shadows that rested below the unburned trees. Wind began to creep into the cleared space, but died before gaining a foothold. Campfires that should have blazed tall and bright produced a flicker and a sputter and illuminated nothing past the tight circle of soldiers huddled about them.
Torches were lit and placed about the threshold, and they stood as muted sentries that shone no brighter than the pinprick of stars that peeked through the heavy clouds.
The soldiers waited. None could sleep.
Moonmarks later, or perhaps more quickly because the darkness hid the time, a muffled yell squeaked to Cordenion and his aides. It came from a fire nearer the trees. He rose and raced to it. It flickered across empty ground, no soldier in sight. Those with him made a short look about, and saw nothing. He glanced around, noted that the ten who came with him had dwindled to five. Where had the others gone?
One aide, an excitable lad of exceptional breeding, tripped over something poking out of the ground. Cordenion frowned at the odd bump, then dug his boot into the earth and kicked away the soil.
The top of a head. Further down, sightless eyes stared ahead, filled with grit, mouth open, clogged with dirt. A soldier. One of his aides who had just sat with him at the fire.
He ordered a retreat. The soldiers abandoned their tents, their extraneous gear, caught up their armor, their weapons, and ran down the center of the cleared space, to the edge of the forest, to the safety found there. They ran with torches, but that did not stop the darkness from closing in. Ten-thousand people he once had, and when Cordenion exited the forest, to stand at the edge of the small village in its shadow, gasping for breath, no more than half remained.
Cordenion went to Shell Pass and conquered the Suvecan with his five-thousand men. The arch-general, disbelieving the tale, sent scouts to find the missing men. To find Nordenas. None returned. He then sent siojhetioxh. They survived, but they spoke of a dead land, a still, silent, cold place where life was an illusion and shadows stalked the light.
They swore, only death awaited Jonna in the Bane.
The famed Condi lightartist Lotherane eventually burned a road through the forest, creating the Northern Trade Route. Tales say she spent more power on defensive spells than she had on the fire wieldings to turn the tall trees to ash. They say she and her mates cleansed the road, making it possible for supplies to reach Suvec from the south. They say those spells dwindled and died when Jonna retreated, and neither Merren nor Oritan nor Suvan are interested in continuing a thankless task. Traders now tell stories of hungry shadows creeping into the road, of caravans disappearing without a trace. Single travelers are not safe anymore, and have to walk with a larger group to make it through alive. Hendelven and its mystery artists might be the only thing keeping the forest at bay. Without the trade route, there's no city. They have a reason to fight.
So the forest is still there, as silent, cold as it ever was. It was Jonna's Bane, and now it is ours.

Return to Top
Wellspring Dragons World