Noctifer: Created page with "{{Article_Reference |article= Alseon Forest }} The '''Alseon Forest''', whose name means "the grove of the gods" in the old Aebasan tongue, is a vast and sacred wood in western Gallorea, lying between ancient Aebasa, the cradle of human civilization, and the vibrant kingdom of Eeridia. It stands with its western eaves in the salt mist of the Aebasan Sea and its eastern marches climbing toward the Paelusian Mountains, and it..."

2026-08-13T01:31:06Z

Created page with "<includeonly>{{Article_Reference |article= Alseon Forest }}</includeonly> The '''Alseon Forest''', whose name means "the grove of the gods" in the old Aebasan tongue, is a vast and sacred wood in western Gallorea, lying between ancient Aebasa, the cradle of human civilization, and the vibrant kingdom of Eeridia. It stands with its western eaves in the salt mist of the Aebasan Sea and its eastern marches climbing toward the Paelusian Mountains, and it..."

New page

<includeonly>{{Article_Reference
|article= Alseon Forest
}}</includeonly>
The '''Alseon Forest''', whose name means "the grove of the gods" in the old Aebasan tongue, is a vast and sacred wood in western [[Gallorea]], lying between ancient [[Aebasa]], the cradle of human civilization, and the vibrant kingdom of [[Eeridia]]. It stands with its western eaves in the salt mist of the [[Aebasan Sea]] and its eastern marches climbing toward the [[Paelusian Mountains]], and it is held, by every people that keeps the old faith, to be the holiest ground in all the world. For the Aebasans do not believe the gods once passed through the Alseon. They believe the gods are there still.<noinclude>
==Name==
Alseon is among the oldest words the Aebasan tongue still carries, older than the city-states, perhaps older than speech as men now use it. It names not a forest but a grove: a place set apart, given over wholly to the divine, where the works and quarrels of mortals have no standing. To the Aebasans the distinction is everything. A forest is a thing men may enter, fell, hunt, and own. A grove enters and owns them.

==The Grove of the Gods ==
Aebasan teaching holds that in the first age of the world, when the gods walked openly among their creations, they came most often and most gladly to the Alseon, and that when at last they withdrew from the sight of men they did not truly leave it. The holiest tradition of all is kept in the deep heart of the wood: that it was here, beneath the oldest trees, that [[Ptharos]], King of the Gods, laid down his crown in shame at his own tyranny, and that here the first Celestial Council convened to govern heaven not by one will but by many. If this is true, then the Alseon is the birthplace of two things at once: the human civilization that rose in neighboring [[Aebasa]], and the rule of divine council that shaped the whole southern world in its image. The Aebasans consider these one story, and the grove its beginning.

Whatever the truth of it, all who enter agree on what the place is like. The light beneath the canopy falls golden and slow, as through deep water; sound carries strangely, or not at all; and time itself seems to loosen its hold, so that a pilgrim may pass what feels an afternoon within and emerge to find a season gone, or none at all. Men do not speak above a whisper in the Alseon. Most, in the end, do not speak at all.

== The Krenon ==
At the center of the wood rises the '''Krenon''', a spring of water so clear it seems to hold light rather than reflect it, welling up among the roots of trees no living loremaster can age. It is the oracle of the Alseon, and the holiest site of the [[Aebasan Orthodoxy]]. Those judged worthy to drink of it are said to speak afterward with the voices of the gods, in riddles that the temple-readers of Aebasa spend lifetimes construing; those judged unworthy who drink of it are said never to speak again at all. Kings of [[Eeridia]] and archons of Aebasa alike have made the long pilgrimage to kneel at its edge, and gone home changed.

==Rites and Pilgrimage==
The Alseon is the great pilgrimage of the Aebasan world, and its rites are kept by an order of priestesses who dwell in the wood and are said to age as slowly as it does. Three laws bind every soul who enters, pilgrim or priestess or king: no axe may touch a living tree, no blood may be shed upon the ground, and no flame may be kindled beneath the canopy. To break any of the three is the gravest sacrilege the Aebasans know, and their histories are grim with the fates of those who tried it: armies swallowed among the trees, cities cursed to ruin, names struck from memory.

Twice a year, at the turning of the equinoxes, the pilgrims keep the rite the Aebasans call the '''Threshing''', in which the whole vast congregation moves in silence through the wood by night, each bearing a single unlit lamp, in memory of a heaven that learned to rule itself without a crown. No fire is struck; the only light is what the grove itself gives, and the faithful hold that on those two nights it gives a great deal.

==The Deathless Wood==
The Alseon is home to more than trees. Its springs and glades are the dwelling of nymphs, said to be the eldest of the fey and the truest of the old gods' company: naiads in the waters, dryads in the ancient boles, and stranger presences in the deep interior that the priestesses name only obliquely. It is held that the wood cannot die, that no tree within it has ever truly fallen, and that certain of the oldest and greatest among them are not trees at all but gods asleep, who put on bark and root when the age of their walking ended, and who dream there yet.

==Rumors and Legends ==
* That the season a pilgrim loses within the Alseon is spent, unremembered, in the company of the gods, and that this is why so many return unable or unwilling to speak of what they saw.
* That the Threshing's unlit lamps were once lit, in the earliest days, and that the practice was ended after a single lamp was raised in pride and the grove answered by going utterly dark for a year, so that Aebasa nearly fell.
* That should the last of the priestesses ever leave the wood, or the Krenon ever run dry, the sleeping gods of the Alseon will wake, and the age of their walking will begin again, for good or for ruin.
See also:
* [[Aebasa]]
* [[Eeridia]]
* [[Gallorea]]
* [[Paelusian Mountains]]
[[Category:Gallorea]]{{NeedsMap}}
{{Gallorea_Guide
|chapter= Geography
}}
[[Category:Geography]]
[[Category:Forests]]
</noinclude>

Alseon Forest - Revision history