The Grove Burnings
The Grove Burnings
The following intelligence has appeared in Gootcha's Harper book — the magical volume given to her on the road from the Wyrmwood (Session 38), which receives findings from the Harper spy network as they are made.
To the bearer —
Your inquiries touching the Prophecy of the Thorn-Born Star have reopened files most of us hoped were closed. What follows is every attack in our archives that fits the shape: a dragon, a site touched by the fey or keeping old foretellings, and nothing taken that a dragon should want. Each was recorded in its day as a rampage, a flood, a storm, a hard winter. Read together, they are none of those things. They are precise.
We are researching every one of these anew, alongside the wizards of the Arcane Brotherhood. More will appear in these pages as we find it.
— the Archives, on behalf of the Ways Harp
The Ledger
| Site | Region | Year | What the records say | Survivors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starspire Grove | East of the High Moor, foothills of the Greypeak Mountains | 759 DR | The holy grove of the Skarhald orc clan burned in a single night; the clan eradicated in the seasons that followed. Accounts of the era name Balagos the Flame Tyrant. | None known |
| The House of the Still Pool | Near Silverymoon | 1132 DR | An elven scriptorium and seer-house — keepers of transcribed visions — burned so hot the stone glazed. Nothing of its library was ever recovered; one salvager's inventory suggests some writings left the house before the fire. | None known |
| The Drowned Sisters | The Lizard Marsh, south of Daggerford | 1201 DR | Three fey-touched druid circles and their grove-temple swallowed by black water in a night. Recorded as a flood. The field agent's note reads: "the water burned — the stones are scarred as if by acid." | None known |
| Cloudcrown Vale | Foothills of the Spine of the World | 1264 DR | A vale of sky-watchers who read the stars and kept star-charts of things to come, destroyed by a storm out of a clear sky. The treants that warded them were found split by lightning. | None known |
| Whitepetal Enclave | The coast north of Luskan | 1310 DR | An enclave tending a warm-spring glade that never froze — frozen solid in a single midsummer night, every soul within. | None known |
| The Dreaming Bower | Neverwinter Wood | 1359 DR | A circle of dream-seers found dead without a mark on them, the bower withered to spore-dust. The agent who filed the report noted a lingering "taste of pine sap and rot" — and that those who later slept near the ruin did not wake. | None known |
| Thornwild Court | The Misty Forest | 1402 DR | A fey crossing and the court that kept it, burned end to end. Hunting parties that season reported "wings against the moon" — no dragon was ever identified. | None known |
| Narthalas | The Glimmerwood | 1447 DR | A village burned end to end; officially a rogue dragon's rampage. The files hold almost nothing — the fire was thorough. | None known |
The Archives' Assessment
- Seven centuries, one shape: every site was fey-touched, prophecy-keeping, or home to seers. Nothing was taken — no hoard, no ransom, no territory held. These were not rampages. They were cullings.
- Five killing methods recur: fire, corrosive water, storm, cold, and a poison that kills through sleep. We do not think this is coincidence.
- Every file closes with the same line: no known survivors. We are no longer certain every file is right. If any survivor exists, we will find them.
On the map
The eight sites, as the Archives place them. Three lie on the Sword Coast and five in the North; the ledger gives some only by region.