![[b9fad8a1-2251-4957-bd8f-cc17ab63a069.png|center]] ```leaflet id: image: defaultZoom: ``` > [!infobox|right] > # > **Coat of Arms**: A silver sporeburst over black mycelial roots, framed in darkwood. > >
General Information
LeaderNo central ruler; each strand guided by its elder-host
DemonymAshen, Myoukin (formal)
Population~200,000 Myou, plus ~25,000 mixed Tul-Myou and foreign settlers
DemographyPredominantly Myou, some Tul settlements in southern and eastern fringe regions
Government
TypeDecentralized council of spore-elders representing the three founding Strands
Notable People
Notable FiguresElder Myssha of the Pale Strand, Thorn-Reach Yoven, Whisperroot of the Hollow Bark
Military
Land ForcesNo formal army; forest-dwellers rely on spore assassins, traps, and guerilla tactics
Naval ForcesMinimal; a few lake-boats and fungal skiffs used for river patrol
Important Locations
Seat of PowerNo fixed seat; the Ashenvale Grove is considered sacred center
Key LocationsThornreach (fringe town), Hollowmere, Rootvault, Temerian outpost of Virex
Wondrous PlacesThe Heartgrove of Ashenvale, the Ruined Bloom, Weepstone Glade
Infrastructure & Trade
InfrastructureNatural paths, fungal walkways, minimal roads; travel relies on guided routes and spiritual permission
Trade GoodsMycelial medicines, spirit-ink, dreamwine, scented resins, fungal silk, poisons
## Overview Ashenvale Woods is a haunted forest realm of breathtaking beauty, deep-rooted mysticism, and biological strangeness. It is the ancestral homeland of the [[Myou]] - a fungus-based, alluring, and often misunderstood people whose society is built upon spiritual cycles, bio-symbiosis, and memory woven in spores. Spanning from the Inner Sea's southern shore to the uplands near the [[Black Citadel]], Ashenvale is more than just a forest - it is a living organism. To outsiders, it is a place of whispered rumors: of assassins that kiss and kill, of blooms that sing when disturbed, and of spores that enter the lungs and dreams alike. While travelers may find peace in the border hamlets where [[Myou]] and Tul have mingled, none but the [[Myou]] may tread into the sacred depths of the Ashenvale itself. To violate that boundary is to vanish - and be unremembered. ## Geography Ashenvale is vast and layered: a primeval woodland laced with ghost-blooms, glowing fungal bioluminescence, and old ruins reclaimed by vines and spores. From the **southern shore of the [[Inner Sea]]**, it stretches deep into the **uplands before the [[Black Citadel]]**, its border defined by the **[[Great River]]r** in the west and the slow fade into **eastern steppes and [[Golden Coast]]** beyond. The forest is not uniform - it shifts between fog-wrapped groves, thick underbrush, marshy pools, and crystalline springs. Many of these environments harbor their own semi-sentient fungal colonies or lesser spirit-nodes. The Myou have expanded the woods over generations, reclaiming what once was devastated in the [[The Shattering|Shattering]]. Stone relics of the Tul-Dar empire now lie buried beneath moss and luminous caps, pulsing with hidden memory. Though much of the region is dense wilderness, a few settlements - **[[Thornreach]]**, **[[Hollowmere]]**, and **[[Rootvault]]** - serve as open, if cautious, trading posts to the outside world. Foreign powers have little foothold here, save for the **Temerian slave-fort of [[Virex]]**, a scar on the northern shore viewed with cold hatred by the [[Myou]]. ## History Before the Shattering, the region now known as Ashenvale was a temperate hinterland dotted with frontier towns and minor strongholds of the [[Tul-Dar]] Empire. The forest, back then, was but a modest woodland, and its fungal inhabitants little more than rare curiosities. That changed in the centuries of chaos that followed. When the [[Veil]] sealed the world and empires fell, something ancient stirred beneath the soil. From forgotten spores and decaying bodies, the first true [[Myou]] emerged - mysterious, alluring, and strange. Their origin is not recorded in any surviving Tul-Dar chronicle, but their spread is written in moss-covered ruins. Slowly, patiently, the forest reclaimed the land, its growth not natural but guided - conscious. Structures fell, roots split stone, and the woods crept across battlegrounds and crumbled keeps alike. The Myou trace their lineage to three original **[[Spore-Hosts]]** - enigmatic progenitors who bonded with ancient spirits or symbiotic fungal intelligences. Their descendants formed the **three great Strands**: the Pale Strand (subtle and pacifying), the Hollow Bark (secretive and observant), and the Crimson Gloom (decadent and deadly). While distinct, these factions rarely warred, instead meeting each year in the **Grand Confluence** to share spores, memory, and prophecy beneath the canopy of the **[[Ashenvale Grove]]**. Throughout the centuries, the Ashenvale remained largely insular. Attempts by the Mentralian Kingdoms to cut swaths into the woods were quickly repelled by misfortune, disappearing troops, or spiritual blight. Yet over time, in the east and south, some Tul settlers were welcomed - or at least tolerated. These mixed communities birthed a small population of hybrid peoples, culturally or biologically entangled with the Myou. Tensions rose again when the **[[Temerian Empire]]**, with its hunger for exotic slaves and rare reagents, built **[[Virex]]**, a fortified northern outpost. From there, slavers launched raids into the forest's edge, capturing [[Myou]] to sell in black markets or twist into servants and assassins. This has left a bitter scar, and while open war has yet to erupt, several slave caravans have vanished entirely, their bones found weeks later tangled in root-webs and filled with silent spores. Today, Ashenvale is a quiet power - unified only in its resistance to outside intrusion. The Myou speak little of their past, and even less of what lies at the heart of the woods. But as the Veil thins and spirits grow restless across Vaelora, the Ashenvale watches... and waits. ## Social Structure The Myou have no kings, no thrones, and no walls. Their society is not built on hierarchy, but on lineage of spore, memory, and influence within the three great **Strands** - semi-hereditary fungal bloodlines that trace their origin to one of the First Spore-Hosts. These strands function like extended kin networks, spiritual circles, and political blocs all at once. ### The Three Great Strands - **The Pale Strand** values stillness, reflection, and symbiosis. Their communities are tranquil and secretive, often nestled deep within misted glades or alongside spirit-wells. They are the most likely to interact peacefully with outsiders. - **The Hollow Bark** are watchers and listeners, guardians of forgotten places and lost things. They inhabit ruins and half-sunken temples reclaimed by the woods. Their members serve as memory-keepers and spirit-binders. - **The Crimson Gloom** are the most feared and misunderstood. They embrace the intimate bond between beauty and danger, and many of their kin act as enforcers, assassins, or emissaries when subtlety fails. Each strand is led not by a ruler, but by a **[[Circle of Spore-Elders]]**, individuals who have retained the most mycelial memory across generations. These elders commune with their strand's ancestral fungus - a semi-conscious network of spiritual and biological resonance. Decisions are made slowly, through consensus, trance, and chemical communion. Once a year, representatives from each of the three strands gather for the **Grand Confluence**, a sacred festival of memory exchange, ritual storytelling, and spore-sharing beneath the glowing canopy of the Ashenvale Grove. No Myou may harm another during the Confluence, and many of the year's disputes - territorial or philosophical - are settled through silent negotiation and shared dreaming. ### Interactions with Outsiders Outside of the core Myou society, there exist two notable castes: - **The Rooted**, Myou who choose to permanently bind themselves to a single place or spirit. They often become sacred caretakers or sentient groves in themselves. - **The Bloomed**, Myou who leave the forest - either willingly or through exile. Some become advisors, courtesans, or assassins in foreign courts, while others live solitary lives on the fringes, unable or unwilling to return. Though not a formal part of their society, **Hybrids** born of Myou and Tul unions are treated with cautious respect. Although they are always native Myou, they are seen as bridges, not mistakes. Some are raised within the forest; others become go-betweens along the borders. The Myou disdain titles and wealth. Influence flows through memory, spiritual resonance, and the subtle chemical language of spores. In their society, to be _remembered well_ is the only lasting authority. ## People and Culture Life among the Myou is slow, deliberate, and deeply intertwined with the forest itself. Their culture is one of **rhythmic patience** and **chemical memory**, built not on conquest or construction, but on adaptation and resonance. To outsiders, Myou seem serene, alien, or unsettling - calm voices hiding ancient echoes, and gestures that linger too long or not at all. ### A Culture of Intimacy and Scent To understand the Myou is to understand a people who do not _speak_ so much as they _resonate_. Their language is layered - part posture, part expression, and most profoundly, **spore-emission**. These microscopic particles, released with each breath or shift of mood, carry subtle chemical signatures that communicate emotional states with remarkable fidelity. Among their own kind, this creates a society of radical honesty. Deception, as understood by most mortals, is nearly impossible. Instead, intentions are _felt_ - suffusing the air itself. Where other species use words to convince or conceal, the Myou use **atmosphere**. Within their groves, negotiation feels like drifting through the perfume of emotion itself. Discomfort has a bitter tinge, joy a floral haze, and mourning leaves a dry, dusty trace on the tongue. Even outsiders can feel the edge of these moods, though they rarely interpret them accurately. Intimacy in Myou society is not reserved for lovers. It is the foundation of **all** meaningful interaction. Bonds of trust are formed slowly, often through **shared rituals of growth**. In these rites, participants sit in mirrored stillness, synchronizing breath, heartbeat, and pheromonal rhythm. With time, the participants begin to _feel_ one another - memories surface, emotions blend, and a form of silent communion unfolds. Such rituals are used not only in courtship, but in diplomacy, dispute resolution, and mentorship. True Myou courtship is both beautiful and strange to outsiders. It is not aggressive or showy, but a slow blooming of connection that might take months or years. It is expressed through bioluminescent display, shared dream-trance, and the exchange of spore-thought - an intuitive form of emotional memory. When two Myou bond, they often become synchronized for life: finishing gestures together, dreaming in parallel, and sometimes responding to pain or joy felt across distances. Storytelling is likewise immersive. Rather than spoken tales, the Myou rely on **spore-memories** - ritual clouds of shared hallucination where listeners experience the events firsthand, as if walking through another's memory. The most gifted storytellers can carry ancestral impressions hundreds of years old, releasing them through carefully cultivated fruiting bodies that "bloom" stories like living books. Outsiders who experience these rituals often describe them as overwhelming, disorienting, or euphoric. Some never recover from the emotional imprint - left with dreams not their own, or habits that echo the Myou's alien cadence. To the Myou, such residue is a gift, not a theft. Because of this deep-rooted emotional resonance, **secrecy is taboo**. To hide one's heart is to poison the network - to muddy the spores and confuse the song. This is one reason why Myou communities tend to be small, tightly bound, and deeply cautious of strangers. The presence of an outsider who shields themselves emotionally is _disturbing_, like a dead root in the center of a living grove. ### Beauty and Death To the Myou, **death is not an end, but a yielding** - a graceful surrender back into the cycle of life that sustains all things. They do not bury or burn their dead. Instead, they offer themselves willingly to the **mycelial lattice** that cradles their civilization, a living network of remembrance and rebirth known as the **Underskein**. The act of death is referred to as **“Returning to the Thread”**, a ritual wherein the dying are laid in sacred groves and gently absorbed over days or weeks. Their memories, impressions, and emotional resonance are taken into the fungal web, where they may continue to whisper in dreams, shape the growth of song-fruit, or linger in the heartwood of a grove long after the body is gone. This cycle of decay is not mourned - it is **celebrated**. Rot, in Myou culture, is holy. The slow dissolution of flesh into fruiting body is seen as beautiful, even erotic in its intimacy. Moss-covered bone altars, root-wrapped skeletons, and glowing decay gardens are common in their sacred places - not as grim reminders, but as signs of continuity. Likewise, **beauty is not divorced from survival**. It is weapon, art, and invitation all at once. Myou learn from a young age to mold themselves, not with surgery or fashion, but with **intent** - subtle hormonal shifts and mycelial reweaving allow them to alter skin hue, scent, posture, or even the cadence of their breath. This self-sculpting is a lifelong practice, both expressive and strategic. One may become more alluring, more neutral, more threatening - depending on what is needed, or desired. Among their people, **bioluminescent expression** is a sophisticated form of communication and courtship. Myou can bloom with pulses of light along their skin in flowing patterns that ripple like spoken verse. Some paint stories across their bodies that only reveal themselves in darkness. Others use spores laced with hallucinogenic memories to draw partners into shared visions - a performance of scent and glow that blurs the line between theater and communion. **Dance and spore-weaving** are twin arts central to their culture. A skilled dancer can awaken memories in their audience, cause echoing sensations in the gut or spine, or induce weeping in those attuned. Spore-weavers craft temporary illusions - breath-born dramas that unfold in the air like pollen-born dreams. Both are considered sacred and dangerous, capable of healing trauma or unraveling the mind. Beauty, for the Myou, is not ornament. It is **an ecology of meaning** - a tool, a ritual, and an offering to the world. To be beautiful is to be _seen_, to be _understood_, to _bloom_. And when the bloom fades, one returns to the Thread, where all beauty goes to root again. ### The Web of Settlements The Myou do not build cities in the way the Tul or Temerians understand them. They do not quarry stone or raise towers from steel. Instead, they **grow** their homes - rooted in the rhythm of nature, shaped by patience, and fed by decay. Their largest communal settlements are known as **Living Groves** - vast, semi-sentient ecosystems composed of symbiotic trees, fungal structures, and luminous vines. These groves are not fixed. They breathe with the land, **growing and retracting** according to the season, the state of the forest, and the spiritual harmony of the mycelial web. A Living Grove may vanish from sight in autumn, slumbering beneath moss and bark, only to unfurl again in spring. These settlements are tended rather than ruled, shaped rather than constructed, and inhabited by dozens or even hundreds of Myou across layered platforms of root and bloom. Smaller communities follow a different rhythm. Most Myou live in **wandering clusters**, tight familial units that travel through the woods along ancient **mycelial migration routes**. These paths, invisible to outsiders, wind through forgotten ruins, sacred springs, and nutrient-rich hollows. They are known only to **Spore-Elders**, who guide their kin along these ancestral trails with unerring instinct - sometimes aided by visions or fungal omens. The timing of these movements is tied not to clocks or stars, but to cycles of rot and regrowth, dream-patterns, and the murmur of the Underskein. To those unfamiliar with Myou ways, this way of life seems inscrutable. They appear and vanish without warning, leave no lasting roads or monuments, and rarely mark their territory in visible ways. Yet beneath the forest floor, a vast network of **memory and intent** connects all their settlements. A message whispered in one grove may bloom as insight in another. A child born in the southern bloom-fields may walk, years later, to a northern hollow already known to their dreams. Where outsiders see wilderness, the Myou see **a city beneath the soil**. ### Foreigners and the Edgelands To outsiders, the Myou remain a paradox - **alluring and terrifying**, healers and hunters in the same breath. In the **fringe regions** of the Ashenvale - where the deep forest thins into eastern steppe or southern plains - some Myou settlements cautiously engage with the wider world. Here, among dew-soaked glades and pale-mossed ruins, one might encounter Myou who **trade rare tinctures**, serve as **silent guides through haunted thickets**, or offer companionship with a disquieting intimacy. In some Tul border towns, whispers speak of **assassins with velvet voices** and kisses like chloroform, always vanishing on spore-ridden winds. These border communities are **tenuous zones of tolerance**, where cultures blend at arm's length. Mixed-blood children walk with bioluminescent freckles. Myou-born healers tend Tul wounds. And yet, the barrier remains. Because beyond the shallow kinship of trade and desire lies the **heart of the Ashenvale**, and that heart is sacred. **No outsider may walk beneath its canopy.** The inner forest - known simply as the **[[Ashenvale Grove]]** - is a place of origin, memory, and identity. Even Myou speak of it in hushed tones. Legends abound of Tul who wandered too far, drawn by glowing trails or the promise of eternal youth. Some were never found. Others returned changed - dream-haunted, silent, their souls grown soft and strange like overripe fruit. The deeper one goes, the more the forest listens. For the Ashenvale is not just home to the [[Myou]]. In many ways, **it is one of them.** ### Memory as Culture Among the [[Myou]], memory is not kept in books or carved in stone - it **blooms**, **breathes**, and **lingers in the air**. Their storytelling is a living ritual, conducted through **spore-dreams**, **ritualized gestures**, and **embodied performance**. Words spoken are only one layer of their cultural transmission. The deeper truths are inhaled. Instead of writing, the Myou use **living spores** as mnemonic vessels. These spores, released during sacred ceremonies or intimate exchanges, carry sensory impressions, emotions, and even fragmented experiences. Some are suspended in **fruiting bodies** - sacred mushrooms that sprout only during key lunar cycles. Consuming such a bloom might grant the eater a vivid vision of a past moment, a shared dream of a love lost or a battle endured. **Elders** are not honored for age or authority, but for **the memories they host** - for the stories that sleep in their veins. They are walking archives, living witnesses to centuries of joy, pain, and forest change. In their presence, a Myou might "speak" not with their own voice, but with the gestures, intonations, and **spore-scents** of their ancestor generations past. This memory-transmission is not mimicry. It is _reliving_. To the Myou, identity is less about individualism and more about the **thread of connection**. You are who you remember - and who remembers through you. Outsiders sometimes mistake this for possession. In truth, it is a kind of reverence. For the Myou, memory is **not a past to study**, but a **present to embody**. ### Fashion Fashion in Ashenvale is not merely a matter of aesthetics - it is an extension of identity, mood, and communion with the forest’s spirits. Among the Myou, clothing is grown as much as it is crafted. Many garments are formed from treated fungal fibers, moss-thread, and whispervines, which retain their connection to the forest even after harvest. These materials shift slightly in color and texture depending on spiritual presence and emotional resonance. A robe woven from glowcap strands may subtly shimmer in the presence of a protective spirit, while a sash tied in mourning will darken like ash near places of sorrow. Rather than differentiate themselves through bold colors or extravagance, the Myou favor **subtle ornamentation**: the shape of a cloak’s drape, the curl of lichen-lace at the hem, the way translucent veils catch the faint forest light. Most clothing is **layered**, light yet insulating, allowing spores to breathe through and bodies to stay cool in the humid gloom. Garments often include **symbiotic fungi**, living components that grow small patterns or shift hues as emotional cues - a Myou elder might wear a mantle of velvetcap fronds that bloom pale pink in contentment or bleed deep crimson in fury. Adornments are grown, carved, or grafted rather than forged. Jewelry is made from polished bone, spore-glass, amber-honey, or petrified mycelium. Some wear **memory pendants** - bone beads etched with family stories or embedded with spores from ancestral glades. Others carry **skinbound mosslets**, small living patches worn on the collarbone or hand that mark social status, marital union, or spiritual vows. For the few Tul who live among or near the Myou, fashion is often a hybrid. Leathers or homespun cloth is combined with fungal capes, veil-laced masks, or ornamented woodcut brooches. Outsiders gradually adopt Myou symbolism and mannerisms the longer they stay - and even the most reluctant woodsmen begin to wear soft shoes, loose wrappings, and natural tones to avoid disturbing the ever-watchful spirits. ### Cuisine Food here is unlike any tradition found beyond the misted boughs of its forests, for the Myou do not eat in the conventional sense. Their nourishment comes through absorption and osmosis - they dissolve organic matter slowly through specialized tissues, typically along their hands, lips, and the inner folds of their bodies. In ancient times, this was a predatory function: prey would be lured into their embrace and consumed in ecstatic silence. In the present age, however, such hungers are restrained and ritualized, shaped by a deep spiritual code of harmony and consent. They feed on decaying matter - fallen leaves, soft rotwood, overripe fruit, decomposing fungi, the bodies of small creatures returned to the soil. Nothing living is taken without profound necessity and ceremonial justification. Their immunity to toxins allows them to absorb what others could not survive: venomous plants, poisonous molds, even the bitter marrow of the murkmarrow serpents. Indeed, the more complex and potent the material, the more nourishing it becomes for them. This has shaped their relationship to the forest into one of patient reverence - they do not hunt or harvest so much as wait and tend, guiding things gently toward death and transformation. “Meals” are often taken in solitude or quiet companionship, lying against a tree, a corpse flower, or even a patch of rot. The Myou may run their hands over soft decay, letting enzymes do their work, or slowly dissolve bark, bones, and flesh in secret cavities of their bodies. While they have no true need for culinary variety, many have cultivated elaborate rituals of scent and sensation - fermenting mosses to release a perfumed decay, steeping spirit-rich soil in bark-infused baths, or layering spore-heavy blossoms for a slow, narcotic absorption. These are not acts of necessity, but of beauty and communion - to taste the forest’s dying breath and carry it within oneself. Though they do not cook, they prepare: letting meat age in sunless hollows, or binding leaves and fungi together into fragrant bundles worn against the skin until their oils seep inward. Some Myou adorn themselves with nutrient-rich garlands, feeding over hours or days as they meditate. Others prefer offerings brought by outsiders - a stillborn calf wrapped in moss, a shattered egg buried in scented rot, gifts laid at the edge of the forest by those seeking favor. To outsiders, the Myou’s way of feeding appears eerie, even obscene. But to the Myou, it is an act of profound intimacy - not simply nourishment, but union with the slow, sacred processes of decay. They do not kill to eat; they wait, and in that waiting, honor every ending. In mixed settlements where Myou and other species cohabitate - often in the shaded fringes of the deeper woods - this fundamental difference in sustenance gives rise to a strange and delicate culinary fusion. Those, who require cooked food, still prepare meals with heat and spice, but have come to adopt Myou influences in how they treat ingredients before cooking. Vegetables are partially fermented or cured in humid earthen chambers before being boiled or roasted, and meat is frequently aged until it reaches a pungent tenderness that would repel outsiders but is considered a delicacy here. Foods are seasoned with spores or root extracts that carry a subtle narcotic quality, allowing non-Myou to glimpse the euphoric haze the forest-dwellers so often dwell in. Some families raise rot-gardens - beds of layered compost, mushrooms, and withered flora - not only to feed Myou neighbors or family members, but to imbue their cooking with a richer, darker umami. Shared meals are rarely taken at tables. Instead, diners recline in circles, often on thick moss or mats of woven lichen, with platters and bowls placed between them on stone or root. Myou may not partake of the food directly, but they join in the sensory experience - inhaling, touching, communing - as part of the ritual of bonding. Occasionally, visitors from afar brave these feasts, only to find themselves overwhelmed by the heady atmosphere - a mixture of decay, incense, sweat, and fungus-blooming wine. But to those who live within Ashenvale, this shared approach to nourishment - part meal, part meditation, part sacrament - is a testament to coexistence. It is not about feeding the body alone, but feeding the slow, intertwining roots of understanding. ## Religion To the Myou, religion is not a separate institution - it is the air they breathe, the ground they walk on, and the _thread that binds all things_. Their spiritual understanding is deeply entwined with the rhythms of **decay, rebirth, memory, and connection**. They do not worship gods in the conventional sense, nor do they erect temples in stone. Instead, their sanctuaries bloom in the living wood, in the hum of ancestral mycelium, and in the quiet communion with the spirits of Ashenvale. ### The Sacred Cycle The Myou revere the **eternal cycle** - growth, decay, transformation, and renewal. All things must rot before they can feed the future. To them, rot is not a symbol of death, but of sacred return. Fallen kin are offered not in mourning, but in celebration. Their bodies are willingly absorbed into the **mycelial network** that runs beneath Ashenvale, becoming nourishment for the groves and memory for future generations. Their rituals often involve **fungal blooming**, **spore-communion**, and **seasonal offerings of decay** - dead wood, dried skin, spent blood, or old memories preserved in living fruiting bodies. ### Spirit-Binding and Melded Souls The Myou are uniquely predisposed to **meld with spirits** - particularly those native to Ashenvale. This practice results in a merged consciousness between Myou and spirit, often enhancing the Myou's sensory awareness, emotion, and purpose. These [[Melded Souls]] may serve as oracles, guardians, or wild pilgrims, rarely returning to their previous form. Unlike most cultures, where melding is dangerous or taboo, among the Myou it is viewed as a **sacred marriage of form and essence**, especially when the spirit represents a natural cycle or ancestral echo. ### The Grove of No Return At the heart of Ashenvale lies a **sacred sanctum** - an ancient fungal cradle known simply as the *[[Ashenvale Grove]]*. No outsider has seen it and lived unchanged. Even most Myou only visit it once in their lives - if at all. Outsiders who sneak there often **do not return**, or return transformed in body, mind, or soul. The Grove is seen not as a destination, but as a final calling. A return to origin. A communion with the **first spores** - the original memory of their people. It is said that when a strand has lived too long or feels the weight of too many voices, it may **dissolve into the Grove**, where identity and legacy merge into one. ### Living Ancestry Myou do not **worship** ancestors. They _are_ them. Each of the three major **spore-strands** traces its roots to an original spore-host. Through shared mycelial memory and spore-exchange, the Myou carry the thoughts, feelings, and instincts of those who came before. There is no "afterlife" or “rebirth” in Myou belief - only a deeper **continuity of being**. In this way, every Myou is a living altar, carrying pieces of the past like scents in their breath. To insult an elder is to insult one's own future self. To dishonor the dead is to rot one's own roots. ## Education Among the [[Myou]], education is **not institutionalized**, nor is it structured in the way other cultures might understand. There are no schools or academies, no written texts or formal instructors. Instead, learning is **organic, ancestral, and deeply sensory** - passed from being to being through **spore-dreams**, **shared memory**, and **ritualized experience**. ### Memory as Curriculum From the moment a Myou is mature enough to sense the **mycelial threads**, they begin absorbing the memories encoded in their grove's fungal network. These are not just stories or facts - they are **lived experiences**, accessible through touch, trance, or carefully prepared fruiting bodies. One may “learn” the technique of healing a fever by re-living the memory of an elder apothecary, or “study” diplomacy by absorbing the emotional imprint of a centuries-old negotiation. This form of knowledge transfer creates a culture where **wisdom is embodied**, not abstracted. Elders serve more as **memory-keepers** than teachers, guiding young Myou to safely explore and contextualize the threads they absorb. ### Spore-Dream Apprenticeship Practical skills - alchemy, hunting, dreamweaving, and bonding rituals - are passed on through **spore-dream mentoring**. A younger Myou will share long trance sessions with a mentor, entering a mutual dreaming state where knowledge is transmitted through symbols, feelings, and simulated memory. These sessions can last hours or days and are deeply personal. What one learns is often shaped by what one _is ready_ to understand. Because of this, **social mobility** is fluid. A Myou's role in society is not fixed by birth or station, but by the **depth and resonance** of the memories they carry and the skill with which they express them. ### No Writing, No Records The Myou do not write. Their spores _are_ their archives. Sacred events are preserved in blooming totems, living constructs that store collective memory in mycelial strands and can be awakened during ceremonies or crises. Some settlements maintain **Memory Gardens** where particularly valuable knowledge is cultivated in rare and sensitive fungal blooms. Literacy in the Tul sense is nonexistent, but comprehension and **intellectual sophistication** are often _superior_ - shaped not by analysis, but by empathy, intuition, and experienced memory. ### Foreign Influence In border settlements where Myou and Tul interact, a few have adopted writing or external languages out of necessity. Some mixed-blood children receive tutoring in Tul script and arithmetic, especially when dealing with trade or diplomacy. Still, within the deep groves, such practices are viewed as unnecessary or even **disruptive to the natural flow** of shared memory. ## Law and Jurisdiction The Myou have no codified law, no written decrees, and no centralized enforcement. Instead, justice is enacted through **ritual memory**, **communal trance**, and a deeply spiritual sense of balance. Their society values restoration over punishment, and personal wrongs are viewed as disruptions in the communal thread that must be rewoven - not severed by force. Disputes are resolved through **gatherings of breath**, trance-like rituals in which all involved parties inhale shared spores and enter a communal dreamspace. Within this state, perspectives are merged and memories opened to all present. The goal is to reach consensus through **lived empathy**, to feel what others have felt, and emerge with renewed understanding. Most conflicts - whether emotional, social, or spiritual - end in reconciliation, not retribution. **Spore-Elders** act as guides and facilitators during these rituals. Chosen not by age but by memory depth, they possess long personal and ancestral recall, allowing them to speak on behalf of those long gone. They do not judge but instead **nudge** the process toward harmony. In matters too complex or dangerous for open communion, they consult the oldest spores - those seeded in sacred fruiting bodies near the heart of the Ashenvale. For grave transgressions - betrayal of the grove, murder of kin, or corruption by forbidden spirits - the greatest punishment is **severance from the Thread**. This **exile** is spiritual and literal. The individual is cast out of the local mycelial network, cut off from shared memory and emotional communion. To a Myou, exile is not merely social - it is a form of **spiritual death**, resulting in disorientation, memory loss, and deep psychic sorrow. Exiles are shunned even by other Myou communities unless ritually purified, a process which is both rare and arduous. In mixed communities on the edges of the forest, hybrid legal practices may exist. Tul-style arbitration or clan authority may be tolerated, but any case involving a native Myou will usually defer to **communal trance resolution**. Violations by outsiders against the forest - particularly intrusion into the sacred Ashenvale Heart - are answered not by council but by the **grove itself**, which protects its own through fear, hallucination, and erasure. ## Trade & Transport The Myou are not a mercantile people in the traditional sense. Trade within Ashenvale is largely **non-monetary** and based on **mutual exchange**, **empathic understanding**, or **ritual agreements** formed through trance-bonding. Goods are often gifted rather than sold, and what might seem like a transaction to an outsider is, to a Myou, a reaffirmation of trust or social rhythm. Inside the woods, materials such as bioluminescent silk, medicinal fungi, carved bone tools, and natural pigments are bartered through **ritual exchange circles**. These gatherings take place under moonlight, accompanied by storytelling and spore-dance. The movement of goods is seasonal, often following ancestral mycelium trails used by semi-nomadic Myou clusters. Rather than roads, the Myou use **living paths** - fungal rootways and glade-to-glade sporeways known only to Spore-Wardens. These paths change subtly with weather and season, remaining largely invisible to outsiders. Messages and small parcels travel quickly through these fungal networks via **spore-memories** and **symbiotic courier-beasts**, such as moss-deer and dream-wasps. Trade with outsiders is rare and highly localized. A few Myou communities on the **eastern steppes** and **southern fringe** engage in cautious exchange with Tul villages and nomadic traders. Goods offered include: - Potent medicines and soporifics - Hallucinogenic sporefruit - Bioluminescent dye - Poisoned or toxin-laced weapons - Fungal salves and dream-ink In return, the Myou sometimes accept fine cloth, salt, rare minerals, or carved wood - particularly when imbued with memory or symbolic craftsmanship. Trade is **strictly forbidden** near the heart of Ashenvale. Any outsider attempting to cross into the sacred interior, even for commerce, is either repelled or simply **disappears**. Temerian slave-traders who operate along the northern coast are not seen as traders, but as predators - and are hunted in return by forest-born blades. ## Military The Myou do not maintain a standing army, nor do they pursue expansion through conquest. Their strength lies in **territorial resilience**, **environmental manipulation**, and **psychospiritual deterrence**. To most outsiders, the idea of a Myou military seems absurd - until they vanish within the first few miles of entering Ashenvale. There is no centralized chain of command, no general staff, and no conscription. Instead, **defense is local, instinctual, and ritualized**. Each Myou settlement maintains a loose circle of defenders - known in Tul as **Whisperblades**, though the Myou have no name for them. These individuals operate autonomously but are deeply trained in **forest warfare**, **spore-based signaling**, and **psychological subterfuge**. Whisperblades do not march or form ranks - they **disappear into the canopy**, lay in wait beneath the roots, and strike with silence and sorrow. Most carry **spore-coated blades**, **bone bows** laced with paralyzing or hallucinogenic toxins, and use **bioluminescent misdirection** to confuse and mislead. Their warfare is as much a spiritual rite as a physical act. What others call “terror tactics” the Myou consider **forest justice**. Tales of **seductive forest brides**, **singing ghosts**, and **dream-lures** stem from real Myou practices. These include: - **Luring invaders** into sacred groves using pheromones and illusions, where they become lost or pacified before being dispatched. - **Marking trespassers** with spore tags that make them vulnerable to tracking, madness, or possession by local spirits. - **Hallucinogenic traps**, which cause attackers to relive ancestral grief or feel the forest's pain as their own. To violate Ashenvale is to wage war not just on the Myou - but on the forest itself, which moves with them, hides them, and strikes with them. Myou strategy is **defensive, indirect, and deeply spiritual**. The land itself is their shield and weapon. They **do not seek to conquer**, but their woods have grown year by year, inch by inch, reclaiming ruins and forgotten places not through war - but through patient overgrowth. The only Myou who take war beyond the woods are often **exiles, spirit-bound wanderers**, or those touched by ancestral trauma. Some of these become assassins or poisoners for hire in the outside world - **reminders of what lies beneath Ashenvale's quiet beauty**. ## Notable Factions and Organizations Power among the Myou flows not through governments or written law, but through inherited memory, fungal resonance, and the unspoken will of the forest. Their society is organized around three ancient lineages known as the **Strands** - each descended from a primordial spore-host that bloomed in the heart of Ashenvale after the Shattering. ### The Pale Strand The most pacifying and empathic of the three, the Pale Strand values subtlety, healing, and dream-weaving. Members are often found in fringe settlements or as wandering envoys, diplomats, and herbalists. Their spore-fields carry calming pheromones, and they are known to ease the dying into the next cycle with whispered dreams. Though serene in manner, they wield emotional influence like a scalpel, able to unravel the will of intruders without ever raising a blade. ### The Hollow Bark Secretive, observant, and deeply intertwined with the forest's silent rhythms, the Hollow Bark are its watchers. They maintain hidden glades and sacred trails through the deepwoods, preserving old knowledge and guiding Myou migration routes along ancient mycelial veins. They rarely speak, preferring gesture and spore-dream, and their elders are said to carry centuries of unbroken memory. If the Pale Strand are healers, the Hollow Bark are keepers - and no one crosses them unseen. ### The Crimson Gloom Decadent, alluring, and dangerously alluring, the Crimson Gloom embody the Ashenvale's darker side. Rooted in beauty, power, and predation, they are both feared and revered. Many legends of man-eating dryads, toxic lovers, or trance-bound disappearances trace back to this Strand. Crimson Gloom Myou often serve as assassins, courtesans, or spiritual judges, wielding hallucinogenic spores and intoxicating pheromones with artful precision. Their presence blurs the line between worship and doom. ### Hidden Groups Beyond the Three Strands, whispers speak of secret groups: - **The Pale Choir** - A rumored order of whisperblades, trance-singers, and memory-weavers who act as the Ashenvale's silent will. Whether myth or reality, their name alone causes unease among outsiders. - **The Spore-Elders** - Ancient Myou who speak in the memories of countless generations. They serve as spiritual anchors and voices of ancestral consensus. - **The Mycelium Accord** - A secretive network of alchemists and traders who maintain contact with the outside world, exchanging rare medicines, poisons, and fungal relics for information or favors. ## Additional Notes The Ashenvale Woods are not merely a place - they are a presence. To enter them is to step into a realm where time moves like mist and memory takes root beneath your skin. Most who visit the inner forest never return the same. Some do not return at all. At the forest's deepest heart lies the **[[Ashenvale Grove]]**, the origin of all Myou. It is said to be a living sanctum, a place where the Three Strands were born in the bloom of the first fungal convergence after the Shattering. Outsiders are strictly forbidden, and even most Myou approach it only once in their lifetime - if at all. Those who return from the grove rarely speak of what they saw, and those who remain are said to become one with the forest entirely. Along the edges of the woods, the **Temerian Empire** maintains an uneasy foothold at **Fort Virex** - a fortified hunting outpost perched on the Inner Sea. Ostensibly a waystation, it is widely understood to be a base for capturing and exporting Myou as exotic slaves or alchemical resources. While open conflict has been avoided, it is likely only patience - and the forest's eerie deterrents - that have prevented retaliation. Scattered along the southern borders and eastern steppe are **mixed-blood settlements**, where Myou and Tul have intermingled over generations. These enclaves are delicate, walking the edge of trust with both peoples. Their existence is proof of rare harmony - and constant tension. Though reclusive, the Myou are not absent from the wider world. Some travel as wandering **sporesiblings**, emissaries of forest will or seekers of new mycelial threads. Courtiers whisper of beautiful Myou in distant courts - servants, assassins, lovers - whose presence lingers like perfume and prophecy. Myths abound: of **orchid-skinned brides** who vanish with their grooms, of **green-eyed assassins** who seduce to kill, and of **dancers who leave dreams blooming behind their steps**. While many of these tales are exaggerated, they are rooted in ancient truths and real encounters. Some scholars have begun to suspect the truth whispered in old stories - that the Ashenvale is not merely populated by fungus, but is itself a single vast **sentient organism**, one that remembers every step taken beneath its boughs. To walk in the Ashenvale is to enter a place where beauty is danger, memory is law, and silence is never truly empty. ## Flora and Fauna The Ashenvale Woods are not merely alive, but _aware_. The line between plant and spirit, between beast and memory, blurs beneath the forest’s ancient boughs. Here, the natural world hums with an eerie resonance, shaped by ages of symbiosis between the native Myou and the deeper mycelial consciousness that pulses through root, rot, and shadow. Every living thing in Ashenvale seems to exist in dialogue - with itself, with others, and with the Veil. The dominant flora of Ashenvale is not green, but pallid and strange. Towering trees with bark colonized by immense fungal networks form the canopy, their broad, cap-like crowns filtering the dappled light into dreamlike hues of violet and pale gold. These are not trees in the traditional sense, but living scaffolds for the forest’s collective memory. Some are hollow and echo with the breath of old spirits, while others pulse faintly with spores that drift on unseen winds. The Myou believe the oldest of these “mycelial giants” hold ancestral knowledge in their roots and often build their sanctuaries near them, whispering secrets into their bark in the hopes of being remembered. Low to the ground, strange blooms flourish in shadowed glades. The Ghost-Bloom, translucent and faintly glowing, is used by the Myou as a means of subtle communication. Their petals respond to mood - pulsing in rhythm with emotion - allowing a field of them to flicker into anxious light at the approach of strangers. In more cultivated glades, Whispervines thread through fungal beds like hair-thin nerves. When one Myou hums softly into them, others miles away may receive the tremor, a primitive yet reliable method of communion. The Myou make deep use of these flora. Lumenstalks - spiraled mushrooms that glow in colors depending on nearby spiritual activity - are distilled into oils and inks, used to craft dreamwine or illuminate ceremonial texts. Ashblossoms, those black-petaled flowers that bloom only where death has touched the soil, are gathered in mourning rites and alchemical preparations - particularly in crafting poisons that ease pain or amplify hallucinations. Whispervines are sometimes woven into veils or mats that can subtly relay emotional states within communal chambers, promoting silent harmony. The forest’s fauna is just as strange, and often dangerous. Packs of Sporejaws - large, fungal-infested beasts resembling wolves - prowl the undergrowth. Their mossy hides allow them to vanish into the gloom, and their breath is laced with spores that disorient and induce dreams. They are feared predators, yet some Myou have learned to coexist with them, offering flesh or fungal offerings to encourage territorial boundaries. Among the rarest and most revered creatures are the Glimmershade Stags. Ethereal in appearance, with glowing lichens blooming along their branching antlers, they are believed to be physical manifestations of ancestral spirits. To witness one is seen as a blessing; to follow one, a calling. Some spirit-guided Myou wander after them for years, believing the stags to lead the way toward deeper understanding or long-lost kin. Carrion-birds known as Hollow Crows also haunt the trees. White-eyed and unnaturally intelligent, these scavengers mimic voices and often follow Myou travelers. They are seen as keepers of forgotten truths, and offerings of trinkets or bone-carvings are sometimes left in their perches in exchange for guidance. A few elder Myou even claim to have bargained with one for a name or a memory. Other creatures are less romantic. Murkmarrow Serpents lurk in the wetlands, their fungal-spined bodies coiling through the muck. Their venom induces dreams, often prophetic or maddening, and some Myou alchemists risk their lives to harvest it for use in vision-brew or spiritual binding. Even smaller threats exist - like soul mites, nearly invisible insects that feed on the lingering essence of spirits. They tend to gather in battlefields or near the newly dead, making corpse-handling a delicate ritual in Ashenvale. More complex are the symbiotic entities that defy easy classification. Some are fungi, others ooze or gel - yet they think, respond, and remember. Echo-Fungi, for instance, are clusters that record sound. When brushed or disturbed, they repeat old conversations or whispered prayers long forgotten. Memory Slimes, slow-moving gelatinous beings, are nurtured in sacred pools. The Myou commune with them in trance states, using them as mirrors to uncover ancestral memories buried deep within the soul. Certain spirit-guides even encourage bonding with Crowncaps - cap-like fungi that grow atop the skull or back. Once bonded, they heighten senses, improve spiritual clarity, or grant mild resistance to poisons and emotional trauma. Such partnerships are intimate and lifelong. Alongside the bizarre and mythical, more familiar life persists - though changed by their environment. Forest deer, once common grazers, have adapted to the tainted soil and now grow small fungal growths along their backs and legs, harmless but unnerving. These “spore-deer” are sometimes domesticated by forest folk, their mellow temperament and tolerance for hallucinogenic fungi making them excellent companions for Myou hunters or herbalists. Their milk, though sour, is believed to calm the spirit and is used in trance preparation. Ashen squirrels, once typical foragers, have developed pale fur and reflective eyes. They no longer chatter, instead communicating in subtle gestures. These creatures are occasionally raised in family homes as playful familiars and warning-keepers. Ravens and owls still dwell here, but their calls are warped, echoing with unnatural harmonics. Some appear to repeat the cries of dying beasts or weeping spirits. While unsettling, such birds are tolerated - even welcomed - as omens. It is said that a mourning owl’s cry in Ashenvale announces not only death, but the arrival of a message from the ancestors. Even the insects have adapted: honeybees produce dark amber honey with faint hallucinogenic properties, and are tended in cultivated fungal groves. The bees themselves are calm, almost meditative in their movements, and seem to respond to the mood of nearby spirits - flying wide arcs around places of spiritual unrest. Ashenvale's more mundane plants - nettles, berries, mosses, and ferns - have also transformed. Blackcap bramble produces sweet but mildly narcotic berries that can soothe pain or inspire vivid dreams. Ferns unfurl into fractal spirals that never repeat the same pattern, believed to reflect the will of local spirits. Even ordinary moss grows in elaborate patterns that shift subtly over time, mapping the movement of magic like lichen-compasses. What sets Ashenvale’s ecology apart is that it does not follow traditional seasons. Instead, its patterns are governed by spiritual tides - by shifts in the Veil, lunar alignments, or the moods of slumbering forest spirits. Bloomings and migrations happen not with spring or snow, but with omens, dreams, or the death of a great Myou. The forest does not sleep in winter - it listens, waits, and dreams. To live in Ashenvale is to participate in its memory. Every step leaves a trace, every death feeds a bloom, every whisper might echo for years. The forest is not a setting, but a companion - ancient, enigmatic, and always watching. ## Language > [!aside|show-title right] *Experiencing Communication: The Myou Way* > > To speak with a Myou is not always to understand them. Their communion bypasses language and drills directly into sensation, intuition, and memory. To those untrained or unsuited, it can feel like a dream shared across a membrane - beautiful, unsettling, and not entirely within one’s control. > > **A traveler once wrote:** > *“When the child took my hand, I smelled cedarwood and tasted warmth like sunlight on metal. A flicker of gold passed across her skin - and I understood she missed her sibling, even though she said nothing at all.”* > > **A stravelling Spirit Soother recalled:** > *“We sat in silence as she spoke to me. I saw her memories - not as visions, but as pressure in my chest, the tightness before tears, the scent of rotting leaves and apple blossom. I left feeling as though someone had poured me into a new shape.”* > > **Common sensory phenomena during Myou ‘speech’ include:** > - A **shiver in the spine** paired with the sudden scent of river moss: a warning or apology. > - **Flashes of color** behind the eyelids, synchronized with faint pheromonal cues: shifts in emotional tone. > - **A rising metallic taste**, like biting on copper, as a symbol of danger or betrayal. > - **Phantom texture**, such as the sensation of bark or fur stroking the skin, often conveying affection, history, or even identity. > > To non-Myou, these experiences can be misinterpreted as *hallucinations, dreams, or spirit-visions*, leading to myths of forest madness and faerie trickery. But to those who dwell long in Ashenvale, especially those who bond with the Myou or train with the Eldsingers, the forest begins to “speak” - not in words, but in a language older than sound. > > > ***“You do not listen to the Myou,”*** an elder once said, ***“you remember them.”*** In the shrouded stillness of Ashenvale, language takes on a form far more fluid and intimate than mere words. The Myou, who have lived in symbiosis with the forest since before recorded time, do speak - or at least, they can. Their voices are soft and melodic, often unused for days or weeks at a time, reserved for moments when clarity or performance demands sound. But speech is only the surface of how they communicate. Far more often, they convey meaning through subtle releases of spores, shifting scents, faint pulses of bioluminescence beneath the skin, and gentle physical gestures. Among Myou, communication is layered - emotion, memory, intent, and metaphor flow together in a single exchange. A brush of the hand across bark might be paired with a spore-cloud scented like ash and pine sap, conveying regret, farewell, and the cycle of return. Two Myou may appear to simply sit in silence beneath a tree, but in truth, are engaged in a complex dialogue of scent and color. Bioluminescent flickers ripple across their skin like written glyphs, but never the same way twice - their “syntax” is more akin to music than grammar, ever-shifting, interpretive, and context-bound. This means that much of the Myou’s knowledge and memory is passed not through books or spoken lore, but through direct experience - shared touch, lingering scents, ritual communion. Elders, for example, do not tell stories so much as reenact them bodily and chemically, allowing younger Myou to feel what was felt, to inhale the memory. Because of this, language in Ashenvale is rarely fixed. Even among the Tul and other mortals who dwell in the outer groves, the spoken word is shaped by this local fluidity. The common tongue spoken here - sometimes called “Graywood,” a dialect of the broader Vaeloran trade tongue - is lilting, full of elongated vowels, open-ended phrasing, and many borrowed terms from ancient Myou expressions that cannot be translated directly. It is not unusual for someone to end a sentence with a color or scent-word: _“She left in blue,”_ or _“He waits with the breath of crushed elderflower.”_ ### Naming Naming conventions follow this same lyrical ambiguity. Myou do not have permanent names in the way Tul do. Instead, they carry _ephemeral identities_ - descriptive phrases, feelings, or impressions that others use to refer to them. A Myou might be known as “Flicker-in-Mist,” “Soft Hunger,” or “Memory-of-Burnt-Bloom,” depending on how they are perceived in a given moment. These names can shift over time, especially after major life changes. Only bonded companions or intimate kin may give a Myou a _true name_ - a deeply personal spore-scented gesture that cannot be spoken aloud, only recalled through memory or skin-to-skin transmission. In mixed settlements, this has given rise to dual naming traditions. Many Myou accept a simplified Tul name when engaging with the outside world - often monosyllabic and evocative: Rin, Vesh, Ooma, Kael. Tul, in turn, sometimes take on Myou-style _spirit names_ for ceremonial use, especially if they have undergone rite or communion within the forest. These names often mark a turning point - an illness survived, a love lost, a vow sworn - and may only be spoken under the hush of moonlight or mist. Thus, to live in Ashenvale is to embrace ambiguity - to listen not just to words, but to silences, to shadows, to the scent of bruised leaves and the slow glow of understanding. Here, names are songs written in flesh and breath. Language is not a tool, but a shared root system: invisible, tangled, alive. > [!note|] Names of Ashenvale > > Naming in Ashenvale reflects the dreamlike nature of its people, blending ancient Tul-Dar structure, Myou sensory resonance, and the forest's organic influence. Names often carry **layers of meaning** - sound, sensation, and symbolism woven together. > > **Myou Names** are often melodic or whisper-like, with breathy consonants and soft vowels. Many are *untranslatable*, referring to color-emotions or sensory states. Others are simplified when spoken aloud. > > *Examples:* > - **Siluun** (*a name evoking misted moonlight*) > - **Thahlei** (*feels like soft moss underfoot*) > - **Nivael** (*resonates with falling leaves and farewell*) > - **A’shene** (*a whisper of sorrow and longing*) > > **Forest-Touched Tul Names** tend to be more grounded, but often adopt elements from Myou or Old Tul-Dar languages. Names may incorporate **nature metaphors**, **seasonal references**, or **spirit homage**. > > *Examples:* > - **Kaelen Duskroot** (*born under the canopy at dusk*) > - **Verelith Thornwake** (*a warrior of the briar paths*) > - **Rinhal Shadebloom** (*one who blooms in silence*) > - **Orren Myrshade** (*named for the black spores of memory*) > > **Mixed Naming Practices:** > - Double names or bonded names are common, especially in **Myou-Tul unions**. > - Myou may also bestow *“felt names”*, experienced only in full sensory communion. > > **An approximation of how names are found is this:** > - Imagine a **memory** or **natural image** (e.g., “soft rain on ash”). > - Consider a **texture** or **emotional impression** (e.g., “the ache before sleep”). > - Shape it into a **soft-syllable sound**, with elements like “thae,” “sha,” “nu,” “vel,” “orien,” or “lys.” > - Optionally, pair with a **second word** that grounds it: *shade, root, veil, drift, dusk, bloom, thorn, whisper*. > > A true name in Ashenvale is never spoken once. It is breathed, tasted, and remembered.