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The ancient thickets and the Oldstone
🕑 Added 2023-04-23 19:33:01 +0000 UTCWith the fall of the witches' power, their once-cursed domain became desolate and forbidden for centuries, and only a few would risk entering it. Forests overran war-torn lands. No one knows for sure what caused it, but the trees there grew unusually large, but at the same time twisted and ugly, as if suffering from disease or a curse.
Since then, the frightening thickets had spread far from the walls of the ancient cities lost in them, swallowing up forgotten fields and huts. In their shadow, beasts and birds of all kinds have proliferated - unlike hunters, they had no knowledge of tales of witches.
People who tried to reclaim a patch of land from the witch's thickets faced the extraordinary vitality of native species, whose mighty roots proved almost impossible to scorch or uproot. Oldstone marked the only places that resisted the encroachment of the forest.
Oldstone is believed to have been used to build the cities of men under witches' rule. Still, scribes well-versed in ancient scriptures say that mounds of Oldstone were also mentioned by authors who lived in those immemorial times and that witches themselves were forbidding anyone to quarry it.
The heavy, hard, greyish-blue Oldstone is famous for the iron that grows inside it. Miners say it is exceptional in Oldstone - clean, strong, and elastic, and blacksmiths undertake to forge its best blades. Getting it, however, is a genuine torment, as the best picks break very quickly and become blunt against these ancient slabs.
There are tales of dungeons and caves that hide under the largest hills of the Oldstone, but these are often nothing more than fables, especially if they are not told by pilgrims from the North.
The Oldstone protects its secrets.
