Old-Growth Forests
What players would know
In the Empire, old-growth forests are not “wilderness.” They are politics.
The trees are protected, guarded, and argued over in courtrooms more often than they are cut. Wood is scarce in the places that matter, and logging is trouble—legal trouble, religious trouble, and sometimes the kind of trouble that has no paperwork.
Forests are also contested memory. Shrines appear where roads don’t, and certain groves are treated like borders: you can cross them, but only if you accept that you are being noticed.
Common rumors
- Some forests are warded like vaults, and cutting the wrong tree counts as sacrilege.
- The quickest way to start a feud is to accuse someone of wasteful felling.