The Wardens

Roots Bound to Watch

The Wardens of Rootwatch began with a promise spoken at the first carving of the Fountain stones. When the founders chose to fix a city where ley flows meet, they knew the forest would test them and strangers would weigh their gates. A ring of scouts took an oath at a moss-crowned shrine: to walk out as far as a day’s hunger, to mark the safe lines, and to return with the truth before night. They wore plain leathers and carried ashwood spears, but their power was never their gear. It was their right to witness and to speak in the Council’s hearing without ornament. Over centuries the oath held firm, even as paths shifted and enemies changed their names.

Each generation learned the old calls, the way to read stones that sweat in heat before a storm, and the patient skill of listening to the same trail five times before deciding it had truly moved. When the city grew new districts, Rootwatch widened the ring and recalibrated its silence. They never sought fame. They kept weather records and bone counts. They learned to say no when no was needed, and yes when the land could bear it.

Work of the Green Line

A Warden’s day is not a single thing. At dawn they clear nightfall debris from culverts, scatter resin on a slick rootbridge, and check the notch-marks that tell if a predator has started testing the edge lanes. By late morning they follow a deer track into ferns and replace a boundary tag gnawed by age or chance. Toward noon they read the wind at a rise known for carrying echoes from the Ridge and use hand-signs to place a small shrine where travelers will actually stop. In the afternoon they pass a foragers’ crew and adjust their license board with a charcoal stroke, lowering the bark take by a hair after a thin spring.

Evening brings the quiet counting of fireflies near a watercourse—a measure older than any instrument—and a slow return to the watch-camps just outside the Eldertree Gateways. The camp speaks softly: a stew that tastes of wild onion and patience, tools set out for drying, a shared telling of what the paths said that day. Training is constant. Youths fresh from the Roothearth are paired with walkers who have lost friends and learned from it. They learn to fix a torn boot with sapcloth, to pin a sprain with willow slats, to map by scent and sound when fog makes fools of eyes. Their leathers are moss-dyed by tradition and reason; it breaks their outline and carries the forest’s smell more cleanly than oils. At the Cloister’s request, some Wardens share path notes with Lorekeepers, copying them into resin-bound journals that outlast weather and grief.

Shrines, Signs, and the Quiet War

Rootwatch holds the responsibility for the small sacred places that keep Naath in rhythm with the Verdwood. They clean the stone lips of spring-shrines and replace the braided offerings that mark a safe bend in a creek. They maintain the Hollow Beacon boundary, where the wyrm bones spiral in their stern ring, and they keep the sign-boards there legible even in storm-season. When the Wyrmshade pushes its mists too far, Wardens mend windbreaks and set dull chimes that turn aside wandering steps without drawing attention.

They watch the Maer’thalas Ridge for signs of movement among cairns that should be still, and they trace old avalanche scars to judge where a snow road might hold one more winter. In the Varnhollow Peaks, they do not pretend mastery; they set short routes to safe ground and post warnings in plain script: turn back or write a will. Spider-silk across a trail means scouts halt and throw sand, not because the silk burns but because the smell carries and carries far. The Bronthok Reaches demand a different discipline. There, Wardens are careful with pride. Redfang brands are noted, sketched, and brought home, not pried from bone as trophies.

A Warden’s spear is used to open distance, not to settle scores. When parley is possible, a Warden chooses it and lets the Seekers take contracts that call for blades. When parley fails, Rootwatch sends a line of shadows the forest itself seems to approve, and the border holds. Most conflicts never earn a song; that is the point of the work. A traveler reaches the city. A caravan arrives late but whole. A nest of sharp-toothed things finds a new hunger away from homes and fields. The quiet war is not won once. It is prevented, again.

The City’s Hand Beyond Its Walls

Rootwatch serves the Council without bowing to any guild. Their ledgers are public, their patrol charts posted at the Pavilion in a format any farmer can read. When traders press for a shortcut road through a wet glade, Wardens provide impact notes and mark the alternate line that will save the soil. When the Embergrove asks for dry cedar and rare bark, Wardens point to a ridge where that take will do least harm and stamp the permit with a season and a weight, not a promise without end. They work with the Merchant Guild when markets overflow and require overflow fields that won’t crush a root system, and they report offenders who try “expedite” harvests in the dark. The Seekers remain both partners and foils—welcome in the watch-camps, shared bread, hard truths.

Wardens bring them reports, warn them off folk cures for curses that are not cures, and accept, with respect, that some roads belong to people who are willing to vanish for them. Even when a Seeker returns broken from a far errand, a Warden keeps the talk calm and the borders steady. In times of festival, Rootwatch leads the children’s procession along the first ring path, teaching the meanings of the knot-codes that hang on guide-posts: flood here, dry line there, the safe turn when smoke smells wrong, the call to kneel and listen when wind carries the ridge’s iron taste. In times of fear, they stand at the Eldertree Gateways with quiet faces and trusted hands. The city knows them on sight: moss-dyed coats, rootglass beads for counting, the distant gaze of people who remember a trail even when they close their eyes to sleep.