The First Tree

The Ancient Tree is one of Rosewick’s oldest living landmarks, standing long before the town itself existed. To ordinary residents, it is simply an unusually ancient tree surrounded by local legends and generations of history. Its true significance has been almost entirely forgotten.

The tree is directly connected to The First Severance. Its living wood possesses a supernatural property capable of harming every bloodline created by that event: Vampires, Witches, Hunters, and the Forgotten Fourth.

The fact that all Four share the same vulnerability is not widely understood. If discovered, it represents an important contradiction in the accepted belief that Vampires, Witches, and Hunters have separate origins.

Living Wood

Only living wood taken directly from the tree retains its supernatural properties.

Branches that fall naturally, dead bark, rotting roots, and other pieces shed by the tree gradually lose their power and become ordinary wood. A fallen branch cannot simply be collected and fashioned into a supernatural weapon.

Harvesting living wood is extraordinarily difficult.

Ordinary knives, axes, and saws may damage the outer bark, but struggle to penetrate deeper into the tree. The more someone attempts to cut into its living wood, the more unnaturally resistant it becomes.

There is an ancient method capable of harvesting the wood, but the knowledge has largely disappeared. Discovering this method should require investigation, forgotten records, old traditions, specialized materials, or other meaningful discoveries.

The method must never become common knowledge simply because someone finds the tree.

Effect on The Four

Members of the Four experience increasingly severe effects when exposed to the tree’s living wood, particularly when injured by it.

For Vampires, contact causes intense burning pain and interferes with supernatural healing. A stake of living wood driven through the heart causes permanent death.

Witches and Hunters are also vulnerable to the tree, though the exact nature of its effects may differ between each inheritance.

The Forgotten Fourth is affected as well.

The tree does not distinguish between them.

Weapons

Weapons created from properly harvested living wood are extremely rare and dangerous. Even knowledgeable Hunters cannot simply manufacture them whenever needed.

Obtaining enough wood for a single stake should be considered significant.

The tree should never function as an easily accessible source of weapons. Finding it is only the beginning. Understanding what it is, discovering how its wood can be harvested, successfully obtaining it, and learning how to use it should be a process earned through play.

The Ancient Tree is not merely a weakness of the supernatural.

It is surviving evidence that Blood, Spirit, Will, and the forgotten Fourth were once part of the same whole.