The Caskwood

The Caskwood

The Caskwood is an eastern woodland tied to the Eastern Ledger-State’s storehouse network. It is logged by charter writ and rebuilt into barrels, casks, and crate slats. The state treats the woodland as infrastructure. It is guarded, counted, and punished like a depot yard.

Land and layout

The Caskwood is a managed belt of tall, close-set trunks broken by straight lanes, fresh stumps, and slash piles. Main roads are wide and packed hard by cart wheels. Side lanes drag logs to fortified cooper yards. Thorn belts and low broken ridges split the lanes and make side travel slow. Pitch, wet wood, and dust sit in the air. Watch fires burn at gates each night, because fire is both accident and weapon.

Water reality

With rivers and lakes gone, the only water here is what can be pulled from deep wells and held in sealed cistern vaults. Each yard has at least one well shaft and a chained hatch to a cistern room. Water is issued by ration note and recorded by name and time. A cask is not “legal water” until it is sealed and stamped. Unsealed casks are contraband, even if the water inside is clean. Theft is punished fast because one missing cask can mean a dead convoy.

Cooper yards and the seal system

Fortified cooper yards sit where lanes converge. They hold locked sheds, hoop stock racks, pitch pits, and stamp benches for state seals. Yard posts display seal boards and tally marks that show which charter house controls the cut. Inspectors arrive to count timber, check hoop stock, and audit cistern volume. When numbers do not match, the yard can be locked down until someone is blamed or a “missing” total is produced.

Daily life and labor

Most people here are cutters, haulers, coopers, and depot guards. Families live in lean shelters near palisades, then are pushed outward when inspectors arrive. Work is timed by bell: cutting hours, hauling hours, sealing hours, ration hour, then curfew. Fires are limited to marked pits. Lantern oil is counted. Burials are logged, because a missing body can hide flight, theft, or infection.

Institutions and pressure

The Caskwood sits under three overlapping powers:
• Charter Houses that own the writs and schedule timber and cask output.
• Contract Courts that decide disputes over shortages, broken seals, and debt seizures.
• Well-Wardens and Reservoir Guards that control wells, cistern hatches, and ration notes.
When these powers clash, water law usually wins. A warden can close a hatch and stop work. A court can transfer a yard to a rival house overnight. A house can cut rations to a camp by changing who is “on the rolls.”

Smuggling and “black cask” routes

Smuggling exists because law cannot feed everyone. Black cask routes run through thorn breaks and narrow drag lines where patrol carts cannot follow. Smugglers move water, salt, hoop stock, and forged ration notes. They use copied ledger marks and stolen stamp plates to fake seals. Some smugglers act as relief. Others sell water back to the same workers who filled it. The state hunts these routes by burning cover, widening lanes, and hanging warnings on cutline trees.

Raids and outside pressure

Orc warbands raid the Caskwood for hoops, salt, and stored water. They also steal seal cords and ration notes, because a paper can open a gate without a fight. Patrols respond with curfews, road sweeps, and public executions near gate posts. In famine years, yards hire extra muscle, which creates more corruption and more disappearances.

Monsters of the Caskwood

The Caskwood’s value draws predators. Sealed water and strict law also draw devils and plagueborn that feed on fear, debt, and crowded camps.

Orcs

Orcs are the most common living threat. They watch lane patterns and hit at night when escort shifts change. They target hoop racks and cistern hatches first, because those decide who can travel and who must stay. When pressured, warbands scatter into thorn belts, then return when patrols move.

Bearded Devil

Bearded devils appear as road terror and contract muscle. They guard black cask crossings, shake down lone carts, and demand “fees” in water and bodies. Some yard captains secretly hire them to break strikes or silence workers who saw fraud, then blame the deaths on raiders. Their presence makes guards hesitate, because a fight near a cistern hatch can turn into a riot.

Succubus

Succubi work the quiet side of the Caskwood. They pose as clerks, heal-house aides, or grief attendants in yard camps. They target seal-keepers, inspectors, and anyone who can change a number on a page. They push a target toward consent and a signature, then use that bond to steer audits, redirect convoys, and isolate rivals. In the Ledger-State, a single altered ledger entry can starve a district.

Bog-Hauler

Bog-Haulers are swamp giants, but they can survive in the Caskwood’s damp pockets. Failed cistern chambers, sinkholes, and low pits hold wet rot that never fully dries. Bog-Haulers claim these places and pull prey into mud, using choking vapor to blind and ruin breathing. Patrols fence these pits when found, but fences rot and the ground shifts after storms.

Spore-Caller

Spore-Callers rise where damp rot and fear gather. In the Caskwood they are linked to “bad vaults” and sinkholes near yard walls. Their spore fog causes panic and false sight, which breaks discipline and turns workers on each other. After a fog event, theft spikes because no one trusts what they saw, and officials answer by locking gates and cutting rations.

Brand-Bearer

Brand-Bearers appear after raids and mass injuries, when blood is fresh and crowds are packed behind gates. They mark targets with a burning sign that draws other plague creatures into a focused chase. A marked runner spreads panic through lanes and into yards. Lockdowns become harsher after each incident, which creates more desperation and more smuggling.

Corruption patterns

Scarcity makes fraud practical.
• Some yards keep off-ledger hoop stock for bribes and emergency repairs.
• Some inspectors accept payment in wax, hoops, or seal plates, not coin.
• Some guards sell one night of gate access, then arrest the buyers later to erase the trail.
• Some smugglers trade route names for immunity and keep operating under protection.

Faith pressure

Life priests are pulled in during injury weeks and sickness scares. They keep workers alive, but their supplies are still issued by note, so charity has limits. Death orders arrive when bodies stack after a raid or when water tastes wrong in a vault. They can order burning measures that destroy timber stock and pitch reserves. Many yard captains fear this more than orc raids, because it can end a season and start riots in the towns they supply.

Fire, pitch, and controlled destruction

Pitch is everywhere. It seals staves and preserves wood, but it also makes a yard burn fast. Sabotage fires have happened, usually timed with a raid or an audit. After a burn, policy hardens: brush is cleared farther back from lanes, camps are pushed away from palisades, and water is kept under double lock. These steps reduce ambush cover, but they increase exposure and hunger. In winter-dry years, a single spark can destroy months of output and force towns to ration harder within weeks.

Signs locals watch for

• A gate fire burning bright at noon often means an audit or a quarantine check.
• Extra throat cords on guards often means cistern keys were stolen nearby.
• Fresh black wax on a tally post often means a convoy is scheduled and escorts are doubled.
• A lane that is too quiet is treated as a warning, not a relief.

Place in the supply chain

Casks and crates from the Caskwood feed depot belts across the east. When output slows, courts seize stock from weaker towns first. This creates more flight, more theft, and more black cask traffic back into the woodland. The Caskwood stays productive because the state keeps counting, keeps sealing, and keeps punishing, even when the cost is plain.

What outsiders should understand

The Caskwood is not a refuge forest. It is a controlled production zone that makes the containers the continent depends on. Barrels move grain. Crates move medicine. Water casks move life. The Ledger-State defends the woodland because losing it means losing the ability to store and move survival itself.