Abbot Council of Alderlight

The Abbot Council of Alderlight is the oldest organized power in Mosswood, a bastion of discipline, devotion, and memory built around the living trunk of the Great Alder Tree. To the faithful, the Abbey is the last candle still burning against the encroaching twilight — a place where prayer and labor unite to keep the world’s goodness alive. The Council governs not through edict or sword, but through ritual, reflection, and the steady rhythm of bell and hymn. Each abbot is chosen not for ambition, but for endurance; they believe that holiness is proven not in victory, but in patience. Their creed, carved into every candle sent forth from the Abbey, reads: “Light does not conquer darkness. It refuses to leave.”

At the Council’s head sits High Abbot Cael Thornwright, a mouse-kin cleric of immense faith and unbending will. Beneath his guidance, the Abbey has grown both revered and feared — its teachings carried across Mosswood by humble friars and candle-bearing pilgrims. Yet within its stone walls, there is quiet conflict: younger monks argue that the Abbey has grown too rigid, too blind to the world’s suffering, while Cael holds that compromise is the first step toward corruption. The Council thus walks a narrow path — between illumination and pride, purity and isolation.

From its Candle Hall, the Abbey sends out its monks and message-bearers to every village and vale, offering healing, guidance, and judgment. Its influence is everywhere — in the wax-sealed scrolls of oaths, in the hymns sung at market dawn, in the warm glow that flickers through every cottage window. To its followers, it is salvation; to its critics, it is a light too bright to see by. Yet even as the Abbey’s flame flickers in the wind, the faithful whisper one truth unchanged through generations: “So long as the candles burn, Mosswood will not forget itself.”