The Heartwood glade wage the sylvaneth's war with the single-minded devotion of the hunt. They venerate Kurnoth, the fallen god of the chase whose spirit the forest-folk carry in every drawn bow, and they hold his memory not as grief but as instruction: that to protect the wilds is to hunt their despoilers without pause, without mercy, and without end. No glade answers Alarielle's call to war more swiftly, and none fields the deadly Kurnoth Hunters in such numbers.
To the Heartwood, guardianship is not a mood that rises when danger threatens but a discipline practised every hour of every season. Their scouts range the borders of the wyldwoods in endless patrol; their archers loose from cover so complete that the first sign of a Heartwood ambush is the arrow already in the throat. They regard the more contemplative glades with a hunter's impatience, for a threat pondered is a threat that has already been allowed too near.
This ferocity makes them the spear-point of the Sylvaneth, the glade sent where the killing must be swift and certain. Yet there is no cruelty in it: only the cold, tireless purpose of the predator, kept honed in Kurnoth's name against the endless enemies of the living wood.
Order of battle
The Heartwood field the units of the Sylvaneth, a detachment from the roster:
Other Sylvaneth formations
GnarlrootThe loremasters of the sylvaneth, keepers of grove-magic and the deep memory of the lamentiri. Gnarlroot works more closely with the wizards of the free peoples than any other glade, trading wisdom for wardenship. Blight and betrayal have scarred its rootways, and its generosity now comes twinned with watchfulness.
OakenbrowThe eldest of the great glades, rooted in lineages that remember the world-that-was. Oakenbrow marches beneath more Treelords than any other glade, and it wakes to war the way mountains wake: slowly, and then all at once. Its nobles counsel patience in all things except the defense of the old groves.
WinterleafA glade scoured by an unending winter of war, whose survivors' sap froze and never wholly thawed. Winterleaf fights without mercy and largely without song, killing with the quiet of snowfall. Other sylvaneth mourn what the glade lost; Winterleaf considers grief a weapon like any other, and keeps it sharpened.
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