---
title: "Harrowwood"
summary: "The kings' forest of colossal oaks and yews, and below it the Gloamroot, where the roots go down into the dark. Broken ground, where the world's own things run loose."
status: concept  # A proposal: the story, world and art direction, invented for Alex to keep, change or cut
section: "The Journey"
region: harrowwood
act: "Act 3: The Ascent"
html: harrowwood.html
source: www/content/journey/harrowwood.md
---

# Harrowwood

*The kings' forest of colossal oaks and yews, and below it the Gloamroot, where the roots go down into the dark. Broken ground, where the world's own things run loose.*

> A coal glows inside a hollow oak, and the moss on the trunk around it has grown in the shape of a hand.

North of the Vale the ground rises into Harrowwood, the old forest of the kings of Velmarch, older than the kingdom. Beneath it the roots go down into the dark, and that lower country is the Gloamroot. It is the third act's first wild ground after the Vale; which regions sit in which act is a proposal, from the [overview](../world/overview.md).

## What you find

Colossal oaks and yews, their trunks as wide as houses and their roots standing out of the ground like walls. Moss on everything. Sun comes through the canopy in gold shafts and lies on the forest floor in coins. Further in, the canopy closes and the light goes from dappled to dusk, though it is still afternoon outside.

Some of the oldest trunks are hollow, and some of the hollows hold a coal, glowing ember orange in the green dark, warm to the hand, burning nothing. The Hearthfolk call them the kings' lamps. A fallen knows what they are. Deep in the wood stands the King's Lodge, roofless, with a yew growing through its hall, and beside it a stone king on his horse under a coat of moss so thick his face is gone.

## The Gloamroot

Where the roots break through into caves, the road goes under. The Gloamroot is a country of roots under the stone, some thin as rope, some wide enough to walk along, all wrapped in web. There is no sun at all. The only light is candlecap, scattered amber glows in a violet dark. Sound does not carry; you can lose a companion three roots away. It is the last dark of the climb.

![The Gloamroot](../art/paintings/zones/gloamroot.jpg)

## What it tells you

What the Apostates' war costs. Harrowwood is broken ground: somebody broke the hold here, and the Apostates keep it broken. The world's own things run loose in it, still wearing the broken white of the chains they slipped, and they go for a coal first, then for whatever lives. The Hearthfolk who come to the wood's edge for firewood and mushrooms are dying of it, and they were never in the war. The Apostates who have helped you all the way up planted that.

## What lives there

- **[Gloom Spiders](../wiki/monsters/gloom-spider.md).** They grew in the dark of the Gloamroot and feed on light. They wrap the fallen they catch, coal and all, and hang them in the roots. The webs near the oldest trunks are full of dim lights.
- **[Cinder Imps](../wiki/monsters/cinder-imp.md).** In Harrowwood they drift between the trees like will-o-the-wisps, small lights that call in borrowed voices. The Hearthfolk call them false lamps and teach children never to follow a light that speaks.

## How it plays

- **No champion, no order.** Broken ground has no hold to break and no angel's hand on its packs. What runs loose comes at the party's light from every side at once, and never turns on what runs loose with it.
- **Down before up.** The Gloamroot is a dark, tight stretch between the forest and the moors, where the party's light matters again.
- **North to the moors.** The road comes up out of the roots onto open grass, the [Barrow Moors](../journey/barrow-moors.md).

## On the second climb

A century on, the wood is broken wider if you chose the Apostates, the webs reach the Vale's top fields, and the woodcutters' villages at its edge are empty. If you chose a great faction, it has mended the hold here, and Harrowwood is a quiet, white-chained wood. See [the second climb](../game/second-climb.md).

## Its place in history

The kings of Velmarch hunted here for three hundred years. The oaks of Harrowwood were cut for the royal fleet, the *Crowned Gull* among them, so the hull that Hearthold lives in grew in this forest. Since the drowning the roots have kept growing down, following the fire. See [History](../world/history.md).

## In the game

Harrowwood and the Gloamroot are concept. Gloom Spiders and Cinder Imps are in the current build from depth 2 of its caves.

## Rumours

- Candlecap eaten raw lets you see in the dark for an hour, and dream of a white city for a week after.
- One root of Harrowwood runs all the way under the Vale to Hearthold's hill, behind the Coalwrights' forges. They have bricked it over. Some nights the bricks are warm.