Briar Grove is a daughter of the peasantry. Her home is dirty, her chickens are malnourished, and her garden never survives long in to the autumn. Alone in the world, though not by any unusual means. In Larchwood it is quite normal for mothers to be lost on their birthing beds, and for fathers to never return home from battle. Before his death, Briar’s father had taught her how to till the earth and how to skin a rabbit (he had even found her books so that she might one day learn how to read), and for that she counted herself amongst the lucky ones.
The Kingdom of Larchwood is built on river country, where farming is competitive and swamp magic is much more than a children’s bedtime story. A sloping landscape of lush woodlands and grassy plains make up much of the map, marred only by boggy fens that thrive and fester where the valleys dip. Merchants travel the roads in those fens with fearful haste, and royal visits there are unheard of. Places of poverty and strife, coined ‘the Mire’ by those who can afford to look down upon it.
Sundown comes early in the Mire, the yellow-orange light of twilight swallowed greedily by whomping canopies of great oak and brittle ash. Whilst the plains towns and merchant cities of the kingdom revel long in to golden evenings, swamp-dwellers like Briar stumble through humid night. Despite themselves however, the people of the Mire keep a quaint community. They are humble and bony, their colours greying and spines wilted, but that is all they know.
And this is where our story begins, amidst villages of people who are simply as happy as they can be.