Whispering Groves

Grove Hospital Closed After Trees and Vines Overtake the Wards Overnight

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Chronicle Wire Desk

Grove Hospital has closed to the public after staff arriving for the morning watch found trees and vines grown up through the wards overnight, a growth that by every account was not there at the close of the evening watch and stood waist-high by dawn, with saplings between the beds, roots lifting the east corridor, and vines sealing a supply room shut. All patients were moved out safely to the Vaelthir waystation infirmary and to private healers, and appointments and visiting hours are suspended. A hospital spokesperson would say only that the cause is under assessment and that the building will not reopen until it is safe and sound.

Whispering Groves

Three Smells That Mean Spring in the Groves

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Maren Voss

A Whispering Groves seasonal column. Maren Voss waits each year on three smells to know spring has come, the first warm rain off the forest floor, blossom drifting from the grove canopy, and the resin and ash of the old fire scars in the great trees. A warm, sensory piece on its surface, though beneath it the Groves’ frozen cycle shows through, a blossom that no longer falls and a burn that no longer comes, loved by a narrator who cannot see the wrongness in either.

Whispering Groves

The Entmoot Conservatory Has a New Litter, and They Are Bred to Mind Your Road

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Maren Voss

A warm visit to a new litter of six manticore cubs at the Entmoot conservatory, the third generation of serpent-mousers bred there. The groundskeeper of twenty years, Bram Ashwick, explains they are a cross out of Grandma Windward’s old line and a fierce farm cat found in the Rolling Downs, bred as serpent-mousers in the old sense, to scent a serpent on the trail long before a walker could. Ashwick says there has never been a waiting list like this year’s, with trail-walkers, Groves families, and farmers down on the strip all wanting a cub at the door before autumn, in a season when everyone has grown careful about who falls in beside them. The piece is pure charm on its face, and quietly of a piece with the season’s wariness of who is on the roads.

Whispering Groves

How to Keep Yourself Safe on the Trail This Season

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Corwin Ashfield, Whispering Groves Trail Safety

A seasonal safety guide for walkers in the old growth, offering simple habits to stay out of trouble on the trail: go in company, bring a hunting beast, keep to open ground, watch the still water and warm rocks, wear good high boots, walk heavy, and trust your instincts about the company you keep.

Whispering Groves

Disaster at the Long Table: The Serpent-Pirate and Her Crew Ate Dellriven's New Supper Room Bare on Opening Night

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Rue Ashdown

The Long Table, Mother Bettony’s new supper room behind the Green Kettle apothecary in Dellriven, opened this week and was promptly eaten empty by the serpent-pirate they call Rain and her ragtag crew, who cleared every dish on the table and drank the cellar dry before the night was through. Bettony refuses to make anything of it, and the Groves are arguing about what that means.

Whispering Groves

The Long Table Is Laid: Mother Bettony's Supper Room Opens in Dellriven Next Week

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Rue Ashdown

A short notice from the Groves: The Long Table, the supper room behind Mother Bettony’s Green Kettle apothecary in Dellriven, is finished and set to open to the public next week.

Whispering Groves

The Ashridge Herd Has Left the Hospital, and Now the Whole of It Sits Still at the Southern Road

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Kael Dunwick

First the boars came up out of the deep Ashridge forest, then they took the slope above Grove Hospital and would not be shifted, and for weeks that hospital has posted extra guards and walked its visitors in past them. Then one morning that all changed. The hospital staff will say that there isn’t much to tell. They came in one morning and the boars were simply gone. Security says that there wasn’t any noise or anything unusual that night and there was no physical sign of the boars fleeing the area.

Whispering Groves

I Am Home, and I Am Not Grateful the Way You Want Me to Be: On the Door I Walked Through and the Woman Who Walked Away

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Marigold Fenn

Marigold Fenn, recovered from the Misthollow lodge after weeks unaccounted for, returns to these pages not with relief but with anger. She will not describe what was behind the door, but she has a great deal to say about the review that moved at its own pace while people sat inside it, the Council that found time to hold a ribbon and no time to keep a list, and above all about Madame Solace, who was gone before anyone official arrived to ask her a single question.

Whispering Groves

We Are Publishing Marigold's Notebook: Her Family Asks You to Read It

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·The Fenn Family

Marigold Fenn’s family releases the working notebook she left behind, transcribed in full, in the hope that a reader will recognize a detail and help find her. The entries trace her growing fixation with The Reverie, from her charmed first visit to the harder, more suspicious questions she was preparing to ask on the follow-up she never returned from.

Whispering Groves

A Kettle On in Dellriven: The Green Kettle Opens, and For Once You Are Allowed to Know Exactly How It Works

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Rue Ashdown

Rue Ashdown reports from the opening of The Green Kettle, Mother Bettony’s witch’s apothecary in Dellriven, where in a season wary of new magic the appeal is a proprietor who explains everything and hides nothing.

Whispering Groves

MISSING: Marigold Fenn, Last Seen on the Road to the Misthollow Lodge

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·The Editors

A missing-persons appeal for Chronicle correspondent Marigold Fenn, last known to be traveling out to the restored lodge off the Misthollow fire road to report a follow-up on The Reverie. Anyone who has seen her is asked to contact the Whispering Groves desk by owl.

Whispering Groves

Trail Advisory: There Is a Manticore on the DellRiven Network and She Just Wants to Be Held

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Maren Voss

Maren Voss issues a trail advisory for the DellRiven network, where a four-hundred-pound manticore, almost certainly the Wendigo of Grandma Windward’s sanctuary that readers met in the Faded Lands adoption notice, has taken up residence and begun greeting, robbing, and affectionately pinning every hiker she meets. No injuries reported. No packs survived.

Whispering Groves

A Door Opens in the Groves: The Reverie Arrives, and There Is Nothing Like It on the Island

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Marigold Fenn

Marigold Fenn reports from the ribbon cutting of The Reverie, a new immersive entertainment experience in a restored lodge off the Misthollow fire road that locals are calling unlike anything else in Wexamour. Its proprietor, the warm and famously evasive Madame Solace, will say what it does to you but not how, university students are already making the trip out to try it, and one early patron could only describe the inside as realer than real.

Whispering Groves

I Switched My Whole Trail Diet to Honey and I Am Never Going Back

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Kael Dunwick

Kael Dunwick makes the case for a honey-based trail diet after two months of running the Ashridge network on little else, breaks down how he fuels a long day in the old growth, and confesses to the breakfast he now chases every morning despite the shortage: a slice of honey cake, fuelled by clover honey from the northern Downs on the trail and the rare Dorran sort only when he can win it.

Whispering Groves

Trail Report: Thornveil Pass to Upper Canopy Overlook

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Maren Voss

Maren Voss runs the numbers on the Thornveil Pass route to Upper Canopy Overlook: 14.3 miles round trip, 2,800 feet of gain, and one dicey river crossing that earned its reputation.

Whispering Groves

The Tuskboars Have Come Out of Ashridge, and I Do Not Think They Wanted To

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Kael Dunwick

Kael Dunwick reports that tuskboars have abandoned the deep Ashridge forest for the townline and the slope above Grove Hospital, and argues the boars are only the latest symptom of a forest slipping out of balance, after the spring the redbelly newts failed to make their pilgrimage to Lake Viralora.

Whispering Groves

Broom vs. Pegasus vs. Apparition: Which Is Actually Worth It for Backcountry Travel?

Spring Yr10 5745 P.M. ·Kael Dunwick

Kael Dunwick puts brooms, pegasi, and apparition to the test on the worst backcountry routes in the Whispering Groves. His conclusion is confident. His reasoning is questionable.