Aslaug
Updated: May 30
Overview
Aslaug is the world tree of Aldemere and the most sacred site in the Weald faith. It is an ancient tree of incomprehensible size. Its trunk is so tall that clouds circle its boughs, and its roots run under the whole of Aldemere and Strom, deep enough to reach the leylines at the continent's core. Nature spirits make their homes inside the tree.
Location
According to the Weald faith, when Remedia laid down to rest after creating life on Aldemere, her body became the mountain range that spanned the continent. Aslaug grew from where her heart had been. Druids make pilgrimages to Aslaug from across Strom and Aldemere. It is a Weald holy site.
Nearby, the city of Ardveld is built in the cliffsides and lowlands surrounding Aslaug's valley. Despite the cold alpine climate surrounding the tree, the area directly beneath Aslaug's canopy stays warm enough to sustain greenery year-round. It serves as a perpetual pocket of late spring, even in the middle of winter.
The Solstice Games
Each year at the winter solstice, Ardveld hosts the Solstice Games. The Games are a significant civic and religious event in Aldemere. The Games take place in the open valley at Aslaug's base. The Games are what Aslaug is most known for.
During the Games, a large fairground sprawls beneath the canopy with encampments for the royal court, camps for each major city, druids, and crafters. The Games serve many functions. The royal court uses them to announce the kingdom's new laws for the year. They also serve as a unifying celebration of community, craft, and the natural cycle. The Games are open to citizens, visitors, and nobles to participate in. Victory in the Games earns public recognition and considerable prestige.
Law Proclamation
The law proclamation is delivered by a team of bards and druids who race to recite the new laws while a crowd of volunteers compete to chop a massive felled tree into firewood and build a bonfire with it. The laws are rarely the focus. The chopping is. Bets are placed, crowds roar, and the bards are frequently drowned out entirely. When the bonfire is finally lit, the Games begin.
Athletic Events
Events include foot races, long jump, high jump, hurling, spear throwing, boxing, swordfighting, archery, wrestling, swimming, and chariot and horse racing. Competitions in strategy, singing, dancing, and storytelling are also held.
Crafter's Faire
There are crafting competitions held at the Solstice Games. Goldsmiths, jewellers, weavers, armourers, leatherworkers and others sell their wares and try to attract wealthy patrons and visiting nobles.
Marriage Ceremony
A mass arranged marriage ceremony takes place on the final day of the Solstice Games. Couples meet for the first time, and druids perform handfasting ceremonies for them: a marriage in which two people bind themselves to one another with a ribbon and vow fidelity for one year, renewable at the next Solstice. This matchmaking is often an opportunity for peasants and crafters to marry off their sons and daughters quickly, forging fast alliances across disparate families.
Magical Properties
Aslaug grows at the convergence of powerful leylines. These leylines are ancient rivers of energy left behind by slain cosmic entities, fused into the earth over millennia. The tree draws on them continuously. It is the reason Aslaug has survived since before recorded history, and the reason nature magic comes so readily to those who worship near it.
The Hand of Clay, a colossal earth elemental formed from every earth elemental in Oros and Aldemere merging into one, slumbers beneath Aslaug with its fist closed tightly around the tree's liferoot.
Freshwater flows constantly from fissures in Aslaug's trunk and roots. This water carries trace amounts of the leyline energy that feeds the tree. Drinking it has mild restorative properties.
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