March 16, 2023
Keir Dunston
A local ne’er-do-well, Keir is forced to wear a bird costume and act as entertainment and mascot during the Flight Festival as a form of community service. He deeply resents this, and does a very poor job at masking his hostility.
Woodsy
A mindless wood golem left over from the clear-cutting era, used as a general laborer and mascot by Kindling.
Pink Valkyries
A mercenary group of dwarves that won the low-bid contract to provide security to the Flight Festival.
March 15, 2023
A famed ornithologist and retired member of the Mage Guild, the 104-year-old Ethelred was one of the last confirmed people to see a yellow-billed woodpecker, and has devoted his adult life to the study of the Fyrewood’s birds in general and the yellow-billed woodpecker specifically. As the head of the Flight Festival, Ethelred is easily the most powerful person in Kingling, easily outstripping the mayor, and his dominance of the event has won him both admirers and enemies.
At the time of his death, Ethelred was reporting sightings of the yellow-billed woodpecker. He had been in talks with Warscout Grumash about ancestral Shatterjaw knowledge, which Grumash had refused to divulge. He had angrily denied Hawkmaiden Elia’s request for a larger role in the Flight Festival, threatening to dismiss her if she exceeded her authority. He had been quarreling violently with Mr. Stripbark about lumber issues related to the cutting of a tree near the outskirts of Kindling, which Ethelred felt was key to attracting a yellow-billed woodpecker. He had also been having an affair with Mayor Hooper, coercively using his position as the festival head.
March 14, 2023
The mayor of Kindling, having been elected in the place of her deceased father. Her husband, a stonemason, is often away on business and is currently at work on Prince-Bishop Leonard III’s palace. Mayor Hooper desires nothing more than to live at court and to be a civilized and sophisticated noblewoman; this is reflected in the elaborate court dress she wears at every Flight Festival. In order to fund her ambitions, she is in the process of negotiating to allow illegal logging and hunting in the Fyrewood.
Dr. Ethelred has been forcing Mayor Ethelred, 60 years his junior, into a relationship by threatening her position. This has been kept secret from both her husband and Dr. Ethelred’s fifth wife.
March 13, 2023
A middleman for the Lumber Guild, Stripbark is responsible for coordinating the small amount of cutting the guild is allowed to perform in and around Kindling, and supervising the woodworkers of the town and the festival. An ambitious company man, Stripbark hopes that his position and power will improve if, as rumored, Prince-Bishop Leonard III lifts the prohibition on cutting in the Fyrewood.
Naturally, if the Flight Festival fails or suffers a disaster, this presents a keen opportunity for the Lumber Guild.
March 12, 2023
A hawkmaiden is the highest level one can achieve in the all-female Raptor Guild, and it means that they have formed a life-bond with their hawk that allows them to see through one another’s eyes and act as one. The Raptor Guild has traditionally sent a hawkmaiden to the Flight Festival to perform demonstrations and gather recruits. Elia has long awaited this opportunity, as it is her first festival, but she also feels like the town of Kindling and the festival itself are an undue encroachment upon nature.
Rumor has it that Prince-Bishop Leonard III is planning to disestablish the Raptor Guild, replacing it with all-male mercenaries from a neighboring kingdom. This has left Elia on edge and desperate to show her guild’s worth at the festival.
March 11, 2023
A scout for the Shatterjaw Orcs, who once inhabited the Fyrewood. His people were annihilated on the field of battle by an ancestor of Prince-Bishop Leonard I and driven out of the Fyrewood to be scattered and absorbed by other orcish groups. Still banned from the Fyrewood by ancient decree, the Shatterjaw nevertheless often attend the Flight Festival, since it and the town of Kindling are open to all for the duration and it represents the only opportunity for them to visit their ancestral lands.
Every Shatterjaw arrives under strict orders to behave themselves, but there is an unspoken expectation that they will attempt to secretly sabotage the festival in some small way without getting caught and by stealing a small item as proof. The tales of these exploits have a great deal of social cachet among the remaining Shatterjaw.
March 10, 2023
The hamlet of Kindling was founded as a logging camp in the Fyrewood during its clearcutting. When Prince-Bishop Leonard I made the area a nature preserve, it alone was not shut down, and along with the Old Forest Road that connects it to the rest of the world, it remains open and inhabited.
Officially, the people of Kindling are there only to support the forest’s regrowth and its study. A handful of small farms provide it with crops, a small mine with ores, and it also includes shops, an inn, and other amenities. Unofficially, the hamlet has two additional purposes: poaching, and the annual Flight Festival.
Poaching has been a problem for the Prince-Bishopric for decades, and the preserve’s rare and endangered animal life makes it a tempting target for the unscrupulous or the desperate. With wardens few and far between, it is all too often unpunished, although the official punishment can be as harsh as execution.
The Flight Festival is the hamlet’s other major draw, bringing scholars and amateurs alike to the area hoping for a glimpse of rare or unusual avian fauna. The majority arrive hoping for a glimpse of the extinct yellow-billed woodpecker, of course, but there are also lectures, guided tours, falconry, and other pursuits.
March 9, 2023
One of the most enigmatic birds of the old Fyrewood was the yellow-billed woodpecker. As large as a hawk or eagle, according to the few stuffed skins that remain, it was only ever found in the deepest part of the Fyrewood. Despite being known to locals for centuries, no one had ever seen it nesting or breeding, and young animals were similarly totally unknown.
While never abundant, the yellow-billed woodpecker was driven to extinction as the result of the intensive logging of the Fyrewood before the personal union. Despite the pleas of ornithologists and other learned people of a scholarly bent, the logging concerns did not stay their axes even when they began recovering dozens of dead woodpeckers in the fallen trees.
In the years since then, with the regrowth of the Fyrewood, many scholars have continued to be fascinated by the yellow-billed woodpecker both for its large size and its sudden extinction–the first such bird to be wiped out in living memory. Funded by the Prince-Bishop himself, several expeditions per year have attempted to find surviving birds, to no avail.
Nevertheless, records of sightings persist, and not all of them can be explained away by the similarly-sized red-beaked woodpecker. Many hold out hope that this elusive species yet remains in the depths of the Fyrewood.
March 8, 2023
Prince-Bishop Leonard I’d instructions, followed throughout his long reign and that of his successor, placed the Fyrewood off limits to hunting or development. With one exception, the area was patrolled by ducal game wardens empowered to seize, expel, or even execute trespassers.
The one exception was for scientific inquiry, which the Prince-Bishop supported wholeheartedly. As such, provision was made for a single small settlement in the interior of the Fyrewood, the town of Kindling, to serve as a base of support for forest and science. Tradesmen and merchants were permitted to settle there under strict rules, and a rotating group of scholars also took up residence at the Prince-Bishop’s pleasure.
Thanks to these protections, the Fyrewood soon began flourishing again and by the 100th anniversary of its protection it had largely regrown, and was a haven for many plants, animals, and other creatures that had been put under pressure by the intense settlement elsewhere nearby. Birds, especially, flourished, and the second Prince-Bishop, Leonard II, encouraged their study. An amateur ornithologist, he personally introduced several rare and endangered birds to the preserve and presided over the first Flight Festival.
With Leonard II’s recent death at age 86, his distant cousin Leonard III has inherited the Prince-Bishopric, and while he has not made his feelings known on the matter, many suspect that he would be more open than his predecessors to allowing the Fyrewood to be developed.
March 7, 2023
The Fyrewood was so named both because of the frequent wildfires that used to sweep through the area and for its extensive exploitation for firewood and lumber a century ago.
As a result of a long-running land dispute between the Grand Duchy of Radiata and the Bishopric of Scalling, the Fyrewood was claimed by neither as both advanced their claims to the city of Oldport down the river. As a result, the Fyrewood was governed by the laws of neither, setting the stage for intensive and destructive exploitation. By the time the two entities were joined in personal union by the Prince-Bishop Leonard I, and the dispute settled, hardly any trees remained in the Fyrewood outside of its deepest reaches.
In response, the Prince-Bishop declared the area a nature preserve, and refused to allow any logging, hunting, or other exploitation for the remainder of his long reign. His great-nephew and successor, Leonard II, followed the same policy. Now that the throne has passed to a more distant cousin, who succeeded them as Leonard III, there is some hope among loggers and hunters that the area may be reopened.
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 