Dead Tree Hollow

HIS onetime camping-place on the North Road is a small valley with its own ponds, marked for years by a huge, gnarled old oak whose trunk was as large around as many cottages. Only the rotting stomp now remains: the druid who made his home in the hollow tree years ago was burned out of it by a hungry dragon (perhaps the dragon that laired in nearby Dragon Falls). Dead Tree Hollow is today a sleepy little wooded village, known for its fiddlehead (in season) and fem-frond soup, exotic mushrooms (much prized by gourmets around the Dragon Reach), and its excellent wagonworks.

The Hollow also has its own treasure tale, more unlikely than most. An elven carriage is said to be buried somewhere in the Hollow (perhaps sunk in one of the ponds): a magical, flying conveyance from long ago, still packed with the gem-adorned silk gowns and jewellry of the haughty elven lady who died on it. Her bones-and those of her guards – may well lie with the fallen craft, too. They were slain by a furious elven mage (a scorned suitor) whose spells smashed them from the sky and then buried them alive. This happened a very long time ago, but elves in the lands around remember the incident because of the extreme wealth of the lady in question (she had outlived six husbands and taken all their wealth for her own).

Adventurers still search, from time to time, for the final resting-place of Lady Alauthshaee – but be warned; the entire Hollow is a dead-magic tone, where no spells work. This effect is said to be the price of the reckless spells hurled by the angry elf-mage Ilthuryn long ago.

From The Everwinking Eye: Treasures of the Vast, Part One by Ed Greenwood (Polyhedron #88, October 1993) as revised in The City of Ravens Bluff.

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