Worulthing

Many generations ago, the Worulthing were one of the most populous of the Banyari tribes, second in number only to the Verthod. But the War of Leaves has left its mark on this dying tribe.

Their great Hearthwood Tree grew in an area called the Aametfeld, on the far side of the Malachite Plains. Tall and broad, it rose like a tower from moss-covered hills, its perforated, dark-brown bark only occasionally brightened by the presence of a sprout or lichen upon its surface. At its crown, long green tendrils vined up toward the sky before blossoming into huge bursts of flat golden-yellow flowers. The blossoms and the strange texture of the wood were all part of a self- contained ecosystem, supported by a thriving hive of unusual wood-boring insects that called the tree home.

As you might expect, the Worulthing were much like their beloved Hearthwood Tree. Looking not unlike a brightly colored Verthod, but with blossoms about their head, each Worulthing also served as a home for their own colony of the woodbugs.

At the climax of a lengthy campaign, the Teryxian Outlanders were able to locate and assault the Hearthwood Tree of the Worulthing. And they did so with fire. The benevolent insects living inside the Worulthing began to catch fire and, in their simple-minded panic, began to devour their Worulthing host from the inside. Despite this horror, some of the Worulthing did survive, even if their Hearthwood Tree did not.

Now the rarest of the Banyari, the few remaining Worulthing are literal husks of their former selves. Their woodbug companions long since having abandoned them or died horrifically, the Worulthing are now blackened stumps, the light gone from their eyes. And although we still know next to nothing about Banyari reproduction or life cycles, we know that it is somehow intimately tied to their Hearthwood Tree. So we must assume that it is only a matter of time before the Worulthing fade from the world.