Faction
The Factions
The Woodland plays home to many denizens and powerful groups, all vying for control of its resources. These powerful groups are called “factions”, and they extend over the width and breadth of the Woodland.
The Eyrie and the Marquisate are at war with each other for control over the Woodland, while the Woodland Alliance is a new and growing rebel force aiming to revolt against those greater powers.
There is one more “faction” of note within the Woodland— the Woodland denizens themselves. This faction is broken up and disunified—fox-dominant clearings don’t necessarily agree with mouse-dominant clearings. But the opinions of the regular denizens will affect the vagabonds wherever they go.
In all cases, no faction is “good” or “evil”. All factions do right and wrong. All factions help the denizens sometimes, and hurt others. All factions have members who have empathy and honor and care about those around them, and members who are in this fight purely for their own selfish benefit.
The Eyrie Dynasties
The history of the Eyrie Dynasties stretches deep into the Woodland’s past. They claim that they have always ruled the Woodland, and always shall. True, their reign was characterized by infighting, by regime change (often at the edge of a blade), by bird dominance and oppression of the other Woodland denizens…but they also protected the clearings from bandits and the wild. They built and maintained the paths between clearings. They enforced law and order, and they made the Woodland what it is today.
Everything came crashing down in a recent civil war, one of the more vicious conflicts to ever face the Eyrie. The Dynasties nearly tore themselves to pieces back then. Now, a newly resurgent Eyrie is caught in a new war with the Marquisate to retake the Woodland clearings—their rightful domain. And with an enemy outside of itself for once, the Eyrie is ready to wage total war. After all, the denizens of the Woodland need its protection.
The Lizard Cult
The Lizard Cult originated in a distant land, and its missionaries, priests, and soldiers spread out across the world, sometimes acting as with kindness and succor, sometimes acting as invaders and conquerors, but always spreading the message of the Great Dragon. The Cult’s core hierarchy and structure is far, far away from the Woodland, and those missionaries who have made it to the Woodland have adopted all
those different tactics and more to share their ideology with the denizens. They even go so far as to alter elements of Cult orthodoxy to match the Woodlanders’ belief and better bring them in to the Cult.
Despite its name, the Lizard Cult isn’t actually composed only of lizards. Especially in its Woodland incarnation, the Cult has found supporters across all the different Woodland species as it caters to the downtrodden of the clearings. But the Cult, like nearly any faction, is not one simple thing, and for all that there are plenty who have been helped and uplifted by the Cult’s kindness, there are some who fear
or even hate the Cult as a result of crimes perpetrated by those claiming to act in the Cult’s name.
The Marquisate
Named for the Marquise de Cat who leads it, the Marquisate is either a faction of foreign invaders and colonizers, or a new force for order and industrialization—it depends upon whom you ask.
The Marquise de Cat comes from a foreign empire, and swept into the Woodland with her army when the Eyrie Dynasties were no longer in power. In general, the Marquise’s goal is still to industrialize the Woodland and fully tap its resources. Perhaps this is about improving her own position in her home empire; perhaps it really is about improving the lot of the denizens of the Woodland. Only time will tell.
The Riverfolk Company
The Riverfolk Company is a mercantile federation consisting of trading captains—a name inherited from the Company’s fleet of boats, but now used to refer to any Company trade leader, whether they operate on a boat or not. The Company gives a fair amount of autonomy to each captain to pursue their own profit, but they all tithe some portion of their proceeds to the larger organization, and they can all call upon the organization’s aid and resources when necessary. With this alliance of traders— backed up by a strong mercenary arm—the Company positions itself as the predominant economic power wherever it goes. As the Company pushes farther and farther into the Woodland, it strives to become the sole source of crucial trade for countless clearings, even as it pushes itself into the conflicts between factions, always trying to find a path to profit.
The Woodland Alliance
In the midst of the new war for the Woodland, many denizens have reached their boiling point. After years of chaos in which they found themselves free of any reigning wing, paw, or claw, to suddenly have two major empires trying to force a yoke upon them yet again—it’s unacceptable. These denizens built the Woodland Alliance, a network of would-be rebels, and waited for their moment to hit the Eyrie and the Marquisate hard enough to take back their Woodland.
The Woodland Alliance isn’t a straight representative of the denizens, of course—they weren’t elected or chosen by the denizens at large. They arose from the denizens most angry at the current war and the other powers, and they are willing to take extreme measures to defeat those empires. Sometimes, that means freeing clearings from oppressive regimes. Other times, that means creating martyrs and making terrible sacrifices.