Arboris
Floor 9
The high boughs gone into winter, where the snow has not stopped falling since the Silence
The high boughs, where winter used to come every year and go every spring. Frostcrown's world ended at Midwinter, on the longest night of the year, and it has been Midwinter ever since. Wintersap lies in the hollow between two great boughs, where the snow lies softest and the wind cannot reach.
Hoarfrost, the Warden of the Crown, brought the snow down every winter and took it home every spring, when the village climbed the north road singing the Thaw Song. When the Heart fell silent it sat down on the Frost Throne and would not go.
Frostcrown: the high boughs, near the top of the Tree, where the winter came every year and went every spring. This is Wintersap, in the hollow between two great boughs, where the snow lies softest and the wind cannot reach. Our world ended at Midwinter, on the longest night of the year, and the Tree caught it there. It has been Midwinter ever since.
WintersapThe Rime WoodsHoarfrost FieldsThe IcefallsThe Frozen BoughsAurora RidgeThe Crown of FrostThe Frost ThroneThe wilds grow stronger the further you go from the Hearth.
The Winter Matron
The Frozen Boughs, Level 33
The great white spider nesting in the deep of the Frozen Boughs, mother of the snowlurkers; when she wakes, frost cracks through the wood tree after tree. She throws frost-silk as wide as a barn floor, and her fangs, as long as a forearm, freeze you where you stand.
It wakes on its own about every half hour, and the whole floor hears it: Frost cracks through the Frozen Boughs, tree after tree: the Winter Matron has woken!
For a party of up to six, from level 33. Every party walks its own copy.
The channels under the Crown where the high boughs' sap froze at Midwinter, worked for centuries by Wintersap's sapice cutters, entered by their door once the snowlurkers are cleared. The Deepsting winters in the Cutters' Deep, where the last cutters cut too far; in the Sapwell, the cold that keeps Hoarfrost on its throne has grown into the Rimeheart.
Hoarfrost, Warden of the Crown
Level 35
Frostcrown's guardian, the Warden of the Crown, who brought the snow down every winter and was sung home every spring. When the Heart fell silent at Midwinter it sat down on the Frost Throne and would not go. Dark ice that has never thawed, the green of the sky's lights in its chest, it holds the winter in its fists.
Waits in the Frost Throne. Everyone who climbs fights it together, and it grows with them. The first time it falls, the Withered Crown opens for everyone; then it returns, to be fought again for what it leaves.
Wintersap
