Colossal trees scattered throughout the Elder Wilds, rising three hundred feet or more above the rainforest canopy. The Anchor Trees mark the burial sites of titans who died in the aftermath of the Ezz Rift, 12 million years ago. They give the "Elder Wilds" their name.
Physical Description
Each Anchor Tree dwarfs its surroundings. Their trunks are massive enough that small communities could live within hollowed sections—though no one has attempted this. Their roots spread for hundreds of yards, intertwining with the forest below. Their canopies form islands above the general treetop level, visible from miles away.
The wood carries unusual properties. It doesn't burn easily. It resists rot absolutely. Tools made from fallen Anchor Tree branches hold edges longer than metal. The sap, which bleeds pale gold when the bark is cut, has mild preservative properties.
Origin
When the Ezz Rift flooded Alaria with Melera's music 12 million years ago, the titans—beings of pure Deoric order—experienced emotion for the first time. This contact with raw feeling was unbearable agony. Many killed themselves. Others fled to distant planar stacks across the cosmos.
Those who died in what would become the Elder Wilds were buried by the druids. Using Faesong to bind the cosmic energies of the titan corpses, the druids sang them into the earth. Where druids bound titan remains, the Anchor Trees grew.
Their roots wrap around titan bones that never decay. Their sap carries traces of Deoric resonance. They are, in a sense, living tombs.
The Collective Consciousness
The Anchor Trees are aware.
Not individually intelligent—each tree is no more sentient than any ancient oak. But together, they form a slow, distributed consciousness that communicates through root networks and spore dispersal over decades. They remember fragments of the titans they anchor: impressions of an age before emotion, echoes of Deoric speech, the traumatic flood of feeling that ended everything.
Druids can sometimes perceive this collective awareness. Faesong practitioners hear it as a bass note beneath their music—impossibly deep, impossibly slow. Psy-sensitives approaching an Anchor Tree feel the weight of geological time pressing against their minds.
The ancient druid Minori Ezag, who dwells where three Anchor Trees stand in unusual proximity, may have become attuned to this consciousness. What they perceive—and what they've become as a result—is unknown.
Behavior
The trees are not hostile. They are patient beyond mortal comprehension.
They are waiting—for what, no one knows.
Those who sleep beneath Anchor Trees sometimes dream of vast, empty spaces and voices speaking in languages that predate language. The dreams are disturbing but rarely harmful. Prolonged exposure may have effects that haven't been documented because no one stays long enough.
Distribution
Anchor Trees appear throughout the Elder Wilds, from the Apelands in the north to the edges of the Dalizi Highlands in the south. They are particularly numerous in and around the Apelands—suggesting either that many titans died there, or that something about the apes' presence relates to the trees.
The only place where multiple Anchor Trees stand close together is near Minori Ezag's territory in the northeast, where three grow within a few hundred yards of each other.
Anchor Trees are rare in Lemru Nymor and absent from the Dalizi region, suggesting the druids buried fewer (or no) titans there.
The Shemazari Connection
The oldest Anchor Trees often stand near Shemazari ruins. Whether the ancient civilization worshipped the trees, tended them, or was destroyed by them remains unknown. The Gamori claim the Shemazari "went into the trees"—a phrase they do not explain.
See: Elder Wilds - The Anchor Trees
Now lets do the NW: Edari, Sestros, and the two city states.