The Hollowing of Thornwood Vale

The hook

Five people have walked out of Milbrook into the Thornwood in as many weeks — the miller’s son, two woodcutters, the schoolteacher, and last night the reeve himself. No bodies, no tracks past the treeline, and the wood has gone wrong in small ways: game animals returned to snares alive, streams running a day late, ravens that watch and do not startle. The village asks quietly, because speaking of it loudly feels dangerous now.

What’s really going on

A green hag called Mother Wren has re-rooted the vale’s old Heartgrove around herself. She takes people who carry grief — and all five of the missing do — offering each a bargain in the voice of who they lost. The taken aren’t dead: they stand in the Heartgrove, half-grown into the trees, dreaming. Every day the clock runs, one of them grows a season deeper.

The trail, in three acts

Act I — On the Old Cart Road

The road in is watched: wolves that pace the party without attacking (hers), and ravens that repeat a child’s rhyme in dead voices. The schoolteacher’s satchel hangs neatly on a branch — inside, her journal names the dream that tempted her. First real fight comes at dusk when the party ignores a “turn back” the wood has clearly spoken.

Act II — The Drowned Shrine

An older faith once kept the Heartgrove tended; its lakeside shrine is now knee -deep and green. What drowned it lingers — and what the hag fed it, too. Under the altar: the rite of unbinding, readable by torchlight, needing a thing freely given by each of the taken’s kin (Milbrook will part with them, each a small, painful scene worth playing).

Act III — The Heartgrove

A ring of five half-trees with sleeping faces. Mother Wren does not open with violence: she offers the party what they grieve for, one by one, and means every word. Fighting her among the roots is her ground — the owlbear she raised from a cub answers her scream. The rite frees the taken one at a time; each freeing weakens her visibly. She flees at the last, and remembers.

Key NPCs

• Mother Wren — courteous, patient, and honestly convinced she is a rescuer. Never lies outright. Keeps her true name folded inside a wren’s egg in her hut.
• Old Tansy — Milbrook’s herbalist, the only one who remembers the shrine faith. Will guide the party to the lake but not one step past the waterline.
• The Reeve, Aldric — the freshest taken, still able to speak through his tree for one round at dawn. Knows where the hag walks at night.

Running it

Let the forest soundscape run and cut it to silence when the hag is near — the players will learn the tell. Track the days: each dawn in the vale, describe one of the five a season deeper in bark. The clock is the horror.