Dishley Shrame: Echoes of the Silent Wood

The Cartographers’ Folly

The initial records, fragmented and stained with something akin to peat and regret, speak of a survey. Not a simple demarcation of land, but an attempt to *contain* something. The Cartographers, a cohort of men from the nearby village of Oakhaven – Silas Blackwood, a surveyor of unsettlingly precise habits; Thomas Finch, a scholar obsessed with ancient folklore; and young Elias Thorne, eager but prone to fits of nervous energy – believed they were charting a boundary. They called it Dishley Shrame, a name derived from a dialect believed to mean “The Still Heart.” But the land resisted. The measurements warped, the compass spun wildly, and the forest itself seemed to rearrange itself around their efforts.

The Blackwood Sextant

Recovered from a collapsed cairn at the heart of the Shrame. Constructed of blackened iron and strangely polished bone. It doesn’t function in a conventional manner. When held, one experiences…shifts. Distortions of perspective. The whispers of the wood grow louder.

Chronicle Entries – The Year of the Grey Bloom

1687 – October 27th

“The bloom…it is not natural. It began with a single patch of silver moss, spreading with an unnerving speed. Now, entire trees are covered. The bark pulses with a faint, grey light. Thomas insists it’s a manifestation of the wood’s sentience, but I fear it’s something far older, something…consuming.” – Silas Blackwood’s Journal

1687 – December 12th

“Elias has vanished. He was tracking the bloom’s progression with a crude charcoal sketch. The last entry is a single rune – ᛠ - etched into the soil. It radiates a coldness that penetrates to the bone. I believe…the wood has taken him.” – Thomas Finch’s Fragmentary Notes

1688 – March 5th

“I’ve seen it. A shape moving amongst the trees. Too tall, too thin. It doesn’t walk, it *flows*. The bloom seems to guide it. I tried to follow, but the forest shifted, blocking my path. The air grew thick with the scent of rain and something…else. Something ancient and utterly alien.” – Silas Blackwood’s Final Entry (incomplete)

The Shrame’s Resonance

The Shrame is not simply a place. It’s a locus, a point where the veil between realities thins. The bloom – the Grey Bloom – is its manifestation, a filter through which other…entities…can observe and influence our world. It’s a conduit, a wound in the fabric of existence. The Cartographers, in their arrogance, attempted to seal it, but they only served to amplify its power. The wood remembers. And it whispers.

“Return… to the stillness…”

Echoes and Warnings

Beware the grey. It consumes not just flesh, but memory. It feeds on the echoes of what was, and what might be. Dishley Shrame is a place of loss, of forgotten names, and of things that were never meant to be known.

The runes are not symbols, but keys. Do not attempt to decipher them. Some doors are best left unopened.