Editing Acrozatarim/Gazetteer (section)

==The Thorn Circle==

'''Icons''':  The Thornmaiden

The Thorn Circle is not constrained to one location in the Western Reaches; rather, the entire region is where the Circle is at its strongest.  Their doctrines are followed in many a remote village; those of the gnoll clans who paint their muzzles red heed the call of the Circle; well-hidden valleys host their gathering points.  The Thorn Circle are blood-priests, mystics and wildlanders, followers of certain doctrines of certain Younger Gods (most notably Lliras) that have been blended into philosophical beliefs from a different, old source that the Thorn Circle keeps well protected.  Despite the Circle's scattered nature, it has several bastions within the Reaches and can call upon many capable woodsmen and gnoll warriors when it needs to make its point in violent fashion.  Some of these bastions are rumoured to be literal living fortresses, great outgrowths of thorns and cancerous bulges of wood, and are home to esoteric orders of Circle warriors and mystics who undertake extreme blood rites of sinister fashion.

The Thornmaiden is the current leader of the Thorn Circle, and pursues an aggressive agenda - seizing sacred sites of elemental energy and hunting out Elder taint regardless of the petty complaints of nations and peoples.  The Circle's influence has waxed and waned with the passing of the years but, for now, it is on the rise.  Recent large-scale clashes between gnoll tribes and the Carthagians along that nation's eastern border have dragged in the Thorn Circle to aid their allies, and for the first time in a while the Circle is having to commit resources against a genuinely powerful foe - and finding out that it has strengths it never knew in the process.  This conflict has the worrying possibility of serving as a crucible from which the Thornmaiden will be able to forge the Thorn Circle into a truly powerful militant organisation.

A number of old stone pillars littered across the Reaches seem to be of particular import to the Thorn Circle.  Known as the Storm Pillars, these rocky columns are riddled with crystalline veins and serve as lightning rods during the violent storms that often clash against the flanks of the Sarokean Mountains.  The power so gathered is fed into the lines of energy that the Circle maintain across the landscape, presumably for geomantic purposes.

The most well-known of Thorn Circle holdings is Bloodstone Cascade, a town amongst the crags of the Sarokean range's northern point.  Here, a series of breathtaking waterfalls crash down out of cave mouths, flowing through a series of pools and falls before feeding into a river far below.  What is notable, however, is that the water is all slightly bloodied; not just red-tinged, but actually containing diluted blood, apparently seeping out of a vein of bloody rock deep in the mountainside.  The water is drinkable, albeit always possessing the coppery tang of gore.  The settlement itself is a brightly coloured place of streaming banners and ornate, ritual kites dancing in the winds that batter the crag-face; temples to both Ishrak and Grumand stand proud atop the highest terrace of the town.  A very old community, Bloodstone Cascade's ties to the Thorn Circle are deep and intricate; a strange tree, its bark carved with sigils and its leaves the colour of crimson gore, is rooted at the edge of the crag's high blood-pools and drinks deep of the mystical water, and this tree is apparently central to the Circle's strange doctrines.