Topics: fantasy worldbuilding, characters, factions, relics, creatures, locations, canon.

Tags: forest, sacred, boss, proof-audited.

Appearance: enormous stag with antlers like living branches, flowers blooming from wounds, moss along the spine, and eyes reflecting trespassers' broken promises. In rage, its breath smells of rain, rot, and fresh-cut wood.

Threat tier: boss inside a wounded grove, regional if grove memory spreads rage through connected roots, and politically explosive if Moonmere declares the beast an accusation rather than a monster.

Origin: a Greenwake Stag is a sacred forest guardian that becomes monstrous when oath-breaking, road cutting, murder, iron cruelty, or false treaty work poisons a grove. It is often evidence of a crime before it is an enemy.

Behavior: it hunts oathbreakers, road cutters, liars under trees, and people carrying tools used in grove harm. It may spare the ignorant, mark witnesses with pollen, or drive victims toward the place where the original promise was broken.