Gosava Tree
There is a gosava above Ughill that I have seen once and have no plans to see again. A trunk the width of a doorway, a low net of dark, dripping branches, roots closed round something the size of a lad and not letting go of it. Look closely at the bark and you will find knots that are not knots -- small, ringed, and set at intervals that have nothing to do with how a tree grows. Press one and it does not give like bark. It gives like something underneath deciding whether to open.
It does not move to you. It has never needed to. A gosava roots itself once, early, and after that it simply reaches, further every year, until its net of branches covers ground it never had to walk to claim. Everything green beneath that canopy has already died. Nothing grows in the dead wood a gosava keeps, and the organic network that runs through everything else in the Wisewood stops dead at its edge and goes around, which is the only review of the place I have ever fully trusted.
The danger only starts once you are close enough to matter to it, which is unfortunately also the only distance at which a gosava can be killed. Get within reach and the branches attend, the roots shift underfoot, and the drip that comes down the back of your neck is not water. It stings first, then it doesn't, which is worse, because you stop being able to tell how much of you it has found. I have heard, from exactly one source I trust and no one else, that the same drip does something other than harm if it is taken in on purpose rather than by accident. I have not tested this myself and I do not plan to. Whatever it costs to find out is not a price I have ever seen anyone pay back in full. Cut it, shard it, put a fungun round into it, and the wood closes back over the wound anyway, as though you had done nothing at all. Fire is the only thing a gosava cannot close over. Everything else you try first is just noise it will remember you for.
I do not know how old the one above Ughill is. Old enough that it was already a known hazard before I started making this circuit, and old enough that whatever it has taken over the years has stopped being individually mourned and started being a line item on somebody's ledger. What hunts the ground above and below it, mostly gabbleratchet packs drawn by anything loud enough to be worth investigating, treats a lit gosava as an invitation. Burning one and getting away clean are two separate jobs, and the second is harder.
Field note: you cannot do this quietly. Accept that before you climb, not halfway up. Bring more oil than you think you need and be gone before the fire finishes what you started.
| Type | Lurker |
| HP | 9 |
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