Treenode
| Type | Swamp town |
|---|---|
| Ruler | Formerly the Olphins |
| Notable sites | The fountain pond, Seely's house |
| Notable inhabitants | Olphins |
| Status | Abandoned and in ruins |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Treenode is a ruined town in a swamp forest of giant mushrooms, and the home the Olphins governed until the War of Shadows.[1] A reclusive people, they farmed their own land there and left the rest of Eslura to its business.[2] Every Olphin who survived the war was removed from Treenode and shipped to Morgaedion, and the town has stood empty since.[1][3]
The books do not settle what to call it. Pemadee calls it a town, the narration of Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened calls it the swamp city of Treenode, and The Way Shadows Live calls it the Olphins' swamp kingdom.[1][4][2]
The town
Treenode stands deep in forest. The approach from Haberpaw crosses flat plains dotted with shrubs and wildflowers, then a dense wood loud with birds and biting insects, then a circular clearing where florahorses graze with their flower woven tails. Past the clearing the trees dwindle and the path enters a forest of giant mushrooms taller than the trees, their wide caps closing over into a canopy that leaves a walker in shadowy twilight with vines hanging down like tangled hair.[3]
A river about the width of a driveway runs alongside the last stretch of path and leads into the town, where it spreads into a scummy pond with a disused, rusted fountain standing in the middle of it. Trees and mushrooms grow out of the pond itself and out of the stone walls around it, leaning crookedly over the water.[3]
The town beyond is rubble. Rows of houses stand half crumpled and overrun with insects and small rodents, pitted staircases climb to nothing, rotted roofs lie in pieces on the ground, and a larger building that was plainly official is choked out by vines and roots. Creatures croak, insects swarm, and Alpin Loomin warns that the mud will suck a walker down whole if it is given the chance.[3]
Peepmuks live in the woods around the town: finger sized fliers with glowing yellow fur, which Bea took for very fluffy rats with wings, and which Alpin remembers as a nuisance. One spat a wad of goop into his face on sight, and he ran to the swamp water to scrub it off. Barnaby Britto knew that many in Eslura could not imagine choosing to live in a swamp full of spitting peepmuks, and said as much about them.[3][5]
Alpin, who remembers the place from before, says he would have burned it to the centre of the earth if it were up to him and calls keeping it around a waste of space.[3]
Seely's house
Seely settled at Treenode after the Knowers expelled him from Galecrest, and lived there in solitude while he studied the Olphin Stones and watched over the one free Olphin nobody else knew was alive.[1][3]
His house is built on the cap of a giant mushroom, reached by spiral stairs up its side to a balcony under a wooden roof. A hand painted sign on loose twine reads Resident Knower. A bamboo rocking chair with binoculars on it faces into the heart of the woods, bird shaped wind chimes hang from rusted nails at the lip of the roof, and half eaten blue candies lie spat out across the boards. Inside, jars of blue and green liquid holding small floating creatures line the shelves, sacks of the same blue candies sit on the floor among open notebooks and crumpled parchment, and a long wooden arm on a shaft lets Seely open the door from his desk across the room.[3]
Accounts of where the house stands do not quite agree. Pemadee says Seely lives just outside Treenode; Seely, asked why a Knower of Many Things would live out in a mud bog, answers with the question of why he would not be in Treenode.[1][3]
Government
Treenode belonged to the Olphins. Pemadee calls it the town Barnaby's people once governed, and the Olphins held a seat on The Council: Alyria says she served as the representative for the Olphins before Zybersia fell.[1][4] Nothing is recorded of how they governed it, and nobody has governed it since they were taken. The people themselves are covered at Olphins.
Notable events
- Obellius Kalaar raided Treenode and put the Olphins under. Mavis says that was when they turned into monsters, and that their bonded toads no longer recognised them and left.[6]
- The Olphins who lived through the war were taken out of Treenode to Morgaedion. Pemadee found the infant Barnaby there on the same trip, along with the two stones he and Seely divided between them.[1]
- Tabitha Glowdish was on her way back from Treenode when she saw the Eyearke Stone hanging around Reagan Hideaway's neck, which is what sent her after Reagan into the Kella Desert.[7]
- Barnaby, Bea and Alpin followed a trail of dropped blue candies through the ruins to Seely's door, and Seely laid out for them what he had worked out about the stones and the Olphins.[3]
- Demise found them there. The party fled the mushroom house into the woods with a wall of black smoke eating the forest behind them, and Bea, cornered and bleeding, put a hand on a tree and drove a root through the Shadow Reaper's chest and up into the canopy.[8]
Behind the scenes
The map of Eslura letters the village TREENODES, with a final S. Both novels' pronunciation guides give Treenode, as Tree-node, and the prose uses Treenode throughout.[9][10]