1. Locations

Maze of Fathaghn

Feywild

This enormous briar maze belongs to the dryad queen Fathaghn, and lost travelers are kept away from the maze's center at all costs.


The Maze of Fathaghn was created by the Dryad Queen Fathaghn to protect one ancient Oak tree. The briar maze has hidden within treants that have taken root within it and swore to the Dryad Queen that they would protect the maze at all costs. Wards placed by the Eladrin who sympathize with the Dryad Queen has caused flames to find no purchase on the greenery that protects what many believe is the Mother Tree.


Creatures that enter the maze are kept a close eye on by the Dryads and if their path takes them closer to the Mother tree the Dryad start attacking them in a hit and run pattern. The further away from the Mother Tree the lesser the intensity of the attacks. It is believed that the Mother Tree is what birthed the green fey races and if a creature was to fashion a staff from a branch of the Mother Tree he/she could control the plant fey. The staff would also allow the creature to tree stride at will. No one has dared to prove this theory right or wrong because the closer one gets to the Oak tree in the maze the more ferocious the attacks from the Dryads and treants and the more bones are visible littered on the floor.


Maze of Fathaghn (MoP p. 45*; HotF p. 17, 134, 153) – Briar maze made by dryads to protect the Mother Tree

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History

Although treants and dryads can be found throughout the forests of the Feywild, they have a mysterious agreement to protect, at all cost, one great oak tree deep in the Feywild. To do this, the dryad queen Fathaghn raised a mighty briar maze to confuse and consume any who venture too close to the sacred grove.


Adventurers traveling through the Feywild who enter the maze of Fathaghn might first notice that the undergrowth around them is too thick to cut through, though— what luck!— a worn path leads them through the briars. As they continue on, the trees surrounding them grow closer and closer together. Before they know it, the forest has aligned into impenetrable walls of wood and briar. The path they follow twists and turns, splits and wanders. Just as the adventurers recognize a malign intelligence at work, the dryads strike.


It is possible to escape from Fathaghn’s maze with patience and luck. The dryads use hit-and-run tactics that are anchored around treants taken root within the maze itself. If explorers stay on the move, they can keep from being surrounded. Eventually their flight will lead them away from the sacred oak at the center of the maze. When their path leads them farther away from the oak, the intensity of the dryad attacks lessens. Perceptive adventurers can use this response to gauge direction within the maze and find an exit.


Alternatively, they may decide to press forward and find the oak the dryads are protecting. Legend has it Queen Fathaghn is protecting the Mother Tree— the ancient tree from which all green fey races originally sprang. Anyone who fashions a staff from the wood of this tree could conceivably control any plant fey or even transport himself or herself from tree to tree in a manner similar to dryads. But the abilities of the oak wood— and its provenance as coming from a mythical Mother Tree— are no more than legends, and legends are thin things indeed to stake one’s life upon.

May 13th, 2023