The grove pack

“Iron” is the Guild’s word for the woodland’s wildlife, not a rank a party climbs — just the common, ordinary danger of the trees. There’s no tier beyond a slime; there’s a week, a valley, and a farmstead downslope.

The pack breaks into families. The wet family lives in groves and wells: a weak slime is the smallest scrape, a corrupted slime is that same ooze gone wrong in a hollow, and an ancient slime lord under the roots is the reason a cleared grove keeps coming back. The margin holds needlers, skirmishers that fight entirely at range. Dry ground holds ember mites, a swarming, burning insect. Thorn holds briarlings, hunters figured in the Codex but not yet an open fight.

Four of these are playable contracts today: the well, the brushline, the hollow, and the source below the stair, climbing from a party’s first spell slots to Extra Attack. The rest are real wildlife the Guild simply hasn’t written a contract for yet.