Knit-Wood

You deliver the cuttings to Pim Underbank, a lutrine shipwright with sawdust in her fur. She presses one living twig against a cracked hull plank, and by the time she lights her pipe, the wood fibers have knitted the crack shut. "Living knit-wood—grafted into a ship's hull, it repairs battle damage on its own. But a full hull graft only takes root if brushed with sap from the mother tree, and the ursine keepers of the Greywood refuse to sell their sap."

Pim walks you past three unfinished hulls sitting on her slipway with split planking. "A single horn of mother-tree sap is enough to graft a whole ship. If the keepers grant you sap for your own hull, bring me whatever is left over and I'll make it worth your while. Or, if you don't want to risk the Greywood, you can haul my last batch of pre-grafted planks to a buyer in the next region."

As you leave the slipway gate, a man in a Crown shipyard coat falls into step beside you. "Hollis Marr, representing the royal yards. Mother-tree sap is worth far more than that lutrine shipwright could ever pay you. Bring a full horn of sap to my cutter waiting outside the Greywood, and I'll pay you a fortune in Crown silver—no clan keeper needs to know."

The charter yard master signs for the shipment and immediately posts guards over the crates. "Living knit-wood in a Crown yard—the Admiralty will claim every plank." Glancing along your ship's side, he lowers his voice. "Pim packed one extra plank over the manifest count. My shipwrights can fit it to your hull tonight, or I can buy the spare plank off you myself."

The Greywood fills a sheltered hollow between three rock spires. At its heart stands the ancient mother tree—but no keepers are tending it. Their timber lodge stands cold and silent, and the surrounding trees have been stripped of bark as high as a ship's mast by something huge nesting in the grove.

The next morning, the yard master arrives with a naval intelligence clerk holding a sealed Admiralty letter and a heavy purse. "The Admiralty wants the exact coordinates of the mother tree where knit-wood grows—not the lutrine shipwright's name, which we already have, but the sacred grove itself. Name the valley, and this purse is yours."

With the grove cleared without harming the trees, the last keeper—an elderly ursine named Old Marrat—taps the ancient mother tree and fills a large horn with fragrant sap. "You saved my grove cleanly. Sap to graft your own ship is yours by right—but sap to sell to outsiders is forbidden."

The gloomwing queen and her brood lie dead—along with forty knit-wood trees shattered by your ship's bombardment. An elderly ursine keeper, Old Marrat, climbs down from the lodge roof where she had been trapped for nine days. Surveying her ruined grove and your smoking gun deck, she says coldly, "You cleared my wood the way a hurricane clears it. The mother tree still stands, so I will pay what custom demands—and not a drop more."