Ironwood Marches

Dark, straight-trunked forests of the Heartland where imperial road geometry and martial logging regimes permanently changed growth patterns. Roads abandoned for decades can reappear beneath brush after a hard winter, as though the woods remember survey lines. Ironwood is prized for beams, bridge braces, and shield cores. Wolves in these forests are unusually tolerant of marching troops and unusually hostile to scattered travelers, a trait some Heartland veterans take as evidence of old training magics in the land itself.