Poet's Grove

A poet's grove is a graveyard, serene and simple with no stones or markers. Instead of carving monuments to quietly erode over centuries the deceased are interred wrapped in linen with a beechnut embedded in their heart. After a month it sprouts, feeding on the body wrapped around its roots and absorbing the ghost left tethered within the bones, growing into a Verse Tree. Once the tree entirely devours the bones beneath it the magic takes hold and the tree's smooth gray bark begins to crack, etching itself with the deceased's unwritten work. The distinctive voice of each tree makes headstones unnecessary.

The groves are open to all who lived with words and are carefully tended by groundskeeper monks. They meticulously copy the writing from the trunks and branches of each Verse Tree, checking daily for new passages and collecting the ghost-written works into posthumous anthologies that support the perpetual maintenance of the groves. It's an endless duty as prolific ghosts regularly fill their original tree and spread to its saplings, creating entire stands and clearings etched with more works than they ever penned in life.

Note: There are several species of tree and arboreal parasites that mimic the look of a poet's grove but are unrelated. One such species is the carnivorous Glyphic Aspen which grows in large stands on calcium-poor soils. They produce marks on their bark that appear to be writing and often invitations to rest. Don't trust them. They lie. They only want your bones.

Another type of false grove is created by the Ruby Stanza Borer, a species of beetle that has an instinctive grasp of language and rudimentary psi abilities in its larval instar. They replicate the writing effect of true Verse Trees by burrowing through the host-tree's cambium layer in the shape of words, causing the script to appear in scars on the outer bark. This eventually kills the tree. They're generally not skilled writers, producing disjointed hackwork.

A true poet's grove will always have groundsmonks in attendance and a scriptorium situated somewhere on the grounds. Don't be fooled!