The Creshers

The Creshers are a wandering folk — caravans of weathered wagons trading and mending their way from town to town, on roads all across Terrindral. What binds them is not blood but remembrance: they are a religious people, keepers of the name of an old forest god called Streacresh, whom most of the world has let fade into folklore. Where the Creshers pass, the old god is spoken of again. Their faith asks one journey of every new Cresher: a pilgrimage to Groveller’s Pass, where — the Creshers say — one can still commune with Streacresh itself.

They are famously warm company, generous with food and freer still with stories, and it shows in a curious fact about them: the caravans almost always leave a community with more people than they arrived with. Somebody’s restless son, a widow with nothing left holding her to a place — the road takes them in, and the Creshers make room.