Ashwood

Ashwood is the small, poor village that anchors William Oh’s ordinary world before and between his dangerous expeditions. Its orphanage, shops, Exchange Hall, and familiar network of caretakers and Climbers provide both the limitations he must escape and the social infrastructure that repeatedly receives him back. Ashwood’s importance lies in this tension: it is provincial enough to be dismissed elsewhere, yet it is the place that recognizes William Oh, equips him, and sends him toward the wider tower.

A Small Village and Its Institutions

Ashwood is described as a “podunk town,” but its Exchange Hall is nevertheless the largest building in the settlement. The building has regulation-sized marble pillars, an almost absurdly grand construction for an undersized mudhole, making the village’s relationship with the Climb visible in architectural form: Ashwood is materially modest, yet it participates in a system whose official structures are standardized and immense. The Hall serves as a gathering point for Climbers and as the administrative center for major quests.

The village is also defined by distance and inconvenience. From the orphanage, William Oh must cross the long path to the road, continue to the other side of Ashwood, visit the Exchange Hall and bazaar, and then return. When he is injured and dependent on a wheelchair and crutch, this route becomes a physical ordeal rather than a neutral piece of geography. Ashwood’s scale is small enough that its central institutions are reachable on foot, but large enough for that journey to expose how much effort ordinary participation can require from a disabled Climber.

The Orphanage and Local Bonds

Ashwood is home to Saint Gertrude’s Orphanage, where William Oh has been raised under Gertrude’s care. When he returns after being missing for more than a week, his altered appearance has protected him from immediate recognition: he has spent ten days exposed to the sun, lost approximately twenty pounds, and become almost completely unrecognizable. Gertrude nevertheless finds him, catches him by the ear, and hauls him out of Leon’s shop. The scene makes Ashwood’s intimacy both comic and forceful. A person may disappear into the wider world, but the village’s oldest guardian still claims the right to retrieve him.

The orphanage is not merely a background shelter. Its children fill the entrance and make William Oh’s departure physically difficult as he cuts through a crowd of reaching hands. Gertrude’s offer that he can rest another day functions as a challenge he cannot accept; he understands that her apparent permission to stop is precisely what will make him continue. Ashwood therefore binds care to pressure. Its residents support William Oh, but they also know his habits well enough to push him through reluctance, injury, and embarrassment.

The Climber Community

Leon’s general store connects Ashwood’s ordinary economy to the specialized needs of Climbers. When William Oh returns, Leon remarks that he is more alive than expected, a dry acknowledgment of the danger he has survived. William Oh offers the tooth-dented gold coin obtained from a caravan and asks whether Leon has a Relic available for one gold. Leon cannot meet that price, but he offers to watch for equipment suited to William Oh’s Build if William Oh returns with fifteen gold or an equivalent value. Leon presents this as a service he provides to all Climbers from Ashwood, although his wife immediately contradicts him, revealing the affectionate dishonesty within the shop’s hospitality.

Ashwood’s Climber culture also shapes first impressions. At a gathering, a veteran asks William Oh whether he suffers from fear of Doors, and William Oh admits that he has no idea what the term means before accepting its definition. He then notices the number of girls his age in the crowd and realizes that Leon’s description of the gathering was accurate. The moment places William Oh’s inexperience inside a recognizable local social world: Ashwood has customs, jokes, and expectations among its Climbers, even when William Oh does not yet understand them.

Quests, Recognition, and Departure

The village is where William Oh receives the Establishing Quest: Break the Supply Lines. A public board in the Exchange Hall announces the quest, and dozens of people he recognizes stand in line, confirming that he has reached the correct communal institution. The quest concerns the Kaith, who have pushed into the First Floor and are under an extermination order from higher-level Climbers while receiving supplies through unknown channels. Ashwood thus becomes the point at which William Oh’s private survival is converted into an official role within the tower’s campaign structure.

The quest also produces an unusual form of local recognition. When William Oh gives his name to the clerk, she notes that he is the sixth William Oh to appear, then verifies that he is the correct one and awards him the reward. The joke depends on Ashwood’s bureaucratic setting and on William Oh’s growing reputation: even the attempt to confuse or steal his identity cannot prevent the System from identifying the right claimant. His performance is rated exceptional, and the reward is roughly equivalent to Mason Lanover’s, placing his achievement within a visible community hierarchy rather than leaving it as a private victory.

After the Establishing Quest, the System issues William Oh a new quest to ascend to the Second Floor and records that he has reached level five. Among that year’s Aspirants, he ranks 1,053rd. Ashwood is therefore not only his starting point but also the place from which his progress is measured. The village sends him outward with a rank, a reward, equipment prospects, and a reputation that can travel beyond its boundaries.

Ashwood in the Wider World

The village’s smallness becomes explicit when William Oh later identifies it to Travis. Travis has never heard of Ashwood, and William Oh admits that it is small. The exchange contrasts Ashwood’s self-contained social rules with the broader, more aggressive Climber culture: Travis assumes that strangers in his city fight to establish who is stronger, while William Oh comes from a place where that behavior is not normal. Ashwood is consequently provincial in scale and custom, but that provinciality is not equivalent to insignificance.

William Oh’s bodily return to Ashwood gives the location another dimension. He comes back injured, later moving with a wheelchair and crutch, and must cross the village to reach the institutions that organize his next ascent. Yet the same place contains the people who notice his survival, pursue him when he disappears, supply him when he lacks money, and gather with him around the quest board. Ashwood is the threshold between dependence and dangerous independence: a village that cannot protect William Oh from the Tower, but repeatedly helps make his continued climb possible.