Poisoned Thorn

Deep within the Overgrowth, in the Bleeding Depths forest near Yellstown Settlement, the Poisoned Thorn have carved out a territory that outsiders enter at their peril. This Unborn tribal settlement practices ritual sacrifice and guards its borders with a ferocity that has discouraged all but the most desperate visitors. The forest around them is thick and treacherous, navigable only by those who know the area well, and the Poisoned Thorn know it better than anyone.
  The tribe's exclusivity is absolute. When Matthew Wayward, desperate and half-starved, stumbled into their settlement seeking to join, the elders cast him out. Not because he was unworthy of membership, but because they deemed him too unclean to even serve as a sacrificial offering. The rejection says less about Wayward himself and more about the Poisoned Thorn's standards: their rituals demand purity that outsiders simply cannot provide.
  Their annual rituals fascinated outsiders enough that a cult formed in imitation of their practices, the Wayward Sons, who worship from a distance what they cannot join. The specific customs and spiritual beliefs of the Poisoned Thorn remain poorly understood outside the tribe. What is known is that they conduct their ceremonies in the crystalline fields at the deepest recesses of the Bleeding Depths, where the Unborn of Teixiptla take on a deeper coloration of infection than any found elsewhere in the wastelands.