Privacy

What Thornswood keeps about you, why, and how to have it deleted.

Last changed: 26 October 2026.

Thornswood is a free fan project run by a small team in their own time. It is not a company. This page is written plainly rather than legally, and it is meant to be the whole truth rather than the minimum.

The operators are primarily based in Colorado, United States. Thornswood is aimed at adults in North and South America. Privacy questions and requests go through the Discord, including its private support tickets.

The short version

Signing in with Discord tells us your Discord id, your name there and which roles you have. Nothing else from your Discord account.
Playing sends the server your character, where it is and what it does, and what you type in chat.
Voice goes straight from one launcher to another and is not recorded, so the people in a voice room see each other's internet address (below).
Ask for deletion in the Discord and it is done.
There is no advertising tag on this site. Cloudflare counts how often each page is opened and how fast it loads, with no cookie (below).

What is stored, and why

Your Discord id, name and roles. Sign-in is Discord and nothing else, so this is how the server knows who you are and whether you are allowed in. It is the only identity Thornswood has: there are no passwords here and no email addresses.

Your application. Applying in the Discord keeps what you wrote in a private ticket only you and staff can read, and on the site for staff. Your answer to whether you accept the rules is also kept on the site against your Discord id, with the time you gave it, so there is a record that you agreed to them.

When you played. Each session records who, when it started and when it ended, so an alpha has a record of what was tested and by whom instead of somebody's memory. The game server's door also writes down each time a character connects, by its profile and character numbers, and whether it was let in, so staff can see why somebody could not get in.

Your character. Name, appearance, what you carry, where you are standing, what you have built and claimed, and the ranks you have earned. That is the character, and without it there is nothing to log back into.

What you say in chat. Kept so that a report of something that happened has something behind it other than one person's word. If you would not want staff to read it, do not type it.

Reports and calls for help. /helpme and /report in the game, and a report about a person on the site's report page, keep who sent it, who it is about, what they wrote and where they were standing, so staff can act on it. Only staff read them, the person reported is not told, and nothing else from the chat is copied into them.

Using /stuck. Each use keeps your character, your profile, your Discord account, where you were and where it sent you, and when, so staff can see it was used for being stuck. The game server also keeps the last few places each character stood, for as long as they are online, so /stuck has somewhere to send them back to; that list is gone when they leave or the server restarts. Only staff read these.

Staff records. When staff ban a character or a whole account, kill a character for good, or write a note about somebody, the site keeps it against the Discord account or the character, with who did it, when and why, and the staff channel is told. A character killed for good is kept, not deleted. Only staff read these: somebody who is not staff never sees a note, even one about them.

Your join number. When you join the Discord, the bot writes down which arrival you were against your Discord id, so the number on the welcome card is never handed to two people, and is yours again if you leave and come back.

The launcher's own log. Sent to the site when a session ends. It is about the game: which mods are installed, what failed to start, which version you are on. It is how somebody who cannot play gets helped without a conversation.

Gallery submissions. The picture or recording, your signed-in account, the name for its caption and any note for staff are kept for review. A picture or recording can also say inside the file where it was taken (a phone or camera often writes the GPS position), when, and with which camera or program. The site takes all of that out as the file arrives, so none of it is kept or shown. Of the file, only the picture or recording itself is kept, with its colours and which way up it is shown. Only approved submissions appear publicly. Their caption and media then become public too. With a picture, your browser or the launcher also sends smaller copies of it, which are shown in its place on smaller screens and deleted with it. Submit only material you have permission to share, without private information about other people. Ask in the Discord to have a submission removed. Removing one deletes its file from the site. See Terms for publication permissions.

What is not stored

No email address, no password, no payment details. Patreon holds the payment side and Thornswood never sees a card.
No voice recording. Voice is passed between the people in the room and nothing keeps a copy.
No advertising tag on this site. There was a Google Ads tag until 23 September 2026 and it was removed.
No cookie or anything else kept on your machine for counting visits. Cloudflare's page counts, below, need none.

What leaves this site anyway

Honesty about the things a page does by existing:

Voice connects each launcher in a voice room straight to every other one in it, machine to machine, with nothing in between. To make that connection each launcher hands the others its internet address, the public one and the one on your own network, so everybody with voice on in that room can read yours from their own launcher. The voice service only introduces them, and keeps no copy of what is said.
Discord is where sign-in happens, so signing in tells Discord that you signed in here.
Launcher updates are fetched from Thornswood's own site.
Cloudflare carries every connection to this site, and to voice, on its way to our server, which answers nobody else. Like any network between you and us it sees your address and what you ask for, and it keeps its own records under Cloudflare's privacy policy.
Cloudflare Web Analytics. Since 22 October 2026 Cloudflare adds one small script to each page on its way to you, from static.cloudflareinsights.com. It reports that the page was opened, which page, the page that sent you there, the kind of browser and device, and how long the page took to load. It sets no cookie and keeps nothing on your machine, and Cloudflare does not use it to follow anybody from site to site. Thornswood sees only totals: how many visits each page had, from which countries, and how fast it loaded. Blocking cloudflareinsights.com in your browser stops it and changes nothing else on the site.
Cloudflare Turnstile, on the report page only, since October 2026. It is the check under the form that a person, not a script, is sending the report. It loads from challenges.cloudflare.com when the report page opens and looks at the browser, not at anything typed into the form. When the report is sent, this site asks Cloudflare whether the check passed, with your address, and keeps only the report. What Cloudflare does with what it sees is in the Turnstile privacy addendum. Blocking challenges.cloudflare.com stops the report form from sending; /report in the game and a ticket in the Discord still reach staff.

Apart from Cloudflare's analytics script and Turnstile, opening a page on this site loads nothing from anybody else. The fonts came from Google and a markdown renderer from cdnjs until 24 September 2026, and both are served from here now.

How long it is kept

Sign-in records, the only thing on the site holding your address, are deleted after 30 days. The address is the one your connection reached the site from, as our own front door saw it, not anything your browser claims about itself. Cloudflare carries the connection the last step, and the front door takes the address from Cloudflare only when the connection really comes from Cloudflare. That is enforced by the site rather than promised: old rows go whenever the log is written or read.
The game server's log records the address each connection to the game came from, beside the Discord account it signed in as. It keeps nothing older than 30 days: the server checks every hour and deletes each line as it passes 30 days. Staff read it to look into a fault or a report.
The site's, voice's, gamemode's and bot's own logs (site.log, voice.log, thornswood.log and bot.log) record what each service did, with profile numbers, character names and some Discord ids, never an address. Nothing in them is kept past 90 days.
Session records and chat are kept for 365 days, then dropped. That is the record of each session and the launcher log sent with it. The site checks every hour, so nothing waits for somebody to play first. A session staff mark as kept, because a report or a ban rests on it, is not dropped, and neither is its launcher log. Chat on the voice service ages the same way. Both numbers come from the code rather than a promise on this page; if they change, this line changes with them.
Your character is kept until you ask for it to be deleted, or until a wipe, which is announced first. A wipe, a character reset or putting a backup back leaves the characters it replaced set aside on the server for 30 days, so it can be undone, and then deleted. The server checks every hour.
Launcher logs are kept for 365 days, like session records, unless staff mark the session kept.
A gallery submission that is removed has its file deleted then. One taken down after somebody reported it is kept out of sight for 30 days, so staff can look into the report, then deleted. The site checks every hour.
A gallery submission waiting for staff waits for 90 days at most. One staff have neither accepted nor deleted by then is taken off the queue and its file deleted. An accepted one stays up until it is removed.
Your application on the site is kept for 365 days, like a report, then dropped. The ticket itself is a private thread in the Discord. Staff close it rather than delete it, because it is the record of what you were told, and it stays in the Discord, closed, for 365 days, then the bot deletes it. A ticket nobody closes is closed by Discord after a week with nothing said in it, and goes 365 days after that. Opening a ticket again starts its 365 days over when it next closes. Each time a ticket is closed, the bot writes a line in a staff only ticket log naming the ticket, which carries your name in Discord, and a ticket whose private thread cannot be opened goes into that log whole instead. Each of those goes 365 days after it was written. The bot checks every hour.
Your answer to the rules is kept for as long as your account is here, because it is the record that you agreed to them, and goes with the rest of your account when you ask for that to be deleted.
Reports and calls for help (/helpme, /report, the report page and a report about a gallery picture) are kept for 365 days, like the chat they are about, then dropped. The site checks every hour.
/stuck and the staff logs. Each use of /stuck, each thing staff did in the world or on the site, and each move out of the world for being idle is one line in a staff log, and each line is kept for 365 days, then dropped. The site and each game server check every hour.
Staff records. A ban is kept for as long as it holds. Lifting one deletes it, and one that ran out is kept for 365 days after it ended, then deleted. A character killed for good stays dead, so that record is kept; one an admin undid is kept for 365 days after it was undone, then deleted. A staff note is kept for 365 days from when it was written. The site checks every hour.
The game server's door log keeps each line, a character connecting and whether it was let in, for 90 days, the same as the gamemode's own log. The game server checks every hour.
Your join number is kept while you are in the Discord, and for 365 days after you leave, so coming back within a year keeps it. Then it is dropped. The bot checks every hour.

Backups. Encrypted recovery copies include site records and uploads. The server keeps seven daily and four weekly copies. Copies fetched to the operator's computer are kept for 30 days, with at least seven retained for recovery. A whole copy of the server taken by hand, before moving it to a new machine, is encrypted the same way and kept on the operator's computer for 30 days. These are private recovery copies, not public downloads. Removing a live record does not rewrite older backups; they expire through that retention schedule. The game server's log is not in them. Staff must reapply completed deletion requests before putting an older backup back into service. What putting a backup back replaces (the site's records and uploads, the bot's join numbers, characters) is set aside on the server for 30 days, so it can be undone, and then deleted.

Deleting it

Ask in the Discord, or open a ticket there with I need help. Say which account and what you want removed. It is done by a person, and you will be told when it is. Each part of Thornswood (the site, the game servers, voice chat and the Discord bot) removes it from its own records the next time that part restarts, which happens with its updates: usually within a day, and for voice and the bot sometimes up to a week. You are told once every part has done it.

You can also ask what is kept about your account, request a copy, or ask to correct it. Use a private ticket for account details rather than a public Discord message. Do not send a government identity document.

What deletion means here: your Discord link, your session records, your chat, your character, your answer to the rules, the applications and calls for help you sent through the site, your gallery pictures and your join number. A ticket in the Discord, and the bot's lines about it in the staff ticket log, are not deleted by a request: each stays until its 365 days above are up, because it is the record of what you were told. What cannot be undone is something you said that somebody else has already quoted in a report, because that now belongs to the report. Staff's own records stay for the same reason: a ban, a note, a character killed for good, a report you made or one made about you, a line in a staff log, and a session staff marked kept because a report rests on it. A request does not delete them, and they still go when their time above is up. A completed request is written down with your Discord id and character numbers and nothing else, so that an older backup put back into service has you removed again first. Until every game server has removed your character, the site also keeps its character numbers and nothing else, so that a server that has not restarted yet cannot put it back.

Who can see it

The Owner, the Co-Owner and the Dev rank, who run the site and the servers, can see all of it, chat and session records included. The other staff ranks see the parts their job needs: the staff who work in the world (Gamemasters and Loremasters) see the staff records and the gallery queue, and calls for help and reports reach staff in the Discord's staff channels. Nothing is sold, shared or handed to anybody else, and there is nobody to hand it to.

Children

Thornswood is eighteen and over. If you are under eighteen, do not sign up, and if you already have, say so and the account will be removed.

Changes

This page is in the repository with the rest of the site, so every change to it has a date and an author in the history. If something material changes it will be said in the Discord rather than quietly edited.

Cookies

The cookies and browser storage this site uses, what each is for and how long it lasts, are on the cookie page. None of them is for advertising or for counting visits.

Asking about any of this

The Discord, which is linked on every page. A security problem, a way to get at what this page says is kept, goes to the owner as a Discord direct message, never in a channel, where everybody would read it. You will hear back within 72 hours.