The forest south of the Leather Road is thick, and smells of autumn. Oak and maple trees form a canopy above the dry ground. Brown leaves crackle as you walk along the rolling hills. Sunlight shines through the trees in beams that shine like spotlights to the ground. You step through ferns and bushes, some flowering in bright blue, others mustard-yellow.
The players might decide to try and triangulate where the castle should be in order to shorten their trip. This is fraught with danger: from nearer, the breasts will not be as obvious as they are from further, especially given that the time frame will be different. The High Divide is a wide set of mountains, and it will be very easy to miss the castle. The southern forest is thick, dark, and completely uncivilized. An Intelligence roll at a penalty of 4 is required to successfully navigate the forest using the instructions from the song if they have good maps. Surveying, map-making, or woodland skills will assist.
The best way to become unlost when lost in the Deep Forest is to go north to the Leather Road. A Perception roll at +8 is required when traveling across the Leather Road to notice it.
- The Deep Forest: Encounters
- There are very few encounters in the Deep Forest with “civilized peoples”. While they do stand a good chance of meeting evil and fantastic creatures, most of their encounters will be with nature and history. There are strange ruins all over the Deep Forest, remnants of lost villages from before the Goblin Wars (when the people of Highland thought they could conquer the forest) and the lost cultures of the ancients from before the Cataclysm.
- First evening
- As the sun caresses the tops of the trees from the horizon, a sense of golden calm settles over the forest. Birds chirp cheerfully, go silent, and then chirp again from a different direction. A cool breeze lazily flutters a few leaves here and there as shadows lengthen upon your first night in the Deep Forest.
- Sighting Isaiah’s Breasts
- Approximately three days’ walk south of Hightown, if the characters are occasionally rising above the trees, the “breasts”, the twin peaks that lead to Kristagna, become visible. Any character with tracking, mapping, or surveying skills will (if paying attention at all) see the breasts automatically. Others must make a Perception roll at a bonus of five.
- The Chaotic Mist
- At some point the characters are likely to pass through or near the Chaotic Mist. Where the creatures of the Deep Forest are dangerous, the creatures of the Mist are dangerous and alien. The chaotic mist is largest on nights of the full moon. If the characters left Hightown during the waxing moon, the moon is most likely full now, resulting in a three or four day journey through the mist. On a new moon, the journey through the mist will take less…
- The Forgotten Road
- If they follow the breasts and do not try to go a roundabout way, they will eventually find the old road.
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