A four-hundred-mile expanse of dense forest stretching across Central Aboyinzu, bounded by the Cowardly Mountains to the northwest and thinning into savanna grasslands to the south and east. Unlike its northern neighbor M'Svyla, which is cultivated, inhabited, and deliberately shaped by the Ix'Lorett, Luendrokrül is abandoned. Something lived here once. The forest swallowed it.
Character
Luendrokrül is old in the way that makes travelers uneasy. The canopy closes overhead like a held breath. Sound travels wrong: voices don't carry, footsteps echo where they shouldn't, and the usual forest noise (birdsong, insect hum, wind through leaves) goes quiet without warning. Locals from the surrounding grasslands don't enter the forest. They don't forbid it exactly, but they don't do it, and they don't explain why.
The trees here grow differently than in M'Svyla. Trunks twist, branches reach at odd angles, root systems surface and dive in patterns that suggest the trees are moving, slowly and invisibly, over years. Clearings that existed last season aren't there anymore. Paths close behind travelers. The forest rearranges itself, and no one knows if it's deliberate or just how forests are when left alone long enough.
People who spend too long in Luendrokrül come out changed. They aren't cursed or possessed, just different. Quieter. They struggle to explain what they saw or didn't see, what they felt. Most don't go back. The few who do tend to go deeper each time, staying longer, until eventually they don't come out at all.
The Ruins
Scattered throughout Luendrokrül are the remnants of whoever lived here before. Stone foundations covered in moss. Walls that might have been temples or granaries or something else entirely, too overgrown to tell. Carved markers with script no living scholar can read. The ruins aren't clustered; they're everywhere, suggesting not a single city but a civilization that spread across the entire forest.
Whatever happened to them left no bodies, no signs of violence, no indication of plague or war. They simply stopped being here, and the forest moved in. Some ruins show signs of deliberate abandonment: doors left open, belongings packed and removed. Others look like the inhabitants vanished mid-task, tools left where they fell, meals half-prepared.
The deepest ruins, near Byvarnül Lake, are the oldest and strangest. The architecture there doesn't match the rest: larger, built for beings taller than humans, using construction techniques that shouldn't have been possible with the tools available. These ruins are partially submerged now, the lake having risen over centuries to claim them.
The Rivers
Three rivers define Luendrokrül's hydrology:
Minas River flows along the western edge, marking an approximate boundary between the forest and the foothills of the Cowardly Mountains. Its water runs unusually clear; locals say nothing lives in it, though no one can explain why.
Moshavril River cuts through the forest's northern reaches before joining tributaries that eventually feed into M'Svyla's watershed. The healthiest section of forest, if Luendrokrül can be called healthy anywhere.
Egetli River drains the eastern forest, flowing south toward the grasslands. Settlements along the Egetli's southern reaches are the closest thing to civilization that borders Luendrokrül directly, and even they keep their distance from the treeline.
Why the Passage Exists
The Safeway Passage through the Cowardly Mountains exists because going through Luendrokrül is worse than going around. Caravans that need to move between the western territories and the eastern grasslands take the mountain route despite its difficulty, despite the tariffs at Horan's Hut, despite everything. The forest route is shorter. No one takes it.
Expeditions have tried. Military surveyors, merchant scouts, scholars convinced the dangers are exaggerated. Most turn back within a few days, spooked by things they can't articulate. The ones who push through either emerge on the other side weeks later than the journey should have taken, or they don't emerge at all.
The Ix'Lorett of M'Svyla, when asked about their southern neighbor, simply say they don't go there. When pressed for reasons, they give the same answer they give for everything difficult: "some questions answer themselves if you wait long enough."
Byvarnül Lake
The forest's heart, if it has one. A broad, still lake in the southeastern reaches, surrounded by the oldest and strangest ruins. See the dedicated entry for details.