The Eyendra is one of Alaria's great forests, a vast expanse of boreal woodland stretching across southeastern Wycendeula, from the Eceraen Mountains in the south to the Neurian Hills in the northwest, bounded by the coast and Moornik Bay to the east. At over 200 miles north to south and 300 miles east to west, it rivals the Filvrae Sylvrym in scale, though the two forests could not be more different in character.
Where Filvrae Sylvrym is wild but living, Eyendra is something else. The forest is inhabited, though not by people. What people became inhabits it instead, and that presence makes it dangerous.
Geography
Eyendra occupies the southeastern corner of Wycendeula, covering roughly 50,000 square miles of dense boreal forest. The terrain is shaped by glacial history: rolling hills, countless small lakes, and soil that holds water poorly, creating bogs and marshland throughout.
Key features:
- Lean D'Riin: the central forest, the oldest and most dangerous section
- Lean D'Kas: the northwestern forest, slightly less treacherous
- Wer Azenzi: the lake district where Riin presence pools most densely
- The Lygrone Valley: the river corridor showing the densest ancient ruins
- Moornik Bay: the eastern coast where Zor is the sole settlement
The forest grows denser and older as one moves inland. The coastal fringe, a day's travel at most, is navigable boreal woodland. Beyond that, the canopy thickens until light barely reaches the forest floor. The deepest interior has never been properly mapped.
The Riin
Two thousand years ago, the Eyendra was not empty. A civilization called the Riin flourished here, a people who practiced a form of magic that no longer exists, learned (some say) from the dragon Ezra Olkanis herself.
The Riin did not build cities in the conventional sense. They grew them. Their magic bound them to the land: their settlements were living extensions of the forest, their roads were paths that the trees permitted, their governance was intertwined with spirits of place. Rather than conquer nature, they negotiated with it, and eventually became part of it.
For centuries, this worked. The Riin prospered. Their population grew. Their magic deepened.
Then they attempted the final step.
What exactly happened is unclear. The only witness is a dragon who does not explain herself. What is known: the Riin sought to make their bond with the land permanent. A merger. Immortality through dissolution. Civilization through diffusion.
They succeeded.
The Riin did not die. They became the forest. Their individual selves dissolved into Eyendra, their essence spreading through root and soil and water until the boundary between person and place ceased to exist. The Riin are still here, in every tree, every stone, every lake. They simply stopped being people.
The ruins they left behind are not abandoned. The forest grew through them, around them, from them. Structures half-stone and half-wood, walls that have become trunks, streets that have become clearings. The forest incorporates the ruins rather than destroying them. And sometimes, in certain light, the ruins seem to remember what they were.
What Remains
The Riin merger was not clean. Their civilization did not vanish uniformly. It pooled and concentrated in certain places.
The lakes of Wer Azenzi are where the Riin presence pools most densely. These small lakes scattered through the northern forest occasionally display images on their surfaces: glimpses of Riin life, scenes from a civilization that no longer exists. People who linger too long near Wer Azenzi sometimes acquire knowledge they shouldn't have, or feel drawn toward the water in ways they can't explain. Extended exposure carries risks of a more permanent nature.
The ruins in the Lygrone valley are the most accessible, and the most disturbing. Foundation stones that hum when touched. Buried roads that glow faintly at night. The satyr who roam the Wycendeula plains refuse to enter this valley, and they won't explain why. Those who camp there report dreams of faces they don't recognize, speaking a language they almost understand.
The deep interior around Lean D'Riin is simply avoided. The few expeditions that have returned describe a forest that seems to notice them. Trees that weren't there a moment ago. Paths that loop back on themselves. The sense of being watched by something too large to have eyes. Most expeditions don't return at all.
Why It's Dangerous
Eyendra's danger is not monsters or weather, though both exist. The danger is the forest itself.
The forest absorbs. People who go too deep don't always come back, and those who do are sometimes... different. Changed in ways they can't articulate. A hunter who spent three days lost in Lean D'Riin returned speaking phrases in a language no one recognized, presumably Riin. He couldn't stop. He walked into the forest a week later and never came out.
The forest intrudes. The Riin are distributed. Their presence persists in fragmentary form, and certain places make that presence felt. Standing in the wrong clearing might fill your head with sensations that aren't yours: emotions, urges, fragments of identity. Most people recover. Some don't.
The forest protects itself. Whether this is the dragon's doing or the Riin's diffused will or simply what happens when a civilization merges with its environment, the result is the same. Those who take too much, dig too deep, or disturb the wrong ruin face consequences. The reprisal is not immediate violence; the forest is too patient for that. Paths close. Game vanishes. Water sources go bad. The forest makes it clear when you are no longer welcome.
Lean D'Riin
The heart of ancient Riin civilization and the most dangerous section of Eyendra. The name means "Forest of the Riin" in their language, both a geographic label and a statement of ownership. The Riin built (grew) their largest settlements here, and here the merger was most complete.
The trees in Lean D'Riin are impossibly old. Some are clearly older than the Riin civilization itself, suggesting the forest had power before the Riin ever arrived. The canopy is so thick that the forest floor exists in permanent twilight. Compass directions become unreliable. Time feels different, though whether this is psychological or actual is debated.
No one lives in Lean D'Riin. No one should go there unless they have business with the dragon or wish to disappear.
The Coastal Fringe
The only part of Eyendra that can be safely used. A strip roughly twenty miles deep along the coast, from Moornik Bay to the northern extent of the forest. The dragon permits the extraction of timber, herbs, and game here, and Zor's economy depends on it.
The coastal fringe is still boreal forest, still wild, but the Riin presence is thin enough that the land behaves normally. The trees are younger. The paths stay where you left them. The water doesn't show you things.
Zor's foresters know exactly where the safe zone ends. They mark the boundary with cairns that visitors are advised not to cross.
The Dragon's Domain
Ezra Olkanis dwells somewhere in the deep Lean D'Riin, roughly 120 miles west of Zor. The exact location has never been mapped. People have tried; those who get close enough don't come back to report.
The dragon and the forest have merged in their own way over the millennia. Some believe she is the forest's guardian. Others believe the forest is her extension. The truth may be simpler: after thousands of years in the same place, the distinction between the two has blurred.
What is certain is that nothing happens in Eyendra that the dragon doesn't eventually know about. The trees are not her spies; they don't need to be. She simply listens, in whatever way a dragon listens to a forest that was once a civilization she watched rise and fall.
Current Inhabitants
Zor is the only permanent settlement, a city-state on Moornik Bay that survives through the dragon's sufferance and careful observation of ancient rules.
Ezra Olkanis is the only dragon, ancient beyond reckoning, bound to this forest by ties no one fully understands.
Wildlife exists in normal forms along the coast and in corrupted forms deeper in. Wolves, bears, elk, the usual boreal fauna. But the animals of Lean D'Riin are different. Larger, or smaller, or wrong in ways that are hard to articulate. They don't behave like animals should.
Spirits of uncertain nature inhabit the ruins and the lakes. They are not ghosts; the Riin did not die, so they left no ghosts. But something remains that responds to attention and occasionally to speech. Scholars from Zor have documented dozens of interactions, none of them fully understood.
No one else. The satyr avoid the Lygrone valley. The Ulvsjael of Filvrae Sylvrym do not cross into Eyendra. Even the hardy settlers who push into Wycendeula's other wilderness regions give this forest a wide berth. The forest has made itself understood.
For Travelers
Don't go.
If you must go, stay in the coastal fringe. Hire a guide from Zor; they know the safe areas and the extraction rules. Do not take more than you need. Do not dig. Do not disturb ruins, even the small ones. Do not drink from lakes you don't recognize. Do not spend more than three days in the forest at a time.
If you go deeper despite all warning, leave something behind. A token, a name, a drop of blood. The forest notices those who enter without offering anything. Whether this actually helps is debated, but Zor's hunters swear by it.
If you feel the forest noticing you, if paths start closing, if game vanishes, if you hear your name spoken by no one, leave immediately. Don't look back. Don't return for anything you left behind.
And if you see the dragon, do not run. Running triggers pursuit. Stand still, show your hands, and wait. If she wants to speak with you, she will. If she doesn't, she'll let you go.
Probably.