At the center of Roule squats a forest the halflings pretend doesn't exist. On maps, it's simply unlabeled green. In conversation, they call it the Murderwood, the Dreadwood, or simply "the interior." Official Roulean policy holds that it's undeveloped wilderness with dangerous fauna. Everyone knows this is a lie.
The forest is dense, old-growth, and wrong. Trees grow too close together. The canopy blocks all but the dimmest light. Sounds carry strangely—or don't carry at all. Halfling logging expeditions entered the Murderwood for decades after colonization. They stopped when the expeditions stopped coming back.
The truth, known to historians and denied by the Honey Lords, is that survivors of the plague fled here. What they became in three centuries of isolation, hatred, and desperation is unclear. Some say they're simply humans who know the forest intimately and kill halflings on sight. Others whisper of pacts with old things in the deep woods, of people who aren't quite people anymore. The Roulean military has attempted "pacification campaigns" four times. The forest has never been pacified.
The halflings have learned to leave it alone. A rough border of abandoned farms and warning signs marks where civilization ends. Travelers are advised to take the long way around. Those who enter uninvited rarely return, and those who do won't speak of what they saw.