The Glass Forest is the western edge of Old Tolaria's ruins, the first place the wild magic touched and the most accessible part of that fallen empire. The trees here aren't actually glass, but they gleam wrong, refract light in ways that hurt to look at, and at night glow faintly with trapped starlight. This is where Faesong magic bleeds into the material world unchecked.
Why "Glass"
The name comes from the visual effect. Trees in the Glass Forest look normal from a distance: bark, leaves, branches. Up close, something is wrong. The bark has a sheen it shouldn't have. Light passes through leaves that should be opaque. At certain angles, you can see through the trunk to what's behind it.
The trees aren't actually transparent. They're something else: material that exists in more than one state simultaneously, matter that hasn't decided whether it's solid or not. Touch a Glass Forest tree and it feels like wood. Look at it too long and your eyes water.
At night, the forest glows. The trees absorbed sunlight during the day; now they release it slowly, casting everything in a pale, wavering luminescence. It's beautiful. It's deeply unnatural.
The Fae Population
The Glass Forest teems with fae creatures—sprites, pixies, dryads, and things without names. They emerged when the Apparatus of Severance failed beneath Elderran and Melera's caged song tore loose across Old Tolaria, born where that first wave of loosed Faesong washed over the living forest and collided with the region's wild magic.
Some fae are friendly, or at least not hostile. They'll bargain, play, share information that might or might not be true. Others are dangerous: hungry spirits, tricksters who find human suffering hilarious, predators who've learned that two-legged creatures are slow and soft.
Travelers who enter the Glass Forest learn quickly that every interaction is a negotiation. What does the fae want? What are you willing to give? Can you trust the answer? Usually no, but sometimes yes, and the uncertainty is part of the danger.
The Awakened Trees
Deep in the Glass Forest, the trees themselves are aware. They don't move constantly—most of the time they're indistinguishable from ordinary (if strange-looking) trees. But they think, in whatever slow way trees think. They remember who passes. Some of them communicate, after a fashion.
The oldest awakened trees have been conscious since the cataclysm. They witnessed the fall of Tolaria, absorbed the wild magic, and became something new. What they want, if they want anything, is unclear. They seem content to grow, watch, and occasionally interact with the creatures that wander through their forest.
Occasionally, a tree decides to move. This is terrifying. A tree that was rooted in one spot for decades suddenly isn't, and it goes wherever it wants, root-walking across the forest floor. The goblins of the nearby plains have stories about walking trees; they're not exaggerations.
The Forest Edge
The Glass Forest's eastern edge borders the goblin plains. The Scalawag broods know better than to enter the forest. Things come out that shouldn't exist, and goblins who go in rarely return unchanged, if they return at all.
The western edge approaches Eloesi. The Eloweir maintain watch stations along this border, monitoring for anything that wanders out. Most emergences are harmless—confused fae, awakened animals, the occasional talking plant. Some aren't.
The Glass Forest is the busiest stretch of the whole cordon for a simple reason: it is the one passable edge of Old Tolaria, so the great share of what escapes the ruins funnels out through here rather than through the impassable interior border. The Eloweir watch stations are the western anchor of the line the Innerrim states maintain to catch what leaks, and they carry a load out of proportion to their number. What dies elsewhere in a slow trickle arrives at the forest's western edge in a steady stream.
Travel Through
Nobody travels through the Glass Forest by choice. The forest interior is dangerous, disorienting, and unpredictable. Paths shift. Landmarks move. The fae might help you or lead you deeper into the wilderness for their own amusement.
Those who must pass through (treasure hunters bound for Old Tolaria's ruins, scholars seeking magical knowledge, fools seeking both) hire guides from Krakersport in Eloesi. These guides know the relatively safe routes and the signs that indicate danger. Their survival rate is better than going alone, though "better" is relative.
What Emerges
The Glass Forest regularly produces strange things. Fae creatures that decide to explore the outside world. Animals that ate magic-saturated food and became something else. Plants that learned to move. Occasionally, something from deeper in Old Tolaria that wandered out through the forest.
The Eloweir deal with emergences pragmatically. If it's harmless, they let it go. If it's dangerous, they destroy it. If they can't destroy it, they contain it or chase it back into the forest. The system works well enough that Eloesi has survived centuries sharing a border with wild magic.
The same passability that makes the Glass Forest the cordon's busiest stretch makes it the smugglers' road. The route runs both ways. Treasure hunters carry Tolarian relics out through the forest, and some of the guides hired in Krakersport make more from what they bring back than from the herbalists they escort in: a focus-stone, a sealed Tolarian text, now and then a rift-beast caged alive for a buyer who wants one. The Eloweir know the trade exists and catch what they can of it, but their stations were built to stop monsters wandering into Eloesi, not men walking out with their pockets full, and the two jobs do not use the same eyes.