Wildlands

People talked, in hushed voices as though speaking about the forest would attract it, about how terrible and dangerous the Wildlands were, but thus far all that met his senses was that untamed beauty, nature doing what it wanted with no regard for human hands trying to train it into predetermined shapes.
"Is that why they fear you?" he asked out loud, as though addressing the canopy above. "Because they can't tame you?" Sure, maybe the woods had magic, something the City meticulously shunned, but the traveling traders spoke of magic in their homelands, too, without any of the fear the people of the City had for the Wildlands. Far more magical, then, seemed the unbridled growth that surrounded him. More shades of green and brown than he'd ever seen at once within the City's stark white Walls, turning almost golden where the sun kissed the vegetation.

There is no doubt that the Wildlands are dangerous. What many generations ago was an ordinary forest, home to beasts as ordinary as anything in the country, has gradually changed into the home of both plants and wildlife that could easily bring about the untimely death of the unaware. That doesn't mean that what people, and especially the people of the White City, say about it is necessarily true. The ground won't open up to swallow you (mostly). The trees do not drip with poison (mostly). Small children aren't the favored prey of any of its wildlife. It is a terrible place, but hardly ever in the ways it is spoken about by anyone but those who have spent significant time under its canopy, and even they are sometimes surprised.

Ecosystem

What looks like a forest - albeit a strange, twisted one - to the naked eye would look like a frequently-agitated floodplain to someone whose primary visual sense perceives magic rather than physical bodies and color. The magical energy that would otherwise have flowed through the White City has been dammed up by the construction of the Wall and the warding web of chains spread above the City's streets and houses, and the effects have created abnormally high concentrations in magic in an area without sufficient naturally occurring conduits to dissipate it. The high concentration of magic has irreversibly altered the very nature of much of the flora and fauna once found in the woods, some to the point of no longer being recognizable for what they once were.
The involvement of raw, wild magical energy in the unintentionally accelerated evolution of the ecosystem over the last 200-some years has resulted in a number of creatures that might seem improbable at a glance, but which appear to nevertheless have found their niche in the ever-changing forest. Prey species from the Wildlands, unless they possess strong natural defenses or are otherwise undesirable to predators, tend to be skittish, and often specialize in moving quietly through the undergrowth as to not attract the attention of predators.

Localized Phenomena

The Wildlands are the only known location where magic will, at times, congeal into tangible form and collect in small ponds, rainbowescent in color and glowing eerily, killing most that it touches through the sheer concentration of magical power it contains. Aside from the few creatures that can bear its touch unchanged, nothing alive and ambulatory in the forest would voluntarily approach one of these pools of magic. As dangerous as they are undisturbed by wind or weather, they are that much more lethal when rain starts to fall, leading the surface to jump and sputter at the contact with water much like the effect of adding water to an acid.
A less immediate potential threat is the accelerated evolution of life within the magically oversaturated forest. Even those Wildlanders who regularly venture into the forest don't know all of its secrets, nor all of its denizens, and even if they did, that would not be the case for long. The intelligence of wildlife, and particularly predatory beasts, is generally higher than that of creatures occupying similar ecological niches in natural forests; this seems to be a side effect of their evolution being fueled partly by magic.

Fauna & Flora

Most of the notable creatures and plants of the forest after it in earnest started to become the Wildlands known today have simple, descriptive names, little more than monikers for the Wildlanders to discuss the creatures amongst themselves. Similarly, most of the things that have received such names are either useful, dangerous, or both.

Bone Eaters

Generally peaceful scavengers that spend most of their lives submerged in the forest's wetlands, waiting for some unlucky creature to succumb to the water's muddy grip. Produce a material resembling pearl or ivory, that sees use as ornamentation by the wealthy.

Carrion Shrike

Insectivorous bird that sets out bait for its favored prey: carrion-feeding insects. Found neither around the edges nor in the heart of the Wildlands, but in between, and shies away from well-traveled trails.

History

Named for the supposed presence of a black stag standing an easy seven foot at the shoulder, Blackstag Forest was once a treasured hunting grounds for both commoner and highborn citizens of the local city-state whose lands then included the woods. Local children would venture out under the watchful eye of an older cousin, sister, or other relative to search for sheds in fall, hoping they might be the one to prove the presence of the stag of local lore by finding one of his no doubt massive antlers.
Already with the erection of the Walls around The White City, the flow of magic in the area was disturbed. As the City was further cleansed of magic, and the flow of magic impeded further and further until it was completely dammed up, it started to accumulate, permeating the area around the City, at first uniformly, but soon collecting particularly densely within Blackstag Forest, where the rich plant- and animal life offered more purchase than the Whitestone-peppered foothills of the mountains or the flats that flooded with yearly snow melt from those same mountains.
As reports of twisted wildlife started coming in, children were kept closer to the trade road and the Walls, not permitted to venture as far into the woods as they once had in their search for nature's treasure. When woodsmen returned from the forest changed and were denied passage into the City on the grounds of their clearly magical transformation, parents would no longer permit their children outside the Gates at all. The number of hunters, trappers, and foragers in the City fell sharply. Without woodsmen or children to keep the tale alive, the old stories of the black stag, king of Blackstag Forest, faded from memory, to be replaced by cautionary tales of the Wildlands' horrors.

Alternative Name(s)

Blackstag Forest (deprecated)

Type

Forest

Inhabiting Species

• Bone Eater
• Carrion Shrike