The Weeping Wood of Falade

For decades, there have been rumours about the forest near Falade, in Llyn (one of the Four Regions of Adhonaglamar). Some say it's an old wives' tale, others swear on their unborn child they've witnessed it themselves. No one has ever been able to really prove them right or wrong. Though it is a fact that strange things have happened in the forest...

The legend

It all began after the famine of 975, during which many villages were decimated. Especially the young children suffered during that famine. In Falade, the devastation to the population was so immense that two entire new cemeteries had to be built. One of them, the one on the edge of Falade Forest, was a children's cemetery.

During the famine, exactly 44 children were interred there. Forty-four, a sacred number in Adhonaglamar. And one often intertwined with myth and legend.
In the spring after the famine, people started saying they heard strange voices when passing through the forest. Many reported it sounded like weeping, the weeping of children. Not everyone who entered the forest seemed to hear them, so in the beginning the ones who claimed to hear things were ridiculed.
Yet month after month, other people, both from the village and others passing through, began claiming they could hear the weeping. After a while, everyone in the area knew the rumours. Some started avoiding the forest...

A year after the forty-fourth child had been buried in the cemetery, a storm passed over Falade. Hard winds swept through the streets, flinging open shutters and doors, rocking the trees, and tearing away their leaves. People huddled close together inside their huts for safety, while all around them the wind howled. Suddenly, the noise of the wind changed. Where at first it was a brutal cacophony of sound, it became uniform. The only sounds left were high-pitched wailing and weeping, as if multiple children’s voices cried out together. The sound was deafening and chilled the villagers to the bone.

After the storm passed, the villagers emerged from their huts. The streets were a mess; anything that wasn't tied down had been swept up by the wind. But it was not this devastation that shocked the villagers. It was the fact that in the cemetery at the edge of Falade Forest, forty-four candles burnt brightly on each grave. The cemetery itself was untouched by the storm; while all about broken branches and debris were strewn, the cemetery itself was empty and clear. They could see nothing but the grave markers, some flowers and the forty-four candles which burned bright orange against the dark gloom of the forest.

After that, no one would enter the forest anymore, nor enter the cemetery. A few weeks after the storm, a few brave youngsters went in against the will of their parents. They never came out.
The candles, it is said, kept burning for forty-four days and forty-four nights; much longer than any candle could naturally burn. By then everyone in the village was convinced that the souls of those poor children haunted the forest, having been unable to find peace after such a horrible death.

Aftermath

What had happened at Falade began to spread within Llyn. Some agreed the forest was haunted; others simply shrugged it off as an old wives' tale. Yet no one would risk passing through the Weeping Wood, if only because the roads had gotten into disrepair after being unused for so long. Wolves could often be seen at the edge of the forest, having reclaimed a territory without humans. So it was safer to go around, even if you didn't believe in the legend.


Is Falade Forest truly haunted? Did the villagers imagine the sounds during the storm? Did some prankster keep changing the candles on the graves? Did the youngsters who entered the forest meet a much more mundane fate, like a wolf's stomach? After so many years, it is impossible to find out. Yet known this traveller: if you ever pass through Falade, you better steer clear of the Weeping Wood!