Wandering Woods
A dungeon crawling location for very high-level adventurers
The Adventurers' Guild cautions all travelers passing through forest regions in Niere to sharpen their survivalist skills. The message is clear: avoid contact with any and all misplaced flora, such as trees from a temperate forest found in a tundra region. This discrepancy in the environment that exceeds nature’s power to adapt signals the presence of a peripatetic nightmare known as the Wandering Woods. Travelers don’t stumble upon this forest of their own volition. They find themselves trapped inside it after an irresistible desire to venture further consumes them. Thus the Guild recommendation to avoid camping near uncharted forest regions without the aid of a local guide; yesterday’s simple forest may dawn the next day as an alluring deathtrap, for such is the nature of this strange dwimmer.
Example Adventures
The Wandering Woods is a dungeon crawling location designed for very high-level adventurers. It’s a great place for the GM to run scenarios focused on exploration, puzzle-solving, and survival, allowing players to test their wits against a maze full of challenges and interesting discoveries:
- Survive an ever-shifting maze and liberate what’s hidden at the center.
- Claim new items and enchantments from ancient runes, secret stashes, and monster parts.
- Test your wits against traps, puzzles, and the curses derived from bittersweet fairy tale.
The Legend of the Wandering Woods
—Tales of the Emerald East, author unknownA long time ago, in a beautiful kingdom in the Emerald of the East,
a young royal elf fell sick with a malady that no one could resist.
Confined in her chambers and claimed by the rot,
she summoned her sibling, the bravest of the lot.A knight through and through to travel and endure, and later return with a promised cure.
Yet the cure was not her wish, for fair judgment was amiss, and the knight’s company? Her true bliss!“Fear not,” said the knight, “for in dreams we shall meet,
and you won’t feel any fright up on the back of my steed.
I will travel high and low, to the past and the unknown,
and my stories you’ll hear until tired you have grown.So hold off the cries, and the maladies, and the grave
until the day we meet again in the land of the awake.”Yet the knight never returned, unbeknownst to the royal dreamer,
and the kingdom fell soon after, losing all remaining glimmer.
But the dreamer kept on dreaming, with a will never to subside,
for what makes our dreams most precious if not some lovely lies?
Issue #5 of Drintera Magazine. It's also included in the Volume 1 bundle.
