Barrenwood
The Barrenwood, also sometimes called the “Forest of Bone,” is located in the Strica Seaboard’s Warnach Mountains. It’s perhaps the most inhospitable region in Kima, consisting of a vast forest of dead, petrified trees. Scholars have spent decades puzzling over how the Barrenwood and the Warnach Mountains came to be the way they are –– black, draining, and devoid of life. Most have come to the conclusion that it is caused by the abundance of aleksium found in the mountains and ground. Aleksium can be found all over Kima, but it is most plentiful in Strica. This metal is formed when an area is rapidly drained of all its mojy. This sudden absence of magic renders that place more than dead –– it appears to make it eternally barren.
According to what remains of the Ancients’ records, they were wiped out in a war with the dragons. All that remains of their capital city, once located in the Barrenwood, is the Warnach Ruins. The sprawling settlement was the first location to be wiped off the map during the war. So much magic was sucked from the earth –– by both sides –– that it ruined the entire region.
Superstition permeates the Barrenwood. Travelers have claimed to see spirits –– sometimes their loved ones, sometimes vengeful ghosts, and sometimes even whispers of the Ancients. None of this has been confirmed. In fact, scholars believe that such phenomena would be impossible in the Barrenwood due to the lack of magic. Life there is unable to form or survive. No sound but the whistling of the wind through the tree branches and mountainous caverns can be heard. The actively draining presence of the aleksium renders travelers weary more quickly than normal. One could easily go mad if too much time is spent out there. It is a land frozen in an older time.
“If we’re right, and the Barrenwood was once the site of the Ačkan capital…Destruction on that kind of scale is without equal. I cannot fathom what would happen should the dragons ever decide we’re as much of a nuisance as our predecessors were. The Forest of Bone and the Black Mountains would engulf the entire continent.” –– Cheman scholar
