Ebonwoods
The Ebonwoods is a vast, foreboding forest that stretches across Gloomshire, its towering trees forming an oppressive canopy that swallows the light. Once a place of ancient druidic power, the woods have long since fallen into shadow, corrupted by an unnatural force that seeps through its roots and branches.
The trees, gnarled and twisted, exude an eerie luminescence in the darkness, their bark veined with inky black tendrils that pulse with faint energy.
The Shadow Curse seeps through the roots and soil, allowing the veil between the Material Plane and the Shadowfell to thin. In the less afflicted areas, travelers can ward off the creeping darkness with torches or spells such as Daylight. However, in the deeper reaches, all natural and magical light is extinguished, swallowed by an unnatural gloom. Only those bearing a Moonlantern, or those blessed by a fey with the Pixie’s Blessing, can hope to traverse these lands without succumbing to the abyssal dark.
At the forest’s heart stands the Ebon Oak, a monolithic tree unlike any other. Its massive roots stretch deep into the cursed soil, and from its towering, skeletal branches pours a never-ending mist that spills outward, blanketing the entire region of Gloomshire in a veil of spectral fog. This mist is thickest within the Ebonwoods, obscuring vision and muffling sound, making it easy for travelers to lose their way. Whispers echo through the fog, as if the forest itself breathes and murmurs secrets of its lost past.
Beneath its oppressive canopy, the Ebonwoods is home to horrors unseen elsewhere—shadow-born creatures that lurk just beyond sight, waiting for the foolish or the unwary. It is said that the deeper one ventures, the thinner the veil between realms becomes, where the influence of the Shadowfell bleeds into reality.
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