Shimmering Stone
Deep within a forest in the Barrens an outcropping of stone thrusts into the air, crystalline veins running through it. The crystals catch the light and fill the air around it with veils of shimmering colour. The stone has strange powers and is linked to creation stories by the local people, who name it "the Shimmering Stone".
Magic suffuses the entire forest and there are periodic eruptions of wild magic around the stone which can be immensely dangerous. Time and space can be changed unpredictably in the forest, with a week lost in the space of a single golden autumn afternoon, or a trip through the forest taking days - or mere minutes. The effects grow stronger the nearer one is to the stone itself.
Creatures roam the forest, but generally tend to be less aggressive than one would expect of wild animals. Hunters, however, tend to disappear without trace, as do those who attempt to log the trees. People picking up deadfall wood around the edges for winter fires never report any problems, and in fact winter tends to be shorter and milder around the forest than for the surrounding regions.
The trees surrounding the Shimmering Stone's clearing bear a unique fruit which has enormous health benefits so long as it is not overindulged. Those who attempt to consume too much of the fruit soon find themselves weakened and infirm, or even poisoned. Judicious consumption, however, can relieve chronic pain, heal intractable diseases and stave off the worst effects of aging. It resembles dark purple plums, with fruit and juice the colour of fiery rubies when the smooth skin splits. Every person describes the flavour differently, but every single individual recollects it as tasting "like summer," which earns its name, 'summerfruit'. Summerfruit refuses to take seed anywhere other than the clearing, and withers within days of its removal from the forest. The virtues of the fruit are not widely known beyond the region, as the locals fear it being over-harvested in addition to its inability to travel. Despite this, some of the local youths make good coin venturing into the forest to collect a handful of the summerfruit for visitors who are too wary to venture into the forest themselves. The summerfruit is not as effective if it is not harvested by the person who consumes it, but the effects are strong enough to make it worthwhile anyway.
The creation story includes a rare creature known as a cloudwight, a moving shadow able to envelop unwary individuals and drain the life from them. Cloudwights have not been seen in the forest in generations, but there have been recent reports of travellers within the forest encountering one or more. This is causing panic among the locals, as the story goes that if a cloudwight is able to drain the Shimmering Stone, all life will die.
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