The Forest That Is a Mountain

Content Advisory

This horror setting explores dark themes including but not limited to child abuse, transformation horror, identity death, and chronic pain. This setting will never include sexual content of any kind.

  There are many worlds, and many hells to feed off of them. Named for the shape of its vast canopy, The Forest That is a Mountain is a special hell for forgotten children.   The presence or absence of sin doesn't matter; as long as someone or something is not held in the conscious thoughts of others, even if it's just for a moment, they are up for grabs and can be Pilfered away. The Fathers--paper-mache demons with large round eyes of black glass--might stalk a neglected child for some time, waiting for the instant he can snatch his victim. He takes them back to the Wolf Matron--a house-sized demonic wolf-- and makes them drink from one of her thousand teats. The Wolf Matron's milk contains every poison imaginable, and only one of every thousand will be lucky (or "lucky") enough to come away changed, but not dead. They lose their names, become bound to a Numbered Fate, and are counted among the Wolf Matron's Thousand Pilfered Young.   Numbered Fates are assigned in order and cannot be changed except through death. If a member of the Thousand Pilfered Young dies, their Numbered Fate must be reassigned to a new child, starting with the lowest number available. Because the Forest That Is a Mountain is ruled by exact words, each of the Pilfered Young will stop growing before they can be mistaken for an adult by anyone familiar with their species. When the Thousandth of the Wolf Matron's Thousand Pilfered Young is made, and every single one of them is physically assembled before her, the Wolf Matron dies. Every member of her Thousand Pilfered Young is transmogrified into the kind of demon corresponding to their Numbered Fate, and a new Wolf Matron bursts from the lower abdomen of the old, made completely of her predescessor's tissues and leaving behind only the bones and pelt. The split in the old Wolf Matron's skin is examined to augur the luck of the next cycle, and then two rituals are performed:   The new Bone Weaver (formerly the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth of the Wolf Matron's Thousand Pilfered Young) fashions the old Wolf Matron's bones and pelt into a sapling, which the new Father (formerly the Thousandth) takes to the edge of the Forest. He plants it just short of where space stops being and breathes his own life into it, wholly dedicating his now-undead existence to serving the Wolf Matron and her purpose: Collect a Thousand Pilfered Young and complete the next growth cycle. Five hundred of the thousand new demons exist to serve that purpose one way or another, but the Fathers are the closest and most unwavering of them all.   At the same time, the new Thousand Names (formerly the First) takes up his (or, more rarely, her) personal Dark Implement (formerly the Second) and begins to hunt down his own predecessor from the previous cycle. Unlike the Wolf Matron, the old Thousand Names is a traitor in his final moments and struggles against his fate to die, but that is exactly what lets the new one murder him. The new Thousand Names consumes his predecessor in both body and soul, and his own identity is consumed in turn: The consumption of any willful soul or soul fragment forcibly integrates that will into the diner's own, and, even if he dined on souls as the First, the soul of the new Thousand Names is small compared to the Frankenstienian colossus of the old.   The Thousand Names, new but not, replaced but not, is filled with the unshakable convictions that he has just become the perfect being and that the Forest That Is a Mountain has just reached perfection with the number of Trees it now has. He will spend the entire cycle focused purely on bringing in souls, suffering, and servants from other worlds to upkeep the Forest That Is a Mountain in the state it's already in. To this end, five hundred of the new demons join the ranks of his pawns. (One demon, a Lament, serves both.)