Fried Forest

Geography

West of the Sotrocho Forest is a saturnine woodland of skeletal, ashen cedars that were once as alive ad their eastern cousins. A grey shroud of smoky mist permanently looms over it, where pale bats and moths flutter about and hang from the burnt trees. Absolutely useless are these worthless woods, for no phlogiston lies within, and the timber collapses with a single tug or push. The enormous earwigs and horse-sized wasps of the hostile, tar-stinking Sotrocho avoid this pallid, lifeless place, as do the hardy Tragemnortéan rangers and frontiersmen that dwell in the hardy outposts wrought of generously applicated mortared boulders.

Fauna & Flora

Seldom are these dismal woods trod into, for all who draw near to this place are struck with great feelings of dread and melancholy beneath the low cloud of simmering ash that hovers a fathom above the treetops. The entire woodland looks the same and no bush or shrub ever grows in the sandy soil. Not a single creature roams here, save for the great cadaverous worms that lurk beneath and carve tunnels in the white earth, whose rumbling and squirming can be heard from the surface. It is rumoured that ghouls are skeletons lurk in this forest, hidden by the thickest and blackest billowing tongues of smoke.
Most unsettling is the horrible, disturbingly manlike breathing noise that seems to ring from deep beneath - as if the ground is some kind of malignant entity. At night this breathing amplifies into great haunting laughter that echoes throughout the forest. The earth from whence comes the great laughter has been reluctantly dug, only for the holes to refill themselves some few hours later. The most believed answer for this phenomenon is that the Fried Forest is the living manifestation of the awful will of some kind of malevolent spirit or even divinity, that which has been dubbed "That which laughs from below". He is oft credited in folklore for lighting the great magenta conflagration that burned the Fried Forest into being some century ago.

Natural Resources

On the rare occasion when someone valiantly dares to enter such a dismal and lifeless mockery of a forest, it is usually a curious hedge wizard or freelance alchemist of sorts who sees the phlogiston-barren nature of the Fried Forest as a suitable condition for a magical experiment to develop a new thaumaturgical spell, formula or ritual that is sensitive to these kinds of variables. The promise of arcane knowledge and power is surely a potent catalyst for adventure. Although many seek this place to perform experiments and craft magical items, not a single hermit in history has ever made this locale their enclave.

Type

Forest, Boreal (Coniferous)

Location under

Sotrocho

Owning Organization

Federation of Frastland