Firth

The forest of **Firth** (Euluska: *estirul ferð,* Old Vrei: *Ferdz pe vecie,* meaning 'Everliving Forest) was a large area of magical woodland in the central Danderillon, the huge land of rolling prairie in the north of the central continent. Firth itself was clustered roughly around a range of great brown mountains, and the woods themselves constituting over 10% of the Danderillon's area.

Firth somehow resisted all attempts to be deforested. Its powers were likely first noted by the native Vreigardt people many tens of thousands of years ago, who immortalised the fact it was entirely evergreen in their name for it. They soon learnt it was not to be toyed with. Vreigardt woodsmen who would leave from their villages (mostly western Erődvreigardts in towns like Kălbuvărk and the Erőd itself) would never return, and it was written off as an ill-fated venture.

When the Rakkimarran Skýndrar raiders landed on the Danderillon, or Ðanland (Green-land) as they called it in the -1700s DR, they too were mesmerised by the woods, heeding the fear of the Vreigardt people. They referred to it by the Rakki-ised name 'Fyrþir'. As few rivers that were accessible from the Tarkas coast (where the Skýndrar landed) passed near Firth (save for the Far Madze and Sęn Madze), they never had reason to investigate further - after all, why would a Skýndir captain take his Skýndrar all the way across Ðanland when his longship thrived in the northeastern rivers? Raiding monasteries is much more fun than chopping down magical trees.

Thousands of years later, in the first few centuries DR when the Lusken Empire began to come north and colonise The Danderillon, they learnt of Firth and its powers from the Vreigardts. Scoffing at this tribal mysticism in true colonial Lusken fashion, they set upon the woods with their iron and their fire. But Firth stood firm, and they soon learnt why the Vreigardts held so much respect for an oversized bit of jungle. A summer of furious slash-and-burn would barely clear enough land for an entire town and its livestock, but by the winter, the settlers would be driven out by nature itself.

The few (and there were very few) settlers who lived to tell the tale would limp back to the nearby towns like Jarrenfăntan would whisper horrific stories. Stories of great falling branches, rabid wolves, lumbering monitor lizards, trampling aurochs, swarming fire ants, uncannilly well-placed lightning strikes, silty sinking foundations, thundering rain, rock-hard lichens, stinging wasps, man-eating plants, virulently spreading mushrooms that hissed out acidic spores, and wood-eating mould. By the next spring, there would be practically no trace that a mark had ever been made, save for the occasional sapling growing out of a mineral-rich person's skeleton here or there.

Firth was separated from the northern mountain range, Auril's Girdle, by Prior's Gap - a two-mile wide pass between the Girdle and Firth, and the only northern route of passage from west to east and vice versa. The next nearest crossing would involve going south around the forest toward where the Danderillon met the Turmish-Nethir highlands, a journey of several hundred miles.

In the year 1502, the Naysayers Adventuring Company confirmed newer theories that the forest was home to a temporal anomaly of some kind, when they rescued a Lusken Empire captain, Don Zaretti, from a giant lizard attack at its fringes, but also ended up wasting a precious day as they fled to Jarren's Well to try to find Dagult Neverember's gold.