The Trembling Timbers

The Trembling Timbers are a part of a forest that covers big parts of the south of Hyranor. This specific part is very close to the town of Winster, and is notorious for being incredibly dangerous. It is an important location for Arc 4.

## Description

The Trembling Timbers are directly next to the town of Winster. They are known to be dangerous, and very often, people who enter them don't come back. It is taught from a young age to children that they should not go there, and there are a lot of ghost stories about them.

**Official Description upon entering the woods (Arc 3, Episode 3):** "There are no paths in these woods, there is no trail. There are certainly places where you can put your feet to move forward, but this isn't really a place that is meant for a whole lot of foot traffic or travel. [...] Very quickly after you set foot into these woods, it's as if Winster doesn't exist anymore. There are tall trees that surround you an all sides, there are dried leaves and twigs and thorns that snap under your feet as you progress forward. As you make your way into this wood, all of you notice the smell. Pretty soon into these woods, it does not smell very good, there is some sort of stink, or some sort of odor. But Russ [*AN: Russ is a Paladin*], to you in particular, this is something particularly fowl. You feel this sense deep inside of your chest. Every inhale you take, every whiff of air around you, you get the sense of something... rotten. Something wrong. Something that goes against everything that you know, everything that you have learnt, everything that makes you who you are."

The smell in this forest is the smell of death, and especially for Russ, it feels very wrong to be there. As the group progresses, they encounter a few peculiar animals: First, they find a frog sitting hunched over on a plant. Instead of running away when Russ throws a stick in its direction, it turns around, and its eyes are sunken into its face, it's got a trickle of blood coming out of its mouth, and behind it is an opened up carcass of another frog that it was eating. Next, they find some normal looking squirrels trying to find nuts in a tree, but at one point, both of them stop and dash off in a direction, seemingly towards something. Finally, they see an elk in a clearing of trees. The elk is missing half its face, covered in burn marks, and one of its antlers is snapped of. It moans, and then heads off into the trees.

There is also a part of the forest where suddenly, it feels as if the ground was trying to swallow people. If they were to stand still there for too long, they might start to sink in.

Hidden in the forest is a pit with an old orbula field.

**Official Description of the Pit (Arc 4 Episode 3):** "There is a little bit of a hill, and you [Russ] go up this hill, knowing that what you see over this hill is the thing that your sense is leading you towards. You clear away the last bit of rambles to see what looks to be almost like a giant bowl or a pit or something in the ground, and you see a large, sunken in patch of this forest in a circle. You see that etched into like overgrown and withered away etchings, there are runes that are inscribed all across, all interconnected, that lead down slopes in towards the centre."

## Notable Inhabitants

* Cannibalistic undead frog
* Squirrels
* Undead Elk
* Zombie Wrangler

## Notable Visitors

* Ace
* Aster
* Ialius
* Thymore Flameskulls
* Quinn
* Russ