Sunflower Forest

The **Sunflower Forest** is a vast plain dotted with gigantic, towering sunflowers. The sunflowers exude a pleasant aroma and anyone who manages to climb such a giant flower to get the tasty and nutritious seeds will be greatly rewarded for their efforts. A single one of these seeds can satisfy a full grown man's hunger and nutritional needs for a month. Gigantic but friendly bees also circle above the sunflower forest, which can be ridden for a while if you scratch them behind their antennae. The forest is inhabited by a few tribes of mysterious dryads who are open to strangers but defend their forest valiantly against loggers.

When crossing the woods, you should be particularly careful of the **Blind Sunflower Knight**. This is the armor of a former robber baron who fell fighting a rival in Sunflower Forest. When his last bone had crumbled to dust, the armor was taken over by a rare species of thinking sunflowers, who now control him. However, his blind lust for revenge against his rival seems to have been preserved in the armor, which is why he now wanders through these idyllic forests in search of his killer and challenges everyone to a duel until the shame of his defeat is atoned for.

## History

It was a time long past that the mighty Forest of the Sunflowers did extend its bounds, from the Great Hedge in the East to the Evergreen Pastures and the Land of the Windmills in the South and North respectively. There the towering sunflowers and the gentle sunflower dryads, guardians of the trees, flourished and basked in the sun's light.

In the early days, the first humans, gnomes, elves and hobbits who encountered this land were welcomed by the dryads, though they found no use in the sunflowers (finding them inedible) and so, no settlements were built there. Yet it was not long before the discovery of the wondrous properties of the sunflower seeds, for one gnome named Percival Kleinheisler ate of them and found he no longer needed sustenance. Word spread, and soon the races of Northwestern Giantstep flocked to the forest to harvest the seeds for their own use.

It a few hundred years later on that the wonderous properties of the sunflowers' seeds were discovered accidentally, by a gnome known as Percival Kleinheisler. Seeing how upon eating one of these seeds Percival no longer needed to eat in order to sustain himself, he made sure to tell his countrymen, and the word quickly spread around in Northwestern giantstep.

But their hunger was not satiated, and their greed took hold, so they began to cut down the sunflowers to grow the seeds in their own lands. Thus, war broke out between the dryads and the other races, and the latter were defeated, the forest losing much of its vast expanse. But their victory proved to be in vain, for they found that the sunflowers could only grow with the aid of a rare species of bee that was now near extinction and could only be found in the sunflower forest.

### The Blind Sunflower Knight

The large scale logging stopped, but the mass harvesting of the sunflower seeds drained the forest of its resource (as the sunflower dryads did not attack those that just harvested the seeds, welcoming them instead), and soon more and more of the woodland perished. But then there came a human knight, his name lost to the ages, who stood against a raiding party that sought to loot the forest. He fought and slew many of them, but fell in a duel with their leader. Yet even in death, the sunflowers had a plan, for they took over the knight's armor and it became alive.

   Thus was born the Blind Sunflower Knight, who still roams the forest to this day, guarding it against those who would harvest the seeds or harm the sunflowers. Tales of terror have been spun of this living armor, and few dare to venture into the forest now. Yet still, the edges of the forest are exposed, and the seeds are harvested, causing the forest to continuously shrink near its borders, which have been growing sparser and sparser with sunflower trees.

Only in the area directly to the South of the Splinter Pass does the forest retain its former glory, with sunflowers and dryads and giant bees still in abundance. Yet even there and beyond, the Blind Sunflower Knight patrols, seeking out those who would harm the forest, the image of the rival that slew him stlll fond in his memory. Scholars presume that, if no efforts are not made to preserve the forest even more, it may shrink down to a tiny area just below the Splinter Pass, and the Forest of the Sunflowers will become but a memory.

The scarcity of the sunflower seeds and the daring of those who smuggle them into the markets of the world has caused the price to soar tenfold. Many a noble from Zapalovah, Azan, and even from the distant land of Scimitaria will readily spend entire fortunes to obtain this rare and wondrous delicacy that is able to keep them satiated for months at a time.