The Infinite Forest
None will ever know if the Infinite Forest is actually infinite. Many have tried to reach the edge of these woods, but none could truly claim to have found it. Some were lost and never returned; others came back swearing that they’d walked for weeks, never finding the center of the woods or reaching the other side.
The Infinite Forest is a shard of the Beyond, a fragment of paradisiac wilderness once part of the High Heavens. The major magical distortion of this realm is that space is compressed more and more as you venture inside the woods. The diameter of the forest is exactly seventy miles across when measured from the outside, but it is hundreds or thousands of miles long when measured from the inside, possibly even endless.
Flying above the forest, as many wizards have over the centuries, it will appear largely unremarkable. A closer look, however, will reveal that the closer you move towards the center, the slimmer and denser the trees become. The center is an impenetrable canopy and if you attempt to land there, the forest will appear to expand and become less dense, with trees gaining thickness and branches spreading outward. Every point of reference you would have had outside will appear further and further away, vanishing over the horizon. And, once you touch the ground, all will appear normal (more or less).
The Forest’s border hosts several settlements of various species of beastfolk, all utilizing the resources of the region as lumberjacks, hunters, and foragers. These laborers will venture into the forest for about twenty miles, more or less a day’s walk. Up to this twenty-mile mark, one can find marked paths, shacks, small temples, and seasonal encampments. It’s still a forest, with all the challenges and dangers that implies, but still a normal forest. Perhaps a forest where it’s easier than normal to get lost and where the local fauna and flora are a little peculiar, but nothing too weird.
Several species of plants and animals are entirely endemic to the Infinite Woods. Fur trappers make good money in the border towns near the Woods. Many families harvest berries to make liquors and sweets. The most valued commodity of the forest is the dark wood of the Fathom Oak, which is used to construct boxes and furniture that are bigger on the inside.
Moving beyond the day’s-walk radius, things become unsettling. Any two recognizable landmarks (such as trees) very near each other might at a second glance shift yards apart instead of merely steps. Walking backwards might lead a traveler somewhere they weren’t before, even directly retracing their steps onto the footprints they’d just left.
The deeper into the forest, the more drastic this effect becomes- a view between some branches could be different between others of the same tree; deer might seem to disappear and reappear yards away as soon as they pass in front of a trunk; landmarks left behind will reappear ahead.
After many surveys, theories and experiments, experts have concluded that this spatial distortion is not caused by the ground or atmospheric conditions of the forest, but by the interaction between the plants (especially trees) and the soil. Clearings and patches of grass, for example, generally lack major spatial distortions, whilst dense groves are distorted to the point of being nearly unnavigable.
Settlers on the border of the forest have invented many methods of navigation in the Forest- tree carvings, miles-long threads of resilient silk, glowing pebbles… but the deeper into the forest one goes, the more unreliable these methods become.
It’s unclear if the distortion of the forest contains an actually infinite space or just an exceedingly large one. The hypothesis of actual infinite space, while intriguing, seems unlikely- for example, all travelers report normal luminosity in their excursions, which implies that the Sun is able to illuminate the entirety of the space and it is therefore not infinite. Similarly, it is believed that the mana field is finite but it doesn’t seem to rarefy in the depths. The current theory states that the geometry of the Infinite Forest occasionally loops back on itself, a phenomenon which is not noticed by the casual observer due to the fact that the same space in the Forest will possess different spatial properties from different angles of observation. A traveler may appear to move forward in a straight line, but they would in fact be repeatedly entering and exiting the same region of space from different angles.
This spatial phenomenon has warped nature itself within the forest. Living beings here tend to develop fractally repetitive structures: the antlers of a stag could loop in on themselves, forking mathematically outward; a duck might lay an egg with an egg inside, and that egg will have another egg inside, and so on; and even the simplest flowers may bloom in cascading inflorescences under the forest’s influence. So, too, are the local sapient population affected- new hair will develop split ends that will themselves split over and over again; the edge of a chewed fingernail will start resembling a series of miniature replicas of itself; even scars will branch and loop into themselves, infinitely repeating.
The most egregious examples of this self-similar growth are the hydra. Occasionally an animal living in or even near the Forest will give birth to an aberration- a series of conjoined twins, each smaller than the other. Almost none of these creatures survive more than a few days, but there are exceptions. Some large snakes, for example, can survive with this grotesque physiology- and even thrive, becoming massive predators with many mouths to feed.
Unfortunately for the people living near the forest, their own children are not immune to the process of “hydrasis”. Twins are unusually common in the area, and conjoined twins, while still rare, are not as exceptional as elsewhere. Furthermore, once every seventh year (or so goes the folklore), a sapient hydra will be born to parents living in a Forest settlement. Usually, the town comes together to aid the family struck by such a cruel yet wondrous twist of fate.
These children, the bazmaki (multiplicitous), if cared for by the best physicians and healers in the land, may survive for five or six years before inevitably succumbing to their gruesome condition. During this time they will be visited by pilgrims venturing into the depths of the Forest, seeking oracular advice from these mystically touched children. The children will in response provide a few vague and cryptic phrases, perhaps provided by their supernatural connection to the forest- or perhaps fed to them by their parents, looking for offerings to cover the medical expenses.
When a bazmaki is born some people will move there, seeing it as a good omen. Others, more than the first, will instead move away: the birth of such a deformity is a sign that the influence of the forest has run deep in the blood, and it’s time to change the air.
