The Rotwood
"Of course no one knows for sure what's actually there, you'd be daft and stupid to go there. No one's been that foolish since the last group of would be Exemplari tried it near five decades ago. Only one of 'em made it back and they was deathly ill with fever and necrosis, dying within two days. So excuse me if I'm content to trust the last record of Matteo Hornsfel, the man was and is a well known explorer and cartographer tied to the church of Feyheart. So you'll have to forgive me if I'm willing to take his words at face value and not want to go anywhere near the mainland, much less go looking for the damned place!"
Captain Leon Vanderfilt to some want-to-be Exemplari calling themselves the Port Renis Renegades whom he was providing passage to Port Smokeside, when they asked if he'd be willing to take them to the mainland as close as he could to The Rotwood.
Geography
The ground squelches beneath your feet, the muck loose. Each time you trudge forward, the scent assaults you directly, as if pulling your foot free from the muck releases something rotting below directly into the air and into your nostrils. The sickly sweet aroma, cloying, almost choking, of putrefaction. All around you the smell lingers even if you stop moving but every time you stride it is almost as if some unseen rotting matter under foot ruptured and sprayed....you dare not think about it actually and try to force the thought down, utterly revolted.
Around you one could almost be forgiven at first for believing that it was some sort of strange and whimsical sight. The various fungi and mushrooms that tower in this land of decay display a litany, an array, a full palette of colors. They grow like trees, with smaller flowering ones dominating the undergrowth all around. However in being trapped here now for three days you know better. You know that vibrancy is a warning and you avoid it. Your leg still hurts and is likely infected with...something, from your first night when you wandered to close to one of the tall orange tree like mushrooms, trying to climb its dangling purple and light grey 'branchings' to get height and scan your surroundings. One of those branchings coiled around your leg, barbed protrusions hooking and tearing flesh free, pulling the bloody meat into the trunk where the stalk of the mushroom rapidly grew around the meat partially, a thick and green foul smelling liquid spewing forth and melting the flesh into goop that was swiftly pulled into the muddy soil, presumably by the mushroom's root system.
Even now, your leg was dark, and the smell from it, you knew deep down you'd have to lose the leg soon. However first you needed to get away from this place, to find at the very least real trees. You turn suddenly, hearing squelching far to loud to be your human footsteps. It is getting dark, yet you think you see a hulking shape in the distance, through the haze and mushroom stalks. You cannot know from this distance if it is the master of this domain, the unholy beast, the corrupted creature of myth that your companions fell to. You need rest, you need to patch up your leg, or at least attempt it. Maybe you have some clean cloths or bandages in your pack, or perhaps....did you grab Alexandra's pack, you cannot remember. She'd had your medical supplies and been carrying your group's healing elixirs.
Then again, that close to that thing? Within the sphere of influence directly of an ancient Amethyst Tane if any of the legends and theories were true about what sorts of affects such creatures might have had on their environments and areas around them, those elixirs would have been worthless anyway. Though it hadn't even been a fight. The only reason you are alive is because you'd hung back, ready to join battle with your rifle, the rifle you ditched long ago because you simply are too exhausted to keep carrying it all. With naught but a pistol you certainly would be an afterthought if that...entity decided you were worth chasing. You cannot believe for a second, not with all you've experienced in your short time here, or in the disturbing way that creature.....talked to you all, introduced itself, that it did not know you were there.
You perk up, hearing other noises ahead of you, noises you've heard before as night fell. A sound that chills you and is yet becoming uncomfortably familiar. The shriek-scream calls of a Necray pack on the hunt. You had seen trees off in the distance but a few hours ago, you must be close. However that noise means a pack is hunting the land of the living. They are ahead of you, which means you might have to go through them. You check your belt pouch and revolver. Only ten shots, and then you'll be left with naught but a hatchet. Yet you have no choice, you need to get out of this swamp, this place hungers for anything with a pulse, and it will not rest until you are but a rotting pile of flesh. Such is the will of its master, that thing, the name you dare not utter within the mushrooms, as if you might summon the terror to you. Dekay'virulis
The stories had been worse than true. They'd been undertold. The Tyrant of Decay was all to real, and you cannot help but remember Alexandra's last words to you, to your group.
Foolish. Foolish it was. "Matteo if you survive this, you need to warn people. You need to insure what you've experienced is documented." you hear your own cracked voice, pained, husky, feverish, but with resolve. You take up your revolver and hatchet, and limp forward towards freedom.....or towards the sweet release of death.
Inserting a bit of GMing from games in my world, this happened to one of my groups, and is now canonized in the world's lore, and so this is the transcript of my part of the back and forth with Matteo, I've left out their internal monologues and all the game mechanic conversations, dice checks etc, however thought I'd include this because I have it and because it is enshrined in the lore of the world, so its a nice piece for the location article.
Around you one could almost be forgiven at first for believing that it was some sort of strange and whimsical sight. The various fungi and mushrooms that tower in this land of decay display a litany, an array, a full palette of colors. They grow like trees, with smaller flowering ones dominating the undergrowth all around. However in being trapped here now for three days you know better. You know that vibrancy is a warning and you avoid it. Your leg still hurts and is likely infected with...something, from your first night when you wandered to close to one of the tall orange tree like mushrooms, trying to climb its dangling purple and light grey 'branchings' to get height and scan your surroundings. One of those branchings coiled around your leg, barbed protrusions hooking and tearing flesh free, pulling the bloody meat into the trunk where the stalk of the mushroom rapidly grew around the meat partially, a thick and green foul smelling liquid spewing forth and melting the flesh into goop that was swiftly pulled into the muddy soil, presumably by the mushroom's root system.
Even now, your leg was dark, and the smell from it, you knew deep down you'd have to lose the leg soon. However first you needed to get away from this place, to find at the very least real trees. You turn suddenly, hearing squelching far to loud to be your human footsteps. It is getting dark, yet you think you see a hulking shape in the distance, through the haze and mushroom stalks. You cannot know from this distance if it is the master of this domain, the unholy beast, the corrupted creature of myth that your companions fell to. You need rest, you need to patch up your leg, or at least attempt it. Maybe you have some clean cloths or bandages in your pack, or perhaps....did you grab Alexandra's pack, you cannot remember. She'd had your medical supplies and been carrying your group's healing elixirs.
Then again, that close to that thing? Within the sphere of influence directly of an ancient Amethyst Tane if any of the legends and theories were true about what sorts of affects such creatures might have had on their environments and areas around them, those elixirs would have been worthless anyway. Though it hadn't even been a fight. The only reason you are alive is because you'd hung back, ready to join battle with your rifle, the rifle you ditched long ago because you simply are too exhausted to keep carrying it all. With naught but a pistol you certainly would be an afterthought if that...entity decided you were worth chasing. You cannot believe for a second, not with all you've experienced in your short time here, or in the disturbing way that creature.....talked to you all, introduced itself, that it did not know you were there.
You perk up, hearing other noises ahead of you, noises you've heard before as night fell. A sound that chills you and is yet becoming uncomfortably familiar. The shriek-scream calls of a Necray pack on the hunt. You had seen trees off in the distance but a few hours ago, you must be close. However that noise means a pack is hunting the land of the living. They are ahead of you, which means you might have to go through them. You check your belt pouch and revolver. Only ten shots, and then you'll be left with naught but a hatchet. Yet you have no choice, you need to get out of this swamp, this place hungers for anything with a pulse, and it will not rest until you are but a rotting pile of flesh. Such is the will of its master, that thing, the name you dare not utter within the mushrooms, as if you might summon the terror to you. Dekay'virulis
The stories had been worse than true. They'd been undertold. The Tyrant of Decay was all to real, and you cannot help but remember Alexandra's last words to you, to your group.
"We must try, do you not see. We must, for the land suffers. Lady Talia suffers. For that creature is a Tane no longer.....it is a Living World-Wound and must be slain to stop this place's creeping advance on the lands around."
Foolish. Foolish it was. "Matteo if you survive this, you need to warn people. You need to insure what you've experienced is documented." you hear your own cracked voice, pained, husky, feverish, but with resolve. You take up your revolver and hatchet, and limp forward towards freedom.....or towards the sweet release of death.
Inserting a bit of GMing from games in my world, this happened to one of my groups, and is now canonized in the world's lore, and so this is the transcript of my part of the back and forth with Matteo, I've left out their internal monologues and all the game mechanic conversations, dice checks etc, however thought I'd include this because I have it and because it is enshrined in the lore of the world, so its a nice piece for the location article.
Deep in the jungles of the mainland of Mora, the mass unsettled regions, there is a hidden blight upon the world that is slowly but with great hunger expanding, at the warped will of and because of the continued existence of the mighty Tane, wrought with Void corruption, whom calls this domain home. Dekay'virulis, the Rot Tyrant. Year over year more and more of the jungle, in slow creeping fashion, is pulled into its domain, trees strangled and turned to sludge by the spores of various fungal species, beasts that get to close ravenously and mercilessly hunted down and consumed by necray, ghuls, and far worse. Birds or bats so foolish as to fly to low snatched out of the air by fungal tendrils and feasted upon by the fungal forest that is the Rotwood. It is a deadly place, a dead place and a place spoken of by most as equal parts allegory and myth. However it is all to real and it is known to be so. The issue is none know what to do about it.
Ecosystem
The ecosystem here is entirely alien and seems to a point ever altering. Even the soil, the swamp muck, according to Matteo Hornsfel's accounts,
"It felt carnivorous, felt as if it was trying to suck me in, to consume me, to add me to the rotting lower layers this place is built upon."
Localized Phenomena
The whole of the Rotwood is known or at least hypothesized based on the best account we have, to be a 'localized' phenomenon, caused because the corrupted Ancient Tane Dekay'virulis is a in fact a Living World-Wound, something that has always been theorized would have been possible if a powerful enough and old enough true Tane, a dragon of Primorida, one of the first Children, were fully taken by Void Corruption. However until this failed venture some five decades ago and the last testimony of Matteo Hornsfel, there existed no evidence to even begin to suggest such a thing had ever actually happened.
Now the possibility, as chilling as it is, has to be considered. It has been five decades and still no group or nation or organization, no church, not the Magisterium, have done anything with this information. By now it has circulated, it is information that can be found in many a Magisterium library for example. Yet nothing has been done, and no documentation exists that suggests there has been any consideration by any such groups of power anywhere in the world in regard to trying to discuss a solution or actions to take in some way shape or form.
Now the possibility, as chilling as it is, has to be considered. It has been five decades and still no group or nation or organization, no church, not the Magisterium, have done anything with this information. By now it has circulated, it is information that can be found in many a Magisterium library for example. Yet nothing has been done, and no documentation exists that suggests there has been any consideration by any such groups of power anywhere in the world in regard to trying to discuss a solution or actions to take in some way shape or form.
Tourism
No one wants to go here, and many locals of Mora, seafarers and islanders alike, will not talk about the place, they consider it an ill omen. Some will not even let you on their vessel should you mention the location or legends in anyway. Some captains are rumored to do far worse should anyone utter the Tane's name, or the name of this cursed region, whilst on the open seas. For it is seen as that much an ill omen.
Type
Forest, Jungle (Tropical)
Location under
Owner/Ruler
Characters in Location
That really is a place nobody should go! I especially like the part of story from your group, well written. Does that mean all but one character died?
Even Matteo died but later, at sea. He was picked up two days after escaping the Rotwood on the coast but before they could get to the nearest city and hopefully get him treatment the necrosis in his leg and hip had worked its way up into organs. Anything known is from his last words over that last two days at sea, he wrote it all and begged the sailors to insure it made it into the hands of the Magisterium Collegiate in Port Smokeside, and into the hands of the High Captains of Mora (basically the government of the nation). A tragic tale of would be heroes and how it can go very very wrong.