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Message: <blockquote data-quote="QuietBrowser" data-source="post: 7030498" data-attributes="member: 6855057">In light of requests, I'm currently starting to plot out the Wurmwood territory for the next expansion to my world-building. I'm still waiting on volunteers to look over the crunchy aspects of this setting, but I thought I'd go ahead and share my current draft of ideas for the Wurmwood.The Wurmwood represents the largest unbroken span of healthy(ish) vegetation in the Cradlelands, stretching across a substantial swath of the southwest, ending roughly as it melds into Horror Swamp at the far south.Stories told by the locals suggest that maybe the Wurmwood was once a city dedicated to exploring and mastering wood elemental magic, and that when the Black Dawn happened, that magic got out of control, causing it to be consumed by its gardens and parks. The presence of ancient ruins scattered at random through the forest, always heavily overgrown, adds some credence to this theory.The Wurmwood is an area of massive old growth. The trees are so tall and dense that during summer, most of the light is blocked out during the day, leaving the interior in an eternal twilight except in rare glades. In winter, however, it's also surprisingly warm, as the thick layers of decomposing vegetation and the densely woven branches retain a lot of heat. In essence, the Wurmwood only really experiences spring and autumn.As a side effect of the dark environment, fungi and parasitic plants are ubiquitous, and many native plants are bio-luminescent.The most impressive vegetation in the Wurmwood are the so-called "Mother Trees"; a scattering of no more than half a dozen trees the size of small mountains, so enormous they can be seen from outside of the forest and used as navigable landmarks.The majority of the local sapients are small villages, hamlets and fortified camps and they live a surprisingly bucolic life, as much as the natural dangers of the Cradlelands allow. Farming - predominantly in the form of orchards, root vegetables and fungus cellars - and herding hardy sheep, goats, deer and pigs provides food, whilst lumber is all around them. Trade with the outside world is sporadic, but between their own ample supply of food and safe drinking water, the lumber, and myriad valuable plants & fungi used in medicine and reagents, the Wurmwood is an under-tapped gold mine of valuable goods.At least one Mother Tree has been colonized by an aranea librarium, a veritable city of arcanist monkly spiderfolk living within its branches and roots and trading their skills with the outside world as needed.Dangers are less common here, but far from unheard of. An array of deadly creatures lurks in this forest, from comparatively mundane (venomous reptiles and arthropods), to mutants of all kinds. 40ft long snakes, brain-jacker spiders, firebreathing foxes... even hell-hogs (essentially expies of Bloodborne's Goliath Pigs/Maneater Boars) have been known to migrate northwards from Horror Swamp to scavenge the nuts, fungi and overripe fruit from this forest. Worse, this territory is home to the largest concentration of killer plants in the region. Shriekers, strangleshrooms, vegepygmies, molded (yes, as in an expy of the Resident Evil 7 mooks; need a better name), greenvises, assassin vines and yellow musk creepers have all been documented here.Because of this, although wood magic is the most respected form in the region, fire magic users are not exiled; those who do remain form elite militias dedicated to fighting the more dangerous denizens of the woods, especially killer plants and fungi.Don't know if can get away with a Matango expy or if that works best as just a reskin of the Vegepygmies.The Wurmwood's reputation for being haunted is because there are undead here. Fairly rare, and predominantly in the form of yellow musk zombies, but spontaneous corpse reanimation isn't unheard of. In fact, there are actually a number of ghosts reported to haunt various locales in the Wurmwood, and some even have been confirmed to exist. The only one proven in my head so far goes by the tentative name "Lampwick Lenny"; born a Brute strain Caliban and abandoned in the forest, he was taken in by a village that raised him with love and kindness. Growing to be strong and good-hearted, if a little simple, Lenny was fearless and would roam the woods at night with a lantern, looking out for lost travelers and guiding them to safety. He was so devoted to this task that even dying didn't stop him; now he roams the woods on dark and misty nights, seeking to protect travelers from the dangers of the forest.This is... all I have so far, and so I could really use some critique here.On another happy note, I've managed to get a first draft up of a map of the Sea of Souls sub-region in the Cradlelands. Should I post it here for folks to take a look at?</blockquote>

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