The Life of the Sharawood

The Sharawood is three quarters location and one quarter magical beast. Its personality, will and mindset are ancient, bordering on alien. It has perceptions and powers beyond understanding - and often beyond notice - of those who dare to enter its bounds. It nourishes itself. It defends itself. And it remembers those who have challenged it in the past. It is in many ways like any other creature, with the notable exception that it is the size of a country.

I question what the true name is of this magical wilderness... for it has been lost.

The Sharawood Gazetteer

The Sharawood Forest is an ancient place, already old when most of the gods were young. In time immemorial, it cradled the great spirits of nature, and its loam felt the footfalls of the old ones. As millennia passed, its roots swallowed rivers, its canopy stole the sun from vast tracts of land, and its groves created mountains that have since weathered to hills. Somehow throughout time holding at bay the terrors of the Underdark, and the ancient Sarrukh empire of Okoth to the North.

In all that time, the Sharawood had changed little. Time seemed to flow around it, lapping at its edges like the sea around an island. As kingdoms rise and fall beyond its borders, the Sharawood remains a world apart - a place where memories and old magic linger in the rings of trees and where new ideas never quite take root.

But it can only bear so many wounds. The violent, unjust death of its ancient noble guardian Xavarathimius, what many now call the Everlasting Wyrm, has drastically changed the Sharawood. Somehow the two are linked beyond what shreds of history I have found wandering these woods. Though even I, have not been able to find all evidence of its history and changes. Even in the years I have been here - the forest grows ever darker. Instead of hosting solely Domains of Delight, it has begun to suffer the Domains of Dread. I question if the Sharawood is... dying.

August 18th, 2022 August 18th, 2022

Mysteries of the Sharawood

Very little is known in the world at large about the Sharawood's interior. There is simply something wrong with this place, something that unsettles the nerves, plays upon fears, and discourages exploration. Too many stories of danger exit the wood, and too many travelers do not. The few adventurers who date the Sharawood's deep trails return with strange scars, stranger stories, and too few prizes to warrant either.

From the outside, the Sharawood looks like any Old World forest. In some places it is dark, tangled, and foreboding. In other places, it is sun-dappled and open, like an evergreen palace of towering tree pillars, ivy carpet, and wind-rustled canopy. But there is something more to it. Something hiding behind the wind and the leaves and the trees. Something living and vigilant. A presence that none who stand dwarfed among the trees can deny.

The Sharawood unsettled the nerves of interlopers, evoking fear and trembling, especially in first-time visitors. It conjures awe and intimidation as the intruder delves deeper. And nearest the heart of the forest, the unsettling feeling of being in proximity to a supernatural or divine "other" is intensified.

Most describe this faceless "other" as a dark, sinister presence, but perhaps they are simply not in touch with the natural order of this ancient place. Deep-woods druids cast the Sharawood in a brighter, it not wilder, light, describing the supernatural presence as beautiful, terrible, and bestial. They talk of it as if it were a living creature with a personality and a will of its own. Religious figures reject the idea that the forest is alive but acknowledge that some great presence lives therein. Some worshippers claim to hear the whispers of a withdrawn aspect of their Green Gods. Others sense older gods, inimical to man and dwarf, brooding in the forest's vastness and waiting for the age of man to pass. They are all right. Even Baba Yaga confessed to another fey being recently, "The Sharawood came before such recent interventions as gods and spells and names and language."

The forest is encompassed by an antediluvian intelligence with a personality all its own. Natives know that the Sharawood is quick to anger, slow to forgive, and will hold a grudge that passes from generation to generation like a powerful curse.

August 18th, 2022 September 3rd, 2022

Movement

Like all intelligent creatures, the Sharawood knows that the element of surprise provides a great tactical advantage. The forest tends to act when creatures are not looking. Since the forest cannot see normally, it uses its tremorsense to determine when target creatures are still and their heartbeats are slowed. Its activity typically occurs when creatures are sleeping, but it is not uncommon for a relaxed (or drunken) person on watch to hear or notice movement while sitting quietly at a campfire.

The Sharawood can move paths, add forks, or redirect game trails at will. Exploers who wake in the Sharawood might feel disorientated, as if their camp had rotated during the night. Trails that should lead deeper into the forest now lead out of it. Landmarks cannot be trusted. A compass is the explorer's only firned. The best advice comes from a handful of successful trappers and furriers. "Don't make any appointments," they say, "A path may take three days, or it may take a fortnight. It just depends." Cautious parties go around large, ancient trees on the same side, lest they risk being separated.

Night comes early in the Sharawood. This is true not only because of the forest's canopy but because the Sharawood can thicken (or thin) it at will. During the day, the Sharawood filters the sun's rays, blocking most before they reach the forest floor and creating an area of dim light centered on targets who species suffer in such conditions. Vampires and undead travelers experience the opposite effect, as the canopy opens above them and subjects them to the full glare of the sun. At night, the Sharawood typically hides the moon and stars, making navigation by celestial bodies impossible and the prospect of getting lost dangerously likely. The exception is for lycanthropes, who wildness the Sharawood favors and from whom the Sharawood never conceals the moon.

One of the Sharawood's most insidious defenses against interlopers is to starve them. It moves its roots to redirect streams underground and withhold fresh water. It shakes its branches to spook game and withhold fresh food. An old Sharawood saying, "Deer and rabbits dance around the starving man," has been memorialized in wood sculptures whittled by emaciated men and found near their bones.

August 18th, 2022 October 2nd, 2022