Forest of the Cumbers
the Shadow's Forest
Forest of the Cumbers, usually shortened to 'the Cumbers', is a forest in Southern Jerain on the major continent of Ethae. The forest stands in the hills on the south side of the western White Mountains. The region is often covered in mists and low cloud cover leaving the forest itself shrouded in a hazy dim darkness. Navigation is near impossible through the thick forest and its many valleys and hills. This coupled with its dark reputation among the native somon has left the Cumbers a remote and uninhabited land.
The Cumbers has centuries of folklore surrounding it. Dark tales of murder and creatures of pure evil stalking the hazy forest. This is not surprising to the educated that know the forest is a Shadowfell. The despair of the Etu Enur from Beyond Aldern eternally seeping through corrupting all within. Predator creatures born within the forest are more aggressive and monstrous, plants seem to tangle the feet or scratch the exposed skin of travelers, anything to augment the depression of the land. They hope the travelers will give up, lay down, and die, becoming fertilize they will eventually feed on. The moist air can strain breathing in the lowest valleys where the mist is thickest, and it will try to prevent travelers from seeing the cliff they are approaching in the higher elevations. Everything in the forest is trying to kill those who enter it from the outside.
Only a single path winds through the forest mountains, the Cumber Road. Named after the forest, or perhaps the other way around, the road has existed long before the Kingdom of Marras grew around it. The native Somon of Southern Jerain claim the road existed before the first Normon arrived in their land. As did Dorchadas, the Dark Tower. As did the n orbs that lights the way. These orbs keep the shadowy forest and its monster off the road. The road and the tower it travels to are used in the modern day by the government of Marras as a prison for criminals whose crimes do not warrant death but are to never be released back into the public again. Whispers of death being a better fate than imprisonment in Dorchadas have spread through the taverns of Marras.
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