Fire Forest of Innenotdar
In 959, Emperor Drakus Coaltongue of the Imperial Seat of Acheron had just conquered the Free Citystate of Gate Pass, securing a supply line into Shahalesti, and Lord Shaaladel of Shahalesti was nervous of an impending attack. The Innenotdarian elves, their forest’s proximity to Gate Pass making it strategically important, were unwilling to ally with Shaaladel, and their leaders had begun to express opposition to the Shahalesti. In truth, the Innenotdarian elves were simply attempting to appear strong, since their position in a three-way juncture between Shahalesti , Acheron , and the Kingdom of Dassen made them a tempting target. However, Lord Shaaladel did not want to risk that Innenotdar would become an ally with Acheron, so he had agents set fire to the forest and plant rumors that the Acherons had been responsible, a believable claim given Coaltongue’s fondness for fire.
The reason the fires refused to die is because of a Trillith called Indomitability. The Trillith are dream-spawned creatures, born in the great below of the Endless Dark, and until recently very few had come to the surface. Gate Pass has many legends of dreams becoming reality, and indeed there are numerous caverns under and around the city, from which fledgling Trillith sometimes emerge.
Indomitability had arrived in Innenotdar forest several years before the flame. The Seela, the fey who would sing news from one end of the forest to the other through the rustling of leaves in the wind, first noticed the Trillith’s presence. Indomitability, only vaguely conscious of what it was, had endowed its power upon several dying animals, who struggled to stay alive. Seeing the strange entity as a disturbance in nature, the Seela called upon the elf-hero Anyariel to conquer the monster.
The Seela sang the Song of Forms, an old hymn of history and events in the forest, woven in their very bodies, and the song’s power trapped the Trillith in the body of a stag. Anyariel pursued it to the center of Lake Seela, where she trapped it before dying. Indomitability did not die, but it cannot be released from a bodied form until the Seela stop singing, and so it has lain trapped, pinned to the bottom of the lake by a sword driven through its body.
That sword, carved of living wood cut from one of Innenotdar’s oldest trees, remained tied to the forest, and over the years, Indomitability’s essence seeped through the blade and into the roots and trees of Innenotdar. Even some animals are suffused with its power, and now the Trillith is far more powerful than most of its kind, but that power is dependent upon its prison. None who are empowered by Indomitability can idly die, and so the trees and brush have refused to fall, providing an eternal fuel source for the raging flames.
In the year 1000, the Dwarf Naztrak and his party pulled The Living Blade and defeated Indomitability, freeing the Seela and ending the eternal fires ravaging Innenotdar.
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Fire Forest of Innenotdar
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Forest, Boreal (Coniferous)
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