Menok Wilds

The Menok Wilds of Avadale is the largest forest in Kima. Large swaths of it are still uncharted, contributing to the air of mystery that surrounds the area. The locals don’t do much to dissuade the superstition, some of them even playing into it. The forest is one of the few places where people still claim to see foja, the magical denizens of Kima that occupied the land long before any settlers did. Few travelers dare to enter the woods without a guide, as one’s return is hardly guaranteed. Even for those who do enter with help, the journey is perilous, and many native to the area will instead recommend going around.
Resources from the forest are incredibly valuable, as it’s nearly impossible to escape with any mementos, without some kind of terrible consequence. Wood from the area is especially valuable, and brave lumberjacks will sometimes venture to the edge of the wilds to chop down trees there. Many of them have reported terrible misfortunes falling upon them later.
According to the size of the forest, the journey through should only take a week. However, this is often not the case. It’s easy to get lost among the towering trees, under the looming canopy impenetrable by sunlight. Natives sometimes refer to it as the “Upside-Down Forest” due to its chaotic nature. No maps exist of this place, because it seems to change beneath explorers' very feet. Travelers have noted streams traveling backwards, wind blowing the wrong direction, trees growing younger instead of older, roads suddenly disappearing, the rate of time seeming different at any given moment, and, those they blame for these phenomena: the Children of Bark. Sometimes people will emerge from the forest who entered weeks, months, even years earlier, usually completely unaware of how much time has really passed. There are also legends of settlements ranging from modest villages to sprawling cities within, but anyone who’s discovered them has never survived to tell the tale.

“Many have tried to study the anomalies of that forest, but it still defies all explanation. One thing is clear: enter the forest with pure intent, and it will be kind. But if you enter with goals deemed nefarious by the forest…well, don’t expect to make it back out.”
–– Avadalian scholar

Alternative Name(s)

The Upside-Down Forest

Type

Forest