The Ironwood Forest

"Near the Ironwood, woodcutters, and carpenters are just another kind of blacksmith."

— Traveling Merchant

Overview

As its name implies the forest is famous for the trees that make up its majority: The Ironwood Tree. The forest sports a variety of endemic life, much of which is dependent on or connected to the unique properties of the Ironwood trees. On the forest's borders are the cities of Chuthain and Twindirga, and well as Roteswasser Lake .

The forest is estimated to be 200km long from tip to tip, and 40km wide in most places. Most of the Forest's water supply comes from mountain streams from the Spine of Guragard and underground rivers before being deposited into Roteswasser Lake.

The forest has poor quality soil for domesticated crops, and large areas of the forest floor are covered with rock deposits from ancient river beds for rivers that no longer exist. The uneven ground, plague of roots from the ironwood trees, and dangerous wildlife make for difficult journeys on foot, and travel by cart impossible. Despite this, for those able to handle the forest's inhospitable nature, there are plenty of natural resources.

Flora and Fauna

General Inhabitants

The majority of the natural inhabitants of the forest are diminutive in nature. Rodents and lagomorphs make up the majority of the forest's non-endemic animal inhabitants by volume, though there are also plenty of small lizards, bats, and birds. Ironwood Trees provide poor nutrition for non-specialized herbivores, but plenty of berry bushes and root vegetables grow naturally throughout the wood. Lavender, Moss phlox, and several varieties of mint plants also sprout from between the roots of the trees and under the rocks sloped off of the mountains.

Titan Goats
Titan Goats are large mountain goats that have adapted to live in forests near and on mountains. They are particularly good at climbing sheer cliffs like their mountainous cousins, but have become much bigger over time, allowing them to charge to topple trees and reach food that would otherwise be inaccessible. Titan Goats are typically 3 to 4 meters tall, and weigh between 500 and 680 kilograms.

Snake-Bears
Snake-Bears are black and gold bears that get their name from their method of consumption. They are typically 1.3 meters tall when on all fours, and 2.3-2.8 meters tall when standing upright. When not gorged for hibernation they weigh around 190-200kg. Unlike most bears, snake-bears prefer to swallow their prey whole after killing or otherwise incapacitating them. Just before hibernation Snake-Bears will hunt almost twice their weight in food, bringing it back to their burrow. Once they've gathered enough food, they close off their burrow and spend a few hours gorging themselves by swallowing their acquired hoard of food whole, to be slowly digested over the winter months. Evidence from abandoned Snake-Bear burrows suggests that they'll eat just about anything as part of this process, and that they're highly resistant to poison.

Gluttony Overload

Not many species can claim to self indulge so much that they die from their own excess, and fewer still exist among species without sapience. Snake-Bears aren't totally unique in this regard but the list is quite small. Once in a great while a Snake-Bear will overestimate how far their rubbery stomachs can stretch, or try to swallow prey whose hooves prove sharp enough to cause a catastrophic rupture.

Endemic Species

Plants

Blade Flowers
Blade Flowers are a type of succulent often mistaken for a natural feature of the Ironwood trees they grow on. They look like wrought iron roses with fat petals. Their leaves are sharp, hard to pierce and have red colored tips. Blade Flowers are parasitic in nature, rooting into the bark of the iron tree to get to the sapwood and feed off the tree. In most cases these succulents aren't life threatening to the tree, but do slow its growth. One notable feature of this plant is that once sufficiently mature they become extremely dangerous. Mature plants pressurize the base of their petals so that they can shoot them off at high speed and embed them into other nearby trees and be carried off in the flesh of animals to spread. The ejection triggers mostly in the presence of mammals, and is thought to be triggered by the proximity of body heat.

Animals

Lantern Moths
Lantern Moths are enormous moths with wingspans of 2.5 to 3.5 meters across, whose caterpillars consume Ironwood Tree-bark for its metals and then breed and lay their eggs on the bottom of the tree's branches. The adult lantern moths produce a yellow bioluminescent glow that reflects off of their mirror like wings, thus granting them their name.

Crush-Jaw Spiders
Massive Arachnids with diagonal leg spans of approximately 1 meter. Unlike other spiders these agile hunters use their oversized jaws to brutally crush and crack open prey instead of piercing or injecting them with venom. Their jaws are well adapted to opening up lantern moth cocoons, and full plate armor alike. They're agile ambush predators who leap across the canopy. They do not shoot webs, but they do have a nasty glue-like spray they can spit to prevent prey from escaping.

"It split his skull, helm and all like it was a melon. I can still hear the slurping sounds. I think he was still crying when it turned its focus to me."

— Lucky Adventurer

Flint Turkeys
Turkeys the size of an ostrich, nearly 3 meters tall, weighing in around 190kg. They're called Flint Turkeys because their beaks can create sparks when opened, like the striking of flint and steel. While sparks are often seen during routine mating calls, the sparks aren't just for show. When forced to fight, these Turkeys can shoot gouts of flame nearly ten meters long by expelling a gas produced internally and sparking it. They're naturally territorial, and omnivorous.

Sapient Species

Few species with the option to live elsewhere would choose a life in an environment filled with aggressive fire-breathing birds, and spiders big enough to threaten horses, but among those that do are The Lapinor Tribe, and a host of small goblin clans.
The Lapinor Tribe
The Lapinor Tribe is a tribe of rabbit folk. They're exceptionally agile in the forest's uneven environment and use their diminutive size to their advantage when using hit and run tactics to drive predators away from their homes. Lapinor villages are hard to spot even when standing in their middle, because they burrow between the roots of the ironwood trees, and use rocks from the area as their doors.

Rabbit Folk More Broadly

Rabbit folk, like those of the Lapinor Tribe can be found in many places across the world, but are rarely found in cities. Due to their small average stature (about 1 meter tall) normal humanoid towns are risky places to be. They're incredibly smart and known for creating a wide variety of mechanical devices, happy to sell them to middlemen to be sold in the towns they do their best to avoid. At first glance they appear almost like large rabbits with clothes, but their larger eyes, slightly more expressive faces, and more dexterous legs and hands give them away to anyone paying attention.

Ironwood Goblin Tribes
The tribes of the Ironwood Forest are very welcoming to outsiders by goblin standards. Provided your weapons are stowed, it's common for these tribes to offer to trade with anyone bigger than them. They often like to trade for leather goods, dyed cloth, netting, rope, and other general-purpose tools. Their trade offers mostly consist of whatever meat they've recently caught, crude weapons they've fashioned from Ironwood, and the occasional captured member of The Lapinor Tribe. It’s ill advised to run into Ironwood goblins outside of their encampments though; they become frenzied in battle and regard all encounters in the open woods with suspicion. Tribal villages and encampments are typically built near the canopy of the trees, and the goblins spend very little time on the forest floor.

Climate

The forest goes through a two phase climate cycle. During the spring and summer months the forest has relatively mild weather, being somewhat warm and dry, with the rare summer storm bringing heavy rain. During fall and winter temperatures drop significantly, and storms become much more frequent. During the coldest parts of the winter the entire forest floor will be covered in nearly a meter of snow.

Subterranean Caves

The northern forest has a large network of lava tube caves that have been used by all manner of creatures as homes, and even co-opted by various groups of people through-out history. The tubes are believed to stretch up into the eastern mountains that make up The Spine of Guragard . The caves are not mapped, and locals believe them to be the home of bandits, though the caves are frequently blamed for all manner of local problems. Some caves are known to flood completely after intense rains as well.

Natural Resources

Metals
The Ironwood Forest has an abundance of naturally occuring metal deposits below ground, and occasionally these deposits show their presence in the bark of the trees themselves. Unfortunately for enterprising individuals the trees have proven all but immune to being cut, which makes the deposits impossible to get to. The ironwood itself is also exceptionally useful when the branches drop naturally to the forest floor. While difficult, it is possible to work with the smaller branches, and when done, the resulting tools are lighter than metal, less brittle, and still hold an edge when doing most kinds of work. While Ironwood does rust, it's much slower to do so than forged iron tools. Steel implements are still generally considered better, but ironwood tools do not need to be forged or purified, and thus can be produced much faster and cheaper when the branches are readily available.
Gems
As the site of ancient riverbeds and volcanic activity there are several places throughout the forest which are known for having geodes filled with amethyst and citrine of very high quality. Ironwood-Amethyst is highly prized all over the region and in select places beyond for its deep purple hue. Only a handful of families know the best locations to find these however, and even the fact that the crystals come from Geodes is a closely guarded secret. Collecting these heavy rocks is a dangerous gamble though as the local wild-life is hostile, and only after escaping the forest do collectors find out what they managed to get.

Game
While much of the wildlife of The Ironwood Forest is too dangerous to hunt alone, solo hunters can still find luck with small game. Those brazen enough to gather a team and raid a Flint Turkey's nest will be able to treat themselves to massive eggs considered a delicacy for their fatty yolks, and fried Crush-jaw Spider legs are also known to be a local treat.

Local Phenomena

Dancing Lights - Summer (yearly event)
During the summer the Lantern moths enter their breeding season and the entire forest glows with their bioluminescence and reflections. The canopy appears to be strung with lanterns and mirrors, and the forest floor dances with shining and rippling caustics - the lights shining through waves to the ocean floor.

The Procession of Lights

Once a year in the early summer the citizens of the city of Chuthain gather to march through the forest with decorated lanterns and mirrors. The procession is to encourage and celebrate the moths who hold special significance to the city. The original festival was held after several years in a row, there had been no naturally occuring dancing lights. The lanterns are thought to have guided the Moths back home, and the procession has been held every year since for nearly three-hundred years.

Murderer's Snow - Winter (very rare)
Murderer's Snow is the subject of much local superstition. On occasion snow will turn nearly blood red, usually just beneath the white surface. This is considered a bad omen by some, and others consider it a warning from local protection deities that there is a traitor in their village. In truth the reddening of the snow happens when water (either from snow melt, or rain) carries enough rust from the Ironwood trees to flow out past the forest's edge. The air in the fallen snow then transports the rust particles upward in the snow using the capillary effect, giving the snow the appearance that it is bloody, or has been dripping blood.

Area
~8,000sq km
Type
Coniferous Forest
Common Tree Species
Ironwood Tree (conifer), Fir (conifer), Larch (conifer)

Alternative Name(s)

The Ironwood

Location under

Centrailia

Owning Organization

Sapnirtugard - Kingdom

Inhabiting Species

• Wyrm's Greed Caterpillar/Lantern Moth