King’s Forest

The westernmost fragment of Cormanthor, the King’s Forest has long been cleared and settled by the people of Cormyr. The high, thick forest can- opy keeps undergrowth limited to only scattered clearings and provides shelter for an abundance of wildlife, and for many years was considered to be a pleasant place for vacationing nobles to ride and hunt. Since the goblin wars, however, the forest has been home to scattered tribes of orcs that have thus far resisted attempts to eliminate them. The Purple Dragons regularly patrol the area, however, keeping the roads reasonably safe for merchants and other travelers.

Birds of the King’s Forest: The Dwarfbeard Finch

Knowing something of the more mundane creatures and fauna to be found in places like the King's Forest, in Cormyr, is good for Dungeon Masters running campaigns where the Player Characters are low level.
Likewise for generating encounters that help to break the tedium of rest, quest, fight, rest.
Let's start with one of the more colorful--and covetous--birds to be found in Cormyr's largest woodland.
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1. Dwarfbeard Finches are so named for the thick, colorful feathers that adorn the face and breast of male finches.
2. Dwarfbeard males are of one solid color, usually black or deep blue. Females tend to colors ranging from rock-grey to dun-brown. From beak to tail, a typical male finch is about as long as a handkeg is tall. Females are about half again as large as males.
3. The “beards” of male finches appear during mating season. Males inflate their cheeks and breast, causing the feathers over their faces to extend outward like mustachios and curl downward into the feathers of their breast, the later flowing downward past the finch's clawed toes. Beard feathers change color during mating season: vibrant reds, wholesome browns, straw-colored blonds and loamy blacks. A rare few are the color of snow.
4. Dwarfbeards have not been sighted anywhere else in Cormyr since the forested lands north of Suzail were cleared away and separated into what would one day become the King’s Forest.
5. Males build nests on sturdy branches, over the point where another strong branch grows out from the first. The nests are round and one side is built up into a sort of half-dome roof over the nest.
6. A female finch will land on one of the two branches that run out from the junction that the nest is built on. The male finch will come out from the nest and scamper, elaborately preen, dance and wiggle up and down the other branch, doing his best to coax the female towards the nest.
7. This process almost always fails if the male hasn’t placed a shiny object in the heart of the nest. If the object is suitable, the female will enter the nest, and then the male must sing for as long as it takes for the female to settle in. If she does then the birds will mate, and become a mated pair for life.
8. During the nesting season, male Dwarfbeards are notorious for landing in groups on forest travelers wearing items of clothing and jewelry that shine or flash in the sunlight. Likewise on anyone carrying gleaming magic items or richly adorned armor and weapons (a longsword with a ruby set in its pommel, for example, or armor burnished to a bright sheen). The birds will peck and poke with their long beaks, seeking to dislodge an item and to carry it off before another finch gets it. More than once this has given away the position of an adventurer ignorant of forest lore.
9. Forest goblins and hunters will sometimes lay out glimmering objects in the center of box traps, in the hopes of catching a small meal. These same individuals will climb trees and raid Dwarfbeard nests in the hopes of finding a bauble that can be sold for coin, despite the risk of falling to their deaths or of losing an eye or finger to the sharp beaks of males finches.
10. The lore of Dwarfbeards becomes unreliable as one travels further from the forest. In Suzail, innumerable tales have been printed in chapbooks that claim Dwarfbeards have a knack for finding lost treasures. In Arabel, it's common to claim that a small lost item that can't be found was stolen by a Dwarfbeard (Dwarfbeards are pure forest dwellers, mind, and the few that have been trained as pets or coerced by magic into stealing never stay long with their masters). In villages throughout Cormyr, children are told that male Dwarfbeards continue to embroider their nests with jewels, necklaces, rings and coins. Likewise that the easiest way to send an adventurer up a tree is to tell them a mated pair of Dwarfbeards lives in it.
11. One tale told throughout Cormyr claims a stubborn finch made off with the sapphire-adorned crown of an early king of Cormyr (though just who the King was varies from one telling to the next), and that the crown was used as a frame to build a nest around while the largest sapphire was plucked from its setting by the finch and placed in the center of its nest to attract a mate.
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Dangers of the King's Forest: Tenday Mold

1. Tenday Mold is a little bit of everything: mold, rot and fungus.
2. Should your character ask about it, he or she is likely to be informed that the dead god Moander bequeathed Tenday Mold unto Cormyr as a parting gift; something meant to trouble Cormyreans for all of eternity thanks to their efforts to see that deity driven out of the Forest Kingdom once and for all.
3. Others will tell your character that elves made Tenday Mold, and that the legends of elves ruling the region before there ever was a Cormyr are true. Tenday Mold was just one of several methods the elves used to slow the advance of humans into their woodlands, and that the elves “forgot” to take it with them when they left once and for all.
4. Of more practical concern to your character will of course be the question of just what Tenday Mold does. Accounts vary of course, because the chances of encountering someone who’s been infected and survived are small—DM’s choice, as suits the needs of the campaign—but most NPCs will tell you some version of the following: If you are caught in a burst of Tenday Mold and it gets on your skin in a warm, moist spot—such as under your armor, in your armpits or your crotch—or if you inhale a cloud of it, there is a good chance it’ll take hold and grow, much to your detriment. (DM's choice on chance of being infected, and on a saving throw, if any, to resist the infection.)
5. Once it starts growing on flesh, Tenday Mold is nigh impossible to kill without killing or at least seriously harming the infected (i.e., it can be burned off, provided your character does not mind being set fire too; just as the infected flesh can be carved off). Druids know how to remove it safely, as do forest denizens like Dryads and Pixies—who are just as vulnerable to Tenday Mold as humans, elves, orcs, or any other humanoid creature—but you’d better be good at convincing such denizens to help you, or be quick to offer a favor in return for aid (read: accepting the equivalent of a geas placed on your character as the healing takes place).
6. Tenday Mold does not only grow on skin. It bores into the body, devouring muscle and solidifying over joints, making a victim immobile within 1d4+2 days after infection. Once immobile, your character will come to smell so bad that anything living (i.e. that has to breathe) will be driven off. Thus can the mold can grow and kill its victims without interruption.
7. Magical healing in the form of one-spell-heals-damage clerical magic does not cure Tenday Mold; hit point loss is of course remedied, but the mold keeps right on growing—even if a character is returned to full hit points. The right combination of healing-type spells must be cast (DM’s choice as to what spells work, and in what order if multiple spells are required, plus any required Healing Skill check or not). Characters at full HP suffering from Tenday Mold remain in excruciating pain.
8. In 8+1d4 days your character’s body will be fully covered in mold and spores, your character will draw his or her last breath and die (assuming starvation hasn’t killed your PC already). Your PC’s corpse will be frozen in place, and will look like a statue covered from head to foot in thick, powdery mold. Your character is now the latest in a long line of green, gray and blue mold covered humanoid-looking forest statues to be found in the deeper, darker parts of the King’s Forest.
9. (For what it’s worth, the stench fades away after your character dies.)
10. A thick, calcified crust will have formed underneath the mold—this what maintains the statue shape. Mounds of puckered spores will have formed in the center of the various colored patches to be found on your PCs corpse. The spores are very sensitive to movement and to the presence of flesh and blood creatures; your PCs corpse will burst in a 20’ radius if anything the size of a Halfling or larger comes within the area of effect, be it humanoid or forest creature or fantastical beast.
11. Druids and rangers that sight your PC’s corpse will mark the area as dangerous and to be avoided. A goodly act among druids is to cast spells causing bushes or vines to grow swiftly around or over your dead character’s form.
12. Rangers trained in the King’s Forest know that Honeysuckle eagerly takes root on Tenday Mold. If it’s planted near your PC’s corpse, the vines will encase it in about a month. This living shell consumes the mold and spores, and in any case dampens the eruption of spores (which seem still able to sense living creatures that wander by), reducing the explosive radius to 5’. Such growth produces flowers of varying colors, and the leaves are tinged with hues of blood red and deepest blue.
13. If the spores on your PC’s corpse explode, little is left behind. The shell in the shape of your PC’s body will be gone. All their flesh and bone is of course gone too. Anything your PC carried or wore that was incapable of rotting away will have been shot out in several random directions at the same time. However, if your PC’s corpse was covered in vines, all that didn’t rot can be found in a pile on the ground, covered in brittle bits of white that look like eggshells.
14. Wise adventurers know to look for human-high mounds of vines, and to carefully prod at them from a safe distance in the hopes of getting at whatever valuables might be found to lie inside.
15. Unscrupulous adventurers will lure or lead the unwary (such as other novice adventurers or the desperate) into the presence of Tenday Mold shells in order to set them off. After the explosion, the bad guys will attack and slay the unfortunates, then make off with whatever is revealed beneath the shells, as well as the property of the newly slain, as Tenday Mold settles quickly to the ground and then dies if it doesn’t find a new host to grow on.
16. Adventurers on the run from superior forces (or from one of the handful of Hill Giant-sized Owlbears that have reappeared within the last century in the King’s Forest) have been known to make for parts of the King’s Forest where Tenday Mold can be found, in the hopes of infecting their foes and creating a diversion by which they can escape.
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