Once a place of green, growing things, this vale has been polluted, somehow, and is now a place of hunger and pestilence. The trees have all withered and died, or were replaced by huge mushrooms that ate them from the inside-out. Moss has grown wherever a field of grass used to be, and has spread from there all over the vale. Every surface is covered in a dusty mold that coats everything in a soot-black powder.
With shear mountains surrounding it on three sides, this rarely visited vale was once covered in a lush coniferous forest.
There are seemingly no seasons in the vale, just a constant warm temperature perfect for collectors of spores, molds, and fungii.
Everything seems localized within the ailing vale.
Mushrooms and fungus of all kind cover the landscape, like misshapen trees or smooth pated brush. Long, thin-stemmed fungus and grey-green moss cover most surfaces in the vale. Glacially deposited boulders, randomly tossed across the vale by a retreating glacier at some point in the distant past, seem volcanic until one looks more closely; they are covered in a coat of powder mold, just like all of the other stone surfaces. There are vultures and other scavenger birds every direction one looks, and poisonous lizards that will burst out of tall, wavy fungi, hunting ceaselessly. They will bite, then follow, the beast or creature until it dies. Mushroom ants and fungus gnats will get to work on the deceased just as fast as that lizard. Flys, biting gnats and clouds of mosquitoes are immediately drawn to the carcass.
Lac beetle shells (to make lacquer), a wealth of mushrooms and other edible fungus.
Once, this place was a beautiful valley of growth and green pastures, full of absolutely dripping honeycomb and wild herds of sheep, and goat. Deer munched fearlessly with their fauns gamboling close by and their stags vying for dominance close by. But in 5216 CE, it began to change. The local druid council were completely mystified by the change, and sent an emissary to collect intelligence. That emissary never returned. It is said that it was the emissary, himself, that twisted the vale to his own entropic vision. The local druid council, and all the local druids, faded away over the next ten years. Disappearing quietly and sadly, they abandoned the place to The Necrodruid.
A few heroes were sent by neighboring Druidic circles, but there was no success, and eventually even those attempts faltered off and petered out. The Necrodruid has been unchecked since.
Created by Terrapin Lexiconia
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