@The Cursed Wilds is the name given by humans to the deepest regions of the Elderwood. The term is inadequate.
This is not a blighted land. It is not corrupted. It is intensified.
Here, the forest ceases to feel like environment and begins to feel like intention. The deeper one travels, the more the Verdant Heart’s influence transitions from distant whisper to immediate pressure.
Few humans who enter return.
Light does not reach the forest floor unbroken.
The canopy seals overhead in interlocking layers, reducing daylight to thin green shafts. Wind weakens. Sound dampens. Even echoes seem reluctant to travel.
Tree trunks are monumental—bark layered thick as battlements, etched in spiraling patterns that resemble script yet convey no known language. Luminous sap threads down their surfaces in slow, deliberate streaks.
Paths do not exist.
Roots shift gradually over hours or days. Clearings narrow. Landmarks alter subtly. The forest does not block travelers outright—it edits around them.
Turning back rarely leads where one expects.
Vegetation within the Wilds behaves with selective purpose.
Vines respond to proximity and warmth.
Flowers release hallucinogenic spores when disturbed.
Thorn growth tightens corridors overnight.
Roots lift just enough to disrupt momentum.
Plants do not lash wildly. They conserve motion, acting only when intrusion is confirmed.
Hallucinogenic blooms induce auditory distortions—familiar voices, misplaced landmarks, subtle paranoia. Many intruders lose direction long before they lose blood.
The boundary between thought and manifestation thins dramatically.
Fey presence increases in both number and coordination:
Small bark-skinned watchers observe silently from branches.
Elongated, multi-jointed figures move between trunks with unnatural articulation.
Winged shapes unfold into predatory forms upon approach.
Mimic-beasts feign injury or vulnerability.
The Wood Elves thrive within the Wilds.
Their settlements exist high in the canopy—platform cities grown from living branches and reinforced by woven vine architecture. From below, movement is faint and rarely repeated.
On the forest floor, elves move unhindered. Roots do not impede them. Spores do not affect them. Predators align alongside them in silent formation.
The sensation of the Verdant Heart intensifies progressively.
Symptoms reported by survivors include:
Pressure behind the eyes
Auditory hum without source
Memory distortion
Emotional erosion toward industrial or urban thought
Dreams bleeding into waking awareness
Within a day’s march of the Heart:
Bark darkens to near-black, veined with emerald glow.
Fungi enlarge and pulse faintly.
Soil softens unnaturally underfoot.
Fey gather in orbit-like formations.
Air grows metallic-sweet.
The pressure behind the mind becomes structured—not language, not sound, but shape.
A vast awareness leaning inward. Listening.