The Only “Normal” Portion — and Even That Is Debatable
If any part of the Elderwood can be called ordinary, it is the Outer Edges.
This is the forest most humans believe they know. It stretches across Thalosar in an unbroken expanse of towering trunks and rolling green shadow. From distant hills, the canopy appears like a dark ocean held mid-wave.
The trees are immense but not yet impossible — oak, black-ash, ironbark, pine. Moss carpets fallen logs. Fern and bracken crowd the undergrowth. Deer graze at dawn. Wolves call at night.
It is a forest.
And yet.
The Outer Edges feel chartable.
Hunters enter and return.
Trappers survive a season.
Crimson Standard scouts sketch maps with enough consistency to believe the land can be understood.
But the forest does not remain understood.
Paths narrow where they were once broad.
Saplings bend inward faster than growth should allow.
Streams swell unexpectedly.
Landmarks shift by degrees too subtle to accuse.
The change is never dramatic.
Only persistent.
The Outer Edges do not confuse violently.
They erode certainty.
Hostility is not what unsettles most travelers.
Magnitude is.
Days of travel reveal no thinning. No horizon break. No great clearing wide enough to glimpse sky beyond treeline.
At dawn, mist pools between trunks like breath.
At midday, shafts of light illuminate drifting pollen.
At dusk, trunks stand like pillars in a cathedral long abandoned.
At night, the forest becomes immeasurable.
Sound travels strangely.
Branches crack too loudly.
Animal calls seem nearer than they are.
And sometimes, silence falls so completely that even insects cease.
Those who survive passage often share one thought:
The forest is not asleep.
It is listening.
Plants in the Outer Edges do not actively seize intruders.
But they resist.
Bootprints fade within hours as roots rise subtly beneath the soil.
Cleared campsites regrow brush in days.
Bladed marks in bark seal quickly with darkened sap.
Axes dull faster than expected.
Iron tools corrode prematurely.
Fires burn inconsistently — flaring or guttering as though the wood hesitates.
This is not aggression.
It is reluctance.
Fey manifestations are uncommon here — but they are present.
Those who retreat are permitted to leave.
Those who press inward attract deeper attention.
Wood elf warbands move through the Outer Edges without sound.
They are not omnipresent — but they are near.
If humans withdraw quickly, no blood is shed.
If they linger to build, mine, or claim permanence, arrows fall at dusk.
Bodies are reclaimed by the forest.
The message is consistent.
This is not conquest territory.
Even here, the Verdant Heart can be faintly sensed.
Not pressure.
Not command.
But distance.
Like standing miles from a coming storm and feeling thunder before it arrives.