The Wilds

The Wilds is a location in Northern Scaena, known for its towering trees and deadly fungi. The party makes their way through The Wilds early on during Season One of Wacky Ribbons.

Description
"“The trees canopies seem to crowd together as if to block out the sun, determined to make it impossible to tell the time of day. The birds that you all heard earlier seem to have flown off somewhere else - or, if they are present, they are so far away that the trees absorb their songs before your ears can. Despite it being the middle of summer, the temperature here seems to drop. The ground underfoot squelches under your feet, the mud and debris soaking your shoes. Occasionally, every few steps, there are small marshes on either side, but the water in them seems...wrong. Somehow darker and murkier than you’d normally expect. There are no frogs or toads croaking in the mud, no crickets or cicadas to fill the air with white noise. There aren’t any chipmunks or mice scampering through the damp grass. There is only an oppressive silence, and even the sound of your footsteps together seem muffled to your own eyes, as if they’re a thousand miles away.”"For many years in Scaena, The Wilds have existed and acted as an unintentional barrier around the Acropolis. It takes three days to follow the safest path (around the forest, rather than through), but only one to cut across it to reach south of the Acropolis; many advise against taking the shortcut because of the aggressive nature of the fungi that grows throughout. The fungi here are infused with magic from the soil, resulting in a cage-like fungus capable of using illusionary magic and spores to cause victims to see a hallucination of someone (or something) they like to see; this is in an effort to attract the creature in question to come closer to the vines that extend down from the fungal-cage structure. The vines are covered in a numbing slime, slowly killing the target over the course of many days, so as to maximize the amount of nutrition gained from its body.

The group manages to make their way through The Wilds in one piece (barely), and later learn from a friendly face at the Fat Cat Inn that most folks don't recommend traveling through the forest without ample fire and protection.