While still the largest collection of darkwood in Andoran, Darkmoon Wood steadily decreases in size with each passing year. The logging community of Falcon’s Hollow chops away at the woods, harvesting roughly 7,000,000 board feet of timber per year (about 5% of which is darkwood), almost all of which ends up in Augustana to the south. Formerly a part of Arthfell Forest, centuries of logging separated the two into distinct forests, with much of Avistan’s remaining darkwood trees standing among pines and firs within Darkmoon Wood.
At the current rate of logging, the Lumber Consortium estimates the Wood only has about two more decades before it all falls to the lumberjack’s axe. Numerous factors are beginning to slow the harvest, though, and Greenfire druids hope to reach an equilibrium of felling and regrowth in time to prevent the wholesale destruction of the forest.
Cold Marrow: Cold Marrow is an accursed place. Parched and withered weeds spring from cracked earth littered with glum, lifeless rock. No sound of nature penetrates the supernatural stillness of Cold Marrow, and no living creature willingly makes its home in this place.
Calendar of the Ancients: This wide, low hill rises within the silence of Cold Marrow. Symbols of unknown origin encrust the mound’s entire exterior, although most are eroded by time’s careless caress. Ascending the mound is a series of broken stairs framed by two giant menhirs of white marble. At the base of these stairs two enormous stone disks, each the size of a giant’s wagon wheel, rest one atop the other, their edges overlapping slightly. The disks are carved with thousands of runes in wild patterns that defy reason.
Elara’s Halfway House: Standing right on the edge of the woods on a small hill roughly 8 miles outside of town, this small orphanage recently fell to a fire, killing everyone inside—child and caregiver alike. Until the tragic fire razed it, the orphanage housed not only the lost children of Darkmoon Vale, but also those of refugees from Isger and Druma. Now, the superstitious people of Falcon’s Hollow avoid the sad ruins, calling them haunted. Although no confirmation of actual haunting exists, people who get too close to the ruins occasionally vanish.
Forest Elder: The dense trees and thick brush of the forest give way, parting seemingly in respect for the titanic darkwood tree that dominates this clearing. Several times taller than a temple minaret, in one direction the obviously ancient tree reaches into the sky with branches like a giant’s arms, while in the other it plumbs the earth with roots thicker than a man’s waist. Its limbs broad and strong, its bark thick and so richly colored as to almost be black, and its leaves the size of bucklers, the giant thing is less a tree and more a cathedral of boughs and branches. Some of the local druids, in fact, actually consider the Forest Elder and its hanging branches a cathedral of sorts.
This elder darkwood tree is the most ancient of its kind in Andoran (and likely one of the oldest on the continent). Said to have been carried as a sapling from the Hissing Jungle and planted here in the distant past by Deirzir, the Eagle of The First Way, the druids who once guarded the forest claimed this darkwood to be the root from which all Darkmoon Wood grew.
Local tatzlwyrms occasionally make their lairs in the immense branches of this massive darkwood. While Greenfire druids frequently drive out those draconic menaces, others of their kind inevitably return. Why they are drawn to the magnificent tree remains a mystery to local druids and sages.
Lumber Consortium’s Main Camp: This efficient and profitable camp stands amid an ugly swath of clearcutting roughly 15 miles from Falcon’s Hollow. Five sturdy log buildings—a bunkhouse, a meal hall, an office, a barn, and a smithy—comprise the camp, which provides for roughly 30 men. Scattered amid the sawdust-covered clearing surrounding the buildings are numerous wide, heavy carts and sleds.
The Lumber Consortium owns this hard-working camp and employs all its residents. Most of the men here work as lumbermen, and all 23 of them sleep in the bunkhouse. The camp’s boss, Jarlben Trookshavits, lives in a small room tacked onto the outside of the filthy and taxidermy-filled office (in which he works). Similar small rooms attached to the well-organized barn and the junk-filled smithy house their caretakers as well. Several wanderers and woodsmen who explore Darkmoon Wood for the Lumber Consortium (ever looking for new copses of darkwood and other valuable resources) use the camp as a base of operations, taking warm meals here on occasion and bedding down in the bunkhouse during particularly foul weather. Experienced tracker and hunter Milon Rhoddam is one of these itinerate residents.
Ulizmila’s Cottage: Deep in the forest stands a small cottage owned by the witch Ulizmila, said to be a daughter of famed Baba Yaga. The exact location of this cottage remains a mystery, and most people of Darkmoon Vale are happy to keep it that way. Rumors place with Ulizmila the power to kill with a word, turn a man into a goat, and to shoot lightning from her eyes. None dare look for her cottage, and woodsmen who venture into the wood and fail to come out are said to be victims of the witch.
