The Haunted Forest

A large feature that in part will separate Timischburg from my more newly developing Hill Country area is the Haunted Forest.  Originally, this was a different concept—merely a dangerous forest crawling with thurses or beastmen, and I thought the idea of a Haunted Forest was a bit cliche, but gradually I came around to adopting it again anyway.  I haven't, however, given a whole lot of thought to exactly what haunts the Haunted Forest, or why it's called that.  Other than some vague notions of old ruins mouldering in the green, a very thick canopy that blocks sunlight and traps mist and fog and darkness under the branches, and probably some necromancers here and there, like lesser versions of The Necromancer at Dol Guldur.

PA may have said that the forest is in the heart and soul of the Northern European (he was specifically referring to the northern Slavs, but I can see his point for anyone from Germany, Scandinavia, or Great Britain too) but the reality is that forests were also frightening places; full of dangerous wild animals, bandits, and very difficult to navigate without getting lost.  There's a reason why Tolkien had no less than three dark forests in his stories (Mirkwood in The Hobbit, the Old Forest in Fellowship of the Ring and Fangorn Forest in The Two Towers)—it's an important part of our cultural heritage too, and Mirkwood was not actually an invention of Tolkien's (the word also appears in the Eddas, as Myrkviðr ("murky wood") and various other Norse sagas (referring to various places in each) in an Old English poem, and is probably the genesis of the name of the Schwarzwald, or Black Forest—now famous for it's ham and the site of the Teutoburg massacre of three roman legions.  And for that matter, even Tolkien's specific Anglicization of Mirkwood was done first, as in several other things, by William Morris.  Quoting Tolkien himself:

Mirkwood is not an invention of mine, but a very ancient name, weighted with legendary associations. It was probably the Primitive Germanic name for the great mountainous forest regions that anciently formed a barrier to the south of the lands of Germanic expansion. In some traditions it became used especially of the boundary between Goths and Huns. I speak now from memory: its ancientness seems indicated by its appearance in very early German (11th c.?) as mirkiwidu although the *merkw- stem 'dark' is not otherwise found in German at all (only in O[ld] E[nglish], O[ld] S[axon], and O[ld] N[orse]), and the stem *widu- > witu was in German (I think) limited to the sense of 'timber,' not very common, and did not survive into mod[ern] G[erman]. In O.E. mirce only survives in poetry, and in the sense 'dark', or rather 'gloomy', only in Beowulf [line] 1405 ofer myrcan mor: elsewhere only with the sense 'murky' > wicked, hellish. It was never, I think, a mere 'colour' word: 'black', and was from the beginning weighted with the sense of 'gloom'.

The various Mirkwood's seem to have been, in Germanic mythology, not merely a dark, gloomy forest, but also a boundary of sorts between one world and the next; in some cases in a prosaic sense, like the boundary between the realms of the Goths and Burgundians from the Huns and the separation, for that matter, of Asgard from Muspellheim.  More recently, of course, the great forests of North America were the frontier between the colonies and the wild country beyond, and folks like Daniel Boone and before that the fur traders romanticized the great American forests to a great degree.

So, forests are in the heart and soul of the Northern European, but also, we recognize that they are dark and frightening places.  I dunno.  I suppose that's why the Haunted Forest seems cliche.  But that said, it's not something that I have a problem with; cliches are cliche for a reason, and they're only boring if you make them so.  It's usually more in the execution than in anything else.  Unless you're really genius, innovation is over-rated, and is usually best done as a subtle nuance to something that's tried and true, quite often, rather than something completely unheard of.  Especially in the fantasy genre which is, at heart, a nostalgic, backwards looking celebration of the romanticized past, in many ways; a yearning for something that we once had but have lost.

So, all that said, and it's probably too much said, what haunts the Haunted Forest, then?  What is its secret (or maybe not so secret) history?

The territory of the Hill Country, up to at least the borders of what is today Timischburg, was probably first settled by early ancestors of the skraelings.  Some few still live deep in the Haunted Forest and other remote areas of the territory, but it is here that their touch is the least disturbed.  Cursed burial grounds, sacrificial altars, barrows and more leave their lingering taint on the ground, and there is a rumor that "sympathetic magic" ties the skraelings to the land in a way that it does not for other peoples; the land itself, and some kind of genius loci favors them and occasionally actively fights against more recent interlopers.  In addition to a kind of vaguely defined genius loci haunting the region and making modern peoples uncomfortable deep in the forest, lingering semi-sentient spirits either cursed Wendaks or those whom they summoned in ancient times still linger, worn down to being little more than vague emotional resonances of hate and defensiveness, but which can occasionally embody themselves in bodies of earth and wood and stone, animate ill will in the animals and trees and brambles, or even appear as wraiths or wights of some kind.  These skraeling spirits are not organized by anything other than a general animus towards anything in the forest that is not skraeling, and they are usually essentially mindless, possessing no thought, but only emotions such as hate and rage.

Evil empires of kemlings and jann washed over the territory in the past as well.  They built fortresses and waypoints and roads, some of which still linger in the forest, and the evil influence of their sorceries still taint the territory around them.  The kemlings were descendants (in distant generations) from daemonic ancestors, and they used their dark magic to "burn out" pockets of resistance against the skraelings.  While the genius loci of the forest has reencroached on this territory to some degree, but the curse of much of what they built still is there.

The modern population is not cursed or evil, of course, but their ability to have "settled" the forest is limited.  They have been more successful where they've cleared it, honestly, and turned it into farmland, and torn down the stones of whatever menhirs and henges or crumbling fortresses of the past might have been still there.  This has only happened to a small degree around the very fringe of the forest.

The latest to enter the forest, however, have been various dark sorcerers, witches and worse who, being driven out of civilized society, have sought refuge in the forest and established their own small, haunted demesnes deep in the forest.  Many of these are necromancers, or wizards who speak with other spirits besides the dead; strange fey spirits, or even daemons.

Therefore, the haunted forest has layers of hauntings, many of which are actually in open competition with each other.

In terms of the system, I would represent these layers in some different ways.

• Some of the fey spirits and the hostile genius loci is probably best represented by the haunts rules as well as stuff like dryads and maybe occasionally an elemental or something like that.
• There are some old skraeling undead; various ghosts and wights and maybe some uses of the mummy stats, although these are relatively rare.  Most actual undead stats would represent something brought (or raised) by more recently arrived necromancers.
• Daemons or other "otherworldly" creatures are more likely to be the remnants of the touch of Baal Hamazi and Kurushat (the kemling and jann empires, respectively.)  I would focus less on powerful Jewish or early Christian folklore daemonology that's in the list and more on Lovecraftian stuff, like byakhees, imps, deep ones in swampy or flooded lake areas, nightgaunts, spider-baboons, etc.
• The more recently arrived sorcerers and necromancers can be unique in their approach, but they will tend to have lower-powered undead; ghouls and ghoul-hounds, skeletons, wights, etc., as parts of their retinues.
• There are, of course, many animals who live in the Haunted Forest, but because of the fell taint that lingers over much of the forest, many of them are also strange and weirdly hostile to passers-by and travelers.  Use these in as creepy a fashion as you can, emphasizing their unusual and belligerent behavior.  This shouldn't be a case of touch and go thrilling combat, but more creepy foreshadowing and to create a feeling of doom and gloom.
• The most powerful creatures that you'd likely find in the Haunted Forest would be maybe the occasional lich or vampire, and deep in the woods, some things like Dark Young.