Dire Wood The Cataclysm & The War of the Lance The current year for our Dragonlance campaign is set during 351 AC "After Cataclysm". Inspired By Trampas Whiteman

Deep within the Dire Wood, the very laws of life and death are a sick, twisted mockery. The pervasive necromantic corruption does more than just kill; it sours and warps everything it touches. The petrified trees, once living and vibrant, now stand as black, bone-dry husks, their contorted branches reaching and clawing at the perpetual twilight that grips the sky. Moss and fungi cling to these dead monuments, not with the gentle green of new life, but with the pallid, sickly glow of death and disease.

The ground itself is a treacherous graveyard. Beneath the thin layer of rotting leaves and brackish water, the earth is saturated with the residue of countless souls lost to the curse. The bogs and mires do not merely trap the unwary; they are mouths of the forest, hungry for new victims.

Those who struggle in the muck find their energy and will drained away, their flesh beginning to decay before the chill of the water has even reached their bones. But it is the whispers that truly define the wood's horror. These aren't just the rustling of leaves or the creaking of branches; they are the mournful, pleading voices of the endless swarms of ghosts trapped here.

The spirits drift like mist, their vague forms coalescing into distorted, half-remembered faces that stare with hollow, tormented eyes. Some of them follow, silent and observant, while others scream soundlessly, their grief a palpable, psychic pressure that drives all living things toward madness. The air is thick with a sorrow so ancient and profound it can taste like ash in the mouth. It is the echo of a magical ritual gone catastrophically wrong, a cacophony of a thousand dying screams turned into an unending hymn of despair.

For those who enter, the Dire Wood is a living nightmare, its geography and scale shifting to disorient and mislead. What appears to be a day's journey can stretch into weeks, the same landmarks appearing and disappearing as the forest plays with your mind. It is an endless tomb, a trap designed not just to end life, but to consume hope and imprison the soul forever. This is why the barbarians call it "The Trap," for it ensnares body and spirit, and offers no release save a descent into madness or undeath.