The Silent Forest

From Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" to Robert Egger's The Witch, "the woods" are a place where the laws of man--be they temporal, spiritual, or moral--are suspended in the wildness that resists the forces of civilization. If you want to have a Gothic-influenced setting, you need a dark forest where savage elements lurk in the untamed bosom of the natural world. The Silent Forest fills that role in Krevborna.

(art by Tenebrous Kate)

The Silent Forest

Forbidden and Accursed Woodlands 

The Silent Forest is a deep woods of misshapen trees whose limbs resemble clawed, skeletal appendages. True to its name, the forest is ominously quiet. Old burial grounds—their headstones cracked and the names upon them effaced by time and the depredations of nature—are slowly consumed by the green hell of the Silent Forest. 

Villages lurk at the edges of the Silent Forest, but the villagers warn their children not to enter the woods, as it is believed to cursed. When night falls, the malign creatures within the forest grow stronger, faster, and more ravenous. 

However, the Silent Forest is not wholly uninhabited. Those who live in proximity to the Silent Forest report that elves, goblins, and fairies possess a secret enclave deep within the woods, hidden from the eyes of human kind. Tribes of wildlings, regarded as cannibals  prone to scalping civilized folk who intrude on their enclaves, also make their homes among the Silent Forest’s twisted trees.  

Hallmarks

The following elements and aesthetic notes define the Silent Forest:

    • The forest is an accursed and unholy place; many sects of the Church forbid their parishioners from entering it.

    • Elves, fairies, and goblinkin maintain a hidden city in the Silent Forest.

    • The trees of the Silent Forest are often blackened and ominously shaped.

    • Woad-painted wildling tribes live deep inside the woods.

    • A family of bandits known as the Ulvarg clan hide within the Silent Forest.