Anierry Brumal Forest

Geography

An Thierry Brumal Forest is a vast, cold-temperate taiga (boreal woodland) that covers the storm-wracked northern interior of the world during the Twilight Age. It is the antithesis of the saturated thaw-plains of Agaro, or the exposed stone barrens of Aightu. An Thierry is characterized by crushing, suffocating cold, and monumental snowfall accumulations that are topped off with a seemingly endless ocean of ancient, old-growth evergreens able to withstand months of extreme, prolonged seasonal darkness, and winter gales.

Topography and Geology

An Thierry consists of the surface of a sprawling basin of undulating uplands, low mountain ridges, and deep river valleys that were aggressively carved by glacial advance and retreat over the span of great geologic ages. It is the most topographically uneven part of the world-which is itself a deceptive quality in that the true nature of the terrain is hidden by thick layers of the suffocatingly dense evergreen canopy, as well as dense mosses, peats and centuries of accumulated forest detritus. The forest floor is the most treacherous and uneven landscape in the world. Its landscape is composed primarily of frost-heaved root systems, monumental deadwood deadfalls, and freezing marshes and hidden stream corridors that will not un-freeze and emerge for many months per year.

The underlying geology is composed of deeply ancient granite bedrock, immense deposits of glacial till and deeply weathered metamorphic ridges. The immense scarring of the Ice Age is readily apparent throughout the forest. Enormous glacial erratics and smoothed-stone outcroppings litter the terrain, particularly across the more elevated ridgelines where the oncoming continental ice scoured the landscape bare of its topsoil in millennia past.

Climate and Hydrography

The climate of the Brumal Forest is excruciatingly hostile and deeply seasonal. The winters last an agonizingly long time. Freezing gales persist month after month, and subzero temperatures reign during extended periods of total darkness. Immense blizzards will roll across the canopy, burying the valleys many meters deep under snowpack and creating absolutely zero visibility. However, the extreme density of the interlocking forest canopy serves to keep some of the extreme winds away from the ground level, and the extreme conditions have created its own distinct microclimate on the forest floor. In the forest, there is instead an immense and freezing humidity, trapped within the deepest parts of the woods.

An Thierry is powered almost entirely by the winter snowpack. The summer thaw, which arrives but a few short months later, causes the slow melt of these immense, snowdrifts, and a proliferation of a chaotic, sprawling network of braided rivers, kettle lakes and peat bogs. Because the subsurface often remains frozen solid, no true deep-water drainage can occur, so the lowlands are permanently waterlogged. Here it is forever the summer thaw and freezing rains, and dense, ceaseless fog roll through the trees.

Traversability

Navigation within the An Thierry Brumal Forest is a frustrating and potentially fatal endeavor. The incredible density of the old-growth timber makes overland traverse impossibly slow, as does the treacherous terrain of bogs and poor visibility. The reliable path during the dead of winter, is the frozen river or hardened marsh, though one must ever be on guard for sudden, unpredictable collapses and whiteouts. When the thaw hits the terrain, one faces a flooded, impassable network of frozen mud, hidden sinkholes and waterlogged land trapped forever in the dimness of the canopy.