Certai Dying Woodland

Place

Place Name:

Certai Dying Woodland

Biome:

Dying Woodland

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Subcontinent

History

Twilight Age: 4E 0-4E 500

There was an age where the Certai Woodland was sprawling with lush forest, buzzing with life and raw energy. But then something awful happened, an event that pushed the woodland into a path of rot and decay. It wasn’t as sudden as a flip of a switch though. Instead, the death of this land happened over a long period of time, and the process was impossible to stop. So the zu'aan tribes were left to watch their homeland die and be destroyed in agony. The first catastrophe that accelerated the fate of the Certai Woodland towards certain death was the fire.

Some claim that this fire spread from the taiga up North, using the thick forest to jump and invade into the Certai area. Others believe that the fire was a deliberate sabotage by a neighbouring kin’toni clan, sticking a scapegoat onto the forest’s tragedy. All of these are nothing but guesses, and the true reason as to why a third of the woodland burned down in less than a week, is entirely unknown. The cause doesn’t matter much, what does is the result it had, for the fire was especially deadly and cruel, it devastated the clans settled there completely, but the long-term consequence was worse.

Both the zu’aan and the kin’toni of the woodland were farmers. Agriculture was simply something you did as a settler in the woodland. Alas, all the fields of crops were destroyed by a fire, and the soil was spoiled. The Certai clans were plunged into a famine which still lasts to this day. As if the ruin wasn’t enough, the famine was quickly followed by a drought, and all hopes of survival for the kin’toni clans were shattered. There was a single zu'aan tribe which managed to push through it all, namely the Dyn'en Tribal Zu'aan, but all others either moved to different areas in Taerel or simply perished with time.

Even those three horrible events didn’t prevent the forest from regenerating though, and the migrating zu'aan and kin’toni were sure that one day they would return to the land of their forefathers. Just when it really couldn’t get worse, it did. Some sort of mysterious chemical spill, like a timebomb that spent the past few centuries biding its time, completely poisoned the soil of the Certai Woodland. Just like that, it became impossible for new plants to grow, yet still possible for the existing ones to decay and fall. Indeed, this was a terrible fate for the woodland.

Here it was, destined to slowly rot away and to end in a painful death. When the zu'aan kin’toni realized that everything was doomed, all hope slipped away. The Dyn’en however, did not move, only because accepting that the forest is a soon-to-be wasteland hurt too much. Nevertheless, after the chemical spill the large woodland in the Northeast of Taerel had its name changed by its inhabitants. It wasn’t just the Certai Woodland anymore. A single word was added. Certai Dying Woodland.

Geography

The climate of the Certai Woodland is reminiscent of the climate farther North in the taiga, though it’s still way warmer as the woodland had not been afflicted by the horrors of the ice age yet, and it’s also further South. It’s an area of Taerel that has four distinct seasons, something that very few places can brag about. The winter is the only season of the year where the Certai region is coated with a blanket of ice and snow. However, this aforementioned blanket is fairly thin, and even in the coolest days of the winter in the woodland, it still can’t reach further up than a kin’toni’s ankles.

The start of spring used to be wonderful in the area, dead life would blossom and rise from the snow, it would almost be as if the woodland had awoken from a three-month long slumber. Now, nothing notable happens. New life cannot sprout from the woodland’s earth, apart from a few tiny patches of land that were unaffected by the leak and the carelessness of the bygone zu’aan. All that changes is that the sheets of snow melt and reveal the vulnerable bare soil shivering under it. Just mud, no flowers. There is no more joy in the arrival of spring in the woodlands, just bitterness.

Summer is when the scent of grass and trees would overpower anyone taking a stroll through the denser parts of the woods. Even though the sun’s heat would be intense, there would always be places shaded by the mighty tree leaves looming overhead. Today, the summer of the Certai Dying Woodland is as depressing as a summer may get. There is nowhere to shield yourself from the heat, so zu'aan getting from one place to another have to walk across a dry, empty and hollow wasteland that the woodland has become. These badlands once used to be awe-inducing plains and fields, but all that’s left is a desolate desert that even the birds have left.

The autumn used to be a memorable season for good reasons. Leaves would change colour to shades of blood-red and blazing orange before they finally fell, leaving giant piles. Not all trees would lose their foliage in this season, a good chunk of trees would remain green all year round, bringing some more colour to the woodlands’ autumn landscape. In modern Taerel though, this season is merely a cursed mess of rain and rot, as plants would dwindle never to bloom again. The withered and shriveled world that the summer leaves behind disappears in the midst of the unstopping precipitation, and the forest would fill with the stench of rotting vegetation and animal carcasses.

This awful miasma was what sealed the concern that the woodland was solely decaying away without renewal. One thing which obviously didn’t change about the woodland is its geographic elevation levels. The Certai region is extraordinarily low compared to its neighbours, and the land is almost entirely flat, with there not being a single large hill in the area, unless you count those around the border which mark the transition of the higher-elevated regions to the sinking Certai Woodland. The woodland itself is actually mostly below sea level, but it’s surrounded from all sides by solid land.

Plants

Before woe swallowed up whatever is now left of the Certai Woodland, it was an area renowned for its flora. Berries, countless fruit trees, vegetables, it seemed to be the perfect area for zu’aan to settle with the absolutely overwhelming amount of food that could be found and farmed there. A wildfire, a famine, a drought and an enormous poison spill later, and very few species remain standing in the Certai Woodland, and the list is likely to contain even fewer in the near future, as last of the brittle plants turn into a putrid, decomposing mess.

One of the trees that still towers above the heads of the zu'aan living in the woodland is the unyielding wy’il. Unlike further North in the taiga from whence this tree came from, the wy’il of the Certai Woodland is quite a bit less collosal, being both shorter and thinner than its northern equivalent. Nevertheless, the bark of the woodland wy’il is just as tough, and it seems to be the main attribute which helped them go through countless catastrophes and assaults by the hand of nature.

The population was hit heavily by the forest fire that kickstarted this entire chain of tragedic events, but a couple dozen wy’il still endure, ready to absorb any blow that Taerel decides to throw at them next. Not every single square meter of land has been affected by the strange spill that made the majority of the woodland uninhabitable for new life. There are patches that stand out in stark contrast to the rest of the landscape because flowers actually grow there. Those patches are few in-between, and they get reduced in size every year thanks to the rain spreading the poison in the soil around.

One of the flowers that’s really a pleasure to spot is the tura’at. The tura’at are sweet-smelling flowers of a magenta colour, famous for their relatively large size compared to the the average plants of Taerel. Unfortunately, the tura’at are purely there for decoration, and provide neither nutritional, nor medical value to the kin’toni clans. Such is the case with all of the woodland’s plants. The only fruit tree which has stood the test of time is the alira. The ones outside of the Certai Woodland have miniscule round fruits of a bright orange tint, and have been reported to be both delicious and filling.

Sadly, the alira trees in Certai have absorbed too much of the chemical in the soil, and while it didn’t kill them right away, the fruits have completely switched their taste to one that is bitter and repulsive to zu’aan and kin’toni taste buds alike. Some kin’toni have theorized that since the fruit of alira trees absorb the toxin in them, it’s possible to utilize them as a way to purify the land and halt its seemingly inevitable descent into necrosis, but no visible results have been found from the experiments conducted by them.

Animals

The Certai Woodland used to be crowded with life. Birds would perch on trees and sing for hours on end, shaping music that the kin’toni thought had magical properties, since the majority of them could not compose a tune as alive and complex as the one the birds did. However, the birds have stopped chirping in today’s Certai Dying Woodland, as there’s simply nothing for them there. No source of food that they can sustain themselves on, very little clean water, no trees with brittle bark that they could drill holes in and shield themselves from the elements.

Really, the departure of the indaris¸ a species of fowl that used to be unique to the Certai region, was truly what marked the forest’s downfall. Everything was plunged into an eerie stillness, with no song to keep the uncomfortable, creepy lull at bay. Sometimes, wandering animals like the lo’tu would go through, or even settle on the woodland to graze. The lo’tu come no more, as the grass has become bitter and dangerous for their health, just like the alira’s fruit. With no herbivorous fauna that predators could nourish themselves on, the carnivores steadily faded away as well.

It was terrifying to see the animals that have spent huge periods of their lived in the Certai area just walk away without turning back, something that heralded the start of something terrible to come. Now it seems like the only remaining wildlife is limited to bugs and tiny reptiles who feed on those bugs. The akh’zol are the most amazing survivalist out of all this fauna that occupy the woodland. Akh’zol may not be able to grow over ten centimeters long, but they are the fiercest creatures one will find. They spent pretty much the entirety of their days hunting for smaller creatures who stumble about the dying earth.

It reels prey in with a tongue that can retract and detract at what’s seemingly the speed of lighting. These creatures also possess venomous fangs which may not be deadly or otherwise dangerous to a fully-grown kin’toni, but can still leave a nasty bite, something that discourages both zu’aan and kin’toni from messing with the akh’zol, and funnily enough turns these harmless-looking lizards into the woodland’s apex predators. Perhaps the title is well deserved, because if their incredible agility and a powerful defensive mechanism is enough to scare away kin’toni, they must seem utterly horrifying to animals in their size category.

Speaking of which, there has been a demand for insects who can consume the woodland’s corpses and consequently clean the forest up. Navirs are the bugs for the job, and have made the forest smell much more pleasant despite it rapidly rotting from within. A single navir can take care of an entire kin’toni carcass in a couple of days, and it’s worth noting that they almost exclusively travel in large groups of a few hundred. They have been called the nature’s recyclers for a good reason, after all.

Obviously, once the last parts of the Certai Woodland die, there won’t even be need for navirs anymore It’s quite depressing to see an entire region get slowly dismantled until there is not a creature left.

Place

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

Unknown

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

This article is written by piggytheastro. Copyright 2026 piggytheastro. All rights reserved.