Ilaser Seasonal Forest Clearing

Place

Place Name:

Ilaser Seasonal Forest Clearing

Biome:

Seasonal Forest Clearing

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

If you’re visiting Ilaser purely for the sightseeing opportunities, and don’t particularly care about your own safety, you have to take a look at the Labyrinth of the Tanirt clan. It’s not quite so beautiful as it is impressive. The Labyrinth was once an old mine, abandoned long before the beginning of the Third Era and never touched again until the Tanirt discovered it on accident and made it their hideout. Most of it is surprisingly well ventilated, nowadays, so you don’t have to worry about suffocating unless you wander into one of the rooms that the Tanirt have intentionally left unventilated as a trap to suffocate intruders.

Which, if you’re visiting the Labyrinth, you probably are. If you have the proper path memorized, though, you can get to the actual dwellings of the Tanirt clan within a few minutes. The floors and walls are covered in rugs and furs and carpets and fabric in general in an effort to make the place feel more homelike. It looks a bit strange, but it’s comfortable enough. There are plenty of fires lit to keep the place warm in the colder months — hence the ventilation. The smoke of the fires appears in random places in the forest and it’s difficult to pin down where exactly the source of the smoke is.

Atop the Labyrinth, on the surface, is the famous Clearing of Ilaser. The rest of Ilaser is covered in a variety of trees, except in the places where they have been cut down, but this particular spot had all its trees cut down at one point long ago and they’ve never grown back; it seems as though only the wildest of grasses and weeds can still grow here. The entrance to the Labyrinth is nearby, perhaps the miners that made the foundations of the Labyrinth seared the soil so that they could put down their equipment here. The Tanirt clan has done its best to make the Clearing an attractive place, though.

After all, this is where they put their table of food, with which they lure those foolish enough to try the food. The food’s all drugged, of course; at night, the Tanirt clan appears and reaps the produce of their trap, before going off to hunt elsewhere. The villages throughout Ilaser are typically built by streams and rivers, or else lakes, or any other source of water. There are no cities in Ilaser, nor were there ever any. In the days of the zu’aan empire, Ilaser was a mining region. The whole forest was cut down, once, to try and squeeze some farmland out of it.

But as it turned out that most of Ilaser was terrible for farming, the forest was regrown and a lumber industry was made. Those bits of land that did turn out fine for farming, though — farms were built upon them. At that point, Ilaser’s status as a jack of all trades was secured, and all manner of things were tried here. Even now in the days of the kin’tonis, all manner of things are still tried here. You can probably find a man for every profession under the sun in the villages of Ilaser, if you look hard enough.

Plants

There’s a common flower in Ilaser which the Tanirt use to brew their sleeping poisons out of, called the vry’yus. vry’yuses grow in the shade of large trees, gathering the least amount of sun that they can possibly get away with. More sun causes them to grow larger, and when they get too large, critters come along and eat their petals (which come in various cool colours). When they’re small, you see, their petals contain their poison in a high enough concentration to ward away critters. When they grow larger, the poison dilutes and breaks up and becomes much weaker in addition to becoming less concentrated.

The Tanirt don’t care about the petals; the actually useful poison is in the roots. Trying to uproot a vry’yus is a fun process, because the roots are ridiculously thick and deep for such a tiny flower. You have to dig around the tops of the flowers first, and then get a good grasp on the roots, before you start pulling them up. Otherwise, you’ll just pick the flower, severing it from its roots. vry’yus roots are a dark grey colour and do not look particularly tasty. But they’re surprisingly tasty. Not that you’ll notice how tasty they are after the second bite.

Because then you’ll either be dead or asleep or somewhere in between, depending on the strength of your constitution. To use them properly, they require a ton of crushing and juicing, to get all the water out. The powder you’re left with after this arduous process is barely sweet. If you let it ferment a while, it becomes about five times as potent in both taste and effect as it would otherwise be, but even a small dose of unfermented vry’yus powder is usually enough to send a large man to sleep. Strangely enough, cooking vry’yus powder renders it completely harmless

And twice as sweet again, with a strange lemony flavour thrown in. Try adding some to your cake, if you know this trick. Most people don’t, though — not even the Tanirt clan. Maybe one chef and one apothecary in all of Ilaser know it. But they keep it a secret. There’s another flower in Ilaser that’s not nearly as practical as the vry’yus, but it’s definitely more wonderful. galaris flowers are delicate, tiny sprouts that grow in the sunniest of places. They don’t seem like flowers for most of their lives — just like some kind of weird curling grass.

But when the flowers do grow, every songbird that catches sight of a patch of blooming galarises will swoop in and try to grab as many as it can carry, and then carry these flowers to their nests. And there, on the sides of their nests, they’ll replant the flowers, and wait for them to grow into fruits. Baby birds (and adult birds) love eating galaris fruits. No one knows why the birds just know to grab it and plant it even when they’ve never seen the flowers before — they’re rare things, after all — but they definitely do it. galaris seeds survive the trip through the digestive system.

New patches of galaris will appear wherever birds poop.

Animals

The tall, lithe enberiths are the ghosts of Ilaser, and they are a wonder to see. (As opposed to the tall, lithe, and ghostly Tanirt kin’tonis, which you do not want to see.) enberiths are a sign of good times — and not only because of superstition. They only appear just before and during times of good weather. Has the snow been falling for a couple weeks now? If you see an enberith, the sky’s about to clear up and let the sun through. Has a hurricane passed through, or a drought tormented the whole land? The appearance of enberiths means that it’s soon going to pass.

enberiths are pure white nocturnal creatures. The males have antlers of great size, and are not afraid to stare a zu’aan or kin’toni in the eye. The females never show themselves and to this day not even a kin’toni has seen a female enberith, let alone successfully hunted one. Killing a male enberith is surprisingly easy. If you find one, and leave your weapons undrawn, he will approach you himself, and examine you with a noble look in his eyes. Then, if you decided not to kill him, he will leave. But while he is standing there, greeting you, all you have to do to kill him is have a friend in the trees with a drawn bow, and a shield.

The shield is optional, but it increases your chances of survival by a small amount. Enberiths do not retreat when they know they’re about to die; instead, they take their vengeance on the thing that killed or betrayed them, knowing that a broken limb is a much better repayment than a long walk. enberiths never die instantaneously, even if you cut off their heads and put five arrows into their hearts. You will always have to defend yourself. Hence the shield. Another wonder of the forest of Ilaser is the meutaugh. It respects the other creatures of the forest, and will wander past even an armed band of kin’tonis without fear.

If it comes across a dead creature, the meutaugh will have its fill — it’s a scavenger by trade — and then it will bury the bones. And then it will wander on, as it is its nature to do. meutaughs aren’t pretty — they have four arms, four legs, and narrow, studious, wrinkled faces. All of their flesh is covered by dark mottled fur, and all their fur is tangled up with sticks and leaves. They have not hands, but three-fingered claws, which nevertheless have some characteristics of hands. Their feet have one claw each. Kin’tonis are terrified of meutaughs. Zu’aan even more so.

Why? Because if you even meet the eyes of a meutaugh, it will remember you. There’s a flash of recognition in those bestial eyes; there are so many tales told of what meutaughs have done to those people whom it has met twice. For all I know, every last one of these tales could be a fabrication, but when people say that meutaughs follow those people whom they remember unkindly, and tear open wooden walls to get at them while they sleep… that’s going to give anyone pause, especially those who’ve seen the eight-limbed monstrosities. As for those whom the meutaughs remember kindly? Well, there’s not nearly as many of those kinds of tales…

Historical Timeline of Ages

Age Name	Dates	Controller
Stone Age	Before 1E 0	Unknown
Copper Age	1E 1–1E 2200	Unknown
Bronze Age	1E 2200–1E 4400	Unknown
Iron Age	2E 0–2E 700	Unknown
Ancient Age	2E 700–2E 2200	Unknown
Middle Age	3E 0–3E 2050	Unknown
Early Modern Age	3E 2050–3E 2600	Unknown
Industrial Age	3E 2600–3E 2700	Unknown
Machine Age	3E 2700–3E 2800	Unknown
Atomic Age	3E 2800–3E 2850	Unknown
Space Age	3E 2850–3E 2875	Unknown
Information Age	3E 2875–3E 2900	Unknown
Genetic Age	3E 2950–3E 3000	Unknown
Awakening Age	3E 3000–3E 3415	Unknown
Twilight Age	4E 0–4E 500	Tanirt Kin'toni Clan

Place

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Ilaser Seasonal Forest Clearing

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This article is written by Xerxes Worldweaver. Copyright 2026 Xerxes Worldweaver. All rights reserved.