Echest Withered Forest

Place

Place Name:

Echest Withered Forest

Biome:

Withered Forest

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Note

The following documentary was written down with great difficulty and only by the kind consent of the Stastwar Clan. Even though we were dishonest in our bargaining and wrote down much more than we were permitted, Aselia Documentaries would like to apologize for the large amounts of information we were not able to acquire. Thank you for reading.

Geography

Echest, located in the middle of a landlocked sea, is composed of six islands. The main one is simply called the Lab Island, for obvious reasons; the other five do not have names. The Lab Island is about twice as big as the other five put together. The other islands, however, are not insignificant. The first of the five forms a natural harbour, and all the boats are docked there. A bridge runs between it and the main island. The second and third of the five have large populations of uydlais, though the uydlais of the third island in particular have peculiar characteristics.

Still, nobody’s died yet from eating them, so they’re probably fine to eat unless you like your skin colour how it is. The fourth of the lesser islands, a large mound of rock, never had any trees growing on it to begin with, and is thus safer than any other place in Echest. The fifth — we don’t talk about the fifth lesser island, but if you ask too many questions about it, you’ll probably end up being sent there The Lab Island has many concrete pathways, in order to help you get to where you need to go without having to step in acidic brownish-pink gunk. Please do not step off the pathways.

Apparently the Stastwar already waste enough of their time hunting down lunatics before they cause irreparable damage and they have no desire to hunt you down after the chemical pools on this island dissolve something slightly important in your brain. They thank you. In the center of the Lab Island are the remnants of the laboratory itself. Much work has been accomplished with the intention of restoring it to its former glory, but the Stastwar only have so much technology, and the metal that the walls used to be made out of they have put to more important uses.

Such as swords and boats. But if you step inside — mind the craters — you can see many large rooms and many mines. In that room over there, they store all the technology they have been able to salvage; it’s being studied day and night by their greatest scholoars. What goes on in there is a secret. Again, the Stastwar would like to ask you to not inquire into it or attempt to sneak into that room, or they will have to kill you. In this room, over here, we have the living quarters. It gets slightly better every day, but some parts of it, especially the larger dormitories, are still frightful messes of chemicals and damaged walls, floors, ceilings, and furniture. The mines, which are all over the place.

Are some of the safest places in Echest, but they’re still quite dangerous. Take care lest you slip on some slick marble and fall to your death. Here, day and night, the Stastwar clan's zu’aan slaves work tirelessly to carve out blocks of marble to reconstruct the splendour of the laboratory. This is also where most of their metalwork is done. When the work is finished, the heavy blocks of marble, as well as the weapons, are sent back to the surface using the crane that you saw up there. If you’re feeling daring, you can ride back to the surface yourself using it.

But they have already suffered many fatalities due to men trying to look cool, so they don’t recommend it. But of course, I love looking cool, so I took a ride.

Plants

When I asked about the trees in Echest — the place is known as a Withered Forest, after all — most of the replies I got were angry grunts and hostile glares. But eventually, I got an off-duty Stastwar scientist to explain to me what they were:

“So we’ve been examining those things for ages, and they still have (censored) surprises for us every week. But they were definitely normal trees before they turned into blasted little twisted pitchforks of (beep) and darkness. The chemicals that littered this archipelago after the laboratory explosion, they made maybe one or two trees turn black and worthless for any use. But then something in the trees made the disease spread. We call it Echest’s Blight — and we don’t know how it spreads, but it’s got something to do with the wood. Our chief had a mace he was very proud of.

The handle of fine timber — yeah, that turned black a few days after we took possession of this island, and it burned his hands when he tried to pick it up. That’s why he wears gloves now. We’ve chopped down a few of these trees, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth — there’s just so (censored) many of the (censored) (censored) (censored). The first tree we laid an axe to — it blasted out some kind of pink (censored) and killed five warriors two seconds after we blunted the axe on its bark. We figured out how to do it safely, now, but it still takes about a month and ten axes to do one tree. Not worth it.”

I had the audacity to disobey the strict commands to not even go close to the withered trees. They were very tall, but their limbs had shrivelled, so that they were much thinner than they should have been. They seemed like they should have been very fragile. But, when I flung a stone at a branch, instead of snapping like a dead twig, it bent, and oozed out that brownish-pink gunk that I’ve been so often warned against getting close to. As I watched, the gunk dripped off the tree, and onto the ground — but when the last of it was gone, there was a new black branch ‘growing’ from where I had hit the original branch with the stone.

No other plants other than the strange grass and those withered trees grow on these islands anymore. And you can hardly call the withered trees ‘plants’ anyway. But perhaps the grass deserves some notice. The grass is generally a sort of brown colour, with specks of green. But occasionally, you’ll find large patches of it stained an extremely different colour — generally neon pink, but I’ve also seen in my illegal wanderings grass coloured bright blue, bloody red, and musty orange — and black grass too, of course. It’s like some giant spilled his paint. I’ve never gotten closer to the grass than I had to.

Apparently it’s less dangerous than the trees, but of course that’s not saying much.

Animals

As I’ve already noted, there’s uydlais on two of the minor islands in Echest. They feed on the strange grass that grows there, though, judging by the appearance of the uydlais, some of them feed on stranger grass than others. No matter how politely I asked, I was not told what effects the Blight of Echest had on zu’aan like myself or on kin’tonis like my companion, whom I hired to be my guard and writer on this expedition. But I was able to judge by these uydlais that one of the many effects of the Blight was an increased number of limbs, sometimes even an increased number of heads.

Other effects which I noticed on the uydlais include strange coloured fur, eyes that are far too large, an increased number of eyes, blindness, swellings, muscles that don’t function, twisted bones, and sharpened teeth. And the people who live on Echest eat these things? Ew. I’m not going anywhere close to that pink stuff now. When I rephrased my questions concerning the Blight of Echest, saying that I was only interested in how it affected the uydlais, the uydlai farmers were willing enough to confirm all my observations, and to tell me with a bit of pride how they specially bred the uydlais.

And fed them on certain colours of grasses in order to get the uydlais to grow different colours of fur. These furs they make into clothing, and sell to the men the Stastwars aren’t at war with. Apparently the furs, despite their strange colour, are safe enough to wear, so I bought myself a nice neon blue scarf. I haven’t noticed anything strange happening to me yet, and thus can recommend that everyone else buy it with a clear conscience. It really is quite soft, and someone fashionable, I daresay. The fish — I did take a quick swim, since the water was warm — I was curious as to why the fish were described as “too friendly”.

Apparently it’s because they crowd you as you’re trying to swim, scratching your skin with their jagged scales and nibbling your toes. I found this out by personal experience and I can confirm that the fish are indeed too friendly. I later asked why nobody tried to catch the fish and eat them and the answer I got to that question is that it’s bad luck. At this point I don’t even want to know why it’s bad luck. Eating one of those fish probably makes your skin turn into scales or something, if they’re in the same amount of contact with the pink acid as everything else is in this blighted archipelago.

On my way back home — I was checked very thoroughly for wooden items before I left — these same fish followed us in the boat. But by the time we had gotten a mile or so away from Echest, the fish suddenly lost their ‘friendliness’ and swam away. I’m never coming back here again. The Stastwar clan is probably glad of that.

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	Stastwar Kin'toni Clan

Place

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Echest Withered Forest

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