The Great Northern Forest

The Great Northern Forest, called Namaket by the Vargaldi and Korvenya by the Urskans who live to its south and east, is a vast belt of taiga and muskeg that stretches from the lee of the Svinjo Mountains to the Green Sea. It is characterized by long, harsh winters, and brief, vibrant summers.

Terrain and Geography

A vast boreal woodland stretches for hundreds of miles east from the Svinjo Mountains. The bulk of the area forms the Ket river drainage. Low moraines cut across the land, separating drainages and providing drier highlands where spruce and larch thrive. From them, numerous small streams flow to join the Ket, creating willow flats and peat bogs in the lowlands.

Climate and Seasons

Winters in the Great Northern Forest are long, dry, severe, and ruled by white dragons that come from the north and often raid across the Ket. Snowfall is frequent, the rivers freeze, and travel is slow and difficult, often only easy along the ice.

Spring arrives in a rush, though late. With the thaw, rivers run high and fast and open land turns to impassable mud. Summers are short and bright, with long days of sunlight. The air fills with mosquitoes and midges and the songs of nesting birds ring from the trees.

Autumn comes early to the forest. The first frosts redden the birch and drop the cones from the spruce; the forest quiets as animals turn to dens and lairs to hide from cold and dragons for the long winter.

Ecology

The Great Northern Forest is a classic boreal forest, with a mix of spruce, tamarack, pine, and fir, mixed with the occasional birch and willow where the water and soil support them. Berries and sedges fill the forest edges, on bare hills and wet valleys. Elk and moose graze where they can; bear and wolf hunt them; raptors soar over the trees.

But all these creatures fear the two dominant predators of the forest: the ice worms that swim through the deepest layers of the earth that never thaw, and the white dragons that rule the skies. Both of these predators largely retreat north during the spring thaw, giving the land a reprieve, but with the first frosts they return.

The ice worms hunt by stealth, remaining deep underground in the frozen soil until they sense warmth above them, when they burst forth from the frost to swallow their prey whole. Dragons hunt from the skies, daring anyone to challenge their dominance over the land, freezing tree, beast, and human alike with their deadly icy breath.

Peoples

People are sparse in the forests, though the deep woods are home to a northern people, the Vargaldi, whose ancestors crossed the Svinjo. Camps shift with season and game, with few permanent buildings due to the danger of dragons. What camps last are usually hidden in deep forests, out of sight of flying eyes. While the hardships of the land keep population densities low, those who learn to hunt the dangerous inhabitants of the northern forests can make a tidy profit at the markets of Zvervinka.