A colossal western rainforest whose luminous canopy, drowned roads and living archives preserve civilisations the wider world forgot.
Overview
The Viridian Expanse begins as ordinary woodland and deepens for hundreds of miles until daylight becomes green twilight. Rain caught in the oldest leaves carries impressions of voices, faces and places. Orunai keepers collect it in black bowls and use it to preserve testimony.
Roads cannot be trusted. The forest closes unused paths and occasionally opens routes to ruins that should lie on another side of the continent. Travellers therefore hire listeners, guides trained to distinguish real birdsong from the canopy's imitations.
History
Stone causeways beneath the roots indicate that an urban civilisation occupied the basin before the First Kings. Its name has not survived outside the rain memories, which become incoherent when carried beyond the forest.
The Veyran Dominion attempted to burn a military road through the Expanse during its western expansion. The fires returned as green flame and consumed only Veyran timber, wagons and siege equipment. No large army has entered since.
The present record
The Orunai Enclaves permit controlled trade in medicines, living wood and verified memories. In return they demand metal tools and copies of every map made by outsiders, including the inaccurate ones.
Recent memory rain has shown the same unknown city repeatedly: intact, sunlit and apparently waiting beneath the roots.
Notes and record
This article combines campaign record, spoken lore and the mythic account preserved in the Earin archive.