The Twilight Forest
A natural extension of the High Forest under a sky that is never day: shorter trees that drink starlight and gloom and somehow power an entire ecosystem on it. The Leshy hunt and trap here, live near the canopy, and have a reputation for waylaying they have not worked hard to shake.
The Land
Everything here is unique to the Veil, barring a few enterprising daywalkers from the High Forest who have pushed north into the twilight. The forest under the High Forest's canopy is merely gloomy; the Twilight Forest is, to a day-dweller, total darkness. The sharp eyes and magical senses of the natives make it navigable — not safe.
The Duskmarket stands where the forest meets the Shadowed Vale: a settlement built on and inside a fallen giant of a tree, where anything can be bought and nobody asks where it came from.
South the forest runs continuously into the Greenmantle; west lies the Nightwood, darker still and not the Kingdom's.
The Leshy
Traditional hunters and trappers, and occasional waylayers of Faeries foolish enough to wander in. Their villages sit high in the trees near the canopy, because they like to fly above it for the starlight — at the constant risk of owls, which at this scale are the apex predator of the entire province.
They make cloaks and armour from raven and owl feather, which renders forms already hard to see very nearly impossible.
Encounters
Roll d100. Permanent dusk under a closed canopy. Everything here hunts, and the natives are counted twice. CR is scaled to Faerie size — see Challenge by Size.
| d100 | Encounter | CR |
|---|---|---|
| 01–09 | 1d4 Leshy trappers in owl-feather cloaks, who saw you a long time before this | — |
| 10–16 | 1 Duskmarket caravan, 2d6 strong, hauling foolsfire caps and asking no questions | — |
| 17–23 | 2d6 farmed fireflies loose from a broken loft, lighting the whole floor | ½ |
| 24–29 | 1d4 moths, lesser, on the night transport run between canopy villages | 2 |
| 30–35 | truedark: the nightbloom harvest window opens, and the floor fills with people | — |
| 36–41 | 1d3 jumping spiders in the understory, angle already worked out | 1 |
| 42–47 | 2d4 wolf spiders on the forest floor — the province's most common death | 3 |
| 48–53 | 1d4 house centipedes down a trunk, far too fast, from above | 3 |
| 54–59 | 1d2 black widows in a hollow, shy and disproportionate | 3 |
| 60–65 | 1d3 ground beetles in the leaf litter, night and jaws | 2 |
| 66–71 | 1 mantis nymph on a low branch, already lethal | 4 |
| 72–76 | 1d2 tarantulas in the root buttresses, reach Large | 7 |
| 77–81 | 1 praying mantis on the trail, opening with conversation | 8 |
| 82–86 | 1d2 bats in the canopy — truedark belongs to them and they say so | 10 |
| 87–90 | 1 huntsman spider running the trunks | 9 |
| 91–93 | 1 frog at a forest pool | 9 |
| 94–95 | 1 greater centipede in the deep litter, hunting bats by touch | 10 |
| 96–97 | 1d2 jays in the canopy, mimicking the party's own voices back | 13 |
| 98 | 1 barn owl through the trunks, silent | 19 |
| 99–00 | 1 great horned owl — the apex of the entire province, and it is hunting Leshy | 23 |