The Crying Forest is one of the few places in the Demesne where you can still find the Folk. When the Empire's armies and settlers came to Jeril four hundred years ago, they started grabbing up chunks of land pretty quickly. The Folk resisted, but there weren't enough of them to do anything but delay the Empire's expansion by a few years. Eventually, the vast majority of the Folk were pushed up north, in what's now known as the Folklands. A few are still bumping around the Demesne, though; some of them live among the rest of us, just normal folk—no pun intended—trying to get by, trying not to attract too much attention with their gifts and little uniquenesses. There were quite a few, though, who weren't content to be pushed off onto some barren stretch of rock, who wanted to stay in their ancestral lands. So, they did the only thing they could do: they grabbed a piece of land for themselves.

The area where I'm walking now used to be called the Fields of Gold, about two hundred, two hundred fifty years ago. One night, though—overnight—a forest sprang up, completely eclipsing the Fields and swallowing up two towns and more than a few encamped armies in the process. Most of those people were never heard from again, and there are a number of theories about what happened to them. Some say the Folk killed them, or ate them, or turned them to stone. Others think that those who were caught within the Forest became Folk, themselves, forever turning their back on their humanity. The most prevalent opinion, though—and this is not without a little bit of evidence to back it up—is that the people who were occupying the Fields when it happened became the trees. The theory goes that the Folk collectively cast a mighty incantation, one that took the souls of everyone in the Fields and cast them about the land, turning them into the very trees that now make up the Crying Forest. This is partially supported by the fact that the trees tend to move about and, at night, seem to have a near-sentience about them. Mainly, though, it's because you can hear them weeping under the light of the full moon.

At any rate, I'm giving you this long-winded bit of local history not because I think it's interesting, but because I'm now walking through the middle of what is widely considered to be the single most haunted place in the Demesne, and I'm pretty sure it's a full moon tonight. And that is really freaking me out.

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