Let's create a forest with Cairn 2e - part 1

It's been a while, but this week I'm returning to Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide, specifically to its forest generator, to create a a forest to use in the Silksong-inspired 5e Duet campaign I'm preparing for my wife (I'll actually start it, eventually! But for now I'm alternating various different games already).


1. We start by rolling for the FOREST DESCRIPTION, 2d20: 4, Dying and 19, Sunlit;

2. Next we need to establish the SPIRIT OF THE FOREST, 2d20 again:
- Virtue: 5, Cultivating;
- Vice: 16, Prideful;

3. Now we need to find out the FOREST AGENDA, rolling, you guessed it, 2d20:
- Goal: 2, Awakening;
- Obstacle: 19, Vulnerability;

4. The next step is to roll a few d6s on a sheet of paper to generate the POINTS OF INTEREST (POIs) of the forest, numbering them and assigning a type to each of them based on the number rolled (each type then has 2 d20 tables to characterize them). Let's see what we got!

  1. Hazard: 15, Spiked pit, Feature: 19, Trees that grow from bones;
  2. Hazard: 18, Toxic spores, Feature: 17, Watchful dead;
  3. Ruin: 1, Abandoned manor, Feature: 18, The Veil between worlds is thin;
  4. Shelter: 6, Hidden village, Feature: 16, Popular with smugglers;
  5. Ruin: 10, Moldering farmhouse, Feature: 8, Bound Creature;
  6. Monster: 14, Pixie, Feature: 19, Torturing;
  7. Ruin: 11, Neglected shrine, Feature: 16, Realistic toy soldiers;
  8. Shelter: 17, Pale Folk stable, Feature: 11, Occupied by army deserters;
  9. Shelter: 10, Hut with legs, Feature: 20, Thieves' camp.

Ok, I can see a few themes here. The forest as a whole is dying, there are undead creatures in multiple areas, but in a way Nature is trying to make them part of the cycle. Because of its pride, all previous attempts to help the forest have failed, and the whole area is now avoided.
This was a great chance for the bandits, who managed to gain access to the forest by capturing a pixie, whose magic grants them safe passage through the forest. They keep a creature trapped as blackmail for the pixie.

The deserters in area 8 are Elves, who are very rare in this Human-centric setting, deserters from an ancient war (which took place where the Purple Geysers from this realm's creation are) which was fought between two tribes of Elves (a civil war) and was thought to be when the last Elves disappeared from the world. They are very dangerous, but not evil; they went into hiding because they didn't want to fight their kin.
Are there more in the world? They don't know, and at this stage I don't either.
The bandits don't know of them, one of them tried to raid the stable and never came back, so the other bandits stay away from it.

I've got more ideas for this forest, but I'll continue its description in a future post, 3 weeks from now (following my usual rotation). As always, feel free to use this forest (or just parts of it) for your own games, and if you do, please let me know how it goes!

This is all for this week, see you next Sunday for my next post!

May your dice never betray you,
Kirhon

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