A region in Artmegía
Years ago, a curse began to spread from the White Forest, thought to be the home of a coven of witches, into the Kingdom, threatening The Academy of Arcane Arts and its students. It is unclear why, but before the curse could do any real damage to the Kingdom, it retreated back into the Forest. Some believe the Forest is safe now, while others believe the curse could return at any moment and threaten Artmegia’s way of life again, but all who have gone to investigate haven’t returned.
Session 6 — A Hotspot of Divine Magic (May 31, 2026)
Simone’s enchanted map of magic revealed a HUGE spike of divine magic centered on the White Forest — the largest concentration in all of Astrodia. This makes the Forest central to the mysteries the S.A.T.O. is investigating.
- Asha was expelled from Lorehold for researching a forbidden artifact tied to this Forest — the antithetical abuse of academic freedom that prompted the founding of the S.A.T.O.
- The White Forest is The Fallen’s next destination: they plan to bring the Golden Chalice here, away from The Academy of Arcane Arts and toward answers.
- It appears tied to The Seeker of the Sinful Spoils — the woman in black and red who has appeared in the dreams of Asha and Úlfr.
Cross-references: The Fourth Magic, S.A.T.O..
Session 7 — What Is Known of the Curse (July 15, 2026)
Piecing together accounts from Myrna, Quintilius, the butler Archibald, and the Lathen priest, The Fallen assembled the fuller picture:
- The forest is named for its ethereal, unnatural white trees — clearly touched by magic (probably divine, per Simone’s map).
- Decades ago, a curse spread from the forest as cursed vines and thorns that corrupted the land and killed or corrupted anyone who touched them. The Academy and even the Endymion Empire sent people; all failed.
- After ~10 years and roughly 50% progress into the continent, the vines suddenly receded on their own — no one knows what stopped them.
- Even before the curse it was strange, with a persistent rumor of a coven of witches living within.
- Quintilius’s warning: a cursed place that “almost destroyed the continent,” now holding the largest store of divine power in the world.
- The Lathen priest knew nothing beyond the curse, and believed on faith it was ended by divine intervention; Archibald suggested finding a scholar who studied the forest before the Academy’s research ban.
Session 8 — Freedale’s Firsthand Account (July 22, 2026)
At Freedale — one of the towns hit hardest by the curse — a tavern-keeper gave The Fallen the clearest firsthand account yet of how the curse began, adding new detail:
- Before the vines ever arrived, there were omens: children disappeared for stretches of time and then returned unharmed, and the trees around town started turning white.
- Only once the vines came within sight did the town flee; those who stayed mostly died. The vines later receded on their own, and returnees spent years clearing the decayed thorns.
- New lead: the witch Morgana of Freedale went into the forest to fight the curse before it reached the town — and never returned. Rumor holds the vines later dumped her body back at her tower, which now reads as a haunted site with a strong undead presence buried beneath it (detected by Aren’s pendant). The party entered the tower at session’s end.
The “vanishing children who came back” and “whitening trees preceding the vines” are the freshest threads for understanding what the curse actually is.
Session 10 — A Third Source on the Coven (August 26, 2026)
Asked about the forest in Pentamarone, Genni of the WitchCrafters knew the curse — it threatened the city before it receded, and the guild watched it come — but little of the forest’s history. The one thing she volunteered:
Rumor of a coven of witches who lived in the forest.
That is now the third independent source for the coven (after Artmegian rumor and Morgana’s own papers naming Yssa), from a guild of witches with no connection to Artmegia — which moves the coven firmly out of local legend and into something the wider witch world took as fact.
She had nothing on the forest’s older history, and nothing on what the curse actually is.
(Note: The Fallen are now further from the forest than they were at the end of Session 9 — the misfired teleport put them in Endymion Empire territory, and Asha’s mother is still tied to a tree in there.)
Session 9 — Morgana’s Decade of Watching (July 29, 2026)
The Fallen cleared Morgana’s Tower and recovered the witch’s own papers — the first sustained firsthand study of the forest the party has ever had. Morgana watched it through a scrying font for roughly ten years before going in.
- The trees. Her word was “wrong” — “not sick, not dying, just wrong, the way a face is wrong when it’s smiling and shouldn’t be.” Whiter every season, and the birds stopped landing in them.
- The animals. She reported them “behaving as though they no longer recognize this as home” — and “the silence where the deer used to be.”
- Her conclusion, and the key new claim: “Something in that forest is not just decaying. Something in that forest is reaching.” The curse is not framed as spreading blight but as something with intent.
- She grew up in it. Morgana and her friend Yssa were “girls together in that forest” before the whitening. Yssa stayed and was likely part of the coven; her fate was unknown even to Morgana. This establishes the forest was an ordinary, inhabited place within living memory.
- The old story. Dia told the child Morgana a tale of “someone who fell before anyone else ever fell — someone the forest itself is supposed to remember even if no one else does.” Morgana dismissed it her whole life, then stopped: “I’m no longer certain of that.”
What Killed Her
Her body was in her own basement, dead ~two decades. Her eyes were gouged out before she died, and her corpse carries the marks of a prolonged magical battle. Whatever is in the forest casts spells, fights extended engagements, and takes eyes.
Someone Is Alive In There
Using Morgana’s scrying pool, Asha found her missing mother — the mother who vanished leaving only “I told you the truth would cost you.”
She is in the White Forest, tied to a tree in a clearing near the forest’s edge — alongside a second bound captive, a woman dressed all in white with long blonde hair. Both alive. Hundreds of miles away.
The forest is no longer only a mystery to investigate. It is a rescue, and someone in there takes prisoners.