Kazul (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dragon_dealt) wrote2025-05-25 07:30 pm
dragon_dealt) wrote2025-05-25 07:30 pm
Entry tags:
Enchanted Forest FAQ
So... the Enchanted Forest connects to the Milliways forest now! Cool! Uh, what does that mean?
It means that when your character is out walking (or tunneling, flying, etc.) through the forest at Milliways, they might find themselves suddenly in a different forest -- and a different world -- instead. The Enchanted Forest has a mind of its own and likes to move around, much like the Milliways geography, so your character might or might not find it in the same place twice.
This is a permanent connection, by the way, at least for the indefinite future. It doesn't depend on whether Kazul is in the bar or not. That said, if you don't want your character to find it on a given day -- well, maybe Milliways or the Enchanted Forest itself doesn't want them finding it today, or maybe they were just looking in the wrong place.
Can they find it anywhere but the forest?
Mostly: no. Not in the buildings, not on the lawn, not in the lake. It's a forest.
However, there are some adjacent magical caves in the nearby Mountains of Morning (where Kazul actually lives), so if you really want your character to get there from the Milliways mountains, talk to me. Also, if you really want an exception -- your character is a mermaid who can't set foot on land, or whatever -- talk to me and we'll work something out.
My character is dead. Is that gonna be a problem?
Nope! The usual Milliways rules apply: after a few days, unless they have something magically or canonically preventing it, they'll start to fade into a ghost. (Ghosts can totally hang around the Forest, though.) And, of course, two or three days in the Enchanted Forest might be shorter or longer at Milliways -- the Enchanted Forest doesn't usually do that kind of time dilation, but Milliways sure can.
Okay, so what does the Enchanted Forest look like?
A really pretty, extremely green and lush forest along generally European lines. The forest floor is covered in thick, springy moss, studded with flowers. The trees are tall and old and lovely. There are brambles and brooks and berry patches; there are ponds and singing birds and squirrels. There aren't many paths, but there's mostly plenty of room between the trees to walk around. (Mostly. Sometimes there are tangles of underbrush, with or without thorns. Sometimes the Forest wants you to go a certain way.)
There are also unicorns and griffons and lions and firebirds and so on. Some of those birds and squirrels and frogs and lizards can talk, although not all of them. (They might be enchanted Princes, or they might have gotten hit with a spell, or they might just have hung around enchanted Princes or witches or whatever long enough to pick up a few things.) There are elves, of various clans, some of them generally friendly and some of them generally malicious; they're little people who sit on tree branches and maybe cobble shoes, not the stately Tolkien sort.
Some of the ponds will turn you into gold, or heal you, or force you to tell the truth, or turn you into a frog. Some of them are guarded by lions or unicorns or griffons or sphinxes, of extremely varied dispositions. Touch the wrong stone, and you might get turned into a petunia. Then again, you might turn a petunia back into a Prince by picking it. Some trees have invisible night-blooming chokevines wrapped around them; they're reportedly very pretty, if you can see invisible things, but that chokevines name isn't a joke. Some animals will very happily eat you, and some poisonous plants are really lethal, but other magical guardians will be just as happy to have a nice conversation or borrow a book or play a game of chess with you or whatever. (That said, if you really want to officially off your character by having an Enchanted Forest creature eat them... it's definitely possible to arrange.) Enchanted weapons of various sorts might well turn up. Slowstone is what it sounds like: a rock that will slow you to a glacial pace while you're standing on it. Magic mirrors, enchanted carpets, cauldrons of plenty, etc are the kind of things that somebody might well happen to have at their house, castle, den, or burrow. There are giants living in the mountains who might be passing through.
Basically, the enchanted part of the Enchanted Forest definitely applies. This world is a fantasy world aimed at kids and preteens, and it's full of hijinks and silliness and the less grim sort of fairy-tale tropes. Feel free to play around with that. If you want your character to get enchanted by accident, have fun! If you want them to pick up a plot device, awesome! Feel free to ask me for ideas or to double-check that something works, but also feel free to make up something without checking in with me, as long as it fits in this general genre.
Okay, awesome! Uh. That's a lot of animals and objects, but will my character meet any people there?
Sure, if you want them to! As well as all the sentient nonhuman denizens of the forest mentioned above, your character may very well meet a wandering Prince, Princess or Hero. Or a witch or fire-witch or maybe a wizard, or some other random NPC sort.
All of these NPCs will be pretty trope-heavy. Princesses are beautiful, probably blond, definitely clad in lovely raiment and a crown, and almost certainly silly -- which isn't to say they can't be smart, but they will have been raised with the belief that attractive weeping or wide-eyed earnest beseeching or dainty charm are the only problem-solving techniques appropriate to their station, and that they absolutely must remain ladylike. If it's any consolation, Princes and Heroes are canonically just as silly. (About the only difference between the two is that Princes will be wearing crowns and live in a castle back home, and Heroes will definitely be on a Quest, which a Prince might or might not be.) They're more inclined to offer to do valiant battle with sword or lance to win the heart and hand of a fair lady and/or slay a mighty beast and/or win a great treasure. They will probably be very difficult to persuade that this is not the most sensible course of action, in fact.
(Kingdoms outside the Enchanted Forest and the Mountains of Morning appear to be nearly infinite in number. They also tend to be very small -- a ruling family, a castle and its staff, and a bit of surrounding land. This is fairy-tale-based, remember: heavy on aristocracy, low on actual governing. Or economics or anything of that sort.)
Witches are going to be wearing black, and they'll probably have a hooked nose or some warts or something (even if they had to magic them on to get the proper look.) They'll also have at least one cat, whose meows they can understand, and a house with an extremely well-stocked garden. They're probably sharp-tongued but generally practical, and helpful if you get on their good side. They'll all be women; or, if a man is a witch, he'll be touchy about being an eccentric exception.
Fire-witches, on the other hand, can be of any age and any gender; it's a hereditary thing. They'll have red hair and quick tempers. They're pretty self-explanatory: lots of fire! They can work other magic too, but fire's what comes really naturally.
Wizards wear robes that are at least partly brown, have beards (usually scraggly), and carry long wooden staffs. Where fire-witches and dragons and unicorns generate their own magic, and witches work their spells through the use of magical implements (plants, hens' teeth, magic mirrors, etc) and the fairly polite manipulation of forces around them, wizards steal magic. Their staffs suck magic out of their surroundings, and store it for the wizards to use later. They can't really turn that off, and also they're generally self-important jerks who have no desire to do so. For this reason, the Enchanted Forest's moss will turn dead and brown in a circle around a wizard's staff, and grow back only slowly. Also for this reason, wizards are banned from the Enchanted Forest. They do sneak in, but please use them sparingly as NPCs -- if there are a lot of wizards in the Enchanted Forest, that's a major problem.
Who's in charge of the Enchanted Forest?
That'd be King Mendanbar, who lives in a castle at the center of the forest. He wields an enchanted sword, which only the royal family can use, and which lets him manipulate the forests' magic. He's a good fellow. Recently, he married now-Queen Cimorene, who used to be Kazul'sprincess Chief Cook and Librarian, and who was Princess of the kingdom of Linderwall before that.
Your character will not meet them, or any other named canonical characters. Feel free to have them hear those names mentioned, though. (Please note that Kazul is King of the Dragons and a friend of the king and queen, but she doesn't actually live in the Enchanted Forest, and has no authority over any of it except for what being big and toothy and magical grants her. She's more of a next door neighbor to the forest.)
If you really, really want your character to interact with any canonical characters from the Enchanted Forest Chronicles instead of just NPCs, talk to me, and we'll see. However, I will probably be reluctant to do much in the way of NPCing canonical characters or messing with canon's plot. If you want your character to interact with Kazul, that's much easier to arrange!
Can anything follow my character back? Or can they bring home a souvenir?
Nothing sentient is going to follow them back. But they can certainly bring home objects, within reason, whether we're talking a big stick or a handful of berries or an enchanted plot device. And if you really want your character to pick up an adorable pet squirrel that follows them home -- hey, why not?
If you want something that'll kick off a big barwide plot, like a really powerful or rapidly spreading enchantment... it's probably fine, but maybe check in with me first? (I'll almost definitely say SURE WHY NOT HAVE FUN, but it's nice to know about these things.)
Does technology work in the Enchanted Forest?
Canon doesn't say anything about technology not working in the forest! Of course, in canon, nobody has any really advanced technology, because it's a fairy tale world. So: it'll work, unless you find it funny or plot-convenient for it not to, in which case you can feel free to have it stop working or work inconsistently or whatever.
You're definitely not gonna get a wifi signal unless you're generating it yourself, though.
My character has magic of their own. How's that gonna work?
If your character generates their own magic: awesome! It'll work just as usual, unless you want it to work weirdly for plot reasons. (However, lots of stuff around the Enchanted Forest has magic of its own and/or has at least one enchantment on it, and layered different kinds of magic can interfere with each other to have weird results. Follow your own judgment on what's funny or convenient for you, which may or may not be what's convenient for your character!)
If your character manipulates magic around them: again, go with what's funny and/or convenient. It'll work just fine, unless you as the mun don't want it to.
If your character absorbs magic from their surroundings, and either can't turn that off or wouldn't be interested in bothering to do so: uh, see the description of wizards above. They're probably not going to be popular.
Can my character make it from the Enchanted Forest to somewhere else within this world?
Technically: yes. They're in the world.
Practically: probably not. They'll probably end up wandering in circles within the forest until they end up back at Milliways, because this is meant to be a sandbox for fun and plot devices, not an opportunity to swamp this world with multiversal Milliways folk. If you really want them to, though, talk to me.
I have another question that you haven't answered!
Okay! Comment here, or email me (see the profile of this journal), or ping me as Zebosity on AIM or Trillian, or whatever. I'll do my best to clarify!
It means that when your character is out walking (or tunneling, flying, etc.) through the forest at Milliways, they might find themselves suddenly in a different forest -- and a different world -- instead. The Enchanted Forest has a mind of its own and likes to move around, much like the Milliways geography, so your character might or might not find it in the same place twice.
This is a permanent connection, by the way, at least for the indefinite future. It doesn't depend on whether Kazul is in the bar or not. That said, if you don't want your character to find it on a given day -- well, maybe Milliways or the Enchanted Forest itself doesn't want them finding it today, or maybe they were just looking in the wrong place.
Can they find it anywhere but the forest?
Mostly: no. Not in the buildings, not on the lawn, not in the lake. It's a forest.
However, there are some adjacent magical caves in the nearby Mountains of Morning (where Kazul actually lives), so if you really want your character to get there from the Milliways mountains, talk to me. Also, if you really want an exception -- your character is a mermaid who can't set foot on land, or whatever -- talk to me and we'll work something out.
My character is dead. Is that gonna be a problem?
Nope! The usual Milliways rules apply: after a few days, unless they have something magically or canonically preventing it, they'll start to fade into a ghost. (Ghosts can totally hang around the Forest, though.) And, of course, two or three days in the Enchanted Forest might be shorter or longer at Milliways -- the Enchanted Forest doesn't usually do that kind of time dilation, but Milliways sure can.
Okay, so what does the Enchanted Forest look like?
A really pretty, extremely green and lush forest along generally European lines. The forest floor is covered in thick, springy moss, studded with flowers. The trees are tall and old and lovely. There are brambles and brooks and berry patches; there are ponds and singing birds and squirrels. There aren't many paths, but there's mostly plenty of room between the trees to walk around. (Mostly. Sometimes there are tangles of underbrush, with or without thorns. Sometimes the Forest wants you to go a certain way.)
There are also unicorns and griffons and lions and firebirds and so on. Some of those birds and squirrels and frogs and lizards can talk, although not all of them. (They might be enchanted Princes, or they might have gotten hit with a spell, or they might just have hung around enchanted Princes or witches or whatever long enough to pick up a few things.) There are elves, of various clans, some of them generally friendly and some of them generally malicious; they're little people who sit on tree branches and maybe cobble shoes, not the stately Tolkien sort.
Some of the ponds will turn you into gold, or heal you, or force you to tell the truth, or turn you into a frog. Some of them are guarded by lions or unicorns or griffons or sphinxes, of extremely varied dispositions. Touch the wrong stone, and you might get turned into a petunia. Then again, you might turn a petunia back into a Prince by picking it. Some trees have invisible night-blooming chokevines wrapped around them; they're reportedly very pretty, if you can see invisible things, but that chokevines name isn't a joke. Some animals will very happily eat you, and some poisonous plants are really lethal, but other magical guardians will be just as happy to have a nice conversation or borrow a book or play a game of chess with you or whatever. (That said, if you really want to officially off your character by having an Enchanted Forest creature eat them... it's definitely possible to arrange.) Enchanted weapons of various sorts might well turn up. Slowstone is what it sounds like: a rock that will slow you to a glacial pace while you're standing on it. Magic mirrors, enchanted carpets, cauldrons of plenty, etc are the kind of things that somebody might well happen to have at their house, castle, den, or burrow. There are giants living in the mountains who might be passing through.
Basically, the enchanted part of the Enchanted Forest definitely applies. This world is a fantasy world aimed at kids and preteens, and it's full of hijinks and silliness and the less grim sort of fairy-tale tropes. Feel free to play around with that. If you want your character to get enchanted by accident, have fun! If you want them to pick up a plot device, awesome! Feel free to ask me for ideas or to double-check that something works, but also feel free to make up something without checking in with me, as long as it fits in this general genre.
Okay, awesome! Uh. That's a lot of animals and objects, but will my character meet any people there?
Sure, if you want them to! As well as all the sentient nonhuman denizens of the forest mentioned above, your character may very well meet a wandering Prince, Princess or Hero. Or a witch or fire-witch or maybe a wizard, or some other random NPC sort.
All of these NPCs will be pretty trope-heavy. Princesses are beautiful, probably blond, definitely clad in lovely raiment and a crown, and almost certainly silly -- which isn't to say they can't be smart, but they will have been raised with the belief that attractive weeping or wide-eyed earnest beseeching or dainty charm are the only problem-solving techniques appropriate to their station, and that they absolutely must remain ladylike. If it's any consolation, Princes and Heroes are canonically just as silly. (About the only difference between the two is that Princes will be wearing crowns and live in a castle back home, and Heroes will definitely be on a Quest, which a Prince might or might not be.) They're more inclined to offer to do valiant battle with sword or lance to win the heart and hand of a fair lady and/or slay a mighty beast and/or win a great treasure. They will probably be very difficult to persuade that this is not the most sensible course of action, in fact.
(Kingdoms outside the Enchanted Forest and the Mountains of Morning appear to be nearly infinite in number. They also tend to be very small -- a ruling family, a castle and its staff, and a bit of surrounding land. This is fairy-tale-based, remember: heavy on aristocracy, low on actual governing. Or economics or anything of that sort.)
Witches are going to be wearing black, and they'll probably have a hooked nose or some warts or something (even if they had to magic them on to get the proper look.) They'll also have at least one cat, whose meows they can understand, and a house with an extremely well-stocked garden. They're probably sharp-tongued but generally practical, and helpful if you get on their good side. They'll all be women; or, if a man is a witch, he'll be touchy about being an eccentric exception.
Fire-witches, on the other hand, can be of any age and any gender; it's a hereditary thing. They'll have red hair and quick tempers. They're pretty self-explanatory: lots of fire! They can work other magic too, but fire's what comes really naturally.
Wizards wear robes that are at least partly brown, have beards (usually scraggly), and carry long wooden staffs. Where fire-witches and dragons and unicorns generate their own magic, and witches work their spells through the use of magical implements (plants, hens' teeth, magic mirrors, etc) and the fairly polite manipulation of forces around them, wizards steal magic. Their staffs suck magic out of their surroundings, and store it for the wizards to use later. They can't really turn that off, and also they're generally self-important jerks who have no desire to do so. For this reason, the Enchanted Forest's moss will turn dead and brown in a circle around a wizard's staff, and grow back only slowly. Also for this reason, wizards are banned from the Enchanted Forest. They do sneak in, but please use them sparingly as NPCs -- if there are a lot of wizards in the Enchanted Forest, that's a major problem.
Who's in charge of the Enchanted Forest?
That'd be King Mendanbar, who lives in a castle at the center of the forest. He wields an enchanted sword, which only the royal family can use, and which lets him manipulate the forests' magic. He's a good fellow. Recently, he married now-Queen Cimorene, who used to be Kazul's
Your character will not meet them, or any other named canonical characters. Feel free to have them hear those names mentioned, though. (Please note that Kazul is King of the Dragons and a friend of the king and queen, but she doesn't actually live in the Enchanted Forest, and has no authority over any of it except for what being big and toothy and magical grants her. She's more of a next door neighbor to the forest.)
If you really, really want your character to interact with any canonical characters from the Enchanted Forest Chronicles instead of just NPCs, talk to me, and we'll see. However, I will probably be reluctant to do much in the way of NPCing canonical characters or messing with canon's plot. If you want your character to interact with Kazul, that's much easier to arrange!
Can anything follow my character back? Or can they bring home a souvenir?
Nothing sentient is going to follow them back. But they can certainly bring home objects, within reason, whether we're talking a big stick or a handful of berries or an enchanted plot device. And if you really want your character to pick up an adorable pet squirrel that follows them home -- hey, why not?
If you want something that'll kick off a big barwide plot, like a really powerful or rapidly spreading enchantment... it's probably fine, but maybe check in with me first? (I'll almost definitely say SURE WHY NOT HAVE FUN, but it's nice to know about these things.)
Does technology work in the Enchanted Forest?
Canon doesn't say anything about technology not working in the forest! Of course, in canon, nobody has any really advanced technology, because it's a fairy tale world. So: it'll work, unless you find it funny or plot-convenient for it not to, in which case you can feel free to have it stop working or work inconsistently or whatever.
You're definitely not gonna get a wifi signal unless you're generating it yourself, though.
My character has magic of their own. How's that gonna work?
If your character generates their own magic: awesome! It'll work just as usual, unless you want it to work weirdly for plot reasons. (However, lots of stuff around the Enchanted Forest has magic of its own and/or has at least one enchantment on it, and layered different kinds of magic can interfere with each other to have weird results. Follow your own judgment on what's funny or convenient for you, which may or may not be what's convenient for your character!)
If your character manipulates magic around them: again, go with what's funny and/or convenient. It'll work just fine, unless you as the mun don't want it to.
If your character absorbs magic from their surroundings, and either can't turn that off or wouldn't be interested in bothering to do so: uh, see the description of wizards above. They're probably not going to be popular.
Can my character make it from the Enchanted Forest to somewhere else within this world?
Technically: yes. They're in the world.
Practically: probably not. They'll probably end up wandering in circles within the forest until they end up back at Milliways, because this is meant to be a sandbox for fun and plot devices, not an opportunity to swamp this world with multiversal Milliways folk. If you really want them to, though, talk to me.
I have another question that you haven't answered!
Okay! Comment here, or email me (see the profile of this journal), or ping me as Zebosity on AIM or Trillian, or whatever. I'll do my best to clarify!
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I'm going to say that yes, it sounds different than the rest of Bar's forest. It's a different forest in a different world, and also the Enchanted Forest in canon is... sort of an entity. Not exactly sentient, but nebulously somewhat aware, especially of people it likes (like its king) or threats to itself. And it's definitely bound together, with its own network of magic that's all interconnected and not much connected to anything outside the forest; the boundary of the Forest isn't just where the trees stop. What it actually feels like to your pup in any detail, though, I'll leave up to you.
Does that help?
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If it helps, the Enchanted Forest is... well, it's not necessarily kind, but it's not a malicious place, especially to people who aren't trying to harm it. If he's specially magically vulnerable, it wouldn't necessarily go easy on him, but it's entirely possible that it might (to whatever extent it can, which may be limited but I leave it to your interpretation of how a forest's specific magic works with the Green stuff), especially within its own borders.
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My inclination is to say that it would feel Faerie-like, and maybe even like a particularly individual corner of Faerie, but not exactly like the Faerie of the Luidaeg's world. If that makes sense? Basically, it's not going to obey all the same rules (or respect the same authorities), but there's certainly a good case to be made for a kinship there, so I'm happy to go with whatever you think is the best way to reconcile that.
Edit upon further thought: I don't know if you want it to feel like a type of Faerie or if you want it not to, but I think we can justify whichever you'd rather. On the one hand: it's a magical forest, a cohesive entity with some level of rudimentary self-awareness, with a tight magical bond to its ruler (who's the only one who can directly manipulate and call upon its magic, via a sword that only the ruler can wield.) On the other hand: that ruler is a human, and the whole place is a lot kinder and less xenophobic than I get the general impression of Faerie being from what I remember of the two October Daye books I've read. So it'll definitely feel like a magical realm of some sort, but how similar or different it feels to Faerie is up to you. If that helps?
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Does that work for you? Mostly, I was just thinking that she would notice it suddenly being there and wanted to talk with you about how it might feel instead of just deciding on my own what it would feel like to Luidaeg. = ]
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Question 1: Bonnie probably won't be taking the Scouts there intentionally if there's a chance they might get eaten, but is it likely that the kids would find any of the wildlife spilling through into the rest of the forest, or would it only be if they'd entered the enchanted forest then left?
2: Is it just birds and squirrels and lizards? I only ask because in chat it was once suggested (by Bethan I think) that Pygmy Hedgehogs would be an awesome Milliways animal.
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2) Oooh. No, pygmy hedgehogs can totally be part of the local wildlife! :D Talking ones or otherwise.
Basically, if it's commonly found in European forests and/or in fairy tales, it's fair game. If it's uncommonly found, or found in other areas of Europe, or whatever, it's... probably still fair game if you really want. (See also: lions and lizards, both of which are canonical.)
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Things like unicorns: also knock yourself out, but be prepared for the fact that they've got pretty good defenses. If a unicorn or two turns up dead from wolves, hey, circle of life, and the person who finds it can sell powdered unicorn horn to magic-workers who like that kind of thing. If it starts becoming a thing, people are going to take notice faster than they would for a lot of dead rabbits, though. (I'm totally willing to have that plot -- I don't want to do a lot of NPCing the king and queen and whatever detective-folks of the forest, but I'm happy to have Kazul be like WHOEVER'S KILLING UNICORNS, CAN YOU KNOCK IT OFF, YOU'RE MAKING THE REST OF THEM REALLY ANNOYING AND PISSING OFF MY FRIEND MENDANBA -- but fyi.)
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For the record, it's entirely possible that there are normal wolves kicking around the forest already. It's generally Europeanish but it has canonical lions, so I'm gonna assume that other big predators didn't get hunted out either. There could even be werewolves, of a generally PG/cartoon-tropey sort, but there don't have to be, and of course whether Gredya and the kids actually talk to NPCs or just hunt rabbits is totally up to you.