Basically, the Forest Crup is attached to the Fourth Ring. Is it a bubble of a world? A Ring? No one is entirely sure what it’s shape is. It is a hiccup when the Ringed World was created. You could even say it was an evolutionary mistake. Many would tell you it probably wasn’t supposed to happen because nothing in the Forest Crup makes sense. Not even it’s name. No one even knows where the name came from.
Some say the first one to travel and return, told everyone that’s what the name was. When they asked him what it meant, he said, “I don’t know it told me.” When they asked who told him, he said, “The Forest Crup”.
Since I am the author, I can let you in on some of its secrets that many of the citizens in the Ringed World don’t even know. Except the meaning of the name because I really just made that up 😛
Trivia Time!
During the time before Humans’ arrival when it was just the anthropomorphic races, the Forest Crup was an untouched, untraveled place. It wasn’t until Humans came and Halfhumans were created that anyone ventured into Crup.
The creatures in Crup were born in Crup. That includes One Prestigious Parlor, a peculiar place that tries to trap your soul inside the parlor by making you sit in one of the chairs. Like an incredibly elaborate Venus Fly Trap.
The Forest Crup is not big at all. The distance from one side to the other is walking distance that will only take a day at most. (if you can walk in a straight line, that is)
The Forest Crup is flat. Or, relatively flat. There are bumpy areas for waterfalls or rocky surfaces which make the landmass sink in or protrude.
The Forest Crup is made up of infinite layers of possible land structures. Depending on where you end up next, you will find yourself in a certain new land structure. Each land structure layer comprises of three major and distinct areas. That didn’t make any sense, did it? 😛 I’ll get back to this in a moment.
In Crup, time doesn’t run in the normal sense (explained below).
Infinite Layers of Possible Land Structures
Imagine a stack of pancakes. Each pancake is made up of three different ingredients. There is one with vanilla, strawberries, and cinnamon. One with bananas, lemon zest, and custard. One with pumpkin, nutmeg, and cinnamon. One with strawberries, blueberries, and vanilla.
Some are similar, some are completely different, but no two are the same.
You can eat the one with vanilla, strawberries, and cinnamon, but then you might cut too deep and get a piece of pancake from the next layer. So you end up eating the next layer instead of the first one.
Forest Crup is kind of like this stack of pancakes. The only difference being that you can’t choose which layer you want to eat travel to.
UNLESS
unless, yes, you are smart enough like some to create a map every time you go. The only race that can do this without getting lost is the Sorcerers, but only ones that can do teleportation magick. Anyway, the map does allow you to see some kind of pattern to get around the Forest Crup without getting completely lost.
For the Forest Crup, each layer is made up of three different major land structures. There is one with a cave, a swamp, and a forest. One with a waterfall, a marsh, and an edge that drops off into a void. One with an upside down forest, a cave, and a swamp. One with a pine tree forest, giant rocks, and a lake.
Some are similar, some are completely different, but no two are the same.
You might be in the cave and then walk out into a swamp. Through the forest you travel and find a waterfall and a marsh. You have just gone through to another layer.
The boundaries between layers are unclear and you can return to the layer you started out. Without a map or some knowledge on how the magick works in Crup, you could end up lost for days.
No Seasons, No Time
Speaking of time, you also don’t know how much time has gone by because each layer has its own time zone and some layers don’t have 24 hours in a day. Sometimes day is only 2 hours and sometimes night never comes because some layers don’t spin.
This means seasons are all over the place. Some are in between seasons. Some are only one season. There’s a layer that is somehow eternally autumn. Leaves fall to the ground, but the trees never go bare.
FOXWOOD FOREST 