Where Gods Walk

The depths of the High Forest are dangerous, mysterious, and somehow fey or strange - holding not just the evils of dark magic and lurking eyes and strange weather, but "good" mysteries, too.

The deities of nature and wild things and growth seem awake and alive here. Their powers run strong, and druids are sometimes "called" here by dream-visions to groves hidden deep in the gloom. The mysteries grow deeper along the swath of old, moss-cloak trees and sunny glades that runs southwest from the Star Mounts along either bank of the Unicorn Run.

Bards and common folk alike believe that certain deities - from Lurue and Silvanus to Mielikki and Eldath - personally visit the river in animal guise. For this reason, wise travelers are loath to harm or offer rudeness to any creature, from slug or snail to stag or pheasant, that they meet "along the Run."

Those who venture far upriver say the land becomes broken and fissured, the trees creating tunnels and near-caverns, but that the Run cuts through them in slow, wide loops and curves that have carved cliffs and gorges. These are the fabled Sisters, and those who've seen them swear they are the most beautiful place in all Faerûn.

The river here descends from the Star Mounts and is fed by side-streams that pass through the Sisters in cascades and waterfalls. The mists they shed, and the side-pools watered by the falling mists, make for lush cloaks of greenery on everything: On the cliffs and high plateaus around the falls dwell centaurs leprechauns, pixies, naiads, nereids, and sylphs. Dryads dwell in trees on either side of the Run below the Sisters, and there is some evidence that they serve as sentinels, warning those upriver of the approach of intruders.

Those who draw near while marked in some invisible way by the favor of one or more of the nature deities are allowed to come unchallenged, and creatures of the Sisters don't hide from or avoid such Favored Ones. Seeing the moon rise-over the Sisters and in its light spotting a unicorn atop a cliff is considered a mark of Mielikki's blessing of good fortune on the observer.