where the forest has teeth

You open your eyes to a peaceful, beautiful forest. Whatever you were dreaming about — be it something happy, something sad, or something nightmarish — seems secondary to the bright wash of greenery and the comforting, cooling breeze that washes over you. It rustles the leaves of the canopy overhead, disturbing a small nest of two-headed birds who chirp as the sticks for their nests are blown away. A hop, hop, hop later, and they return to continue their building, unbothered by your gaze.

As you walk around, you will find that Aldric’s Grove feels… empty. You pop your head into the inn only to find a fine layer of dust on the furniture, and an ever-burning fireplace refusing to be put out. The General Store is unmanned, the door locked, and the lights inside completely out. The house to the south is abandoned, and a building labelled as a clinic sports no patients. The most life you’ll find lies in the church, where the pigeons see you and swarm at your feet, cooing and asking for breadcrumbs.

Flowers bloom, a deer with a halo of horns skips through the clearing, and a small lizard shaped like a leaf climbs the well. You spend several hours alone… and then from the woods to the east comes a giant capybara and a monstrous moose two stories tall. Upon each of them, they carry a hoard of people coming back from what is clearly a summer vacation, if the inner tubes, swimwear, and overwhelming stench of sunscreen are anything to go by.

Maybe the people dismounting the two animals will be nice enough to greet you and tour you around. It’s the least they can do, since you were excluded from the vacation activities.

It’s still early in the month when a cacophony occurs; an enormous crocodile with too many eyes, known simply as “The Behemoth” suddenly rushes out of the river in a panic as some kind of blue, veinlike latticework covers the surface of it, nearly trapping her within it. It spreads across the entire length of the river from east to west, creeping onto the shoreline up to the church and across the back of the home to the south. When touched, it stings bad enough to paralyse the nervous system, and after making contact for too long while you’re unable to move? Death is imminent, unless someone saves you.

The Behemoth certainly doesn’t try to, too occupied plonking around on land to look for something to do while she can’t go into the water. She won’t attack anyone, but she’s normally searching for a meal, if you don’t mind sharing a snack. As for the other supernatural creatures in the Grove…

Ever since that latticework covered the river, the moose monster — Moder — and the gargoyle that sits on the church’s roof — Zahliya — have only stared and scrutinized. One wrong move, one fight with another resident of the Grove, means either of them are getting up to deal with the problem. It seems that they’re waiting for someone here to show the wrong hand, suspicious of everyone — including those who have been here for over a year at this point. And the second one toe is out of line? Either of them are willing and ready to kill.

Though the suspicion of the Guardians doesn’t wear off and won’t any time soon, the blue gunk covering the river disappears at the end of the first week of July, and it’s anyone’s guess what’ll happen for the rest of the month.

cw: thalassophobia
What happens is pretty simple if you don’t think about it: Another week passes in peace, and then a disembodied voice somewhere in the woods says, “You guys still smell like seawater and sand, and it’s putting me off of my lunch,” and if you’re new and haven’t gone to the beach yet and have no idea what the voice is talking about… too bad, you’re being lumped in with the crowd. Being lumped in also includes, well… a burst of magic, the sound of fingers snapping, and a loud splash of water. When you next open your eyes…

You’re underwater in some kind of reinforced metal base, one thousand meters under the sea, and something is slamming against the outside of it in an attempt to get in and — presumably — eat you alive. If anyone finds the on-board torpedoes in the command room in time, you might be able to kill the creature before it breaks through the hull and kills everyone inside. And with that hopefully taken care of…

Welcome to your new home for the next two weeks. Your only objective is to survive. There are several rooms here dedicated to underwater research, a bedroom with enough uncomfortable single-person beds for everyone (sadly glued to the floor, too), and a “cafeteria” type room that you can eat in. While the seabase comes equipped with supplies — torpedoes, enough rations to last for everyone but not enough for big eaters to eat big, diving suits and oxygen tanks, and underwater planter boxes growing strange fruits — it may take some effort on your part to ensure that survival is guaranteed. After all, the hungry leviathans know exactly where you are, whether you go outside of the base or not. Water, of course, may pose an issue; there’s no way to filter the seawater here, so the bottled water you have is all you’ll get.

Should you venture out, make sure you’re equipped with the proper gear first. Those of you who cannot swim should probably stay indoors, as there are no fancy vehicles to take you anywhere. Those of you capable of going out may consider braving the danger in search of additional supplies… or perhaps you’re just curious about the ecosystem. You’ll be here for two weeks, after all, there must be something to do. Travel far enough from the base and you’ll find the skeletal remains of something far larger than the Grove itself… and if you’re not careful, a monstrous, snakelike thing who wants you for dinner.

Try not to lead it back to the base for the others to deal with. Who knows how kindly people will take to that?

As always, when one of the Forest’s “games” ends and you’re returned to the surface when the magic wears off, there’s a reward waiting for you. This reward isn’t as obvious, however. The fog wall is, for the most part, rolled pretty far back. The folks that have been here before may expect to see it revealing more of the trees, or showing off some new area that hasn’t been accessible yet, but the Grove remains quiet upon return. The Guardians, too, have little to say. Normally, they’d be a little more overjoyed at your return… alas.

No, the “reward” for surviving — or blowing up the base immediately and dying, either way — is that the fog wall obscuring the lake ever so slowly rolls back. From within it, something jumps out, a dark black shape, and disappears into the forest.

…

Perhaps you’ll see whatever it is another time.

The residents of Aldric’s Grove have been down in the dumps recently, haven’t they? Whose fault could that be? Is it the fault of Wolfwood, who started the catastrophic bonfire? The Forest, who took over the body of Elsword and set him to the slaughter? Perhaps it’s the fault of Vash, who disappeared and came back with a corpse, or Beat, who went berserker-mode on everybody. Maybe it’s Gnosis’ general mopey energy spreading like a plague, or the fact that Luca has had the bar closed up for so long, or Pure Vanilla’s forays into his past. Why are you all so depressed, wonders a spirit in the forest, a spirit who has watched you for a long time. Why are you all staying indoors and not talking to each other?

This spirit knows what to do to cheer everybody up. A fun little prank, an event that will spark joy and lead you to somewhere vast and unknowable. Yes… the spirit has been here before, always observing you, even if you don’t often see it. It is the same spirit who hosted that masquerade all the way back in October before diving feet-first into a sinkhole. It is… a walking skeleton by the name of Mr. Bone-Jangles, and he is casting a spell.

At midnight, the sound of rattling bones rings out across the Grove, alongside a chime that sounds like the bell that hangs over the General Store’s door, and then a distinctly warped sound like trying to listen to music underwater. Were you to look outside your windows, you’ll spot a skeleton dressed like a cashier dancing around the well and the two statues next to it, movin’ and groovin’ to the beat of his own drum. Should you try to get outside through a door or a window, however…

You’ll wind up somewhere else. Not where you expected that door to lead, certainly. Your bedroom door might take you to your bathroom, or to your neighbour’s room, or to Ydalir’s tent. Your window might have plopped you right into the church, or the clinic, or one of the many weight-lifting rooms in the rec center. Should you try to leave the new location you’ve found yourself in, you’ll be in a similar spot — these doors also don’t go where they’re supposed to. The doorways have been scrambled, but at least — once they’ve been walked through — their randomized location is permanently set. If the inn doors lead to the bar, they’ll continue to lead to the bar.

Should you manage, by some miracle, to make it outside? Mr. Bone-Jangles will simply wave his phalanges at you and disappear into a puff of smoke.

This enchantment, or perhaps “prank” will last for the month. Good luck, Aldric’s Grove! Merry April Fool’s Month!

One door in the Grove, and only one, will lead you to a completely new space. A space named Alpha Mart, designated by the golden sign. It is, for all intents and purposes, a fairly advanced (by Grove standards) grocery store, and it carries… products of the uncanny and unusual. Once you’re inside, you can’t leave via the door you came from — it’s up to you to find a different exit, because that entrance door will simply plop you back inside.

What kind of products are here, one might ask? Well, the produce section contains the, erm, expected yet unexpected fruits and veggies, which at times seem to be alive and have minds of their own; the carrots will stop mid-yoga session to run away from you, the beetroots will try to bite, the raspberries have tiny eyes, and the tomatoes act much like lemmings, throwing themselves off of the displays at your feet. Nets in a tall, warped basket near the produce section can be used to catch anything that moves, and once caught, they’ll rest like normal food items would in your cart or basket or hands or pockets. All of these are perfectly edible despite the moral implications!

Head on to aisle fifteen, where the snacks are, and you may be pleasantly surprised by the great savings (100% Off!) on blueberry-flavoured pretzel bites, 100% salt peanuts, fried sunflower petal chips, and cookies shaped like Moder’s head. The deli section is a delight of chocolate-flavoured cheeses and lunchmeats with your faces printed on them. Even though some displays clip out of reality, rest assured, you’ll be fine to walk through those spots. The hard-working staff of skeletons are working on cleaning it up. Speaking of cleaning up, do you need something to wash your sins away with? How about some Plausible Deniability?

The walk-in freezers nearby are pleasantly deep and chilly, and should you walk through them, you might find yourself spat out somewhere else. …still within the Alpha Mart, of course. You didn’t think you could leave through a twisting maze of soda bottles, did you? Come on.

cw in first image link: eyes, trypophobia

After making it through the freezer aisle and its twisting, cold maze of products, you’ll arrive at the, uh… um… the eyeball space! Anyway, let’s quickly move on from there.

Quite a ways out of the eyeball space, where the walls blink at you and follow your every move, is something of a playground indoors, featuring both your run-of-the-mill slides and waterslides where the water is dish soap and the swimming pool at the bottom is white chocolate. Try not to get any in your mouth; it doesn’t taste great! Inner tubes are provided by a skeleton staff member wearing a speedo, who also functions as a lifeguard should you drown in chocolate. Your grocery products can safely be set in a cubby nearby for “purchasing” later. Or you can use them between slide sessions. They are free, after all.

When you’re done with the slides, heading through a side door will lead you into a different section of the Alpha Mart, where the products continue to be bizarre and sometimes-sentient. Anything and everything you can imagine is here, unless it makes sense, in which case it’s completely absent from the store. At the tail end is the checkouts, where Mr. Bone-Jangles stands in his cashier uniform, miming a tired retail worker. He’ll send you through with your products after you pretend to pay him and will refuse actual attempts to pay, and then the exit door to the Alpha Mart will be revealed on the back wall. If you walk through it…

It spits you out in the middle of the Grove, and your silly “purchased” products are gone. If you want to go back in, you’re going to have to find the door again. The entrance should be in the same location it just was, at least.

…or maybe, after all of that, you need to wash the chocolate off and take a nap.