The Shadewright

“I’m tellin’ ya lads. Seniji Forest is not a good place to go. Well, nowhere in the Amber Empire is a good place to go, but Seniji especially." "When I was with an older crew, our captain decided that we should land in Seniji to get some water, some food, and for the crew to stretch the ol’ legs and have some shore leave. Well, we land there, and for a while it’s fine, but when we decide to take off, we of course can’t. The trees are way too dense, and it was a miracle we found a landing spot in the first place. Now, I voiced this opinion to my captain, but him being an arrogant tosser that just bought himself a fancy new airship, he didn’t listen to me." "So we’re stuck, we have a small amount of water and food, and we have no bleedin’ clue where we are. We end up havin’ to just pick a direction and start walking, in the hopes that we manage to find some people somewhere. It feels like even the trees are trying to kill ya when you’re going through there, the roots are all twisted around each other and they’re always covered in spikes and thorns. It’s like the wood is trying to strangle itself to death and take you with it. Then, you come across these awful serpents and lizards. We lost half the crew to the animals in that steaming jungle." "The thing is, it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad if they were just big, but most of them are venomous as well - limbs swelled up, and you could see their veins turning purple and black as it worked through their body. All the while, the captain is bellyaching and whining about how it had all gone wrong, and how it was all our fault." "Now, I’m not saying we killed him, but he did have an unfortunate accident where he fell into a puddle teeming with snakes. I’d tried to reach out to save him, but the fella seemed to move away from my hand, as if some sort of force was applied to him. We did find it weird at the time how he was just standing over the puddle though, we didn’t get it at the time. He just had his mouth hanging open and his eyes were wide open, not that we cared too much. Made the snakes’ lives easier, they could crawl straight into him." "Well, we kept on walking. Half of us are on the brink of dying from thirst, the rest barely able to see straight from the heatstroke. Now, I know we were walking during the day. I could see the light coming through the trees. I could feel the heat of its rays on my face. But then it just… Stopped. " "The trees wrapped around each other, blocking out the light and submerging all of us in darkness. The sounds of the insects and birds died off until it was just, silence. I could hear the blood rushing through my veins, the beating of my own heart. And then I swear I could see figures on the edge of my vision, darting through the trees. Every time I turned to look, I got a glimpse of a creature, and then it was gone again. We got into a circle, slingers at the ready, prepared to fight off whatever we were about to be faced by, but then I saw what the captain must have been staring at. I couldn’t tell what it was. It looked like a ceth, but it didn’t have the same features as the hex, and it didn’t have as many legs as an arachne. It was like the other creatures I had seen earlier, always on the edges of my vision, and it was always getting closer whenever I turned. I couldn’t see my friends, I couldn’t hear their voices, and it just kept getting closer to me, until I couldn’t handle it anymore." "I ain’t ashamed to say I ran. Whatever I was looking at, it didn’t want us there, and I knew it hated us. The arrows that started raining on us made it even more apparent, so I sprinted the way I had come, and hid inside the airship for as long as I could. " "Eventually, a group of adventurers sent to kill a big snake found me and brought me with them. After a while of drinking myself stupid, I remembered what those things in the trees were whisperin’ when they were killin’ us and I was running like a madman. They were giving praise to something called the Shadewright. I couldn’t make out the prayer, I was too busy running for my life and dodging the arrows I could feel whizzing past my head. I still see it whenever I’m in a dark room, on the edges of my vision, as quiet and as dark as night, with no face and no weapons, just watching me."

(Barry Crackedmouth, ex-pirate, warning another crew of pirates about Seniji.) (They didn’t listen to him.)