Lore drop: The Subterranean Forest of Kaarushkaa
Overview
Beneath the Capital city of Kaarushkaa, the Nine built a wonder of indulgence: a forest designed from the first gene upward to be a paradise for its masters. It is not natural, but it is alive — an environment where beauty has been perfected and danger erased. Here, predators never see you as prey. Here, even animals that should be wild are companions. It is a landscape of awe, tailored for leisure, where one may walk among living art, touch impossible creatures, and leave with not a scratch.
The Environment
The cavern spans for kilometers, its ceiling fitted with arrays of simulated daylight. Sunrises and sunsets wash the forest floor in golden gradients, nights shimmer with curated constellations, and rivers sparkle with currents as clean as glass. Groves bloom in radiant cycles — blossoms of blue, violet, and silver — each season more vivid than the last. Waterfalls cascade over sculpted cliffs into lakes so clear they glow with refracted light.
It is not just beautiful. It is overwhelming. Every step feels like walking through a painting that breathes.
The Creatures
Every animal was designed not only for appearance but for interaction. They are companions, not threats, each tailored for Green Zone ideals of pleasure and safety.
Razorback Wolves: Sleek, silver-coated hunters with ridges of luminous spines down their backs. In nature, such beasts would be killers. Here, they run beside you, accepting your presence in their pack. They nuzzle rather than bite, their predatory power tuned to thrill without harm.
Dancing Otters: Iridescent-furred otters that move in coordinated spins, as if performing for amusement. They crack open rainbow-colored oysters and offer the shimmering pearls within to visitors, a gift coded into their behavior.
Fruitsalad Moose: Towering, gentle herbivores whose antlers sprout entire miniature fruiting trees. Grapes, pears, apples, citrus — all grow in dazzling clusters. You can climb onto their broad backs, pluck fruit from their antlers, and eat as you ride.
Chorus Birds: Songbirds with crystal-throated syrinxes, capable of harmonizing in human-like melodies. They flock to travelers, surrounding them in living music.
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Glassfish Deer: Smaller grazing creatures with translucent skin, their veins glowing faintly. They shimmer like lanterns at dusk, trailing herds of light across the plains.
None of them fear humans. None will harm you. They are built to delight, not to survive.
The Flora
The plant life is just as tailored as the fauna.
Glowvine Canopies: Vines that curl upward like chandeliers, glowing softly at night, bathing the forest in colored light.
Feathered Ferns: Ferns with leaves so fine and delicate they drift on the air when touched, shimmering like falling feathers.
Fruitstone Orchards: Trees that bear multiple kinds of fruit on the same branches, their flavors designed for variety and perfection.
Whisper Willows: Trees whose leaves rustle in harmonic tones, creating music when wind circulators sweep through.
The forest never decays, never sickens. It renews itself endlessly, maintained by genetic instructions written to perfection.
Purpose
The Subterranean Forest is a garden of conquest and comfort. For the Nine and their chosen elites, it is:
A Playground: A place where rulers can indulge fantasies, to run with predators without risk, to feast while riding living creatures, to play in rivers that sing.
A Display: A living argument for Green Zone superiority. When dignitaries are brought here, they are not shown survival or practicality. They are shown paradise — we do not preserve nature, we improve it.
A Statement: Nature, untamed, was always chaos. Here it is bent, beautified, and perfected into something that serves human pleasure.
Rumors
Wild Code: Workers whisper of creatures that slipped their design, moose sprouting thorns instead of fruit, wolves that remembered hunger. Such anomalies are erased swiftly, but rumors linger.
The Lost Gardens: Sealed chambers deeper still are said to house earlier experiments, too strange, too dangerous, too unpredictable to show.
True Longing: Some visitors report unease. The beauty is overwhelming, but the smiles of the wolves are too perfect, the fruits too sweet, the rivers too smooth. It feels like a paradise that knows it's lying.
Atmosphere
The Subterranean Forest of Kaarushkaa is breathtaking. A visitor can sprint through glowing meadows with wolves at their side, cradle an otter as it offers them jewels from oysters, or pluck an apple while astride a moose crowned with vines. It is a playground of wonder, where the impossible is made possible, not by gods, not by nature, but by human hands.
It is the Green Zone's masterpiece: a forest that exists not to live, but to please.