Vathar Forest

A forest near the River Vathar in the Seven Cities.

"Perhaps he quailed at what Vathar Forest had begun to reveal.

Among the tall cedars there were trees of some other species that had turned to stone. Gnarled and twisted, the petrified wood embraced objects that were themselves fossilized - the trees held offerings and had, long ago, grown around them. Duiker recalled the last time he had seen such things, in what had been a holy place in the heart of an oasis, just north of Hissar. The site had revealed ram's horns locked in the wrapped crook of branches, and there were plenty of those here as well, although they were the least disquieting of Vathar's offerings.

T'lan Imass. No room for doubt - their undead faces stare out at us, from all sides, skulls and withered faces peering out from wreaths of crystallized bark, the dark pits of their eyes tracking our passage. This is a burial ground, not of the flesh-and-blood forebears of the T'lan Imass, but of the deathless creatures themselves.

...

Crumpled platforms were visible as well, stone latticwork perched amidst branches that had once grown around them, closing up the assembled bones like the fingers of a stone hand.

At the war's end, the survivors came here, and made of this forest their eternal home.

...

Cairns had begun appearing, heaps of boulders surmounted with totemic skulls.

DG, UK mmpb, p.762-3

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