The Beast Fears Fire - Feral Paths

Feral Paths [Disaster 2]
Impulse - To Take You Places

The Teigou is big - it could easily fit 20 Cricktons under its canopy, 30 if you leave out the Central Mountains and Lahey. There are portions of the forest that have not been mapped, not by the Hemlocks, not by the Pines, not by anyone before or since, at least, not in any surviving form. We are aware of many settlements inside the forest, some of which we know how to reach but not where they are located in the forest. No one needs to be the first to stand up and say that not knowing where something is tends to preclude knowing how to reach it. In this case, the settlements are only reachable via the feral paths.

The origins of the feral paths are pretty straightforward. There are new ones which appear periodically, which lends a little credence to the general consensus. They are the trails of spoiled blood the feral gods leave when they break free of their shrines. No one's certain where the feral gods go, or what happens to them when they break free. There are no surviving accounts of an encounter with the entities, and given the state of the shrines, when traced over the network of paths, that seems understandable.

Feral paths have a way of compressing distance, making potentially month-long treks into the depths of the Teigou the work of a few hours. While this has obvious benefits (including making a large portion of Song living in what is technically Murren defacto members of Crick society), they can also be quite dangerous. There are some stable and well-traveled paths, but even these can sometimes decide to take travelers to different places than they normally do. Some of these places are in less hospitable parts of the forest. Some may be the sites of feral shrines, which are almost always packed to the gills with stray spirits and supernatural miasmas, some might dump you in Dim Stroen. Additionally, travel on the feral paths can put a traveler slightly out of phase with the rest of the world and drawn inexorably toward Dim Stroen.

The Wood of Error
When you walk the feral paths, face Disaster
On a Hit, you arrive at your intended destination, if you're on a path that goes someplace specific or you arrive someplace relatively safe, if you're exploring.
On a Hard Hit, you arrive as if you Hit, but also get to choose the Cool or Hot option for Acting Under fire.
On a Miss, you end up someplace unpleasant and suffer the Peril Lost on Feral Roads, which you cannot resolve unless you are in a inhabited area.

Those lost on feral roads do not become aware of their predicament until they attempt to interact with other people who did not join them on the trip. It doesn't work. Those lost are aware of those not lost, and are able to interact with the environment, but they cannot interact directly with people who are not lost. Nor can people who are not lost interact with or perceive the lost. Even attempts at violence by the lost against those who are not lost seems to fail (though the lost do not pass through the bodies of those not lost as though they were incorporeal. Their descriptions of physical contact with those not lost is... confusing and slightly unpleasant.)

What's more, those lost report being pursued by shadows of trees (usually pines) which have no corresponding trees and are visible as noticeably darker than even lightless conditions or by those suffering from blindness. Evading these shadows seems to be the secret to finding oneself again, and those who have witnessed others failing to do so see them dragged off into deeper darkness still.

The Wood of (T)Error
When you are lost on the feral roads, face Disaster when you enter an inhabited place.
On a Hit, you suffer 1 Harm from the clutch of Dim Stroen, but get +1 Hit forward to try to escape again.
On a Hard Hit, you resolve the Peril and return to the world.
On a Miss, suffer 2 Harm from the shadows of Dim Stroen. If you Fall while Lost on the Feral Roads, you are gone forever.