Manchile Landing and the Foundling's Forest

Cartographers consider the Neerock River the cutoff for what they will countenance as a major river.  It's not that long or grand or wide, but it does the job, if the job is snaking through the west country of Big Charry and keeping the secrets of those underground.  Travel its banks or its waters, and eventually, you're going to find a swampy spot by a shrine and a lookout tower that maybe you'll wish you hadn't.  There's nothing special about the place, but you might see the odd, oddly plump nutria poking around, with knowing, awful eyes.  There are kobolds down that way, mostly relatives of his, but, somehow, they aren't quite so bad.  As you pole the waters, you might stir up a bone or two; small bones, soft bones, something familiar.  If you see lights in the sky at night, feel the pressure of subsonic wings beating, make for that place as fast as you can, and be ready for a fight.

Manchile Landing is one of the two places where children sometimes arrive, brought from the other lands singly and in pairs by one of the last operating catchers.  You can ignore the catcher, unless you've got some arcane knowledge of those underground's weapons, nothing you throw at it is going to mean a thing to it.  At Manchile Landing, the thing brings the occasional baby boy, and that nutria, he doesn't have a name, but we know who he is, comes waddling for his dinner.  The local kobolds venerate the thing, and do everything in their considerable powers to stymie hunters and anyone who would rescue his infant quarry.  Hearthkeepers have tried setting up in the shrine and the lookout in order to intercept the baby boys, but the kobolds always come in numbers as soon as they are aware of human presence.  So far, only two children have been successfully saved from the landing in all the days since those underground fell.  We're not sure how many have been lost.

Over on the east side of Big Charry, in the pine-choked hills, there's another spot, a hectare or three of particularly dark wood, ringed by a series of old, tiny hamlets (now abandoned).  This is foundling's forest, a spot where multiple catchers bring a handful of children, girls and boys, ages 3 to 6 or so, and drop them off.  The villages used to have a tradition of hunting through those woods for foundlings and bringing them up as their own, and records of the practice hint at serious urgency in the hunt, as the Foundling Forest has been thought to be the home of some stealthy, giant monster, something which burrows, sits camouflaged, and hunts with piercing legs like those of a colossal spider.  Unlike Manchile Landing, the Foundling Forest is well off the beaten track of exploration and resettlement.  Humanitarian concerns aside, there's no reason to get anywhere near that area, and Hearthkeepers have not yet been able to make it to the place, let alone set up a station there.

Old folks from the villages around the forest mention that in times when the population dipped, the catchers got extra-active to make up for it.  A generation has passed since any adults lived in the area.  Stories of communities of feral children living in and around the forest are kind of popular in the eastern cantons, but none of these seem to have roots in any trustworthy accounts.