Ophiodus'_Grove

Woodland grove of the dehar, Ophiodus

This place is a shaded woodland grove. The shining afternoon light of day is peering down through the hazy moist air of the space below the canopy overhead. The leaves above glisten with a lingering dew, and birds, crickets and scurrying beasts can be heard nearby. The moist air lingers and clings to the skin, and you can feel it in your throat and lungs as you breathe; it is a sopping mist of potent botanical odors and perfumed mosses atop the crude stench of stone and soil, and of serpent venom.

This place is both seductive and entrancing, virtuous and dangerous; it has the deep carnivorous hunger of the swamp, and the pensiveness of the savannah. The taste of the air and surrounding wildlife seeps into your throat and on your tongue as you breathe, and you are sure you are tasting both life and death in the wafting pollen and vapors.

Welcoming you cautiously with a gesture, the dehar remains guarded as his domain is entered. A large nearby wolf or wolverine is most assuredly tracking with intention those who step foot in this place without permission or due praise. An altar stands used for millenia beneath a circle surrounded by looming trees: an oak, birch, maple, and a willow tree each marking a cardinal direction of the winds when they come through. Today is not one of those breezy days; the sapping moisture sucks the very oxygen from your breath, should you be mortal.

The light shines, gleening in his copper sheets of hair; bands of flimsy metal with leaf-like flecks of malachite mass in the coils. Silence is his greeting, and solemnity his pride.