Summa Theoludica

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<div class="leftcolumn">It was a prison, but that was back in ancient times. Its walls are now eroded and there are paradoxically more breaches in the walls than walls. In those times, walls were different, too, and they resembled looping trails, impossible corridors between the trees, and other, even stranger features of the forest, which easily can change its shape and size. Evidence suggests that though the prison still exists, it is largely a ruin, now. Its destruction or abandonment probably happened around the same time as the Treaty of the Zyrr, in which the use of Darkheart Forest was lent to a race of entities, who hoped it would contain the race of creatures known as Zyx. The details seem difficult to understand, and are scarcely relevant today. Darkheart Forest, though a ruin, still houses in its secret glades whatever creatures it was meant to incarcerate. The invisible control system that opens the forest-shaped [[doors]] and corridors within the wood are still operable. Even today, when children find the forest, they are, due to influences they can't detect, compelled to play strange games, which seem to grant them access to passages and areas otherwise invisible.</div><div class="rightcolumn">These games are usually elaborations upon Tag, or Blind Man's Bluff, or any other well-known past-time, as long as it has rules and consequences. The games are actually the prison's control system, which only humans can detect, and use. The players of these games always believe that they, themselves, invented their routines, yet careful archivists have noted that the details and effects are consistent, and coincident with the appearance of strange monsters and entities in towns nearby. It is not impossible for humans over 13 to participate in these diversions, but they rarely ever do. There are diverse interpretations of this fact. Some take all this as evidence that humankind itself was created to serve as wardens and record-keepers for the prison. Perhaps, the joy young people take in them simply reflects the efficiency employed by whatever made the forest the people who live near it. </div>

<span id="lefty"><div class="leftcolumn">In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram. Terra autem erat inanis et vacua et tenebrae super faciem abyssi et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas. Dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux. Et vidit Deus lucem quod esset bona et divisit lucem ac tenebras. Appellavitque lucem diem et tenebras noctem factumque est vespere et mane dies unus. </div></span><div class="rightcolumn"> Dixit quoque Deus fiat firmamentum in medio aquarum et dividat aquas ab aquis. Et fecit Deus firmamentum divisitque aquas quae erant sub firmamento ab his quae erant super firmamentum et factum est ita. Vocavitque Deus firmamentum caelum et factum est vespere et mane dies secundus. </div> <<link "And?">><<replace "#lefty">><div class="leftcolumn"> In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. He created other things too, but I have forgotten what they are. Am I a brain in a vat? I have so many concerns, but fortunately, I'm so dim-witted, only one or two of them ever occur to me at a time. This has been a decided advantage when trying to pay bills.</div><</replace>><</link>>

<span class="bigger">The trees are somehow much too thick here. It's as if you're trying to push your way through the tree-[[tops]]. You feel stuck and the only [[opportunity]] you can see of escape from this bramble is a tun[[n]]el leading in a direction y[[o]]u would find it hard to describe, as y[[o]]u would need an adjective just a little stronger than "inconvenient"</span>

<span class="tidier">This is an odd clearing. Like guests leaving an awkward orgy, three trails stumble and meander as obtusely as possible, and [[one]] of them, you're fairly certain, leads [[back the way you came|one]]. There's another one, that skirts around an oddly shaped tree, whose trunk twists so that it's almost in an [[arch|two]]. The [[third path]] is more straightforward. Idly, you remark to yourself that it's a shame the weather and thick, obscuring tree-tops prevent your determining which direction any of these paths are facing.</span>

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