elsewhere, but under Korapira’s guidance, they thrive This is where Korapira cultivates her whims, creating a living labyrinth of beauty, oddity, and danger An ever-growing portion of the gardens is devoted to her more perverse experiments, lending the garden its name This is where Korapira utilizes the lives and deaths—the very souls—of others to further her experiments, wading in and snatching souls from the shores of Sheol Bodies can be seen here in varying degrees of decay, dismemberment, and depredation Screams frequently split the stillness—sometimes from those subjects who had not yet entirely died, but often from her more bizarre chimerical experiments of composite beings, or from plants that have no business sounding so human GREENWAY For those who know the way, who know the paths of power, this forest is a doorway to almost anywhere in the multiverse, traveling from one old forest to another However, most of the paths lead through the Heartwood—the very center of Korapira’s demesne GULF OF TATTERED SOULS The massive blast that accompanied Korapira’s birth reshaped the island of Tanarao The sea quickly rushed in and filled the newly created crater From the great numbers who died in the blast, the resultant tsunami, and Korapira’s experiments, these waters quickly filled with undead, becoming known as the Gulf of Tattered Souls Held deep within its watery embrace is the epicenter of that blast, the birthplace of Korapira, lost to the waves and to the grasping hands of thousands of submerged undead Was it a shrine? Are there remnants that might explain the sovereign-birthing process? Is there a vast well of untapped power lying in wait? The answers to all these questions are unknown and likely to remain so Korapira’s obsession with death and her gruesome experiments leave a veritable torrent of dead and undead in their wake However, she cares no more for undead than she does for the living—it is the act, the transition from life to death, the release of the soul that she cares about Any undead side-products — 74 — of her experiments are typically left to her ravenous children The trees and vines and various predatory plant creatures tear the rotting flesh and bone to shreds to be devoured or ground to mulch Though there are occasional ghosts and other incorporeal undead haunting the forests, even they cannot survive forever against such savagery and violence However, many undead over the years have made their way out of the forest to accumulate in the few unforested areas on or near the island In the slightly less hostile mangroves, on the shores, among the rocks, and even under the water congregate those undead that have managed to stave off being devoured yet another day Bony hands reach from the depths, apparitions dance in the waves, and hungry eyes watch from every cove Derelict vessels, slowly collapsing into the gulf, are now home to vast numbers of undead, who scrabble about on the sea floor like so many malevolent crabs HANGING TREES This remote grove in the Heartwood rewards lost or overly determined travelers with death by their own hands A breeze constantly rustles the leaves of the grove’s stately oak trees At first glance, several accessible gnarled limbs appear as nooses hanging from sturdy branches but another glance gives the impression that this is a trick of the light Moments afterward, the rustling of the leaves sounds like voices reciting a litany of failures tailored to the visitors The voices change to those of loved ones who could not be saved, tormenting victims that the only release is death The wooden nooses reappear at this point, seeming to beckon to the haunted visitors and lowering themselves to convenient heights Creatures that break the grove’s hold see it as it truly is, complete with dangling corpses in various states of decay HEARTWOOD The Heartwood is the demiplane at the core of Korapira’s demesne It is the hub, the crossroads, the dark core connecting all the old, dark forests of the multiverse Its shifting boundaries suffuse with other forests and make possible passage even between planes Of course, without knowing the paths of power, it’s