Way: The Wood

"I've learned the path to the Wood, tangled darkness that grows around the walls of the Mansus (thought the Mansus has no walls). I can Dream with this to return to the Wood."

The Wood is a forest beneath and around the Mansus. While it is accessed in the same way as the Mansus in game, it is not a part of the Mansus proper. It is associated with darkness and the -aspect, and is home to the Moth, the Velvet, and the Ring-Yew, and possibly the Witch-and-Sister.

Reaching
Way: The Wood can be obtained by Dreaming with Passion and any, , or fragment.

Entering
"Now I pass between scar-barked trees. The moon passes behind branches, though her fingers remain in my hair. I am stumbling over roots, now. It is tempting to drop to all fours, to avoid the low branches. Pale wings move, deep in the night."

Dreaming with Way: The Wood and Passion will bring you to the Mansus where you must choose one of three cards. The card representing The Wood will be face up, while the two representing The Well and The Temple of the Wheel are face-down. You must click and drag a card to the Gate. Only one card can be chosen; the other two will be revealed and then destroyed.

The Wood

 * An Occult Scrap ( 2) I walked in the Wood last night, and the scissors worked in the distance and the furred things crammed my mouth and swarmed my ears, and I felt the old urge to drop to wolf-fours and nose among the roots. But I remembered that I walk upright by day and I know fire and steel and words, and at last I found where the Velvet had concealed a secret on tree-bark beneath moss. I read it then with the tips of my fingers, and I think now that I could write it in full.


 * A Buzzing in the Brain ( 2)  'In the midst of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood without paths. It is difficult to express how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was...' I don't recall exactly what occurred, last night, in the beating black between the trunks of the trees, where winged things moved beneath my hands. But now this morning my brain fizzes with fragments: IN GI RUM IMUS NOC TE ET CON SUMI MUR IGNI RUM IMUS NOC TE ET CON SUMI MUR -'
 * Peculiar Rumor  'While I was returning to the depths, one appeared, in front of my eyes, whose mouth was sealed. When I saw them, in the great emptiness, I cried out...' I think that last night I met another soul in the Wood. I will never recall exactly what we said, one to another, but I think that we will recognise each other in the waking world.

The Well

 * A Furtive Truth ( 4) The Velvet is strong at the Well in the Wood, and the Velvet is the Hour that keeps secrets; but now and then she lets a little secret fall, like a crumb at a feast. Last night I found a moss-clad rock written all around with the secrets of another history. I might give thanks to the Velvet, but it will be wiser not to draw her attention.
 * An Awareness of Appetite ( 2) The Well in the Wood is never dry, but it is never clear. One night it might heave with crawling roots; on another, it will pulse with bright moss. On nights of the full moon its waters are choked with the fat dappled bodies of moths. Last night, I saw it brimming with dark and viscous blood. Gelatinous shreds drifted on its surface; clots of -matter.
 * Vitality The Well in the Wood is sacred to the Grail, the Hour that hungers, and to the Velvet, the Hour that guards secrets... tonight as I approached, it heaved with the Velvet's moss, struggling waves of deep and vibrant green, pulsing again and again from its throat. It surged around my calves, rose to my thighs, and this morning I still feel the Velvet's breath, strong within me.
 * Peculiar Rumor So many things rise from the Well in the Wood. Last night it was aswarm with wormy roots. The trees clustered and whispered. Perhaps they were welcoming the influx. I found a sleeping soul ensnared in the roots, and I helped them struggle free. When they wake, they will recall my face, as I do theirs.

The Temple of the Wheel

 * A Furtive Truth ( 4) In my sleep I came to the high jagged rock which is still called the Temple of the Wheel, though the hour called Wheel is long extinct. Another hand had scratched a secret in the black lantern on its flank. I burned that secret into my memory to preserve for waking, before the Velvet came out of the velvet Wood-depths and erased it. The Velvet is jealous of her secrets.
 * A Subtle Flaw ( 2) Last night I came in the Wood to the high jagged rock called the Temple of the Wheel. Its flank, patched with black lichen and eye-signs, opened like a mouth beneath my hands, and I walked in the whispering space within. The Gods-who-were-stone, the first of the Hours, are almost all gone now, but here their voices remain: Wheel, Flint, Tide, the others without names.
 * Trembling Airs ( 2) In the Wood beyond the walls of the Mansus, a jagged rock rears like the petrified remnants of a dancing giant. I trailed my hand along its flank, over the eye-signs and lichen and the crude graffiti of the lesser Wood-powers, and I felt the thrumming of the Wheel which has passed. It has passed, but something continues.
 * Peculiar Rumor I came to the Temple of the Wheel, that high and jagged rock, that memorial to dead gods. Those who take their own lives sometimes first cast themselves from its peak in dream. I found another sleeping soul, scratching the sign of the eye into the lichen at its peak. I do not recall what passed between us, but I will recognise their face in the waking world.

Ascending Further
To reach The White Door, Dream with Way: The Wood and a Lore Fragment with, , or 4 or higher.