A Tour of the Foxglove Queendom

In a very far away place, a very long time ago, there was a country called Deranis, named for someone named Deranis who had come there sometime in the long line of people who had occupied the land. The Deranians were a warlike people, as many people are, and they steadily increased the size of their country over the years they occupied it.

Until, that is, the Karani sailed from across the sea and came to the Deranis. The Karani, or the People of the Crimson Plume, were a society of warrior poets who gained their name from the feathers on the ends of their pens, which rumor has it they dipped in the blood of their fallen foes.

As one might expect when two peoples both inclined towards war meet, the Karani did not get along with the Deranians. And so, not long after the Karani arrived in Deranis, the two societies went to war. It was a long and bloody war, and perhaps future stories shall be written about it, but it is not the topic of today's tale, and so I shall skip over it.

But then the Karani were left with the question of what to call their newfound land. Being poets, they had little taste for places named after people, finding them to be rather unimpressive for the composition of the poems that the Karani were famous for. So they needed a new name. And, in the interests of creating names that would sound nice in their poetry, as well as to honor the field of foxgloves growing on top of the cliff that bordered the sea, they named it the Foxglove Kingdom. It is a queendom now, but we shall get to the story of how it became that way later.

Then, to compliment the name they had given their new country, they set about naming any other landmarks that they found worthy of note in a similar fashion. Which brings us to the topic of today's story. Or rather, today's tour. In today's episode of Foxglove Fairytales, I shall take you on the previously promised tour of what is now the Foxglove Queendom.

The Queendom is divided into nine segments, each with its own environment. Farthest to the west and at the south of the country, you can find the Light Woods and the Dark Woods. The two woods are opposites. The Dark Woods is the sort of place where you'd find witches and werewolves, a shadowy place believed to be where some of the greatest evils in the Queendom lurk, biding their time until they can fulfill their evil plans. I must confess that I do not recommend that you go to the Dark Woods, and advise that if you for some reason must, you find one of the werewolves that lives on the east end of the forest to guide you. Make no mistake, and do not even consider going to the werewolves on the west end of the forest. They will eat you alive, but the eastern pack is generally friendly.

Directly next to the Dark Woods, you will find their polar opposite. The Light Woods. The Light Woods are generally speaking a friendly place, as long as you avoid the Fey Dens at its north corner. They have been a favored hunting place for monarchs, although Queen Snow prefers to hunt in the Dark Woods. If you're ever in the area, I highly recommend you stop by the Sunfilter, a place where the light filters through the trees in a rather unique way, seeming to cast pictures across the woods. It's especially beautiful near sunset.

Just east of The Dark Woods, you'll find a place that is, depending on who you ask, either the most fascinating or most boring place in the entire queendom. The Grey Woods. The Grey Woods are, in essence, the balance to the evil of The Dark Woods and the good of The Light Woods. At first glance, they appear to be relatively ordinary. Actually, at first glance they appear to be perfectly ordinary. They have deer, and squirrels, plants, and all the other things you might expect to find in a forest, but very little else. They are also the most peaceful place in the queendom. It is rumored that anyone fighting with their boundaries will die in seven days, but no one has been brave enough to find out.

If you're in the area, by far the most beautiful place is Shadowbright, a strange place where darkness and light meet in a tangent that cannot really be described within the confines of this language. I also highly recommend that you visit the Witch's Glen, a clearing in the woods where the Light and Dark Witches meet in harmony on the longest day of the year. It is not a place that many tour guides will show you to, for fear of upsetting the witches, but it is one of the hidden gems of the Foxglove Queendom, and the witches won't actually be mad. Probably. On the other hand, you may wish to steer clear of the Demon's Maw, a huge ravine rumoured to contain a portal to the abyss. I will not weigh in on the validity of these rumors, but I will tell you that a strange number of people seem to simply fall off the edge while viewing the Maw.

Just north of The Grey Woods is a place probably best avoided: Paradise Meadows. The meadows look picturesque and harmless, with their almost permanently partly cloudy skies and bright green grasses, but there is a darkness in their perfection, and I will warn you that everything in the meadows can and will kill you. But, in a strange piece of decision-making, the city of Delin was built near the center of Paradise Meadows and thus it cannot be reached without crossing the Meadows. If you need to travel through the meadows, do not leave the main road. Ever. Aside from reaching Delin, the only valid reason to travel through the meadows is to see the Mirror Lake, which has been said to tell the future ever since Garrion Marsh saw in its surface the assassin sneaking up behind him and was able to dodge her attack.

Travel further east and you'll find the Scorchway, by far one of the most unpleasant places in the queendom. It cuts directly across the country, bordering both the meadows and The Grey Woods. The Scorchway is a desert, and one of the hottest ones on the planet, created by a curse during the war which no one has yet been able to reverse, although every year the country's most promising mages attempt to get rid of it. It is not a place many people want to cross, but it separates the majority of the country from The Fields and The Doomsday Spires, so more people than wish they had to nonetheless cross it.

If you'll be in the area, I suggest you plan a visit to The Sapphire Oasis, where you will find the city of Vir. The waters of the oasis glimmer the bright blue of its namesake gem, and just a little farther east you can find the Anguish Cliffs. The Anguish Cliffs are much less imposing than their name sounds. Just up the sheer cliffs is the field of foxgloves from which the queendom takes its name, and they it is quite beautiful, although I will admit that the winds from which the cliffs get their name are quite disconcerting. Additionally located in the Scorchway is The Graveyard, a place identical to a variety of similarly named places in other worlds where the bones of long dead giants litter the sands. It is quite dramatic, although perhaps not worth the hike through the desert.

Just north of the Scorchway are the Fields. The Fields are the sight of the largest battle in the war, but the Karani, who could not stand the hideousness of the former battlefield, cast a spell over them to turn them into rather ordinary fields, much safer than the similar looking Paradise Meadows. They mostly only contain small farming villages, although on the west and north sides they are bordered by the Doomsday Spires.

The Doomsday Spires are the only large mountains in the country. It is said that you can predict the end of the world using some combination of traits that the mountain range possesses, and although that theory was long ago disproved, I will confess that they do have a rather end-of-the-world-ish look about them. At the base of one of the mountains, you can find The Dark Cave, which is, as you might expect, a rather large and dramatic cave. There is probably a dragon in it, so I would not recommend the cave as a site for spelunking, but it may be worth a trip just to see it at sunrise, when the sun reflects off the crystals just beyond where you can usually see.

And, of course, it wouldn't be a tour of the Foxglove Queendom if I didn't show you the beach. Silver Sand Beach has, disappointingly to most first time visitors, sands that are not actually silver but a shade of white that does, admittedly, look pretty silver when the sun hits them right. Lapping at the beach, you will find the blue-green waters of the Crystalline Sea, making for a very picturesque scene around sundown. If you swim into the water, and go as far down as you can, you will find the Cove. The Cove is an underwater cave, but it is also a museum. Its curator, a sea serpent who refuses to share their name with anyone, thought it would be a good idea to put a museum of things relating to the ocean where hardly anyone can reach it, and although admission prices are high (20 gold for the day), The Cove is well worth a visit if you can manage the swim or find a piece of magic to help you breath.

And then there's Kartha. The Capital of the Queendom is such a fascinating and diverse place that I could write an entire book about it, but I'll try to give you a quick summary. It is located maybe an hour from the palace, and Queen Celeste often comes around when she's looking for new spell components, but the chance of seeing royalty is far from the most interesting thing in the city. The market that occupies the center of the largest metropolis in the queendom is a popular destination where you can buy anything from imported monkey livers and exotic species to cheap fake gold jewelry and music in a bottle. But if I were to tell you the one place to visit in the city, it would be the place from which Kartha takes its name.

The gardens. The gardens are large enough that it would take nearly a day just to walk across them, and were the entire reason the city was founded. Shortly after the Karani conquered the country, a young witch named Felicity Bramblebunch took up a rather difficult mission: to collect every kind of plant that can be found in the world. She was far from finishing when she died, but thanks to the donations of many fans of the garden and its mission, the collection now has all but a few hundred species. It was, even while Felicity was alive, so spectacular that people would show up and, never wanting to leave, start building houses near it. And so the city of Kartha, or Brightgarden, was founded. The plants in the garden come in such variety that it's astonishing, and you can see flowers every time of year and in any color of the rainbow and some colors that you can't even see but which I swear exist if only human eyes could pick them up.

And at that point I must end this tour. Thanks for joining me!