The Matagde Mountains and Tocme Forest
The Matagde Mountains rise without warning from the clay plains, with steep and uninviting cliff walls. Neither Baldyr nor me felt any particular inclination towards climbing with our added weight and took, instead, an eastern course around the Mountain chain. This route led us through more villages, with names like Guffi, Possi, Mullo or Kvopp.
The River Rubakin, which flows along the edge of the Mountains, led us in among the foothills, where the halflings dwell. As the river is too violent in these parts, we took to walking, which helped us shed our weight in more ways than one.
The halflings of Saphyna are as polite as the humans, and run excellent inns. However, they do not allow patrons to pay with a song. Indeed, compared to the hospitality of the humans, they seemed downright hostile, and we see little of them. Baldyr later admitted that this might have had something to do with his earlier visit to this area, when he, fairly drunk, had been singing 'What are ye, are ye doin' itsy-bitsy pee-wee?' which might have affected their reception.
In the small village of Pjullo, where the people make a particularly strong wood glue from beech sap and oxblood, we again had to choose between crossing the mountains and travelling through the Tocme Forest. We chose the latter, but apparently, locals thought that was a bad idea. When I asked them if the forest was perilous, they mostly just shrugged. They often collected nuts along the edges, but rarely ventured further in. We laughed at them and left at dawn.
The forest turned out to be harmless enough. However, it is full with mispel shrubberies. As everybody knows, the mispel is a blue flowering bush with mobile seeds, which need a drop of blood to sprout. With its burrs, they hook onto clothes or fur on passing creatures, and crawl to the skin which they puncture with a thorn.
After only about an hour of bold travelling, we had to yield the uneven struggle against starved yesteryear seeds and return, hanging our heads in shame to the village. The entire population, humans and halflings, had gathered to receive us. This was particularly ignominious for my companion. In a rage, he had attacked one of the bushes and had to take all of his clothes off. They were so full of mispel seeds that they crawled around on their own.
The villagers told us that there was no passable way through around the forest. The only other land in those parts consisted of a festering swamp. They did agree to draw a map through the mountains, and warned us of bandits and orcs. Of those, we saw none. We did meet some shepherds, though, he treated us to warm ale and rubbed our frozen feet in bearmoss.