Baihed Woods: History and Rumors

A portion of the island of Girrac is often wreathed in dense mists that flow back over the island from the waterfall where the Lazy River pours into the southern seas off Girrac. Here in the Baihed Woods lies the realm of the Quickvine halflings. Darker and wilder than others of their race in the world, these halflings have lived and survived in the monkey- and spider -infested Baihed woods for generations.

These halflings are wild and untamed; their primitive culture has survived untouched for countless centuries and it is rarely, if ever, that they leave the confines of their twisted woods. They are devoted to Baihead, the great mistress of the trees; though their goddess of nature is actually another form of Katia. They have many rituals and beliefs about the sacredness of the trees, plants and animals of the woods in which they live.

They live their lives feasting on the roots, berries and plants they can harvest in the woods and supplement this with a diet of things like lizards, snakes, monkeys and other creatures living in the woods.

Their greatest enemies are the spider colonies that exist in the dense, twisted copses of trees, and to say they hate and fear spiders is an understatement. They spend their days hunting the elusive spiders and using the poisons from one species to kill the other, though this tactic does not always work . It is a war that has been going on for as long as the halflings have lived in the forest.

At one point in time, the numbers of the halflings had dropped while the spider population had increased in size, and this had been of great concern to the elders of the tribe. Recently, however, one of their number, a particularly devout halfling by the name of Wiralimus Twistedstaff, discovered he possessed strange powers and was able to get the trees, plants and animals to do his bidding. Over the years this power has grown and the halfings have found they have a way to reclaim the balance against the formidable spider numbers.