Fey Forest campaign crash summary

You already know the basic campaign premise: The ancestral forest of the elves is cut off from the rest of the world, and expanding outward abnormally quickly.

Within, there are a number of oddities that quickly become apparent to the traveler:

* The woods are blanketed with a strange, omnipresent mist -- usually too thin to appreciably obscure vision at all, but always there. The mist has been referred to by some as "the Wabe".

* Space is distorted within the forest, with distances and directions often being not quite as they appear, making it easy to stray off course without realizing it if you aren't vigilant and good at keeping your bearings. Even teleportation is affected, making such effects much more imprecise than would typically be expected. However, on the plus side, the party has found that these distortions can actually be used to one's benefit, providing shortcuts that can dramatically reduce travel time if you can figure them out (ie, if you roll high enough on your Survival check to navigate).

* The flow of magic is unstable, making spells behave erratically from time to time -- usually benign, but sometimes with disastrous consequences. (At one point early in the campaign, the party attended a festival where many people were injured and/or killed by a fireball-like wild magic effect triggered from a simple cantrip-tier festival trinket.)

* People are changing into tree-people, which the residents of the forest have taken to calling borogoves. Skin turns to bark, hair turns to leafy twigs, that sort of thing. The transformation occurs gradually over the span of a few days, after which time the subject goes into a listless stupor for a couple weeks before returning to their former alertness and demeanor. Their personality is mostly unchanged, but after the change they tend to be more nature-friendly and laid back about the various weird things going on, and their memories from before the transformation are mostly quite vague. Certain races seem to be immune; there are no known cases of elves or catfolk transforming into borogoves. It also doesn't affect everyone, even of susceptible races. None of the PCs have experienced any hint of transformation setting in, and they've met several human NPCs (as well as one gnome) who've been in the forest for some time without becoming borogoves.

* The seasons within the forest are all out of whack. The western part of the forest is locked in perpetual spring; the north is winter; the south, summer; and the east, fall.

* There's all sorts of weird things going on with the flora and fauna. Even typical plants and animals have a tendency toward odd features, and there has been a proliferation of the truly bizarre. Some of it's dangerous, but much of it's just plain weird. (One of the party's favorites is the hugag, a creature somewhat like a moose, but with no antlers, no knee joints -- it hobbles along on stiff, outstretched legs -- and a big floppy upper lip that sags down nearly to the ground and just dangles there.)

* On top of all that, there are all sorts of little oddities that pop up. The fey in the forest have gotten very active lately, and it's not uncommon to stumble across pixies, leprechauns, and other such small fey engaging in all manner of peculiar pastimes. There have also been various strange phenomena, such as strange things raining from the sky (mostly foodstuffs of one kind or another), clouds of shimmering, weightless crystals floating in midair, etc.

* Some within the forest find themselves visited by strange dreams, and your character would be one of them. The dreams seem to occur monthly, around the time of the full moon, and feature bizarre visions of a dying world and an unseen entity with a deeply unsettling presence that causes the mind to instinctively reject it as impossible, speaking as a chorus of voices in unison, imploring the dreamer to help it do something about the world's decline,  lest the dreamer be destroyed along with the rest of the world.

As far as important plot details beyond these obvious developments:

* The World Tree, the enormous city-tree at the center of the Urwald, is cut off from the rest of the forest similar to how the Urwald itself is cut off from the rest of the world. However, where those outside the forest can enter but none can leave, it is the opposite for the World Tree -- nobody can get close, but there have been m

* The major players in the forest right now are a group of four uncannily beautiful elven sisters, each of whom has taken up residence in one of the quadrants of the forest. They are all quite charismatic in their own various ways, and each has acquired a considerable celebrity status. None of them seems to be pursuing any particular agenda other than simply to guide and help the people of the Urwald in coping with the changes -- though each has a different approach to doing so. However, their father apparently lives at the World Tree, and is working on...something or another. So far the party has only asked one of the four, Dana, about their father, and she didn't really know too much about his work. The party suspects that their father is behind the various problems troubling the Urwald, but Dana confidently insists that her father is working to fix things and help people.
	Dana of the Verdant Bloom: The youngest of the four, she's a very sweet girl, if a little naive and simpleminded. She tends to dress simply, in plain earth-toned dresses with few accessories besides some wildflowers woven into her hair and a large red rose tucked behind her ear. She has a particular love of flowers, and spends most of her time wandering around in gardens or out in the woods picking wildflowers, when she's not tending to the people of the western portion of the Urwald. Her home is in Springvale, a city known for its many waterfalls and the exquisite gardens tended by the monks of the Order of the Sprouting Bud. However, she spends a lot of time traveling throughout the western region of the Urwald, going wherever there's news of trouble to comfort the people there. She is usually accompanied by a small group of dedicated admirers. Additionally, she claims to have a companion by the name of Fleur who never leaves her side, but none have ever seen this alleged individual. (However, the PCs have occasionally received messages carried on the wind spoken in the whispery voice of what sounds like a timid little girl, claiming to be Fleur speaking on behalf of Dana.)
	Macha of the Swift Hunt: The second-youngest, Macha is a wild tomboy with a great love of hunting. She seems right at home in the harsh, winter-locked mountains, and holds to a philosophy of personal strength above all else. She's a pretty decent person, friendly to most and by no means malicious, but she isn't quite as warmly benevolent as her younger sister, and is rather openly biased against those who rely on methods she doesn't consider "true" strength (such as magic and artifice). She has established a home base of sorts in the form of a hunting lodge nestled in the mountains north of D'waat Rhees, around which a budding town has grown up from the flock of disciples and admirers that have gathered to her. Most of her followers are elves, humans, and other races common to the Urwald, but she has also attracted the fealty of an enormous ghostly winter wolf by the name of Vael, and with him the pack he leads.
	Ana of the Flourishing Bough: The oldest of the four, Ana has taken up residence of the southern region of the forest, where she has become something of a de facto queen of sorts. A very regal and refined woman, she loves the trappings of courtly refinement, dressing lavishly in extragant gowns and jewelry and making a grand palace for herself on the island of Somercourt. In keeping with her courtly airs, she tends to favor rules and decorum rather strongly, especially compared to her sisters, but she has a reputation for occasionally changing or ignoring the rules she herself sets out on a whim. Visitors to her palace are often surprised by the great old treant living there, Silverbark, who tends to blend in with the trees in the courtyard and gardens.
	Oona of the Harvest Moon: The second-oldest of the four, and decidedly the black sheep of the family. Oona lives in the eastern portion of the Urwald and is, frankly, kind of a dick. She has a tendency to play malicious pranks without any regard for the potential consequences or harm they may do. She also has rather macabre sensibilities, preferring to dress all in black (and rather lasciviously at that), often wearing festival masks (and making those who travel with her do likewise), and traveling by way of dullahan carriage. She's not a drow, but she seems like the sort who would blend right in with their society if she blackened her skin and bleached her hair. And maybe if she weren't quite so...juvenile.

* As for what the PCs have been up to, they've been traveling about the forest trying to piece together exactly what's going on and how to fix it. One thing that keeps coming up is reference to a legendary King who supposedly ruled the world in a mythical golden age at the dawn of time. The legends surrounding this figure are vague and often conflicting, but he is usually portrayed as a great and benevolent ruler who was deposed by a wicked revolution, ending the golden age; however, some legends say this King will return in the future to restore the world to the utopian state it was in under his original reign. This legend is the basis of a popular elven folk song/nursery rhyme, called "Once Upon a Springtime", which has also cropped up repeatedly along the party's journey. The lyrics are here: http://pastebin.com/We4ArjaU
Along their travels, the party has acquired something of a name for themselves, first slaying the fearsome JubJub Bird that had been terrorizing the town of Gamanar. They then traveled to the mountains, where they defeated the ferocious Bandersnatch of the Far'Bjerg, stopped the plague of wendigos and other unseelie fey in the region, and dealt with the rumors of drow emerging from below the Far'Bjerg.
Now, they are en route to the Grove of the Ancients, home to perhaps the oldest trees in the Urwald short of the World Tree itself, and a sacred site for treants. It is said that the first treants to walk the earth came from that grove, and that some (or perhaps all) of the ancient trees there are in fact treants who returned to inert tree form upon reaching the ends of their lifespans. Elders from among the treants periodically travel to this site for great councils of their kind, a very noteworthy even for it is one of the rare occasions when treants may be seen outside their home forests, crossing plains, mountains, and even deserts to reach the Grove. In this Grove resides the chief elder of all treantkind, known as the TumTum Tree, who is said to be unsurpassed in wisdom, holding all the collected knowledge of the treant elders passed down through the ages -- knowledge that is rarely, if ever, shared with non-treants. Many have hoped that the TumTum Tree's vaunted wisdom could perhaps be of use in dealing with the troubles in the forest, but ever since the forest began to change, the Grove of the Ancients has become all but inaccessible. The spatial distortions in that area are especially strong, rendering the Grove a near-impassable maze, and the Grove is infested with deadly monsters. Most notable among them is the Jabberwock, a vicious dragonlike creature that is, according to those few that have faced it and managed to escape with their lives, seemingly impossible to kill, regenerating from even the most grievous wounds inflicted by any weapon that's been tried.