The Bowers of First Landing, ever abound and bustling with life, give shade to a world apart. The Briar Court lives at its roots, and occasionally their most venerated kin are afforded the chance to venture its depths, but even after thousands of years they know only what rests at the surface. The twisting innards of the great tree now billow with heat, scouring the complex and ever-changing caverns with the unremitting flame that pumps from its heart.

Where few parts of the tree remain free of the Court’s corruption, hints of its past chaos jut from the ash. When allowed to flourish, First Landing is life itself in purest essence. Woody tendrils and vibrant verdure blend and bleed together in a cacophony of all that life can and would ever be—vast swathes of the tree would die at random, others would come into bloom, and yet more would take on the frail warmth of Autumn shades. Every season existed at once in its gnarled halls and beautiful cliffside gardens.

Moreover, life would never stay the same in First Landing. With every visit, the Court’s researchers would see new and unfamiliar eyes watching them from the depths of the greenery. They would record a hundred new species that they would never see again, species arising and then disappearing into the seemingly infinite labyrinth within.

Sometimes, it was as simple as an animal they’d never seen before. A strange-looking wolf, with unusually large ears, beady eyes and a fur pattern suited to camouflage in a territory that they’d never seen, whether in or outside First Landing. Or, perhaps, unique species of wildflowers that they could never get to grow outside of the Bowers.

Other times, though, it was more confusing, more frightening. Many parties never returned from the depths, and many more recorded horrific sightings. Strange, aggressive animals, toxic and hostile environments, and frequently outright incomprehensible things. One researcher recounted a wall made out of moving animal parts bound in vines that never fully unwound no matter how much he pulled them apart.

First Landing is, like all celestial things on Elstren, complicated. Some would worship it as an unequivocal good, the mother of all life on Elstren; others would see it as horrifying and vile, an alien world that would be a threat would that any of its kin could escape its depths. The appropriate reaction, perhaps, is to see it as a simple occurrence; neither good nor evil, neither perfectly beautiful nor overtly malicious, First Landing is exactly what it is: Life, in all of its forms.

Anything that has ever or could ever live and breathe likely does so, somewhere deep in that tangled fractal of life.