Not too many of the monsterfolk will have heard of Dewaint, and fewer still of the humans have. But he'll be able to establish a bit of a good rapport with these people as a nice young man, helpful and curios, so he'd get bonus reputation amongst the elderly population. This means that, should he need something, these people that he's treated politely and interacted with will be more than happy to help however they can.
Some have answers for him now, thankfully. Combining the information that he gains, he learns that there have been attempts in the past 100 or so years to take expeditions and research parties through the Wilde, to the heart of what had once been Dewaint Forest. They've all failed, and very few people have come back from them; those that have were never the same again, whether the Cwyld had gone too far, or they had seen things that left them a different person.
An older Monster - a grandmotherly Chimera with old goat eyes, horns, and ears; hair a lion's mane that's gone black with age framing her weathered, more human appearing face; thin body lion-like, save for the snake tail and goat hooves on her feet - tells him that she was about 15 or so when the last big expedition went out. It puts her around 115, 120 years old, if Eren does his math. Only two people came back from that, with the goal of seeing if civilization still existed in the heart of the Wilde. She seems like she might be able to answer his questions a little more readily beyond rumors.
Most just call her Ol' Nan, which she finds extremely annoying 50 years into the nickname. Eren can call her by her name, thank you kindly, boy: Sully Stichter.
Now Miss Sully here is quite sharp still, in her opinion, and is quick to recount what she remembers of it. She was one of the few Monsters on the expedition, so she didn't get too deep into the Wilde, mind you, but Chimera are hardy Monsters. Even as a youth she was strong - she lifts up her arm, flexing as she speaks; she's skinny as anything now that she's a granny, but it's all lean and wiry muscle that obviously hasn't failed her yet - so they effectively used her and her companions as beasts of burden. (She's wry when she calls them that, obviously.)
She went in far enough for them to set up a base that they could come back to, where the more... skittish researchers and such stayed. The Monsters that went with them were there as protection, but it was before the Coven had innovated their fancy magitech to protect Wilder and explorer Monsters, so they were at risk of possibly going feral or becoming infected by the Cwyld. Double-edged sword, understand.
They were in the depths of the autumnal trees, though. The true Wilde. (Not the boundaries that still sport green foliage where Eren and Mikleo were in range of, where most quests and Wilder missions have taken new arrivals.) The trees there are dying, yet sustained by the Cwyld; they infect them from the inside out, cracking the bark and oozing that disgusting oil as if it were sap. Smells awful, she says. Like death itself, if he's encountered death much in his life, or already met himself some Shades, there's no mistaking what it is. Rots the life out, it does. Replaces it with some dark kind of magic that they can see in that white glow of the cracks. The Witches with them put up wards against the Cwyld creeping into the encampment further, but it was constant maintenance.
But the group that went further into the depths... the only two that survived were humans, ones that weren't practicing Witches. They were almost infected to the point of no return, and brought with them three others that had to be "put down," she says clinically, because they were so far gone that to try and cure them would have been worse than torture. The shock of it would likely have killed them, anyways, with how deeply the Cwyld had taken hold.
In their hysteria, they did manage to tell them what had happened: a Cwyltid, bigger'n any that they'd seen. They'd described it as something that had once been a Monster, but any further attempts to get information from them had failed in the face of them falling apart mentally.
They were never the same again. Died young, sadly. They were good people, kind to her and the other Monsters, and tried to save their companions. Anaïs Thrush, and Oliver Moore. She still talks to Ollie's family, even all this time later. His great-great granddaughter is a Witch at the Coven. Good lass, though serious; good thing she's got herself a Puca to Bond with. Anaïs was an orphan, trying to make a name for herself and to combat the thing that lost her a family, from what she recalls of her.
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JUNE 2019 (EXPEDITION TO DEWAINT)
Not too many of the monsterfolk will have heard of Dewaint, and fewer still of the humans have. But he'll be able to establish a bit of a good rapport with these people as a nice young man, helpful and curios, so he'd get bonus reputation amongst the elderly population. This means that, should he need something, these people that he's treated politely and interacted with will be more than happy to help however they can.
Some have answers for him now, thankfully. Combining the information that he gains, he learns that there have been attempts in the past 100 or so years to take expeditions and research parties through the Wilde, to the heart of what had once been Dewaint Forest. They've all failed, and very few people have come back from them; those that have were never the same again, whether the Cwyld had gone too far, or they had seen things that left them a different person.
An older Monster - a grandmotherly Chimera with old goat eyes, horns, and ears; hair a lion's mane that's gone black with age framing her weathered, more human appearing face; thin body lion-like, save for the snake tail and goat hooves on her feet - tells him that she was about 15 or so when the last big expedition went out. It puts her around 115, 120 years old, if Eren does his math. Only two people came back from that, with the goal of seeing if civilization still existed in the heart of the Wilde. She seems like she might be able to answer his questions a little more readily beyond rumors.
Most just call her Ol' Nan, which she finds extremely annoying 50 years into the nickname. Eren can call her by her name, thank you kindly, boy: Sully Stichter.
Now Miss Sully here is quite sharp still, in her opinion, and is quick to recount what she remembers of it. She was one of the few Monsters on the expedition, so she didn't get too deep into the Wilde, mind you, but Chimera are hardy Monsters. Even as a youth she was strong - she lifts up her arm, flexing as she speaks; she's skinny as anything now that she's a granny, but it's all lean and wiry muscle that obviously hasn't failed her yet - so they effectively used her and her companions as beasts of burden. (She's wry when she calls them that, obviously.)
She went in far enough for them to set up a base that they could come back to, where the more... skittish researchers and such stayed. The Monsters that went with them were there as protection, but it was before the Coven had innovated their fancy magitech to protect Wilder and explorer Monsters, so they were at risk of possibly going feral or becoming infected by the Cwyld. Double-edged sword, understand.
They were in the depths of the autumnal trees, though. The true Wilde. (Not the boundaries that still sport green foliage where Eren and Mikleo were in range of, where most quests and Wilder missions have taken new arrivals.) The trees there are dying, yet sustained by the Cwyld; they infect them from the inside out, cracking the bark and oozing that disgusting oil as if it were sap. Smells awful, she says. Like death itself, if he's encountered death much in his life, or already met himself some Shades, there's no mistaking what it is. Rots the life out, it does. Replaces it with some dark kind of magic that they can see in that white glow of the cracks. The Witches with them put up wards against the Cwyld creeping into the encampment further, but it was constant maintenance.
But the group that went further into the depths... the only two that survived were humans, ones that weren't practicing Witches. They were almost infected to the point of no return, and brought with them three others that had to be "put down," she says clinically, because they were so far gone that to try and cure them would have been worse than torture. The shock of it would likely have killed them, anyways, with how deeply the Cwyld had taken hold.
In their hysteria, they did manage to tell them what had happened: a Cwyltid, bigger'n any that they'd seen. They'd described it as something that had once been a Monster, but any further attempts to get information from them had failed in the face of them falling apart mentally.
They were never the same again. Died young, sadly. They were good people, kind to her and the other Monsters, and tried to save their companions. Anaïs Thrush, and Oliver Moore. She still talks to Ollie's family, even all this time later. His great-great granddaughter is a Witch at the Coven. Good lass, though serious; good thing she's got herself a Puca to Bond with. Anaïs was an orphan, trying to make a name for herself and to combat the thing that lost her a family, from what she recalls of her.