Chapter 4: The Black Forest

There lay a terrifying area near the Holy Federations capital, it was a dark area were no light could shine through. It was known simply as the Black Forest.

This Forest is a mysterious place with little to no information about it's origin, many people have their own theories and stories about this place. Some people believed it to be a land cursed by the Gods,were evil creatures loomed and others believe it to be a once ordinary forest affected by the Dark Triad's experiments. Some theories were close to the truth while others were just people trying to seem knowledge.

The true history of the Black Forest was a complex one, it was not always known by that name. The Black Forest was once known as The Greenlands.

The forest changed three hundred years ago into what it is now. What was the cause of such a drastic change to the forest. It was a witch.

Three hundred years ago the Church of Divine Punishment was hunting down a group known as the Council of Witches.

The Church of Divine Punishment saw the Council as a group of heathens practicing the dark arts. The church viewed their power as evil and unatural, they believed any power not gifted by the Gods to be power granted by the forces of evil.

There were many evil cults in the past that prayed to demons and were given power.

The High priest of the Divine Punishment Church personally ordered the the capture and execution of any and all witches, he would often held sermons depicting the evil deeds of the witches to the villagers and town folk.

The reasons they did this was to manipulate the populars into believing in there lies and gain more followers for their God. When the order was first insulised many people were confused about it. They had heard rumour such a group but there had never been any incidents nor reports about people being attacked by them, the group seemed to be rather reclusive.

Some villages believed the church and started hanging anyone they suspected of being a witch. As you can imagine most of the women that were hanged were innocent nothing more that simple village girls.

The nobles in the cities however never believed a single word of the Divine Punishment Church . They knew the church was simply spouting lies to use the dimwited villages.

One day on a early summer morning a merchant found the of a middle aged man in the middle of the road with odd symbols carved on it. The man was Mr Lars the local tavern owener. As soon as the news was spread about the incident. More people started to believe in the teachings of the church.

When the nobles heard about the news they were shock for they knew the Council had nothing to do with that man's death. They knew the church wanted to use the masses to deal with the Council, but to the extent of killing an innocent businessman. It alarmed them.

Some villagers still chose not to believe in the words of the church, and chose to even offer shelter to any suspected witches. Most of the people that chose to deny the church's claimes and offer assistance to the witches.

The Council was grateful to those that offered assistance to their sisters and would help them whenever possible.