Garden of Forgetting

The Garden of Forgetting, also known as the Garden of Dreaming, is a hidden grove in the southern reaches of Ionia's Navori region. Its entrance lies where stone gives way to soil and narrow, labyrinthine caves open to the sky within a deep caldera, where thickets of trees and brambles grow wild beneath the moonlight and flowers bloom in constant, lush abundance. Where the rest of Ionia is touched by the wonders of the spirit realm, this one forest draws on a different kind of magic. At its heart stands the Dreaming Tree, which gathers humanity's dreams in its blooms. The tree grew from a seed of the God-Willow that once towered over the ancient grove of Omikayalan. When the God-Willow was felled, the cast-loose seed took root in what came to be called the Garden of Forgetting, and the Green Father, Ivern, nurtured it as he had many of Omikayalan's descendants. As the Dreaming Tree spiraled upward, its dream-laden buds spread the magic of mortal desires each time they bloomed. Lillia was born here when one of the tree's own dreams was captured in a bud that fell to the ground before it could open, something that had never happened before. Sprouting as a fawn creature with the flower bud still on her head, she had only her mother tree and the dreams that drifted into the garden each night for company. She tended the buds and, through them, cared for the distant dreamers she longed to one day meet. The grove is bound up in legend and danger. Those who cross its threshold are said to begin as one person and leave as someone else entirely, or never leave at all, for more than memories can be lost within it. Ahri traversed the southern caverns to reach the sacred garden she had heard of since childhood, knowing well its twin nature of danger and beauty, and risking the surrender of her own memories to it. In time a darkness began to encroach on the garden. The Dreaming Tree grew sick, infected with burls, and the dreams held in its buds started to turn to nightmares. As the garden weakened, the violence of the outside world spilled in, threatening the fragile refuge Lillia works to protect.