#forlorn

photos by cloverdecay

Art by chieko_tera

Forlorn by Lhianne

Subreptice…

Forlorn has always felt like Barovia’s distant cousin. Similar hills and heavy skies, the same sense of the land watching you back, but older somehow, rougher around the edges. Even the druids there feel different, less ceremonial and more feral, bound to soil and rain. Apple clootie dumpling fits Forlorn in a way few dishes ever could. Yes, it is another fruit cake like thing, and I say that with all the fond exasperation that comes from knowing every domain insists on its own version, but this one tastes ancient. The apples are sharp and honest, the spices restrained, the whole thing dense and sustaining rather than indulgent. It is wrapped, boiled, and waited on, the sort of food that assumes you have time and patience, and demands both in return. They save it for festivals, what few there are, because nothing about it is easy. Apples must be gathered or traded for, cloth must be clean and whole, whiskey precious enough to spare. It tastes like persistence, like people who refuse to vanish even when the land seems determined to swallow them. Hearty, weathered, and deeply comforting, it is exactly what I would expect from Forlorn, and exactly why I am always glad when the effort is made.

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