My deer La is very afraid of The Old Oak.


I know a lot of people like to role play and write stories about The Endless Forest, myself included. It's also clear that there isn't a lot of creepy stuff in the forest (inherently), but I like spooky stuff in media so I went deliberately hunting for some ways to put it in my experience of the game. Here's an alternative way for your characters to look at The Old Oak, if you want, for IC role play purposes. Or you have the opportunity of humoring me and La and just reading on anyway.

It started in 2010 when Shaku told me that her deer Vodun was playing with a friend around The Old Oak and the friend vanished. Shaku wrote a poem about her experience (read more of her poetry on Vodan's bio page):

     Keke~ You came to play, yes?
     I have a fun game.
     After the sun sets,
     We can play hide and seek.
     Hide in the Old Oak...
     You'll never be found again~

Out of character most people are thinking “big deal, the other person's internet was funky” and you're almost certainly right—but what would a deer think if they saw someone go into a tree and vanish? That would be terrifying! “Hide in the Old Oak... / You'll never be found again” really sounds like something fawns might chant to each other, and in the dead of night a young stag might hear it echoing in his ears as he walks past that tree.


I'm not a religious person but I find religion's influence on history and art impossible to ignore. The Endless Forest certainly draws a lot from the times where Christians were clashing with assorted local religions in Europe. I believe that the Ename Ruins represent the Christian influence, while the statues and The Old Oak represents the older local religions. Both ruins and oak provide shelter and resting places for deer to peacefully meet and live in harmony without humans fighting over their beliefs.

The oak is the sacred tree of Thor and of Zeus, both gods with connections to thunder and lightning. FairyClock informed me in the comments that, "The Oak tree is a symbol of the All-Father, Dagda, and is also represented as a Stag." (I've taken the liberty of adding the link in the quote.) She was kind enough to dig through her books for me and list these other deities as well: Dianus, Jupiter, Heme, Janus, Rhea, Cybelle, Hecate, Pan, and Erato.

A Christian legend says that Saint Boniface destroyed a very special oak that some Germans had devoted to Thor, and by doing so converted them to Christianity. Despite the saint's efforts, oak leaves appeared on pfennig coins in Germany for years.

According to the Book of Genesis 35:4, “And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods ... and Jacob hid them under the oak … .” That particular translation is from the King James version of the bible. Some other translations say “terebinth” instead of oak and are phrased differently, but the translations seem to agree with each other: the point is, gods were put to rest under an oak tree. What's under our Old Oak? What makes a god strange?

FairyClock also said, "Three of my books not only concur the Oak being a house for spirits but that it is, in fact, a gateway to the Otherside or Underworld (Depending on what pathos you're standing at). ... The Otherside, while beautiful, is also dangerous. Good spirits and mischievous ones (I guess you can call some of them "evil" but I feel that might be insulting as their rules are different from ours) reside there and can teach or trick you. Frolic or fear. / Life and death. / Light and Darkness. / It seems to always represent balance and 'twos'." She added that acorns are poisonous to humans but nutritious for deer.




Collecting tales of glitches and bugs around The Old Oak as well as In-Character perceptions and tales of that tree. Please share your characters' odd tales!

In 2010 I started playing the 3.4 beta, and it's dark and creepy. There was thunder every few minutes, and I thought back to Thor and Zeus. La stayed away from the Oak, scared by the sounds that it made and she hid under mushrooms instead.

In 2010 Ysrael said she's seen a "ghost nameless" sleeping inside the Old Oak. Her fawn was even brave enough to go inside the tree to get a picture of the ghost!

Later in 2010: Spyrre said that she, too, has seen ghosts near the Old Oak. Fortunately, these ghosts proved friendly.

On 1/24/14 La saw a deer with a golden deific pelt. I hit CTRL+W to see if it was legit and it wasn't. Later seeing many screenshots and the fake god's conduct I think it was definitely a jerk hacker. La tried to cast pelt spells to correct the error but they wouldn't take, and in the end the false god settled down underneath The Old Oak. La didn't follow because she was afraid. Made me think back to that quote from Genesis of strange gods being buried under the tree. La remembers this incident as a very frightening time of seeing a monster of some kind hiding in the skin of a god. Also pictured is Myshka. After La had run away, Myshka's player kikinkacze documented more scary happenings here.



On 2/20/14: La fell asleep under a willow tree by the pond, and when the camera zoomed out it passed through The Old Oak's branches and displayed this on the screen, giving poor La a nightmare that she had vanished and the willow trees had died.



Epherfish told me (and I read it on his deer's bio for more detail) that on 1/20/14 an innocent game crash caused a doppleganger of their deer Epher to remain under the oak even after Epher returned to the forest.

FairyClock's character Oduvanchik arrived in the forest through The Old Oak's magic, presumably interplanal transport magic.

Jennie says that her eponymous deer chased around some ghosts near The Old Oak on 2/28/14. She added that Velocity the Big Zombie Deer likes to sleep under The Old Oak as well. She mentioned the false gods under the tree appearing and multiplying. (I believe that particular incident happened on the same day that La saw the false god) Lastly, she commented on the illusion that the branches have of "tearing everyone apart below them."

Toya said that her deer Trout and Hototo were in the forest together (running the game two times simultaneously) around 3/5/14 and only one of them was able to see a deer by The Old Oak. The strange deer was spellable but unmappable.

Jennie had an incident where she turned into an enormous rabbit near The Oak and found The Pond dried up (sucked up by expansive roots perhaps? They say that for every tree there is as much wood underground as there is above ground). Fortunately things went back to normal all on their own.

Bayleen's character is The Guardian of The Oak, and doesn't see it in a spooky light at all. In fact, the character spends much of her time decorating it to make it more pretty and inviting.

Player Grammarshine says that The Oak contains an entrance to a rabbit warren, which might make sense given that being near it may have turned Jennie into a rabbit. Grammarshine's deer Adrien is part of the rabbit family that lives there.