The official entrance to the Forest of Lin is the town of Fǔtóu, or "Axehead". Built where the River Yun emerges from the forest, it is the main hub of operations in Lin. Supplies and personnel are shipped here for processing and distribution among the camps as needed, and raw timber is in turn brought here, documented, and shipped downriver to Mutsai.
Unlike the camps, Axehead is a permanent settlement and therefore boasts many of the amenities one might expect in a town of its size. Laborers from the nearby camps may come in on their rare rest days to spend their earnings on wine and women. But they are not allowed to get too wild. In some ways Axehead is run even more rigidly than Mutsai. Everything here is the property of the Yeng Clan.
There is tension between Axehead and Mutsai. The officials here feel that the clan leaders demand too much of them and offer too little support. Meanwhile Mutsai generally accuses them of laziness and carelessness. These frustrations have not led to an actual split-- neither group could function without the other, after all-- but the embers of a true quarrel are there, and who can say what further events may inflame it.
The area closest to Axehead has been deforested and replanted several times. Rows of trees stand in straight lines, each square plot planted in a different year. In addition there are wide fields of farmland and pastures which keep the town and many of the closest settlements fed. Yeng officials grumble about using land for crops when it could be used for timber, but the costs of shipping food in upriver from Mutsai make this a necessity. One hardly feels oneself to be within a great primeval forest here. It is only as one goes further upriver that one begins to encounter pockets of old growth.
Expansion into Lin naturally followed the course of the River Yun and its various tributaries coming down from the central highlands. Water travel is still the most reliable means of navigating the area but one must always be on the lookout for the vast flotillas of logs which are continually being shipped downstream. It is helpful to have a guide with knowledge of the frankly arcane patterns, schedules, and techniques of the shipping, and even then a logjam may set one back days. Where the rivers do not go, paths have been made across the cleared land for oxcarts to drag logs by, although this is much less cost effective than using the water. Still the Yeng are determined to harvest the pockets of old growth that remain away from the waters' edge, and little by little these ancient groves are shrinking as they are whittled away. But as you go further north or east you approach the tree line and begin to glimpse the true Forest and the camps along its verge.
The camps naturally must follow the line of trees, and as one area becomes depleted and is replanted, the buildings are disassembled and moved to a new location. Many structures are basically tents, but some that require a bit more complexity have been nevertheless been designed with this function in mind. Pins holding together interlocking beams are removed and the whole building is taken down and carried off to be rebuilt at the new site. Generally speaking nothing is allowed to be left behind or abandoned, but occasionally one will find a building that for one reason or another was left behind.
The camps are dangerous places where rough and hardened men wage war against the forest which always seeks to take back its own. Both predator and prey are dangerous here-- more lives have been lost to a boar's tusks than a bear's claws. There are even plants which will seek to strangle a man and suck his blood. And there are hostile minds as well. Most of the native tribes will periodically attempt to raid the camps near their territory. Perhaps a third of the forest is even rudimentarily explored, and only half of that is safely under control. Whispers also abound of ghosts and forest devils, and of a certainty there are mind-reading apes in the central highlands, which raid native and settler alike.
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