Flororenghashst: The Ironbar Cave Forest of Fhanna

2025-12-09

Transit

Travel to and from the Ironbar Cave Forest is largely hangled by the Fhanna Ranger service and their guides. While traveling to the forest on your own is certainly doable, either via charter-bus service or rented vehicle, the Ranger service discourages entering the forest without a properly accredited guide.

The Fhanna Ranger Guide service operates out of Moortla City, which has several available train lines and plane routes to various travel hubs across the world. Prices will vary based on your origin and travel-line of choice.

Purchasing a trip to the Ironbar Cave Forest will cost anywhere from four to ten face, depending on which hicking path you wish to take, which guide service you purchase, and how much equipment you need to rent.

The Place

The Ironbar Cave Forest is one of the premier unique ecosystems in the world. Spanning over one thousand square miles, the Ironbar Cave Forest is perfectly situated between two system of regular mudflows and floods, resulting in a cycle of shifting ground-cover.

In what the locals call the “soft season,” landslides and mudflows cover the forest floor, providing a suitable foundation for new plant-life. Once the “hard season” hits, severe floods wash away a great deal of the surface soil.

This rapidly shifting forest floor prevents most common breeds of flora from surviving. The only tress that persist are the Ironbar trees of eastern Fhanna. Ironbar trees are known for their thick, straight, and radially placed roots, each nearly as thick as a thin birchtree trunk. Young ironbar trees are close enough to the ground to provide shelter for small rodents, insects, and reptiles; while older trees’ roots can reach almost a full story into the air, providing mild shade and limited movement for predators. The underside of ironbar trees’ trunks are porous, which allows moisture and sap to leak into the caged undergrowth. This provides a ripe environment for all kinds of life, especially moss, fungus, and a wide variety of insect life.

The Ironbar Cave Forest is one of the oldest and therefore densest ironbar forests in the world. The roots of the ironbar trees are sometimes close enough to each other that they grow together, twisting around each other to grant extra vertical support and to share nutriants. The trees are so close, their is thick enough that sunlight rarely reaches the forest floor, giving the area its cave-like ambiance and name.

A wide variety of mosses, fungui, and lichens also manage to thrive, and several unique species of plants and animals have adapted to survive the ever-changing forest floor. Climbing ivys, hibernating blooms, and stonepetal flowers are common on the ironbar roots.

Walking in the Ironbar Cave Forest is an odd combination of hiking and spelunking. Travelers should not venture into the cave forest without a guide, as the constant flooding and mudslides has created an unstable floor. There are small cracks and drops that can easily cause a twisted ankle if you are not careful.

In terms of important equipment to bring, travelers should pack a high-powered light, a compass, and warm clothing. Safty harnesses are sometimes required, but will be provided by your guide if required.

Be on the lookout for ‘curtains,’ also called ‘moss stalactites.’ These are the names for a particular kind of carpet lichen that grows on the underside of the central trunks of the ironbar tree. Mostly these carpets are kept short by insects or other fauna, but sometimes they can grow to amazing lengths, reaching down almost to the forest floor. They may appear like jagged rocks, but they are far more fragile than they look; do not try to climb them.

Notable Fauna

The Ironbar Cave Forest is home to an incredible assortment of unique animals, each adapted to survival in the strange environment. Birders and animal-lovers of all kinds should seriously consider purchasing a Fauna-tour-guide, to see some of the incredible varieties of nature.

Yintze Warbler: Only loosly related to other Warblers, the Yintze Warbler is regularly preyed upon by Cave Coyotes and Furrowed Panthers. Their natural defence is an impressively articulated cry that sounds like multiple warblers crying at once, usually startling or confusing any hunters long enough for the warbler to escape. They themselves eat seeds from the climbing flowers or insects from under the ironbar trunks.
Mudpie: A flightless bird, the mudpie thrives on the colonies of Ironshade Beetles that live on the sap of the Ironbar trees. Their legs are quite strong, and their claws are ridged to give a better grip when climbing roots or trunks. They are incredible jumpers, using their wings to help turn and guide their thin bodies. Their beaks are serrated to help hold onto the beetle’s shells before they crack them open to feast.
Ironshade Beetle: The scavangers of the Ironbar Cave Forest, the Ironshade Beetle has long serrated legs that allow it to climb the tree roots and trucks with relative ease. Ranging from small coin to fist-sized, the Ironshade Beetles move in large swarms through the forest, feasting on sap and lichen from the trees’ roots. When threatened, the largest beetles will swarm and bite at their attackers, giving the other beetles the chance to flee. Listen for sharp stacato hissing, as this is their warning signal.
Hunter Snake: One of the few insect-eating snakes in the world, the Hunter Snake has a small luminescent patch on the top of its tongue. To hunt, it hides in a patch of glowshrooms and opens its mouth. Sometimes waiting for up to a week without moving, when a beetle or other insect lands in its mouth, thinking it a glowshroom, it bites down, piercing the insect with its sharp teeth and then swallowing its meal whole.
Crested Cavecrab: The Crested Cavecrab is unique in its ability to survive in both the hard and soft seasons. Its powerful downward curving claws give it the ability to hold onto the tree roots during floods, as well as dig to find recently displaced lichen and insects after mudslides. When threatened, it digs down in the dirt leaving only its sharp crest as a natural defence against hungry coyotes and panthers.
Cave Coyote: Carnivorous hunters, the Cave Coyotes are some of the more curious and surprisingly docile animals in the forest. Cave Coyotes rarely hunt anything larger than themselves, even when starving. Instead, they walk silently through the ironbar roots, eating insects, groundsquirrls, and other small animals. They are easily identified by their incredibly large eyes, adapted for visual hunting in the dark underside of the forest.
Nighteye Bat: A short-winged bat species, also called the blink-bat because of their furrowed skin-flap brows. Nighteye bats are insectivores, with incredibly accurate sonar. Their long snouts also make them excellent scent-hunters, and their shorter thicker wings give them incredible agility in the air. They are able to fly through spaces only inches larger than their bodies, and pounce on a target from twenty feet up with pinpoint accuracy.
Blind Tree-Gink: A cousin of the gecko, the Blind Tree-gink is a tiny amphibian that eats lichen and fungus, as well as seeds and nuts from the various tree-clinging plants in the forest. Its eyes are near useless in the dark, and the blind tree-gink navigates via sound and vibration. Tiny hairs along its sides, back, and legs sense vibrations in the air, while its stomach and feetpads sense vibrations in the ground. It uses its broad tail to tap out specific signals to other tree-ginks, or to get a sense of its surroundings.

This is a small sample of the varieties of animals you will be introduced to on your trip into the Ironbar Cave Forest.

Note: hunting is strictly prohibited in the forest, incuring fines of up to 1000t and a month in prison for each attempted infraction.

Accommodations

Finding a place to stay in Moortla City is relatively easy, as most travelers tend to make the Ironbar cave forest a daytrip and then head home. Those who do rent rooms usually do so for only a single night.

Those who are enamoured by the Ironbar Cave Forest can certainly find plenty to last them two or three nights in a local hotel. I personally recommend the Breva Bed & Breakfast as a marvelous place to rest; the rustic chic coupled with casual flair is instantly comforting and calming after a long day of travel.

Things to Do

Daytime

Naturalists should take the time to visit the Ironbar Museum in Moortla. It has an informative collection on the Ironbar tree, as well as an extensive history of the Ironbar Cave Forest. Entry is free, through donations are encouraged.

The Genessi Market is a great place for locals to pick up sundry items, and tourists as well can find a nice array of localy crafted Ironbar wooden items. Ironbar wood is a solid material, and utensils, furniture, and other tools can be sure to last.

As far as food, I have not found a single eatery that hasn’t met or exceeded my expectations for the price. Loe’s Café has some of the best coffee in the city and is the perfect place for breakfast, while The Blue Fork has a wonderful selection for midday meals, catering to almost every kind of diet.

Be sure you sample vennick at least once during your trip. Vennick is a local street-dish, made of rice, wine, dumplings, and a thick broth. Travelers should be aware that the alcoholic content of Vennick is far greater than the smell might suggest, so be cautious when sampling. There is no taboo against ordering your Vennick light on the wine, though this is a sure-fire way of telegraphing your tourist nature. Non-alcoholic Vennick is called shpisht, and is served by some vennick carts for people who do not drink for any reason.

The only other place I feel obliged to mention is the Shrine of the Fendrui. Open to the public, this ancient shrine is almost as old as the trees of the forest itself. The fendruids that still exist consider the location a holy place, even as Moortla city rose up around it.

Remarkably welcoming for fendruids, the caretakers have turned the shrine into something of a museum of the forest, and the fendruid’s ministrations. Be sure to read the collected notes of the fendruid Witaxi, who said of the Ironroot Forest:

“I have spoken with many an Ironroot tree, and always they speak of pain and longing. Here, however, they are calm and silent. Here, which is not their home. This adopted land fills them like no other, and it confounds even them.”

If you want to see the forest from an entirely different perspective, it is well worth spending an afternoon at the shrine.

Evening

Unlike many tourist locals, Moortla tends to shutdown after sundown, the locals caring more about spending their time at home with family than manning storefronts.

That said, Art Lagoon recognized a niche, and is one of the few eateries that serves tourists in the evenings. It is a well-patronized location, so it would be wise to call ahead for reservations.

The one regular artistic attraction in Moortla is the Old Wren Theatre House. There are performances at dusk throughout the week of several different classical plays, though be prepared: traditional theatre in Flororenghashst is much more formalized than in other cultures.

Born from its ancient religious traditions and morality plays, traditional Flororenghashst theatre sees consistency and familiarity as its primary virtues. This is to say; if you see the same play in two different theatres, it won’t just be the script that is the same. Gestures, sets, intonations, even pauses; if you see a play once in Flororenghashst, you have seen every performance.

That said, be aware that artistic expression always finds a way: plays in Flororenghashst are re-written constantly, framing the same or similar story in different ways. A famous example of this is the difference between Yoplin’s The Dark Staircase, written in 1724, and Lady Wentwere’s Dark Staircase, written in 1873. While the words in both scripts are almost exactly the same, Lady Wentwere’s changes to intonation, pauses, and emphasis through physicality turn the heroes into the villains of the story.

Other nighttime entertainment is sparse, but lovers of architecture and picturesque tableaus would do well to take a walk along the streets of Moortla at night. The city’s tendancy to roll up the sidewalks means there is little light-pollution, and some of the best star-fields in the world are viewable at night.