The Dark Woods

{if woods = 1}That path seems about right...{elseif woods = 2}Maybe this way?{elseif woods = 3}Must be this way! Or is it?{elseif woods = 4}Oh, a path! Is it this way?{elseif woods = 0}{else} PRESS THE START GAME BUTTON TO YOUR RIGHT!{endif}

{if darkwood = true}The trees towered over Hopkins, their leaves blocking out the sun so much that the forest bed lies in a perpetual state of gloomy dusk. Most of the trees are old, their trunks withered and twisted, though there is a good portion that would be considered more 'normal'; straight and healthy looking, with blight green leaves. Unfortunately, there's just enough cohesion that the forestscape is a blur, and no perticular patch of the woods looks much different from any other, making any natural landmarks useless for getting ones bearing.

However, Hopkins knows that as long as he heads east he will reach the forest edge, so leaving the woods is not too much of a problem. For the common person such a feat would be quite difficult, but there are ways to tell which way is which direction; little signs, plant behaviour, the directed wind; Hopkins can tell his east from his west, but without landmarks it's not useful for much more than getting out.

The patch of woods that Hopkins currently found himself in looked just like any other.

Time to pick a direction and go. One shouldn't worry about reading their directions in the wrong order; the woods generally guides travellers to where they want to be, so long as the traveller knows what the place they want to reach is.{elseif darkwood = false}Hopkins entered the Dark Woods. The difference between the woods and the outside was like night and day; quite literally too. The woods were shrounded in a gloomy darkness, just enough light trickling in from above to see where one was steping, but not enough to, for example, read a sign from more than a few feet away.

An owl hooted from nearby. The occasional rustling of a small critter. The rare distant howl of a wolf. Otherwise, silence was all that was heard. The air was not stale, but it was not fully invigourating like the air elsewhere near the village. Mushrooms of various kind- speckled, coloured, plain, domed, dimpled- littered the forest floor, sitting still even in the wind, some attached to the trees or logs or poking through piles of leaves. Some say that fairies like to use them as chairs; if that were true Hopkins must be in the presence of a banquet hall! If there were any fairies, they did not make themselves shown. In the years that Hopkins has been alive, he has only met any a few times, all them quite brief encounters. It would be unlikely that he would meet any this time either.

Anyway; time to pick a direction and go. One shouldn't worry about reading their directions in the wrong order; the woods generally guides travellers to where they want to be, so long as the traveller knows what the place they want to reach is.{endif}