Location from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The oldest forest in Middle-earth — where the trees remember being young and the Ents walk slowly, growing angry at a world that has forgotten them.
Fangorn is watchful. Not metaphorically — the trees are literally watching. They shift when you are not looking directly at them, branches repositioning with creaks that sound too deliberate to be wind. The air is thick, humid, and heavy with the smell of leaf mold and something older — the concentrated green exhalation of trees that have been breathing for thousands of years. Sound behaves oddly here. Your voice is dampened, absorbed by the wood and leaves, while the forest's own sounds — groaning, rustling, the deep woody vibration of something enormous moving just out of sight — carry perfectly. The Ents walk these paths, tree-herders older than the Elves, slow to speak and slow to anger but terrible when roused. Saruman's orcs have been felling trees at Fangorn's borders, and the forest's fury is building. The Huorns — trees that have become almost Ent-like, or Ents that have become almost tree-like — are the forest's immune response, and they do not distinguish well between orc and man.
Ancient, gnarled trees so densely packed their canopies merge into a solid ceiling of leaves. Trunks wider than houses, draped with moss and lichen in every shade of green. Almost no undergrowth — the forest floor is a carpet of dead leaves and tangled roots. Shafts of pale green light filtering down. The trees seem to lean inward, closing off paths behind you. Occasional clearings where Ent-draughts bubble from mossy springs.
Also known as: Fangorn, Fangorn Forest, Entwood, the Forest of Fangorn