The Sempadan Forest was a vast forest lying on the eastern side of the wide isthmus joining the continents of Faerûn and Kara-Tur with Zakhara. It was known as the Jungle of Monsters to Zakharans to the southwest.
Geography
The Sempadan Forest spread along the shore around the Segara Sea, east of the World Pillar Mountains and south of the Wu Pi Te Shao Mountains.
Geographical features
An unnamed river ran south-east through the forest, emptying into the Segara Sea. It had two tributaries descending from the mountains. Two more meandering rivers cut through its narrower southern part, flowing from the eastern heights of the Land of the Yak-Men into the Foreigners' Sea. Another short one marked the southern border of the forest towards the no-man's land between the Haunted Lands, the Ruined Kingdoms and the sea.
In the eastern part of the forest was Lake Odoh.
The northern edge of the forest was known as Herne's Wood to the people of the Utter East, the land lying on the western side of the isthmus.
History
The nations of Kara-Tur and the Grand Caliphate of Zakhara had largely ignored the continental isthmus.[speculation] The Sempadan Forest, together with the adjacent Roof of the World, was a formidable barrier for land travel between the two continents, so that trade was usually done by sea. Thus the Sempadan Forest remained completely unknown and unexplored by the 14th century DR.[speculation]
The neighboring Yikarian Empire had often been in direct conflict with the dangerous denizens of the Jungle of Monsters. By the 1360s DR, the army of the yak folk was on guard in the adjacent Bronze Falcon province under the effective leadership of the Mountain Prince.
Notable locations
Around 1357 DR, the settlement of Seringkali lay in the eastern fringes of the Sempadan Forest, connected by a trail to Tang-ga. Close by, the ruins of Sampar (once the southernmost port of Shou Lung) sat at the very eastern tip of the Sempadan Forest.
In the far northwestern corner, near Herne's Wood, stood Edenvale Castle, part of the Utter Eastern realm of Edenvale around the mid-600s DR.
Around 1367 DR, there were also persistent rumors of a yak folk trading post at a location where one of the rivers from the World Pillars emptied from the forest into the Foreigner's Sea.