The Heartwyld. A massive forest where the phrase Everything Trying to Kill You reigns supreme. Where every ounce of flora and fauna is enough to drag even the bravest adventurers to the depths of fear. And Saga's ultimate destination? A city located at the dead-center where the surviving soldiers hired to fight the horde are boxed in.
For that matter, the Heathen's Touch, also known as the rot. Anyone who comes into contact with it ends up slowly (emphasis on slowly) having their skin become charcoal-black as they slowly crumble away on the inside and out. "Rotters" spend their last days in total agony.
The fact that the Heartwyld as a whole is The Dreaded for someone like Clay, a seasoned mercenary.
Some of the place's inhabitants include fleshless owls, trees with white snakes for branches, and a man-eating plant capable of imitating the last pleas and screams of its victims. It's saying something when one of the nicer things in the Heartwyld is a Cannibal Tribe.
And even if you were get past the forest, there's still the Emperor's Mantle, an icy Hell where one is constantly on the verse of either freezing to death, getting attacked by giants, falling to their doom from a precarious ice bridge known as the Cold Road, or getting jumped by monsters just as vicious as the beasts in the forest, particularly the ice trolls known as rasks.
Lastleaf's Establishing Character Moment includes him having his mount, a massive wyvern matriarch named Ashatan, rip one of Mattrick's rivals to pieces when he dares to attack.
Although it's Played for Laughs, during the fight against Viscera, Moog accidentally turns an entire forest floor into snakes with a flute meant to transform wooden weapons (apparently, ANY wood will do). Saga barely escaped unscathed while Raff gets bitten in the throat by a viper thanks to Clay instinctively picking one up in self-defense.
The Quarry. It's a maximum-security prison in Fivecourt, and it wouldn't be so bad if all of its occupants weren't Taken for Granite by either it's master, the gorgon Dinantra, or the basilisks. Oh, and did we mention that these prisoners, Ganelon included, are FULLY CONSCIOUS while they're there. And Ganelon was in there for two decades, to the point where he prefers the haunted woods of the Heartwyld for the sole reason that you can actually FEEL things there. Brr...
Another small yet morbid detail is that the place is kept tidy by the Keepers, poor souls blinded at birth and taught to know every part of the place by touch.
The chimera that Saga fights in the Maxithon is every bit the killing machine as the heroes thought it would be. Aside from having three deadly heads, one of which is a fire-breathing dragons, it has claws laced with paralyzing poison. And it scores some hits with them. And even after Ganelon manages to get the upper hand, it manages to break loose from the restraints on its wings. Once it goes airborne, it destroys a skyship and causes it to crash into one of the arena's supporting pillars. Then another skyship tries to fire on it, killing a random audience member in the process. The whole crew is scorched, and the ship goes crashing into another pillar.
The Heartwyld Horde is just as horrible as everyone believes it to be. When Saga first sees it, it practically is the horizon, and it's full of every vicious and vile monster you can think of. Plus, they have an Infernal, a beast only known by stories and paintings that could never capture it's sheer power and terror. Sure enough, our heroes barely survive the battle against them.
Lastleaf's last act before succumbing to his wounds is to impale himself on Tamarat, ensuing that the Winter Queen will rise again. Based on Clay's reaction, this can't be good...
