Encounters in the Unchartable Woods

Here are some sites and sights your players could find in the yellow and red zones of the Unchartable Woods.

 
d50 Encounters in the Unchartable Woods

1. A well. Old and moss-covered, but the winch still seems to be working. You can also just about make out an opening half the way down the shaft.
2. A lamp post, just like the ones along the caravan trail, except here it sits in the middle of a meadow. Permanently alight.
3. A stone bridge over a ravine so deep you cannot even see the bottom. A rather friendly troll lives in a tiny cave below the bridge. It won't demand toll, but loves presents. It also really, really hates goats.
4. An orchard of fruit trees maintained by a suspicious but otherwise friendly robodroid. He keeps the trees for masters that left and never came back. He distills a strong obstler that his body can burn for energy.
5. A witch hut on chicken legs, the witch nowhere to be seen.
6. A feral robodroid, damaged and believing itself to be a cannibal savage. It hunts humanoids with obsidian spear, then attempts to eat them.
7. A severed arm is crawling to the east. It's scaly and wears a signet ring.
8. Giant gold spiders gathered in a massive swarm, spinning their webs high above between skyscraper-sized trees, with a king's ransom of gold trapped within. Not aggressive unless disturbed.
9. A slumbering demon-goddess in a dilapidated temple, served by a cabal of debauched Vulkins. They keep the goddess asleep with incessant chanting, and draw her blood with silver needles, injecting it to their veins to experience heightened emotions unadulterated by logic or shame. It would be very bad if the players made every last of them stop chanting.
10. A castle of wax, full of bee girls. This must be the fabled Apian Acropolis, where the royal jelly capable of curing all ills and even prolonging one's life is produced.
11. A perfectly circular lake of mercury.
12. A space-time vortex, leading to anywhere and anywhen. If the GM wishes to derail the campaign completely, I suggest they pick at random from all the setting books and modules they own. Otherwise, it might perhaps lead to the Asteroid 1618.
13. A crashed spaceship, long ago overtaken by nature. It will never fly again, but maybe there is still some high-tech wonder left intact.
14. A lighthouse. The crashing of sea waves and the cries of seagulls can be heard while inside.
15. An asphalt highway. It will lead you (d4): 1) out of the red zone in much less time than possible, 2) to the unknown highway (yes, on the other side of Vanth), 3) to a random other encounter, 4) back where you started after 1d6 days of uneventful travel.
16. A foothill of a high mountain with snowy peak. No one had ever heard about it, nor seen it even from the blimps that sometimes cross over the forest. There seem to be buildings high on the mountainside and shadows moving between them, but not humanoid shadows.
17. A towering crystal spire, with a narrow staircase chiseled into its side. Standing at the top, you could see all over Vanth with crystal clarity, and even chipped-off piece of the crystal can serve as a powerful spyglass.
18. A titan, bound by adamant chains with a single link larger than a grown man. It speaks with rumbling, sorrowful voice. It will offer anything and everything if you can set it free.
19. An area frozen in time. You can just barely make out some humanoid silhouettes inside, through the dirt and rain that gathered on the edges of the effect. Surely the time field could be broken?
20. An idol of black stone, half sunk into the swampy ground. It has two fiery jewels for eyes.
21. A well-kept hedge around a homely cottage. Dire sheep who can mimic human voices lurk nearby.
22. An old graveyard. Anything dead brought inside will spring back to life (including leather armour or cured meat), but only for as long as it doesn't leave the graveyard.
23. A factory complex, devoid of all life but full of phasic fumes. There is an insane medibot running around trying to cure anyone it can get its many manipulators on. It's actually really skilled in medicine and surgery, except that it puts everyone to hospital beds deep within the polluted complex, where they then asphyxiate.
24. A feast table full of lavish foods, expensive wines and exotic liquors. If the PCs taste anything off the table, they realise it heals their wounds, restores crippled limbs and revitalizes spirits. The next time they sleep, they will dream of beautiful people dancing with them through the night, and wake up 1d10 years older per every food or drink consumed.
25. A shrine and a pedestal with a gemstone of death. Intelligent, remorseful and very valuable. It glows ominously and will scream at anyone coming near not to touch it. A skin contact kills with no Save, and nearly all materials will rot, rust or crumble with prolonged contact.
26. The forest floor becomes covered in meaty tendrils and vines, until the PCs come upon a large, cancerous mass of flesh and fused carcasses, with a sphincter-like entrance. Might be a biomancer's laboratory, might be a temple of the God-Flesh, or even a portal to Xor.
27. The gravity just stops. An area of the forest experiences zero g. Maybe the culprit, be it a wondrous item or a miracle machine of stupendous science, could be found?
28. A distress call. Pick some form of communication available to the PCs; a radio, telepathic message, etc. It might lead to a ransacked camp, a replacement PC, or an ambush.
29. The end of the world. You found a cliff going straight down towards a starry void.
30. Three Amazons have a small cabin and several fields of coca plants here. They found a relatively reliable path out of the forest and enjoy the seclusion that allows them to run their drug trade in peace.
31. An ancient circle of standing stones and some modern scientific equipment laid out inside. There is no air within the circle, only vacuum, as anyone unlucky enough to enter will quickly discover.
32. The ruins of a lecture hall, with a ghostly professor endlessly talking about possibly quite interesting topics.
33. The wellspring of love. Any creature that drinks from the waters will be overwhelmed with the desire to mate and will produce viable offsprings no matter how incompatible their partner should be. Many hybrid creatures lurk nearby.
34. A small village stuck in a loop. Not a time loop, they just repeat the same activities day after day and know nothing about the outside of the village.
35. A bunker connected to an abandoned nuclear silo. The hidden launch door are buried and stuck, but the nuclear missile is still in working conditions. Another adventuring party might have arrived just before the PCs, intent on taking the weapon for themselves.
36. A humongous mecha, half-buried in the ground where it fell ages ago. It could still be repaired, but the time and resources necessary depend on how much you want your players to have a gigantic mecha.
37. A vanta rose field. They suck light out of their surroundings, plunging everything into absolute darkness. Not even magical light or sight can pierce it.
38. A random magic weapon in a stone. Anyone can pull it free, but anyone who does will firmly believe that they were chosen by this act as the true king or queen of a kingdom also lost in the Unchartable Woods, and that the weapon will reveal the path to their promised land to them. There is no kingdom and the wielder will just get themselves and the party lost.
39. A haphazard heap of electronics and scrap metal covered in moss speaks to the party in synthesised voice. It wishes to send them on a rather pointless fetch quests of medium difficulty, but for every fulfilled quest, it will allow one PC to pick a cybernetic augmentation and have it implanted. It won't tell that it can receive data from and remotely control the implants later.
40. A rusty iron cage, apparently empty. Except it's not. A close examination reveals extraordinarily powerful enochian sigils and runes of warding under the rust, strong enough to hold even an angel of the sixth choir.
41. The dread gazebo. It's actually completely normal except for a warding that envelops it in a fear aura. Once you get inside, the effect no longer affects you and you can enjoy the safety of a gazebo that the monsters are too afraid to come near.
42. A recently fallen star in a shallow crater. Her leg is broken, but otherwise she's unharmed, if frightened and baffled by her fall.
43. A space suit is reclining over a fallen tree, as if in respite. If opened, a torrent of swarming, ravenous insects will pour our, leaving inside only a skeleton gnawed clean.
44. The party wakes up dirty, exhausted, hungry and injured. They don't recognise their surroundings and 1d6 days worth of supplies are missing from their backpacks. Close by, a brain-like monstrosity lies slain by the PCs' own weapons.
45. The trees and undergrowth give way to enormous fungi, mushrooms and mycelium. Any open wounds will get infected with mould, and should the party stay longer with no breathing protection, the airborne spores will start to germinate even in their lungs.
46. A pair of lovers argues viciously before one assaults and kills the other. Then suddenly the whole scene flickers and starts again - the party will find a faulty holovision stuck endlessly replaying a short bit from some old soap opera.
47. A spawn of Shub-Niggurath merchant has her wares displayed and will be very eager to trade or talk, as business is quite slow around here.
48. A combination of shrubbery and briar forms a maze of narrow passages, large enough that circumventing it would take a long time. The surrounding forest seems very quiet, but once the party delves deeper into the maze, they will start hearing nearby footsteps or slithering sounds.
49. A sign is nailed to a tree. It unfortunately brings bad news - there is a minefield somewhere around here.
50. Lonely snowflakes fall on the party and as they continue on their path, it starts to get colder and colder. If they don't double back and choose a different route, they will wake up to a winter morning the next day, with heaps of snow and biting cold. It's not just a fluke in the weather, the time jumped forward to the next winter.

I also approve of these, if you want more encounters for the woods.