Sea of Trees

Question: How would you mythically run Japan's suicide forest, Aokigahara? I think It could be used as a portal to Yomi.

What a neat question! For those who haven't run into this bit of Japanese folklore, Aokigahara is a forest around the base of Mount Fuji that is deep, old, unnaturally silent, filled with the remains of ancient volcanic activity and heavily associated with death and suicide. It's one of the most popular places in the world for people to attempt suicide, with an estimated fifty to two hundred people killing themselves in it per year and double that making the attempt (at our best guess, anyway - the government of Japan doesn't like to give concrete numbers anymore because it just encourages more potential suicides to beeline for the place). And while the traditional association of the place with suicide has only really been tracked in the past several decades, the forest's been connected to the idea of death for centuries, and is believed to be one of the places that ancient Japanese people abandoned their elderly community members in times of hardship to die alone instead of taxing the rest of the peoples' resources.

There's actually a story seed regarding Aokigahara in Scion: Demigod on page 113, but there are plenty of options out there for other things to do with it as well. If you'd like to connect the mortal forest with the supernatural very directly, it's a perfect location in the World to connect to a Terra Incognita, most likely some kind of dangerous forest of death and suicide, even one connected to other mythic forests such as the Norse Mirkwood or the Wood of Suicides from Dante's Inferno.

While we think you could use it as a portal to Yomi if you really wanted to, we'd probably avoid it, simply because Yomi is traditionally hard to get into or out of (out of necessity, because we don't want Izanami rolling up in the land of the living), so more doors into the place are not necessarily better. But it is reputed to be haunted to the gills by the souls of all the mortals who have killed themselves there, so even if you don't use it as a direct door to the Underworld, it may still be full of the dead who for some reason find themselves trapped there (due to Titanic interference? some death god's influence? something even weirder?) or even be on its way to turning into an Underworld itself if some enterprising Scion with a penchant for Death happens to come along and lay claim to it.

It's also a good site for breakthroughs from Titanrealms, if that's something you're interested in seeing. If you're using a Titanrealm of Death (like Xibalba in our Maya supplement or Mrtyu in the French supplements from Biblioteque Interdite), Aokigahara is a natural place for such a realm to break through into the World; and while the death connections are strong, so is the place's ancient forest setting, making Terra or Ourea another possibility.

And even if you don't make the wood itself anything special, it looks like a perfect home base for Titanspawn who would likely be drawn to the nasty vibrations and free buffet of a bunch of mortals losing their lives. There are tons of possibilities to suit all kinds of games, so go to town with your favorites!