Aulis

The spindle forests of Aulis are the plaything – and possible extension – of the psyker-being Yes. Known only through mnemodreams of lobotomised Inquisitorial oneoirocriticks, as the planet is seemingly inescapable, the surface is covered by a perfectly still forest of whip-thin trees that reach toweringly – impossibly – high into the dead white atmosphere.

The shadows cast by these trees as the planet orbits the star creates disorientating and bizarre optical effects, and navigation is all but impossible. Road-like structures seem to criss-cross the surface, and at a distance, seem to have traffic or travellers upon them. However, the paths seem to evade investigation: disappearing when the viewer is forced to travel through a small depression or inexplicably remaining on the cusp of the horizon as if retreating at the viewer's approach. Even once reached, these roads seem equally likely to be revealed as a trick of the shifting sunlight, merely short leaf-scattered shadows.

The common report of the oneirocriticks that stay mindtranced the longest is of a single concrete and unchanging location: a squat, thick-boled tree whose twisted grey back appears to form leering faces. This is The Bitter Tree, the final location reported by all; the reported appearance of which presages the utter and irreversible silence of the oneirocritick from that point on.