12 Noisome Marsh Landmarks
Much of a marsh’s landscape is unremarkable and mundane; however some features become local landmarks and are used as waymarkers or meeting places.
A muddy bowl-like dell pierces the fen. Reeds grow thickly along its rim and after heavy rain water cascades into the dell. Locals know the place as The Devil’s Bowl and avoid the place after bad weather. A persistent legend tells of a fearsome lizard-like or snake-like creature that dwells underground and emerges to hunt after heavy rain.
A muddy ring of standing stones—many leaning at drunken angles or fallen into the muck—surmounts a low hill. The remains of a wooden causeway run to the hill across a series of narrow, mud-filled streams. Reeds, rushes and small trees grow among the stones. A stone lies at the centre of the ring; ancient legends tell of the cultists who cavort here “when the stars are right” and of the strange things they call forth with blood sacrifices from deep marsh.
A vast hawthorn tree grows from the mire. The tree’s wide boughs provide an area of deep shade and amid the shadows lurk three partially sunken burial cairns fringed with a great mass of reeds and wild flowers.
A single carven obelisk—fully 30 ft. high and 15 ft. in diameter —rears from the mud. Standing perfectly straight it has resisted the mire’s downwards pull for centuries untold. Fantastical images of a black dragon, huge lizards and other marsh-dwelling creatures decorate its surface. The Dragon’s Pillar—as it is known—was risen long ago by a tribe of marsh-dwelling lizardfolk in veneration of their master. The tribe’s degenerate descendants still dwell in the trackless reaches of the deep swamp and occasionally come here.
The Grey Fen is a stretch of lifeless, foul smelling water, avoided by locals and other intelligent swamp dwellers. The fen fills a depression in the wider swamp barely half a mile in diameter. Within, only twisted, warped plants grow and local tales tell of hideously deformed, strangely coloured creatures swimming and wallowing in its slimy waters.
Kildrak’s Run wends its torturous way through the swamp. This meandering, often narrow but always, deep channel is navigable all along it length. Local stories tell how the insanely murderous dwarf Kildrak the Slayer used the channel to flee after he hunted down and killed several local women he believed to be witches.
Tumbled stone blocks, and a wide circle of partly sunken, vine-strangled menhirs, dot and surround the so-called Fetid Fane. This crumbling, lop-sided ruin stands at the end of an opt-flooded, always muddy, sunken processional. Strange sounds emanate from the fane when a gibbous moon hangs low in the nighttime sky, and the site is the subject of many outlandish legends of an elder queen and her queer, froggy subjects doomed to attend her through all eternity.
Watcher’s Crag rises from the swamp’s fetid marsh like a petrified giant. Its rocky, grey flanks perpetually ooze water, and thick growths of moulds, lichens and ferns cling to its vertiginous cliffs. A single, worn and slippery stair hacked from the rock, wends its way around the crag. A ruined tower squats atop the forbidding spire, providing commanding views over the surrounding muck. Travellers often use this place as a relatively dry and safe campsite, although the crag’s zenith is all but inaccessible to mounts and the like.
Four sickly willow trees with slightly yellowed bark stand about a pool of water fed by three streams wending their way through the surrounding marsh. The trees are known locally as the Four Sisters.
A cave mouth—named in elder legend as the Dragon’s Maw—pierces the side of a low hill surmounted by a ring of tumbled stones. Weeds and brambles grow thickly atop the hill, and a wide, stone-lined well of ancient aspect cuts deeply into the ground from the hill’s zenith.
A suspiciously shaped conical hill devoid of all vegetation rises from the mire. In the hill’s vicinity the water is black with peat and vegetation is stunted and ill-coloured. Legends speak of a powerful lich dwelling beneath the hill and of the three tunnels leading into its lair. Legends also speak of the scores of adventurers who have sought the hill, and who have not returned. Locals call the place, the Hill of Horrors.
A wide, low-lying reed-fringed pool lies in an isolated part of the marsh. Nine islands rise above the pool’s fetid, stagnant water. Large burial mounds stand atop each island. This was a place sacred to the lizardfolk who dwelt in the marsh long ago. Now a small colony of will-o’-wisps linger amid the bones and remnants of the lizardfolk’s fallen civilisation. Locals name the place the Pool of Glimmering Bones; all right-minded folk avoid this accursed place.
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This article is an extract from 20 Things #54: Noisome Marsh. Add the book to your GM’s toolkit today! Alternatively, check out the 20 Things Archive for more handy, flavoursome and time-saving 20 Things articles ready for immediate use in your campaign.
Design Creighton Broadhurst Art Dean Spencer
