The Coracle

According to marsh elf legend, their most celebrated ancestor, Neah'tor, arrived as a baby alone in a coracle. The orphan had been cast adrift in the flat-bottomed boat and left to the river's mercy. No one ever knew where she had come from or what happened to her mother despite endless speculation that continued long after her heroic demise. A life that ended as it had begun, in a coracle.

The small circular boats have a willow frame covered with a taught animal skin and are perfect for negotiating the shallow streams and thick reed beds of the marsh. The marsh elves use them to fish and travel around their floating villages with ease. When they have their seasonal gatherings the rivers are crammed with hundreds of the tiny vessels as the elves greet old friends and relatives. Without the coracle, the marsh elf might not exist, at least not in so large a number.

Boats in the Desert

When a marsh elf tribe living in the Jennarian Desert discovered an underground river system they set about constructing simple coracles from the materials they had at hand. Willow was unheard of among the dunes and the trees that grew in the oases were too valuable to cut down so they had to find something else to use as the frame. The desert has a plentiful supply of bones, picked clean by the birds and bleached white by the sun so the resourceful elves used them. With their new boats, they descended into the caves and set out to explore. Glowing sacks dangled from the roofs lighting their way as they paddled around the labyrinth, taking care to map the routes and mark out any promising caves.

Marsh elves are a green fingered race and soon realised that the sacks were part of a much larger plant. By searching on the surface they discovered a red grass that thrived when others wilted. It was able to survive by pushing its roots deep into the sand, sometimes by upto a dozen yards. The glowing sacks were nutrient stores and the elves experimented until they were able to harvest them and use them for illumination. By plotting the locations of the grass on their maps they could track the rivers hidden deep beneath the sands. The elves soon named it 'moon glue grass' and passed the knowledge onto the others that sought shelter in the under river.

The subterranean river was home to more than glowing plants. Shoals of fish moved among the caves, feeding on the insects swarming among the rocks and the guano from the bats and birds that swooped around the marsh elves as they paddled their boats.

In the end, the marsh elf tribe was forced to move again this time by humans who in turn were fleeing war. The elves shared their knowledge with the tired and hungry people, gifting them coracles and repairing them when they sank under the much larger humans. They kept them alive for the first year but then more arrived and the marsh elves were pushed out, no longer welcome in the caves they had made habitable. The tribe took the few coracles they could salvage and set out across the sands with them on their backs.

Neah'tor

The coracle will always be associated with its most famous occupant, Neah'tor. Not just because she arrived in one but because of how she used them. Neah'tor was taken in by a tribe of marsh elves that lived in the region of Dragsbat where the marsh meets the forest. They lived a peaceful existence, fishing, growing crops on the islands and raising their families, but a warlord laid claim to their land.

Harmon the Brute was one of the founders of Dragsmund, a fishing village that would grow to be one of the largest in all of Nostvary. When Harmon conquered the area he set about building a town worthy of being his capital but to manage this he needed workers and all he had were a few impoverished peasants. He sent his army out into the marsh and the forest with orders to find him slaves but gave them the order to only take non-humans (he earned the sobriquet 'the brute' for something else entirely).

Neah'tor's tribe was split between the water and the land with half of the people living on boats and the other in huts next to their fields. When Harmon's warriors arrived there was little Neah'tor could do but watch from the water and help any of her people that managed to swim beyond the range of the human's arrows (marsh elves are great hunters and experts with the bow but they are not soldiers). Unable to defend themselves, the tribal chief ordered that they row away and retreat into the marsh, telling any that argued that their loved ones were gone and would never be seen again. When the shattered tribe started rowing away Neah'tor didn't join them. The chief tried to order her to leave but Neah'tor refused, saying that she would free their friends or see herself enslaved. The chief paddled away but a few elves stayed behind to join their boats with Neah'tor's.

The small band paddled at night, wary of being seen with Neah'tor leading the way. It took several days but they tracked the slavers all the way to Dragsmund. The humans had enslaved hundreds of non-humans including a few dwarves that had been travelling through the region. Neah'tor waited until nighttime when the town was asleep and then led the flotilla along the shallow streams that crisscrossed the town (the channels still exist in modern Dragsmund but non of the locals remember the legend). With Neah'tor's cunning, they passed unnoticed and made it to where the slaves were kept at night. Many were in a bad state and unable to walk but Neah'tor had them put in the coracles where they could be pulled along by swimmers. Neah'tor gave them a head start before breaking down the fence and ushering everyone else out. They ran into the town and Neah'tor was about to join them when she spotted the dwarves chained up. Risking her own life she found a hammer and set about freeing the dwarves. Neah'tor paddled her coracle with two of the wounded dwarves at her feet, using every ounce of her skill to evade the guards. She managed to escape and rejoin her people on the outskirts of the town and together they fled into the marsh. The dwarves recovered and returned to their homes to tell of the bravery of the marsh elves and the tale of Neah'tor became famous throughout the mountains.

But all heroes meet their end and for Neah'tor it was no different. She was lost at sea while confounding a fleet of ships sent to capture her. Her tribe watched from the rocky shore as the waves roiled around her little boat and swallowed her whole.

To the marsh elves, the coracle means freedom and many wear the symbol on their clothes. Most humans mistake it for a shiny button but those that have had the good fortune of befriending a marsh elf know the legend of Neah'tor and the true meaning of the coracle.

by Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons