The Ghosts of the Field

The The Fields of Glass are an important source of natural resources for the emirate of Dabwa. Such is the value of this place that those who exploits its riches are keen to ignore the legends that accompany it, the legends of the ghosts of the field. On most days, the Fields of Glass are a clear expanse of translucent white, clear enough for miners to see their own reflections in places. Though the hills and mountains rise above the horizon, the field appears almost infinite to someone standing at the bottom of the valley. In this vast lifeless expanse, stories regularly surface of miners seeing and hearing ghosts, of eerie wailing in the distance, of floating figures somewhere far away, beckoning the viewer deeper into the field. According to legend, the fields were once lakes, and the ghosts of the field are water spirits, unable to live in a dead lake yet unable to pass away, tied as they are to the natural place they inhabit. Though widely circulated among the peasantry and miners of Dabwa, the aristocracy and the owners of the natron mining operations generally consider the ghosts to be folk superstition that mainly inconveniences them by making it harder to attract workers for the natron harvesting operations.

Historical Basis

If one were to visit a camp of natron miners, one of the first things they would advise is not to follow any strange sounds in the field and stay away from ghostly figures in the horizon. Every camp has a story of someone who decided to follow them, and never returned. However, when scholars from Dabwa set out on a fact-finding expedition into the fields to find these ghosts and discover what the miners were actually talking about, they found nothing substantial. Though these scholars did report seeing strange mirages in the far horizon, they supposed that these visions could've been a trick of the light on the translucent surface of the natron field.

Related Ethnicities