Environment
The Sacred Swampland is a bog region at the south eastern end of the Wondrous Continent formed with the Great Water Dragon shook the sea from its back during its flight to
Dragon's Rest following
The Awakening. The marshes are filled with gnarled mangrove trees that stretch up from still, murky waters. Multicolored carnivorous plants cover every surface, pitcher plants dipping down from tree branches and venus flytraps snapping at the ankles of passersby. The exotic plants that grow here have a range of medicinal and poisonous properties and are cultivated by healers (and the occasional hag.) The air is thick with humidity and the sunlight dapples through trees. There is a rainbow sheen across the water’s surface from oils and magic leaking from the local flora.
Homes in the rural regions of the bog typically float along the banks like docked boats or are balanced atop ricket-y stilts and made of natural materials that disguise the building’s location, for example, by being draped in moss.
Population
The people of the Swampland are primarily dark skinned elves who style their hair like the Himba people of Namibia in our own world, coating their intricate braids in mud.
Another common group of people in this region are the
Golem Watch, whose bodies are constructed of animated bog mud. Goloms served as security for the portions of the swamp where the rarest plants grow and the storehouses where medicinal products are developed.
Lizardfolk, crocodile like humanoid creatures, live in the swamp waters in small tribal communities. They rarely interact with the other above-water communities and are not considered troublesome.
Culture
The people of the Sacred Swampland are largely healers, farmers, teachers, and exotic plant researchers. The practice of
Mud Braiding allows traveling healers to carry a piece of the swamp with them wherever they go.
Swampland Elves are almost exclusively healers who harness the unique magical properties of the carnivorous plants that are grown in the bog.
The Academy of Arcane Healing and the surrounding urban center make up the
Eye of the Swamp, an opening beneath the canopy of trees where there was plenty of sky to build up capacity for a dense population. People travel from all over the world to work and study medicine here, and as a result, Swamplanders are welcoming of outsiders and, in turn, welcomed in communities across the continent.
Politics
The rural outskirts of the Swampland are so sparsely populated that they are functionally self-governed. The Eye of the Swamp is a bustling city-state of which the Academy's President is also Govorner. Things are typically pretty peaceful here, but recently, dangerous plants are being successfully stolen and tensions are high. The Golem Watch report to the President.
Before the Awakening, the Swamplands were a part of the Meadows and, as such, they maintain a very strong relationship with their neighbors to the North.
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