The Lament

West of Sogstrand, northern most of the Ten Barronies, lies the largest marsh on the continent. Known for its thick, odiferous mists, deep bogs, and brackish waters, what little flora that grows in the Lament tends to be hazardous, if not outright deadly, to any creature traveling the narrow pathways within the marsh. The few trees that grow here are rarely dangerous in and of themselves. However, the same cannot be said of the creatures that den within the root systems.

Those who survive on the edges of the Lament are known as Stilt-Walkers due to their use of stilts to travel and hunt. Their huts and cabins are likewise built on stilts or in the boughs of a tree. Flat-bottomed boats can navigate the waters in the marsh, but due to the maze like quality of the landscape they are only truly useful for hunting crocs, brine sharks, or far more deadly beasts in the deeper pools and bogs.

The Lament, so named for the pervasive feeling of melancholy experienced upon crossing into the marshlands, tends to overwhelm newcomers to the area with memories of things left unfinished or unsaid as well as regret for choices they've made in their lives. Needless to say, most knowledgeable travellers do not stay within the boundary of the Lament for long and the unlucky who stumble into the marshes tend to disappear into the mists never to be seen or heard from again.

Due to the scarcity of viable plots to lay down stilts, the majority of the population within the Lament tends toward a hermitic, though often familial, type of life. Their nearest neighbors, while perhaps within a furlong as the crow flies, is a long stilt walk across several leagues of the safest pathways through the Lament. The few places that can fit three or more homesteads typically are connected by at least a porch like common area. The larger or more ambitious of these settlements, though one would barely consider them more than an adequet waystation along the Gilted Road to the Five Cities, inevitably build upward using the existing structures as pylons for the structure above. Depending upon the size of the permanent population, such "waystations" will have a "ground floor" used for housing and common areas by the residents. The floor(s) above are typically built around a small market of sorts and the way-tavern with varying types of drink, food, and sleeping amenities.

The largest conglomerate of such a structure is also the only one that earns its description as a settlement. Three-Trees, unsurprisingly, is built around the only grove of trees known to exist in the borderlands of the Lament. It is the barely beating heart of commerce for the local population that is none the less a haven for the daring, adventurous types who make a living taking expiditions into the Deep Lament, as they call it. Few are those who return unchanged by their trek, sucessful or not; though many who take such risks are simply never seen again. Despite the risks, the rewards of even one sucessful expidition can let one retire very comfortably elsewhere in the Ten Barronies, or even the Five cities for a lucky few.

Little is known of the deeper portions of the Lament. Those who return speak of lost whispers in the mists, horribly twisted and terrifying creatures, and occassionally a few mention ruins made of a strange, dark marble like stone with glowing, purple striations through out and an eerie, uncannily familiar starry sky above the mists. Individually, such reports are barely coherent statements given by possible victims of swamp gas. Looked at collectively, a pattern begins to emerge that suggests a thinning of the Skien of Vrilari itself that can produce random, localized portals leading some where else. In any case, the details of the annecdotal evidence is consistant enough to suggest the scavs in question were transported to the same place. Whether a pocket dimension or a piece of Vrilari extending towards the Astral Sea is as yet unknown.

Regret hangs heavy upon my shoulders; what might have been had I but stayed in their arms. Such is how the mind correlates with the terrain within the Lament: twisting, muddy paths surrounded by inky pools of unfathomable depths.

-- Professor Tempest Thornheart, Indepth Canker Survey: Observations: The Lament

Type

Wetland / Swamp

Included Locations

• Three-Trees, Gateway to the Deep Lament