Spiritmarshes

The Spiritmarshes, named by its many tales of doom, disease and tormented souls is a harsh frontier. It's inhospitable landscape is nothing less than a deathtrap for most beings that would test the dangerous, yet beautiful core residing within the mass of illuminated trees and colourful fungi.
Still, the shadows of civilization find a way, and reason to live within the mires.
In the mountains, the Wisplight Conclave resides as a defiance to the dangerous nature. Within their mechanical spires, they watch over the swamps with illusions and technological misschief to scare the innocent from early graves, and the wicked to a horrid demise. Led by the mysterious Ferryman, they intend to hold control of the marsh's resources to fuel the Frozen Empire's machinery.
On the eastern shores, an expedition of dwarves brave the marshes from the relative safety of a hillside keep. With guns and axes, they aim to dominate this new frontier, and show to anyone that the The Stormcrowned Coalition can conquer any foe and any nature, no matter how fearsome it is. Running this operation, the Thane Dwagur Grimaxe leads the Grimaxes in a heated conquest for the territory's resources.
Lastly, the Charpacran tribe known as the Gloomstalkers search day and night for prey to feed on. This cannibalistic faction looms all over the place, hunting both animals, intelligent creatures and even the members of other villages, to soothe their chieftains endless hunger for power, and their aim to form a new civilization within the isolated mires. A civilization that one day shall feast only on the finest of human and dwarven flesh.

Geography

Shrouded by mystery and a deceitful fog, the Spiritmarshes is a small province on the southmost borders of the northern lands. It’s squeezed between the shore and a long mountain range that provide natural walls that isolate the putrid nightmares from the rest of the continent.

Fauna & Flora

The swamps are abundant in a flora that consists mainly out of weeping willows, pines and wisplights trees. However, due to mutation the rooflike canopy glows in twilight from the many bioluminescent fruits they wear. These natural lamps light up the undergrowth of dirt, moss and fungi that accompany the thorny bushes on the root covered earth.
A large number of creatures have also learned to thrive within the swamps, by toxic resistant glands and a chemical coated carapace that allow the insectoids to eat the toxic fruit and withstand the acidic storms. Yes, you heard correct. As if the landscape wasn’t enough on it’s own, the fauna consists of massive man eating spiders and giant bloodsucking bugs.
It’s thanks to the many fissures that spit minerals and surplus oxygen into the air, that these creatures have managed to grow to their monstrous sizes. But even monsters may be prey.
The far more edible flesh on the insectoids, and their glowing bodies mutated from the fruit eating made it possible for some terrible beasts to survive the climate. These fiends known as Mirelords are the apex of the marsh, and could easily be for the entirety of the North. Thankfully the cold winds outside make it impossible for them to stray away from their spawn. Hopefully.

Natural Resources

While inhospitable, there are reasons why so many people risk their lives to set up shop in the swamp. The rich amounts of oil that has decomposed from millions of old victims over the centuries is but one reason. Others are the good quantity of tar, clay and rich chemical compounds such as salt, sulfur wood and reagents from the mutated fruits and sporesacks.

The Wisplight Spires:

The mountain range that runs across the entire border of the swamp, and likely is the cause for the fog and preserved heat to remain in the small zone. The Wisplight spires got its name from the snowy mountain tops that seem to glow in green and blue due to the local flora underneath. The mountains also make home for a smaller city belonging to the Frozen Empire

Hanged man's gallows:

The western part of the swamps, it has received its name from the many vines and dead trees that inhabit the region. The gallows is also the most dry zone, besides the mountains. It's a brown and black region that is easily traversable on ground, thanks to it's higher elevation above the encroaching waters. Still it's a bad idea to march an army over the lands, because while it's mostly composed of clay and mud, an eerie orange glow is the only guidance from the fog and numerous tar pits dark collaboration.

Soulmire:

A sparkling middle flat of land that is overgrown by flora and mostly sunk underneath the water, about a foot to knee-high in elevation. The Soulmire is in fact the least certain death part of the swamp, if one discludes the giant insects. Thanks to the Wisplight trees remarkable ability to cleanse water, the area that dominates a good eighty percent of the swamp is the epicenter for all fauna. It's also due to the glowing bugs and luminating fruits that light up the swamp in blue, green and light purple orbs that the Soulmire has earned its name from.

Festering pools:

The pools to the east is the most inhospitable and thankfully smallest area of the swamp, even though the other areas ain't much better, this place is almost as submerged as the Soulmire but with a thick, brown, greenish goop that is really bad in literally every aspect except that it's rich on hiding oil. This also makes it highly flammable and combined with hot geysers that risk rupture if disturbed, the lifeless hellhole is a minefield that just waits to go off on any poor prospector who'd take advantage of it's bountiful riches. Naturally, this hasn't stopped people from trying, which is why decomposed corpses and likely diseases also decorate the lovely rot.

Type

Wetland / Swamp

Included Locations

• Wisplight Spires

Owning Organization

Âzhgaardian Empire

Related Ethnicities

• Gravewalker