Village - Zhepki

Location

The village of Zhepki is a long and thin settlement stretching along a road atop several bare hillocks amidst the foggy swamps of Bogland in Ardechia. It is in the northern parts of the swampy region, south east of Branik, above the river Leypa.

Surroundings

The village is made of multiple parts, each of which sits at the summit of it's own bare grassy hillock above the flats below. The flatlands that surround the settlement are damp marshes, commonly misty, and covered in thick growth, knee-deep swamps, and soft muddy terrain. It is difficult to navigate unless one stays to the main roads, and it is dangerous to wander alone.

The village

The village itself is a long chain of dwellings running along a road over three distinct minor hills in the middle of the marshes. They are high enough to receive fair daylight at dawn, while the marshes below are still covered in thick fog. The hills stick out of the misty sea like little islands, which the locals see as ''pockets'', which is where the village got it's name. Each hill is a little pocket of respite from the surrounding Bogland, and ''Zhepki'' literally translates to ''Pockets''.
From a far, the space between these ''pockets'' dips just enough for the mist to flow through, making it seem as if these might be individual homesteads atop each their own hill, but there is no such large estates around these parts, with the village mainly inhabited by small time farmers who mainly herd their shy livestock on the slopes of their grassy hills and tend to their gardens beside their huts. None live at the base of these hillocks, as they are afeared of the lowland, and the fog, believing bad things happen within.
The village has a local blacksmith, and a carpenter, but there is no inn, and only a minor shrine of the Church of the Mason.
The central hillock has a great big Oak at it's highest central point, around which the locals have developed a cemetery. A flattened ground lays before the Oak where a pyre may be lit, upon which they burn their dead, and then have the ashes collected and buried under marked gravestones. There is no fence or line of bushes to separate the cemetery grounds from it's surroundings.

Alternative Name(s)

Pockets

Type

Village

Location under

Area - Bogland

Owning Organization

Kingdom of Ardechia

Header:

• Screenshot from the video game The Witcher 3