The War Marshes

The War Marshes are unlike any area in the known world. Rumored to be the site of the final clash between the dwarves and elves, the marshes show clear signs of the violent spells and untold agony that brought about the end of both races.

Geography

Ever-shifting features make the marshes a terrible place to navigate, where nothing can be relied upon to mark the way except the stars and sun in the sky above. One moment a massive tree, vibrant with life and heavy with fruit, bars your way. The next, the tree is gone, and a patch of dead grass, broken by melted metal and littered with sun-bleached bones lies ahead, stretching towards the horizon.
The treacherous terrain seems to fluctuate between two realities. In one, the marches are a lush and vibrant wetlands which promises life and wealth to the casual observer. In the other, a devastating war has rendered the area completely devoid of life and nothing remains beyond the bones and rusting artifacts of the dead.
Open water used to be abundant, and can still be found - often underfoot as the area changes from one reality to the next. Most of the time, the water is brackish just as it used to be, when the wetlands existed on the coast and two rivers fed it from the south and east. Occasionally the water is potable, and rarely it is a thick sludge of viscous, glowing slime that contains high levels of magical energy.

Fauna & Flora

Originally the wetlands were brimming with life, home to a diverse flora and fauna. What life still exists in the area is so heavily affected by the magic still suffusing the air and the ground that they change incessantly, fluctuating from one state to another. Only a few creatures seem to escape this effect, to varying degrees.
Undead rise at nightfall and fall apart when the sun rises, to reform again the next night. Edar trees create pockets of their own reality around them, and offer a measure of safety - if they can be located. Mice are small enough that they escape most of the fluctuating magic, and can make a living in the area. Although local colonies often undergo extinction events, numbers are quickly replenished. Insects and lower forms of life appear entirely unaffected, although they are restricted by the low diversity of plant life that can survive there.

Natural Resources

War sludge, also called Elfblood or Dwarftears, is a viscous slime-like substance that glows with immense magical energy. It can be found in the marshes, and extracted at some cost to those desperate enough to try. Touching it may imbue you with an innate ability to cast spells, or overload your soul and irreversibly deaden you to magic.

Type

Wetland / Swamp