The Nightmarsh
A gloomy swamp watered by runoff off the Crowns, where the water is dark even to Spriggan eyes. Beneath willow, cypress and mangrove the Loa build their villages on stilts, run the channels in shallow boats, and throw the best festivals in the Twilight Veil.
The Land
Villages line the waterways on stilt-borne platforms, connected by shallow-drafted boats poled along gentle currents. Not far past the last lantern of any village, the marsh hides a great deal that would prefer the lanterns went out.
The water comes down off Edelweiss to the north-east, which makes the Nightmarsh downstream of the Rimeward's entire industry — a point the Loa raise at every Kingdom assize and which has never once been minuted.
West a short border touches goblin country; everything else adjoins the Shadowed Vale.
The Loa
Boatmen, marsh-harvesters and traders, taking their living from above and below the waterline and buying the rest from the Duskmarket.
Their villages are lively and brightly coloured in defiance of everything around them, and they are celebrated across the province for their music. A Loa festival is a serious undertaking with a serious guest list, and the fact that the marsh is actively trying to kill everyone present is treated as an unremarkable feature of the venue.
Encounters
Roll d100. Black water, and no way to see what is under the boat until it is in the boat. CR is scaled to Faerie size — see Challenge by Size.
| d100 | Encounter | CR |
|---|---|---|
| 01–09 | 1d6 Loa poling to a festival, who will not accept a refusal and will not be quiet | — |
| 10–15 | 2d6 mosquitoes off the black water at dusk, leaving worse than they take | ½ |
| 16–21 | 2d4 houseflies over something in the reeds that was recently somebody | ½ |
| 22–27 | a slick of Rimeward runoff on the water; the fish are wrong, and the Loa are furious | — |
| 28–33 | 1d4 water striders charging across a still channel | 2 |
| 34–39 | 1d3 backswimmers hanging beneath the film alongside the hull | 2 |
| 40–45 | 1d4 diving beetles in a lantern-lit shallow, and they fly between them at night | 4 |
| 46–51 | 1d3 newts on a cypress knee, unbothered and poisonous to touch | 5 |
| 52–57 | 1 giant water bug under the waterline at a village landing; the bite dissolves | 7 |
| 58–63 | 1d2 fishing spiders running the open water between stilts | 9 |
| 64–69 | 1d2 frogs in the shallows, devout and hungry in that order | 9 |
| 70–75 | 1d2 crayfish contesting a channel mouth on grounds of ancient right | 10 |
| 76–80 | 1 bat working the channels by sound, for which lanterns are no help | 10 |
| 81–85 | 1 cane toad on a mudbank, poisonous and indiscriminate | 12 |
| 86–89 | 1 bullfrog at a landing, swallowing one Faerie whole and looking for the second | 13 |
| 90–93 | 1 lesser snake in the mangrove roots, past the last lantern | 14 |
| 94–95 | 1 garter snake hunting the bank at speed | 18 |
| 96–97 | 1 great horned owl over the stilt villages, and every lamp is shuttered at once | 23 |
| 98–99 | 1 heron standing in the fen since before you arrived | 24 |
| 00 | 1 greater snake — a hundred and forty feet of it, under the boats | 25 |