The Corpselight Fens
Marsh, bog, and standing water threaded with old causeways and crossroads that lead to places no longer there. The jacks keep it, drifting the reed channels by night, and the fens have swallowed more Faerie expeditions than every other region combined.
The Land
Wet, flat, and treacherous, cut by raised causeways of clearly deliberate construction that predate anything in the Kingdom's records and terminate, frequently, in open water.
The fens are the most navigationally hostile country in either realm, and almost none of that is accident. The ground moves seasonally; the channels re-route; the causeways are the only fixed features and they were laid out by somebody with a plan nobody now understands. Add the marsh gas, the standing water, and the foolsfire, and you have a landscape where every reliable-looking thing is unreliable and every unreliable-looking thing is a jack.
- Marsh gas. Vents from the bog constantly. It is flammable, it is mildly narcotic in enclosed spaces, and it is what the foolsfire burns. A still night in the fens is a still night in a room full of fuel.
- Foolsfire. Pale flame drifting over the water, sometimes natural, usually not. A jack's attuned magic is exactly this, and the difference between a marsh light and a lure is a question you get to ask once.
- The suck. Bog that will take a Faerie in under a minute, and there is a great deal of it, and it does not look different from ground that will not.
- Seasonal drowning. Twice a year the water comes up two feet and the causeways go under. Everyone who lives here knows the dates. Everyone who does not, does not.
- The lights that are not lights. Beyond the foolsfire and beyond the gas, there are lights out in the deep fen that the jacks do not claim and will not approach, and this is worth taking seriously from a people who make their living walking toward things in the dark.
Flora and Fauna
| Feature | What it is | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Reed channels | Standing reed in miles of shifting water lanes | The roads, insofar as the water has roads |
| Corpselight fungus | Grows on the causeway stone; glows faintly, always | Which is how you find a causeway under two feet of black water |
| Bog myrtle | Aromatic, repels biting insects, worth its weight | The only reason the fens are habitable at all |
| Sundew | Sticky, patient, and at this scale a genuine hazard | Takes couriers off the reed-tops. Jacks harvest the glue |
| Peat | Centuries of it, and it preserves | The fens give back what they take, eventually, and undecayed |
| Herons | Colossal; stand for an hour without moving, then don't | The apex terror, and the reason nobody poles a boat by day |
| Frogs and bullfrogs | Large to Huge; swallow a Faerie whole | Numerous, vocal, and they hold most of the deep fen |
| Garter snakes | Gargantuan; hunt the banks | Silent in reed. The jacks whistle a warning that everyone learns |
| Mosquitoes and midges | Fine to Diminutive; clouds of them | Bleed a sentry white in a night. The myrtle trade exists for this |
Society
The jacks are the Wilds' guides and its ferrymen. They will lead a traveler through for a price, honestly and reliably, and they will lead an unwelcome one in circles until the marsh takes them, with exactly the same cheerful courtesy. The distinction between the two services is not made explicit at the time of purchase.
Settlements
There is no capital, because the causeways are the settlement: the jacks live along them in wick-houses, ferry-stations, and drifting reed-camps, strung out over sixty-five kilometers of marsh.
Ninewick (4,000) — the largest station, at the junction of three causeways, where Jack Nine-Wicks holds what is not called a court. Every guide in the fens is registered here in a ledger that is not called a ledger.
Myrtlebank (3,000) — the myrtle harvest and the fens' one real industry, trading insect-repellent to every province in both realms at a markup nobody has ever successfully argued down.
Crossing-Under-Willow (1,500) — the settlement at the busiest Waking World crossing: an inn, a chapel of sorts, a toll, and a permanent population of people waiting for a guide or waiting to stop shaking.
The Drowned Stations — a dozen abandoned causeway posts out in the deep fen, still standing, still lit by corpselight fungus, still with their signs up. Nobody uses them. The jacks route around them.
Factions
The Wick-Houses. The guide families, who between them hold every route in the fens. Their authority is customary, absolute, and enforced by the simple mechanism that nobody who crosses the Wick-Houses gets a guide again.
The Toll. Not an organization — an institution. Everyone who uses a crossing pays a jack, including the Kingdom, discreetly, through intermediaries, in a transaction the Chancery would deny under oath.
The Myrtle Trade. Myrtlebank's harvesters, the only jacks with a settled commercial interest, and correspondingly the only ones with anything to lose. They favor stability, cooperation, and a great deal less of the traditional business with lights.
The Far Bank. Jacks who work the human side: guides who cross, stay, and know the Waking World nearly as well as a hobgoblin. They are regarded with suspicion at home and are the fens' most valuable people.
The Leshy. A quiet faction who hold that the fens' oldest business — leading the unwelcome in circles — is no longer defensible now that the traffic includes refugees. They want the practice ended. Nine-Wicks has not ruled, and the ambiguity is doing a great deal of work.
Sites of Interest
The Causeways. Raised stone roads, dead straight, running for kilometers across the marsh, laid by somebody with surveying instruments and a plan. They predate every record in either realm. They connect nothing to nothing: a causeway will run twelve kilometers and end in open water, or arrive at a junction where four more meet in the middle of a bog. The jacks use them daily and have no theory about them, which is either the healthiest attitude available or the most frustrating.
Crossing-Under-Willow. The most-used gate to the Waking World: a place in the reeds where the air changes and a traveler who steps correctly steps out somewhere enormous. It is unreliable, it is unmapped by anyone who will share the map, and it is watched at all hours by a jack who takes the toll and by at least two people pretending to be something else.
The Deep Lights. Out past the last causeway, in water the jacks do not enter, there are lights. They are not foolsfire — a jack can tell, instantly, and will not explain how. They move in patterns. They have been observed for centuries. Nine-Wicks' standing instruction to every guide in the fens is that a client who asks to be taken to them is to be taken somewhere else and charged for it.
The Drowned Station at Elm-Nine. One of the abandoned posts: intact, lit, signs legible, kettle on the hook, and about four feet under water at every season except the low, when it is not. It was abandoned in living memory. Two of the guides who abandoned it are still alive at Ninewick and have each given a different account, and neither account explains the third set of accounts, which is written on the station's own wall.
Hooks
- Somebody has been guiding people through the fens without a Wick-House license — competently, cheaply, and by routes the Wick-Houses do not know.
- A Kingdom party of eleven crossed at Willow nine days ago with a Chancery writ, no jack, and a map. The map is a good one. That is the alarming part.
- The Leshy ask the party to escort a group of Basekin refugees out of the Kingdom, through the fens, to the crossing — which requires a Wick-House guide, and the Wick-Houses have been paid rather well not to provide one.
- The Deep Lights have moved. For the first time in recorded memory they are nearer, and Ninewick's oldest guides have started sleeping on the causeway rather than in the reed-camps.
- Elm-Nine has come up dry two months early, and somebody has taken the kettle off the hook.
Relations
The most heavily trafficked route between the realms passes through here, since several of the crossings into the Waking World open in the fens. Everyone who uses them pays a jack, including, discreetly, the Kingdom.