Great marshes
- General content: | Felaryan fauna | Felaryan flora | Races | Characters | Locations | History and Lore | Science and Magic | Culture and Customs | List of all available articles
Contents |
Danger: Hazardous
Sub zones: Mycoria forest, Malyra fen, Sunken forest
Inhabitants: tagmatoks, heludas, saurotaurans, swamp dryads, giant mud slugs, stormseeker, gorudan behemoths, nagas, dridders, gerridis, harpies,earth mouths, giant marsh vipers, liethins, water leapers, slug girls, korazons, bogmog toads
Characters : Marsha
This vast murky swamp sprawls out to the southeast of the map. This place is called Ixtapalapa: the "second sky" in an ancient language, but that name doesn't sound much like the name of a swamp though, so everyone simply calls it the "great marshes". The "second sky" moniker comes from the perpetual, impenetrable low blanket of fog that looms over the land, forming a natural ceiling. While the visibility is mostly normal up to a dozen feet from the ground, the slowly moving mass maintains an eerie, menacing atmosphere and muffles sounds. It also provides excellent cover for the various predators that lurk above it, able to see through the fog with their piercing eyesight. Thus, the last thing many a reckless adventurer sees is the giant hand of a dryad or the wide open mouth of a harpy. There are dangers from below as well, such as the enormous slugs which lurk beneath the mud, emerging to swallow their prey. All in all, it's strongly advised to possess some sort of detecting device, radar or special sense when you walk through the great marshes.
Mycoria forest
Danger: Normal
Inhabitants: mycodryads, earth mouths, fungoïds, oozes, forgons, moss basiliks
As soon as you enter these gloomy wetlands, your nostrils are assaulted by the mixed smell of putrid sludge, decomposing vegetation, and the strong aroma of mushrooms. This area south of the great marshes is not covered by the blanket of fog, but the moist air is orange-ish from the innumerable spores held in suspension. The trunks of the rare, but immense, trees that grow here are blanketed by various mushrooms, lichens and fungus, giving these behemoths an eerie look. Their roots dip into a stagnant water covered by a thick layer of brown and green mossy slime. A large variety of mushrooms grow here and some of them are gigantic. The water is usually shallow but it's not uncommon for the damp, moldy ground to suddenly give way to a bottomless pit... and sometimes that pit is actually a mouth! The ground itself seems to be alive and organic, sometimes quaking or quivering, and it's not impossible that it actually is. For some reason, this area is a lot poorer in magic than the rest of Felarya and any magical creature, such as a fairy, will immediately feel uneasy here. Strange creatures inhabit the land, often half-plant, half-animal, and a large tribe of fungoïds dwells here as well.
Malyra fen
Danger: Normal
Inhabitants: slimoids, oozes, titan hawks
The Malyra Fen refers to an area located south of the Great marshes, west of the Sunken Forest and east of the Dridder forest, where the rivers of the marsh empty into the sea. This area is believed to have once been a very massive and high plateau, sprawling from the Dridder forest to the Pyrale mountains. Since then, rivers carved the area up into small, separate islands. The rivers then turned into swamp zones. The result was an archipelago of large chunks of the original plateau, rising above the surrounding Fen. The area between the raised land is now a stagnant marshland of small ponds, treacherous bogs and lazily flowing rivers. The whole area is perpetually shaded due to the towering plateaus around it, even though the spaces between them can sometimes be fairly large. What is most noticeable is the large amount of fossils and bones, many of which are often protruding right out of the ground or earthen walls. For a paleontologist, this would be a great place to go bone hunting. This can be dangerous though, as the canals are full of wandering slimoids and blobs hiding in the murky water.
The tops of the plateaus are a whole other story and even more fantastic. They are covered up to their edges in lush jungles filled with massive, thick and ancient looking twisted swamp trees and foliage. Each of them is like an island, separate from the ground and each other. Often, this means that certain species could be found on some swamp islands, but not on others. However, the most notable part of these islands is that many of them are home to animals and plants not found elsewhere in Felarya - as they are believed to have gone extinct far in the past! While the rest of Felarya advanced, and their cousins were turned to fossils, to be unearthed below, these specimens somehow survived in their isolation. The flora and fauna here is as it has been for thousands of years, as if time itself had frozen... and considering the fickle and unstable nature of Felaya, it's not entirely impossible it has! If one wants to see a living, breathing Beast of the Past, the Malyra fen may be the only place to do so.
There are scattered settlements of humanoids that live here, who often have never visited the world below. There are stories of savage cave nekos, tree dwelling warrior women and primitive shamanistic elves. Some of these tribes have built bridges between islands that are particularly close to each other. There are rumours that some of them live in caves along the sides of the islands and have built paths and passages to get from the swamplands below to their ancient forest homes.
Sunken forest
Danger: Hazardous
Inhabitants: ringhorns, colmoteles, quazoliphs
When you reach the sunken forest, you suddenly look into what look like a bottomless pit of vertigo inducing proportions. Muddy rivers from the surrounding swamp come crashing along the tilting walls, plunging into the depths of the pit. The chasm is filled with a thick vegetation snaking its way from the unseen bottom toward the surface, around the twisted trunks of gigantic plants, towering far above the pit and disappearing into the mist blanket that cover the swamp. A very large variety of molds and fungi grow out of the moss-covered trunks of these vegetal behemoths.
The geography of the place can only be described as vertical, and the forest is sometimes referred to as the "vertical forest". The pit seems impossibly deep, leading many cartographers to believe it's actually situated outside of Felarya, in a vertical plane. The air is extremely damp and... strange. The further down you go, the darker and more alien the place becomes, with strangely colored algae glowing faintly, and bizarre creatures found nowhere else in Felarya roaming along the branches. The vegetation seems to become distinctly more carnivorous as well, having so little light to subsist on. Deep within this strange new world an old hidden temple, probably built by a race that is not from Felarya... What lies in there is unknown, as the few explorers who reached it never returned.
- Credits to ProjectHazoid for many ideas to develop the Sunken forest, to Jaette-troll for coming with many ideas to develop the Malyra Fen.
