The Mere of Dead Men - a fireside tale told by Torstag Elveneyes


Part one - The lay of the land

“The first time I saw the Mere of Dead Men, I arrived in late spring. The Mere was a rich, green expanse, full of bogs, shallow ponds, stands of swamp-growing trees, and occasional islands and causeways of solid earth.

That inviting image was an illusion! As I ventured into the Mere, it turned out to be a dark, forbidding place, where evil festers and foul creatures lurk in murky water to devour the unwary. Black, twisted trees and vines stand guard over brackish stagnant ponds, insects swarm through the air spreading foul diseases, and everywhere is the stench of rotting plants.

You asked me what the Mere is like… It ish an eerie fetid swamp filled with unpleasant creatures, strange glows, sucking bogs, scummy, reeking cesspools, deadly quicksand and a general aura of unwholesomeness. A desolate place, seldom visited by civilized races.

It is a vast salt swamp that stretches along the shore of the Sword Coast for over 100 miles. At its greatest width it reaches over 30 miles inland. It is mostly uncharted, but I know the general lay of its borders and the southeastern parts. The depths of the Mere, however, could just as well be the jungles of Chult; it is shrouded in fog and mystery.

Several rich castles and manor houses are rumored to stand flooded in the Mere, with only spires and battlements showing above the dark waters. People say that the ruins littering that fell swamp are from the days when the lich Iniarv raised the water of the coast and swamped the Twilit Lands.

I know that some of them are more recent; an old ranger told me that the Mere has grown in recent memory, swallowing several farms and holdings along the road, which has been relocated to skirt the bog.

The best way to travel, if you’re not struggling along dangerous, muddy trails, is to use a canoe, a raft or a flat-bottomed pole-barge, but in the marshes down south I’ve even seen people with footgear known as Marsh-shoes, which allow their wearers to actually walk (slowly and carefully) on the water’ surface.

The Mere’s climate is harsh and unnatural. A sticky mist hangs in the air constantly hot in summer and cold in winter, clinging to the black branches of trees, gathering in hollows and depressions, flowing like a living thing. Rain falls regularly, drenching the ground, swelling the waterways and flooding the region. These rains have no real season, they seem to fall when most uncomfortable and inconvenient.

Seasons vary primarily by temperature, stiflingly hot in summer and autumn, bone-chillingly cold in the winter and spring. With the constant discomfort of the rains and the fog, the Mere of Dead Men is a miserable and dangerous place no matter what the season.”
 

©2003 Nathan Caroland, All rights reserved.