Today, Part 3 of the Topologia campaign setting details the Shadowfen and horrors that abide there, lots of creatures exportable to similar environments!.

The Shadowfen

No photo credit provided. Source: Pixabay. I thought about editing this image to insert all sorts of hidden menaces, and then it occurred to me: How do you know that I didn’t?

Strictly speaking, the place should be called the Shadowfens,, plural, because the multiple similar environments under the one umbrella title. This is a terrible place where nothing much is really fixed in place and it seems like everything you can see (and several things you can’t) are trying to kill you. No-one likes to live there, but some have little choice in the matter – criminals and bandit groups tend to congregate there because it is so hard to recapture them.

The roots of the vegetation hold what little land there is together, forming buoyant little islands that float.

Some of them are thick enough to support the weight of a person but many of them are not. Plunging through the thin ‘topsoil’ can leave your leg trapped in the roots, some of which have barbs pointing downward to protect the roots from vegetable-eating fish – these cause no trouble going down but create severe lacerations when you try and lift the trapped leg. This can force the careless to choose between hacking off a leg or hanging around long enough to be something else’s lunch. Whatever remains after the feast becomes mulch to nourish the vegetation, so everybody (except the victim) wins from this strategy.

Movement In The Shadowfen

The water between these islands is rank but not quite stagnant – the Everflow passes through the middle, flowing from East to West, and even though it meanders a lot, it still generates tidal flows in and out.

The waters, for the most part, are shallow, only a foot or two deep, but there are hidden hollows and depressions that run deeper. Some of these are quite gentle depressions filled with sticky, cloying, mud; others are sharp-edged cracks which can trap a foot or cut an unprotected leg. Blood in the water, of course, is an open invitation to all sorts of nasty, hungry, critters.

These dangers lead all who come here to contemplate alternatives.

Swimming in the Shadowfen waters

Some fools try swimming in the water instead of slogging their way through the mud and leeches, and this seems to work – for a while. Under the silt and mud, however, there is a great deal of rotting vegetation, and every now and then, bubbles of explosive byproduct erupt to the surface. When this happens, the natural buoyancy of the water diminishes catastrophically, anyone without solid footing will be sucked under, at least temporarily. This often causes panic, which is the last thing that you should do in an emergency. The popular sentiment is, “You swim, you die”.

Boats in the Shadowfen

The obvious solution is to use small boats or rafts, but these are no less susceptible to being sucked under. Rafts have a big advantage over boats in that they have some buoyancy even plunged underwater; they will return to the surface, eventually. Small boats and canoes that fill with water usually will not (there are exceptions which I’ll cover a little later).

Walking, although slow, difficult, and tedious, is the only (relatively) safe solution.

Every step is tortuous; you are effectively lifting 3x your limb’s weight with every step and then putting it down, only to start over. Those with business to conduct within the Shadowfen quickly learn or re-invent the Rotating Point-Man Technique.

The Rotating Point-Man Technique

The group proceeds single file. This obviously puts one member in front; he uses a pole or stick to test the surface underfoot, and everyone else does their best to walk in his footsteps.

The point man walks through the mud and muck for a set period of time, leading the group from one ‘island’ to another, probing for a solid surface strong enough to walk on. If it is, they scramble up onto it as best they can, and for as long as the island lasts, progress is quick and easy.

When their time on point is up, they let themselves get overtaken by the person behind them, who then becomes the new point person, taking the pole or stick from the former pathfinder as they pass them. Once relieved of this tool, the former point person lets the rest of the group pass him or her until they are last in line, to ‘rest up’ for their next stint in front.

CON in minutes is a good quick-estimate of how long someone can take point. They then need to rest for 3-4 times the number of minutes they were on point to recover.

Each minute that they were on point adds 1 to the difficulty of any physical activity (including attacking in combat) and 1/2 to the difficulty of intellectual tasks and judgment calls. It’s extremely fatiguing to be on point!

The penalty applies to attack and damage rolls, and half of it applies to armor class – but weapons always do at least 1 point of damage even with this penalty.

It follows that even weak creatures who are adapted to the environment can pose a significant threat; unfortunately, many creatures to be found in the Shadowfen are NOT accurately described as ‘weak’.

Insects

Swarms of insects fill the air. Some are harmless; some have a painful bite which can persist for up to 72 hours depending on the species; some carry diseases like malaria or Yellow Fever, that can prove fatal; and some burrow into the skin to lay eggs that will do 1 point each when they hatch. One or two such bites are relatively trivial, but 1 or 2 hundred are a very different matter.

Green Alligators

One of the milder threats that can be encountered are Green Alligators. Unlike most such creatures, they operate in packs with a level of social cohesion.

One or two will feign attacks from either side, forcing an unwary party into a trap where the rest of the pack, another 5-10 strong, are waiting.

Green alligators only grow to 2-3 feet in length, and their bites are rarely directly lethal, but the cuts they do inflict can attract many more dangerous predators. They like to inflict 2-3 moderate wounds and wait for blood loss to weaken a target. That’s when they close in for the kill.

They will often attack and wound 2-3 different targets at the same time just in case one or two fall prey to other dangers – that way, they are more likely to feast.

The best tactics against Green Alligators is not to fall for their bluff; the whole target group should attack one of the flanking alligators that are trying to steer them into the trap; kill it as quickly as possible to open up a route around the trap that has been set.

Black Gators

Black gators work alone, and can grow to 15-30′ in length – with corresponding increase in their strength, resilience, and natural armor. They have no need to employ the patient tactics of their smaller green kin.

Typically, they will wrap their massively powerful tails around their target’s legs and then roll over, sweeping the target off it’s feet and under the water, While the target is struggling, the gator then bites out the victim’s throat, causing massive blood-loss and death within seconds. They are also notoriously bad-tempered.

Thunderbeasts

In modern times and in a modern-day place, we would call these dinosaurs – but they are smaller (a bit), warm-blooded, and herbivores. Like deer, they can be skittish and a herd can stampede at the slightest provocation.

Their hides are well armored; some species have external bony structures for defense, some simply have inch-thick leathery skin like elephant hide, and some have hardened layers of scales.

The smaller species have brightly-colored plumage which they can display as warnings when threatened, like 2-ton peacocks.

The biggest dangers that these pose are (1) crushing people underfoot who can’t get out of the way of a charge or stampede quickly enough; and (2) attracting more dangerous predators that hunt them, for these will often turn to the weaker humanoid targets for an easier meal.

Some species of Thunderbeast are large, with horns and spikes for attacks; some have spikes or clubs on the end of their long and powerful tails; a few can spit venom or acid. Some are simply so strongly armored as to be able to ignore just about anything. Amongst the middle-sized species, several have bony protuberances from their spines. One species has chameleon-like camouflage abilities, and this can make them the most dangerous of all.

Most are extremely territorial, but they migrate regularly, giving up their old territory (now devoid of food) in favor of another. It happens regularly that two different bands of Thunderbeast target the same “island”; if there diets are sufficiently different, or the island is large enough, then this is no problem, but if there is a dietary overlap and a more intense competition for limited resources, the result can be a bloody war between the two groups, until one of them is finally driven off.

Thunderbeasts come by weight, usually an even number of tons to a group. Divide this by the average weight of that variety of Thunderbeast to determine numbers.

One in four will be a youngster with only 10% or 20% of the typical resilience and armor of an adult. There will be a patriarch or leader who (effectively) gets the additional strength, size, and resilience given up by the youngsters. If there are more than 9 in the group, there will also be a younger challenger to the leader; divide the extras into whole units and round up for the leader, then allocate the difference to the challenger. If there are more than about 24 in the herd, there will be two challengers – round the lesser one’s 1/3 down, the larger one’s 1/3 up, and assign the difference to the middle challenger.

EG: 16 tons of Thunderbeast, weighing about 2/3 of a ton each on average.

16 / (2/3) = 16 × 3/2 = 8 × 3 = 24 Thunderbeasts.

24 / 4 = 6 youngsters. Half have 10% normal stats, half have 20%, so use 15% overall as the average. This leaves 85% or 0.85 per youth to be ‘redistributed’.

0.85 × 6 = 5.1.

Given the size of the herd, there will be one leader and one challenger. Divide the 5.1 by two and round up to get the share for the leader, plus the normal 1 he already has:

5.1 / 2 = 2.55, round up to 3 and add 1, so the leader has 4x the stats of a typical member of this species of Thunderbeast.

5.1-3 = 2.1, plus the natural 1 that all adults have makes 3.1, so the challenger has 3.1x the stats of a typical member of the herd. Not enough to defeat the leader, but enough to take over should the leader be killed.

Eight of the 24 are thus defined, leaving 16 to be ‘normal’. 60-70% of these will be females, the balance will be males.

16 × 0.6 = 9.6; 16 × 0.7 = 11.2; 10 is nicely in the middle. So 10 females and 6 males. Unless threatened, the females will not attack (but they will stampede), so in terms of combativeness, the herd is a leader, a challenger, and 6 subordinate males. 2/3 of these will follow the leader outright, 1/3 the challenger, who – for the moment – will also follow the leader.

Bat Swarms

The Shadowfen is home t multiple species of bat. The most common are the Duskwings, which actually comprise more than 30 species, all minor variations. Rarer and much more feared are Whisperwings, and even rarer (but less fearsome) are Razortooth Bats.

Duskwings

Duskwings are dark brown and red in color, each species under this collective title slightly different. This species have driven out or out-competed just about everything else with wings in the Shadowfen.

Every island hosts a colony of bats, and 97% of them are Duskwings. Some have shorter wings, some larger; in some species, the ears are smaller, some larger, some flatter, some more erect, and so on.

On smaller islands, there may be only a dozen or two in the colony; on larger ones, a colony may number in the hundreds or even thousands.

Duskwings are essentially harmless (but annoying); they eat insects, and consider a humanoid nothing more than a convenient-but-strange tree.

Razortooth Bats

Razorteeth are the largest and rarest species of bat within the Shadowfen, and in most lists, that would see them listed last of the three major species as the deadliest variety.

Roughly 1% of the colonies Razorteeth. If the colony is small, they will be twice as large as normal but only 1/2 in number, and the equivalent of a Hawk or Eagle. These are sometimes called Gryphonwings. While their preferred prey are mice and other small mammals, they will occasionally attack something larger; collectively doing 1/2d6 each every round, all in a multitude of small bites and lacerations. The bats will then eat their fill and leave whatever’s left for something else to consume.

But, if the colony is large, they will be 1/2 normal size and four times in number, and they will attack in waves of swarms, doing 1HP per swarm member per round. Think of them as piranhas of the air. Only metal armor has any real hope of defeating their intent, but wearing heavy metal armor in this kind of environment is probably going to be even more lethal than the bats. These smaller Razortooth bats are commonly called Swarmfangs.

Whisperwings

One in fifty colonies, or 2%, are Whisperwings. Smaller than Duskwings, these bats navigate by sonar that is too high-pitched to be heard by human ears, and while they can fly, they are prone to glide silently until they strike – hence the name.

Whisperwings are blood-suckers. Their saliva contains a saliva that prevents clotting. They dig into the flesh and clothing with their claws and drink greedily for just 5-10 minutes, extracting perhaps 5-10mL (10-20 teaspoons). This is enough to sustain the Whisperwing for a day or so. It then releases it’s grip and flies away.

Obviously, victims aren’t inclined to wait for the Whisperwing to eat its fill; they usually do everything they can to dislodge the attacker. If the target of the attack is still active, a second Whisperwing will attempt to take the place of the first. One of them is bad enough, but 2 or 3 might be able to feast at the same time, and the blood loss can quickly add up.

Whisperwing bites in and of themselves can be quite dangerous, but the true danger posed lies in the persistent effects of their saliva, causing a slow, cumulative bleeding.

Once they think they have done enough damage, the Whisperwings will simply follow their prey and wait for blood loss to take effect; when the prey falters, they will strike again and again.

The Insidious Threat (Effective Blood Loss):

The true danger begins after the bats depart. The powerful anticoagulant agents in its saliva will prevent the bite wound from clotting for several hours (usually 4-6 hours, sometimes more). From each bite, a victim will experience an effective blood loss of approximately 200 mL (6.75 fluid oz) over that period. It happens as a slow, steady trickle that might go unnoticed or be easily dismissed, especially if the victim is asleep or inattentive.

Cumulative Impact on a Human Victim (Approx. 5 Liters Total Blood):

1. 1st Bite (Effective Loss: ~200 mL cumulative) –

   Symptoms: Very subtle – a slight lightheadedness when standing up too quickly, a feeling of being “off” or unusually tired. The small wound might ooze subtly for hours, perhaps staining clothing or bedding, but easily mistaken for a minor injury.

   Victim Awareness: Likely none (of the true danger). The victim might not even realize they’ve been bitten by anything significant.

2. 2nd Bite (Effective Loss: ~400 mL cumulative) –

   Symptoms: Noticeable pallor and coolness of the skin. Persistent fatigue. Heart rate might be slightly elevated even at rest. More pronounced dizziness or faintness upon exertion or standing. Increased thirst.

   Victim Awareness: The victim might feel consistently unwell, attributing it to a lingering cold, stress, or general malaise. The recurring small, oozing wounds might be puzzling but still dismissed as minor.

3. 3rd Bite (Effective Loss: ~600 mL cumulative)

   Symptoms: Definite signs of mild shock. Skin is clammy, pale, and cool. Heart rate is noticeably elevated (to 100-110 bpm). Breathing becomes slightly faster and shallower. Mental fog, difficulty concentrating, and/or increased anxiety. Significant thirst.

   Victim Awareness: The victim is now clearly unwell, probably wanting to stop and rest. For the first time, there might be a sense that the “minor” wounds are bleeding for an unusually long time, leading to concern, but the cumulative effect might still not be fully understood.

4. 4th Bite (Effective Loss: ~800 mL cumulative):

   Symptoms: The victim enters the more serious stages of shock. Blood pressure may begin to drop, and the pulse becomes weaker. There is a sense of profound fatigue and weakness; even simple tasks become exhausting. There are significant mental alterations, which – being mental – might not be recognized: confusion, irritability, disorientation, and/or even brief periods of semi-consciousness. There is a marked increase in breathing rate, but the breaths are shallow and feel ineffective. There is muscle weakness and potentially cramping.

   Victim Awareness: The victim is gravely ill, likely struggling to function, and may be unable to recognize the cause or seek help effectively.

5. 5th Bite (Effective Loss: ~1000 mL cumulative – 1 liter)

Symptoms: Symptoms are now reaching critical levels. Severe shock. Blood pressure is noticeably low. Heart rate is very rapid and weak (>120 bpm). Breathing is rapid, shallow, and distressed. Extreme weakness, barely able to move. Mental status severely impaired, potentially lapsing into unconsciousness, disorientation, or delirium. Skin is ashen, cold, and the victim would experience profusely sweating. There is barely enough blood to carry oxygen to vital organs; the body tends to shut off blood supply to the limbs, which lose significant power and strength as a result. It’s possible that a victim can no longer stand.

Outcome: At this point, most human prey are incapacitated, unable to flee or fight effectively, and will potentially collapse into unconsciousness. Saving throws are needed to avoid this from the most minor of tasks. If the initial bites were to the limbs, this is as bad as things are likely to get; over the next 48 hours, symptoms will progressively improve if the victim remains protected. But if the bites were to the torso or neck, as seems more likely, things get worse.

6. 6th Bite (Effective Loss: ~1200 mL cumulative – 1.2 liters)

   Symptoms: Life-threatening levels of hemorrhagic shock. Profoundly low blood pressure, barely noticeable pulse, gasping or irregular breathing. The victim is either deeply unconscious or comatose. Chest and/or abdominal pain as organ dysfunction begins. There is a high risk of irreversible brain, heart, or kidney damage, without immediate medical intervention of a very effective nature. There is a serious risk of death without such support.

7. >6th bite (Effective loss ~1400 mL cumulative – 1.4 liters)

   Symptoms: Without critical medical intervention, the victim is comatose and dying. Even with such intervention, serious organ damage can result. Extreme pain in the limbs, chest, and abdomen. Skin is ashen and gray, and may have a blue color. Muscles in the limbs are also dying and affected limbs will almost certainly need to be amputated before sepsis causes another fatal blow to the system.

Magical healing can restore the immediate damage and deny the blood loss, causing the victim to feel fine. However, at lower levels of healing magic, the victim will continue to bleed internally, and nothing short of Heal will restore the lost blood. This causes a sudden resurgence of symptoms a couple of hours later and an unusually rapid progression towards the level of greatest impact.

Close observation under these conditions may reveal areas of unexpected bruising in the abdominal area 30 minutes to an hour after the healing took place. This is the only visible warning until 30 minutes later when the symptoms begin to recur.

The bloodletting

As soon as the victim slows enough that it seems likely to succeed, another Whisperwing attack will take place, with the sole intent of inflicting 2-3 additional bites. This causes the symptoms to dramatically worsen over the ensuing hour or two.

When the victim can no longer resist, the entire colony will swarm the victim, each consuming additional blood until they have taken on board as much as 50 mL each, or the victim is sucked dry. This makes them sluggish and barely able to fly, but it will sustain a Whisperwing for a full week or more. This swarming behavior is known as the Bloodletting.

Though seriously drained of blood, the flesh remains palatable to most carnivores. Little survives the Bloodletting.

Other treatments

Once the danger is appreciated, there is a strong inclination to wash the wounds in an attempt to wash away the anticoagulant, but most of it is absorbed rapidly into the blood supply of the victim, so this is actually of very little benefit, and risks trading one problem for an even more serious one, infection.

If the bites are to a limb, a tornique is a treatment far more likely to be efficacious. Failing that, padding the wound and keeping it under pressure can halve or even quarter the blood loss, permitting the victim to survive until the anticoagulant begins to wear off.

Symptom Tracking

It’s extremely important for the GM to track the actual blood loss per wound each hour and use that, multiplied by the number of wounds, to describe the onset of symptoms as the problem progresses. If necessary, use smaller time intervals. Subtracting 11 and adding a d20 to the number of minutes creates additional realism and tension.

EG: 3 bites = 600mL loss over 4-6 hours = 100-125 mL loss per hour. ‘Bite 1’ level of effects require 200 mL loss, so 200/125 × 60 = 96, so 96-120 minutes after the attack the first symptoms appear. 192-240 minutes after the attack, the symptoms will worsen to “bite 2” levels, and 288-360 minutes later, “bite 3” level symptoms will manifest.

EG2: 4 bites = 800mL loss over 4-6 hours = 133.33-200 mL loss per hour = 2.22-3.33 mL per minute. 200mL (bite 1) effects in 60-90 minutes, bite 2 in 120-180 minutes, bite 3 in 180-270 minutes, and bite 4 in 240-360 minutes ie 4-6 hours. This is when there will be another attack by the Whisperwings seeking to add a fifth, sixth, and possibly 7th bites.

Secondary Attacks

Of course, bleeding into the water attracts the attention of all sorts of other predators. Nothing more need be said about that, really!

Spiders

There are five common varieties of spider of note: Weaverbugs, Kola Spiders, Moss Hunters, Shadowsails, and Lightfoot Terrors.

Weaverbugs

The Weaverbug ‘spider family’ – representing 93% of spider encounters in the Shadowfen – are harmless and are actually insects. Small, the largest specimen is only a cm across (about 4/10ths of an inch) and most species are half this size or less. There are dozens of species in this family and in general, only an expert can tell them apart. They have antenna that are shaped like legs and move in a similar way to legs, and which can even be used to support the ‘spider’, but detailed examination (under a magnifying glass or using a shrinking spell on the examiner) confirms that they actually only have 6 legs, not 8. These come in a wide variety of colors and are almost completely hairless, but so small that it’s hard to notice either characteristic. Unlike most insects, and blurring the line a little, these do use webbing for various purposes.

Kola Spiders

Kola Spiders are venomous but their bite isn’t strong enough to pierce most human flesh; they are only dangerous to infants, small children, and those already wounded. Which puts the bites of Whisperwing Bats into a wholly different context! They are comparatively rare, comprising 3% of all spider encounters in the Shadowfen.

They are uniformly black over the majority of their bodies with reddish or bluish sheens. There is little visible hair, they have very smooth abdomens and thoraxes. There are multiple species, distinguishable by textural patterns – brown or white spots – on the bodies. The typical size is 1-2 inches across.

Each species has a different venom with slightly different effects. Assign each a lethality rating from 0-19 and then distribute those points as follows:

• Organ Impact: Heart 4, Brain 4, Lungs 3, Nervous System / Muscle Control 3, Blood 2, Kidney 2, Liver 1, Skin 1
• Hours Of Impairment: score 1 for each hour or part thereof
• Quarter hours before impairment is noticeable: 0=5, 1=4, 2=3, 3=2, 4=1
• Degree of Impairment: Lethal 6, Critical 5, Serious 4, Rotting / Necrosis 3, Minor 2, Painful 1
• Recurrence of Symptoms (fresh save each time): 2-4 times a day for 1-6 days = 8, daily for 1-2 weeks = 7, every 2-5 days for 1-4 weeks = 6, weekly for 1-3 months = 5, every 2-4 weeks = 4, every 4-8 weeks = 3, Four or more times over the next 6 months = 2, Two or three times over the next 1-6 months = 1, Once or twice over the next week or fortnight = 0, At Bite Site only = -1, Never = -2
• Recurrence of symptoms, initial save result persists: As above but additional +1
• Save vs Symptoms: +1 for each penalty to the save, -1 for each bonus, maximum ±6

EG: Holy Cross Spider Venom, Rating 13 – affects Heart (4) and Muscle Control (3), Duration 1 hour and 2 hours respectively (1+2=3), Delay 1/4 hr and 2/4 hrs respectively (4+3=7), Impairment Minor x2 (4), Recurrence Never (-2), subtotal 4+3+3+7+4-2 = 19, so +6 to the saving throw to resist the poison. Causes heart palpitations and nervous twitching, sometimes accompanied by profuse sweating. Some people experience similar symptoms after consuming a strong curry.

Note that giving the bite two symptoms seriously weakens the lethality. Compare with:

EG2: Blood Rose Spider Venom, Rating 13 – affects heart (4), Duration 1 hr (1), Delay 15 minutes (4), Impairment: Lethal (6), Recurrence Never (-2), subtotal 4+1+4+6-2=13, so +0 to save. Causes cardiac arrest.

Kola spiders are rarely aggressive unless cornered or threatened. Their targets are small mammals and bats, and a single kill can provide food for a weeks or two.

Moss Hunters

Moss Hunters are venomous enough to be dangerous, though the bites of most will only make you sick for a couple of days. Unlike Kola Spiders, Moss Hunters tend to be furry and often black and/or green of various shades. They are generally anywhere from 1-6 inches across. Their bite can pierce skin, and for -2 lethality, even soft leather (-6 Lethality for hardened leather and chain mail!)

Determine Lethality as 3d6+2, and immediately adjust the total for the ‘piercing’ ability.

Moss hunters can be very hard to detect; they typically don’t string webs between trees, instead lurking on trunks and branches, under or in fallen logs, and under leafy cover.

Most are not overly aggressive.

Shadowsails

Shadowsails use webbing between their pairs of mid-legs legs to enable them to glide long distances, can be significant in size (about 10cm across) and are highly venomous.

These are actual hunter-killers, and are more likely to be aggressive when encountered. Fortunately, only 1% of spider encounters are of this kind.

They will rarely attack anything larger than a typical human, and their preferred targets are more on the scale of a typical lamb or medium dog.

Venom is 2d8+8 lethality, but they routinely give up 4 or 6 points of that to be able to pierce protections. Their appearance is black, gray, and/or white, and there are about a dozen species within the family.

Lightfoot Terrors

The largest spiders to be encountered in the Shadowfen, these come by their name honestly. They grow up to 3 feet across, and they hunt in packs of 6-20 adults. They camouflage both themselves and their webbing using leaves bitten off trees and held in place by webbing..

Their venom tends not to be highly lethal, but still scores very high on the lethality index because their bites are fully capable of penetrating any solid armor of less than +2 magical enchantment, and any non-solid armor (including hardened leather) regardless of magical bonuses.

Only one species of Lightfoot Terror are known at this time, and they comprise about 1% of spider encounters in the Shadowfen.

They have the intelligence of a dog or cat, and are fully capable of bringing down a steer. When hungry, they are extremely aggressive, and are also territorial.

Venom Lethality 2d10+10, minus 12 for their piercing abilities.

Ghostnacknids, Ghost Spiders, Spirit Spiders, and Phase Spiders

There are unconfirmed reports of a sixth family of dangerous spiders somewhere in the Shadowfen. These have the power of invisibility and/or insubstantiality, according to reports. The most common description is “pale and translucent white-green, ghost-like”. They are reported to be almost silent in their movements, a slight rustling of leaves, nothing more.

Some believe these to be the evolved ghosts of a former spider species; others think them still living. No-one knows for certain that they exist. Like Lightfoot Terrors, they can be multiple feet in diameter (including legs). They do not climb, if they exist at all – they are a ground-level threat. They are reportedly able to walk on water, and some describe a opalescent glow suggestive of a will-o-the-wisp.

One report suggests that they are intelligent enough to be tool-users and have language; this claims to have encountered a temple built by Ghost Spiders to a spider deity who elevated them from an animal state.

Everything about them is myth and legend – at least for now..

While most of the swamp is green and teeming with life, pockets are more like this image, which I ALMOST chose for the featured illustration. But, while this is more evocative, the other is more representative. No image credit provided, source Pixabay.

Snakes

It’s fair to say that travelers never notice 99.99% of the life around them in the Shadowfen. Most of it is tiny insects, worms, and the like, much of it hidden beneath the carpet of fallen leaves.

Not everything is so inattentive. There are multiple varieties of snake that call the Shadowfen home, and most of those won’t get noticed by casual travelers, either.

Snake venom is generally nastier than spider venom simply because the snake delivers more of whatever the compound is with a single bite. In fact, up to 100 times more. This means that even venoms that are relatively non-toxic can be delivered in sufficient quantities to pose a deadly threat. Per cc, snake venom is generally weaker; but per bite, it is often worse. This is reflected in comparatively high Venom Lethality Scores.

Leafsnakes

By far the most common variety are the most infrequently noticed. Leafsnakes consume the bugs and insects that live on the fallen vegetation, under which they glide almost completely unnoticed. Completely harmless to humans, they grow no more than a foot in length, and most species average around 20cm (8″) at most. Some, also known as Pygmy Snakes, don’t grow more than 1/4 this length. They tend to be only a few millimeters (2 tenths of an inch) in thickness, too. 73% of snake encounters will be with harmless Leafsnakes.

Nirvana Constrictors

Like all pythons, Nirvana Constrictors wrap themselves around prey and squeeze it to death. Strong enough to break bones, anything that is no taller than half the snake’s length is vulnerable. For most humans, normal pythons have to be around 10′ long to pose a threat.

But the Nirvana Constrictor has a hidden ace up its metaphoric sleeve – it’s skin exudes a contact poison that causes diminished intellect and induces a state of euphoria with hallucinations. None of this lasts, but even if the constrictor is unable to crush the human (who will do just about anything they can to cooperate), this leaves the victim easy prey for the many other threats of the Shadowfen – with the python on hand to consume it’s fair share of the spoils.

Strange as it may seem, there are some people who actually seek out young nirvana pythons, ones that are too small to threaten them, and take them as pets for these mind-altering experiences. This is a story that never ends well; the ‘pet owners’ are normally too out of it too often to notice when their pet has grown too large, with predictable results. But this then exposes others to the threat posed by the constrictor, and for this reason, keeping them as pets is illegal.

As a general rule, Nirvana Constructors are shy and avoid confrontation with humans. Only if desperately hungry will they attack anything human-sized, no matter how large they have grown, so if not taken as pets, they are generally harmless.

Nirvana Constructors will be around 2% of the snake encounters in the Shadowfen.

Green Mambas

From one of the more harmless varieties to one of the most lethal – Green Mambas are fairly small, only 2 or 3 feet in length at most, and only about an inch in diameter, but their venom is highly toxic, While bad-tempered, and prone to attack without warning or display if disturbed, they do not seek out humans. Their venom is a defensive weapon, from the snake’s point of view.

In color, these snakes are black with a vivid green underbelly. They like to climb trees and hang with their heads down from tree-limbs, going to ground only to hunt.

They are surprisingly common to encounter, constituting around 3% of the snakes found in the Shadowfen, but only one time in three will this generally lead to a confrontation – unless there is something more menacing in the vicinity, the Mamba will prefer to slither away peacefully. The big problem is that what they consider a threat and what humans consider a threat can vary widely, and lead to hostile responses for no apparent reason.

Black Mambas have a Venom Lethality of 30, and they don’t waste as much of it on penetrating bites – hardened leather is enough to turn one aside. They don’t need the penetration because they are also adept at leaping – if coiled to spring, they can cover a distance three times their own body-length. This is more than enough to target necks, faces, and other unprotected parts of the anatomy of their targets.

Riversnakes

Riversnakes have mastered a trick few other serpents can manage (or rediscovered it) – they actually have gills and breathe underwater. As such, there are usually many more of them around than people are ever aware of.

While their bite is potentially toxic (Venom lethality d6+6), it tends to be survivable, and they hardly ever attack humans. Fish and small amphibians are their primary diet. When encountering a swimming snake, if it dives under, it can usually be ignored; Riversnakes don’t linger at the surface for very long. If it stays visible, it’s probably something more serious.

3% of snake encounters will consist of a Riversnake brushing up against a traveler in the water.

In general, they move too quickly to ever step on one accidentally, so you have to really work at it to get one mad enough to attack you.

Brown, Black, Red, Blue-belly, & Indigo Crown Snakes (and half-a-dozen other snake species)

These common snake varieties account for a massive 15% of snake encounters. Lengths are generally around 2-4′, bodies are about 1-1.5 inches in diameter, and they are all toxic to some degree.

They have been listed as a group because collectively they are very similar in nature. The sequence shown is in decreasing order of aggression and lethality. The likelihood of encounter shown takes the relative level of aggression into account.

• Brown Snakes (2%) – highly aggressive, likely to take a bite just to see if it can. Lethality d6+16.
• Black Snakes (2%) – aggressive if you move towards them once they notice you – and they are more likely to do so than you are to spot them. Lethality d8+13.
• Red Snakes (1%) – aggressive if cornered or extremely hungry. The name is a slight misnomer, they are actually black snakes with a red belly. They will generally respond to a threat with a show of force – if that results in the threat backing off, that’s generally an end to the confrontation. If, however, they feel they have actually been attacked (not necessarily by whoever they consider a threat), they will not back down. Lethality d6+12.
• Blue-belly Snakes (2%) – a mottled green on top, and a vivid blue underneath, like Red snakes they use their bellies as a warning to potential threats. Those bodies are less round than those of other snakes in the Shadowfen, which sometimes leads to these being described as “Ribbon Snakes”. Some (but not all) can also puff out their necks to make themselves look bigger and more threatening. They are slightly more dangerous than Red Snakes because they can spit their venom. If they hit a target in the eyes – and they are very accurate at distances of less than 5′ – their venom causes temporary blindness in addition to any other effects (this has been taken into account with their Venom Lethality rating of d12+4).
• Indigo Crown Snakes (1%) – identifiable by a snout that is a vivid purple except on top of the head, which is somewhat flatter and blunter than most, and almost twice the size that would normally be expected of their body size. Indigo Crown snakes are very close to harmless – their bites can be troublesome, but they are incredibly placid by nature. Comparatively rare, but highly prized by farmers because they prefer to live on mice and other animals humans consider pests. Venom Lethality rating of d6+6.
• Other Snakes (7%) – roll d4+1 to determine which of the above they most resemble in behavior. Re-roll half of the results that come up 4 or 5. Lethality of d8+8.

Frost Serpents

Frost Serpents are white with scales outlined in a pale blue, grow up to 12′ in length and up to 3 inches in diameter, and have two unique tricks to their names: They are warm-blooded, and they exude cold as might a Cold Elemental.

This gives them a significant advantage over other creatures, because most slow down when extremely cold. Blood is shunted away from the limbs and extremities and used to keep the torso and it’s vital organs warm, resulting in a loss of strength, dexterity, and coordination.

The fiery hot blood of Frost Serpents permits them to be unaffected by this, making them extremely dangerous, but it comes at a cost: they need to consume ten times as much food as a typical snake, making them perpetually hungry and hostile.

Their breath is especially icy and constitutes a breath weapon akin to that of a small white dragon. Lethality (not counting cold attacks and environmental effects) is only 4+d6, but they hardly need venom to be deadly. Fortunately, only 1% of snake encounters are with a Frost Serpent.

Bloodfangs

While Red Snakes and Blue-belly Snakes try to scare threats away, they do at least have some level of threat with which to back up those intimidations. Bloodfangs are charlatans in comparison. When confronted, it puffs up it’s head and neck to almost three times normal size and begins to drip blood from its fangs, looking for all the world like a vampire in snake form. But it’s all show.

A Bloodfang’s teeth are hollow, which is where they store the blood supply used for this grizzly display. And that means that there’s no opportunity for the Bloodfang to store venom; it’s teeth are connected to the blood supply.

Since they aren’t used for attacks, and because they are hollow, the Bloodfang?s teeth are also fairly weak. They serve just fine for killing amphibians and small mammals, but that’s about it. You might think that this would make the Bloodfangs an effective substitute for Indigo Crown Snakes, but Bloodfangs are wanderers and won’t stay local, making them unreliable as pest controllers.

Venom lethality d6+6.

Again, only 1% of snake encounters.

Trumpet Snakes

The loudest snake ever!! Trumpet Snakes have conical snouts with multiple nostrils that they can open and close – just like the musical instrument for which they are named. Instinctively, they rise up and sway back and forth while ‘playing’ a melody on their ‘trumpet’. Those who encounter them often stop and relax, enjoying the ‘performance’ – and leaving themselves vulnerable.

Trumpet snakes have no fangs. They swallow prey either whole or in large chunks that their mouths can tear off a corpse, after it’s decomposed for a day or two.

They kill with their music – those ‘nostrils’ get closed by dart-shaped venomous ‘barbs’ that the powerful lungs of this snake can fire a distance of up to 10 feet.

Venom lethality 2d6+8.

Like the other most dangerous snakes, only 1% of snake encounters are with Trumpet Snakes – but they are amongst the most memorable.

Goldentailed Diamondheads

The last significant variety of snake are Goldentailed Diamondheads (1% chance per snake encounter). These are the most colorful of snakes with golden feathers on the rear half. Their bodies are a reddish brown with black patterning everywhere save the top of their heads, which sport a distinctive white diamond-shaped pattern on the top.

They have no venom to speak of, like several other snake varieties; instead, they can spit a stream of acid, akin to a small black dragon.

The name is actually a misnomer; these are actually lizards, but they withdraw their limbs into their bodies to move from place to place. The legs, specifically the claws, are only used to dismember a victim after it has been killed by an acid attack.

Other threats in the Shadowfen

There are four other significant encounters that might take place in the Shadowfen. This excludes a whole host of encounters that are probably not going to be of great significance, such as with Frogs, Toadstools, Mice, and so on.

Daydreamer

The daydreamer is a nocturnal feline with great leaping powers. They tend so spend their days sleeping in the nooks of trees, hence the name. Think of them as a Puma and you won’t be too far off the mark.

Fenwolves

Fenwolves most closely resemble wolves crossed with chimpanzees. They perambulate from tree-limb to tree-limb, dropping to the ‘ground’ only when it is considered safe. They walk on all fours, their forelimbs being longer and stronger than their hind legs.

They are quite intelligent as a species and have been flirting with tool use for as long as they have been known about while never quite grasping the concept. If there is a task that needs doing and am implement nearby that improves the process involved, they will start doing the task manually, notice the tool, figure out how to use it after trying various alternatives, complete the task – and then discard the tool.

They appear to have a 2000 word vocabulary of hoots, hollers, shrieks, and shouts – but fill most of their dialogue with random noise that means nothing. The current theory is that this practice stems from a time when there were two related and competing species, and that the Fenwolves began to suspect their rivals of attempting to decipher their words; to confound this, they began introducing nonsense in between actual communications.

In combat, they attack as a pack under the command of a pack leader who seeks a position above the combat and directs his ‘troops’ with specific instructions. Their snouts are those of a rottweiler, but it’s their arms that are their greatest natural weapons. They not only give the creatures a reach as great as their body-length, they make them dexterous, nimble, and lightning-fast. They clearly have a stratified society with rewards and social mobility.

The uninformed may think that the chimpanzee-aspects of their personalities will leaven and improve their canine instincts. To educate them, I present the following paraphrased anecdote to describe the personality of the Fenwolf:

A new keeper at a zoo was thrown into the deep end when placed in charge of the ape enclosure. Part of her job was to retrieve the food bowls at the end of each meal. For the first week or two all went well, and the apes soon learned that placing the bowl within reach of a slot in the solid door meant that they were fed more quickly, and even got the occasional treat as an extra. At the end of this period, one of the apes placed the bowl just out of reach; the keeper was naively about to reach through the slot for it when a more senior keeper who had been keeping an eye on her hollered at her to stop. Taking the new keeper to the edge of the slot, she discovered that the chimp was waiting behind the door to rip her arm off when she extended it, giving the chimp access to the enclosure keys.

Fenwolves are carnivores, making them that much worse. They are fully capable of feigning friendship until in a position to take advantage of those they encounter. They have no morality or ethics, being concerned first with the welfare of the pack and second with their personal gratification. Anything more is a distant third and to be exploited in order to achieve the first two goals.

They are much stronger than they appear on the surface, and capable of inflicting significant harm – a capability exacerbated by their ability to lull intruders into a false sense of security. It must be remembered that in a hostile environment like the Shadowfen, they not only hold their own but are probably best considered the apex predator. Clever and problem-solvers, they are extremely dangerous – when they want to be.

The best approach to dealing with them is to mirror their apparent mood – if they are calm, you be even more calm. If placid, offer them food to make them even more placid. If aroused, sit back on your haunches and crouch submissively; once they feel in a position of dominance, they will be less threatened and will calm down. For a while. And, at the first opportunity, get as far away as possible, distracting from possible pursuit by leaving another gift of food.

Don’t be surprised is the same pack show up the next day, and the one after, and the one after that, however; they will exploit fully any benefit they can gain. They will establish a pattern of seeming to leave after being satisfied – until one day when, having lured you into closer proximity with their ‘placid ways’, they attack. A key warning behavior comes from sitting on armor and weapons with childlike innocence – they recognize tool use in others and are covertly denying access to those tools. They may even make a game of it, carrying one of their members aloft on a shoulder-height shield carried by two or three more, with the rider pointing and giving directions to its bearers. All the better to lull those they encounter into a false sense of security.

They do not seem to have a sense of humiliation the way that others do; their egos are such that they are completely happy to play the fool or the child – if it gets them what they want in the end.

Swamp Tuskers

There’s a legend from the Australian Outback of the Razorback, which in turn has been conflated with a similar legend from the southern US – which one came up with the concept and associated it with the term first is completely unclear. A razorback is a feral pig of unusual size, strength, ferocity, and meanness. In modern times, feral pigs are pigs released or that have escaped from domestic captivity,as distinguished from those who were always wild.

Swamp Tuskers are to Razorbacks as Wild Pigs are to Feral. The size of a hippo and just as strong, armored, and bad-tempered; the only saving grace is that most of them are not as intelligent as pigs are, generally.

Porcine intelligence is commonly underrated; farmers often conflate innate laziness for a lack of understanding. They are slower thinkers than most species but more methodological, and quite capable of making associations within their environments. Swamp Tuskers are generally less adept at this, as is often the case with bullies of unusual size and strength, especially when coupled with a sour and hot-headed disposition.

About one in fifty is a true menace, however, retaining more of the normal porcine intellect and coupling it with their capacity for violence and destruction. They are quite capable of raiding from the ‘security’ of the Shadowfen into surrounding territories in search of better food supplies.

In the swamps, they translate their intelligence into a natural affinity for the environment, seeming to instinctively know which ground is strong enough to stand on and which is dangerous, where hostile forces are located, where to avoid and where food is available for the taking. It is thought that they maintain and continuously update a mental map of their surroundings which manifests as this ‘instinct’.

If it were not for the Fenwolves, sheer size and ferocity would probably make Swamp Tuskers the dominant hunters of the Shadowfen.

Bandits & Criminals

There are lots of environments easily reachable from Splinter or Gardenia to which criminals and bandits can flee and establish themselves, but most of them come with drawbacks. The Desert is short of food save in the oases of the Dramedyn. You could live on fish for a while, but as a long-term refuge, it’s a bust. Ditto the wastelands of the Ironbarb Crags. The forests are full of elves and elvish creatures, and the mountains, of Dwarves – either of whom would take great delight in trading a captured human criminal for rewards and considerations. The one place where the only threats are natural and environmental and where food is ample (if you know where to look) is the Shadowfen.

Inevitably, then, this is where they run to, that the same dangers that pose a risk for them will also work to shield them from the law.

At any given time, there are not going to be many such – one bandit camp and perhaps half a dozen living solitary lives in the wilderness – but they are not the trusting kind and don’t make good neighbors. They are more likely to kill you first and ask questions later.

From time to time, when an especially nasty specimen has fled into the Shadowfen, the Crown will sponsor an expedition into the fens to hunt for them. If bandits learn something of the sort is under consideration, they will often hunt down the perpetrator themselves and leave him or her trussed-up somewhere where an authority will (eventually) find them – in effect, trading a limited policing function for their own continued liberty.

Anyone who knows where in the fens they are based poses a threat to that liberty, and they respond to such exactly as you would expect: they hide if they can, but prepare for violence without mercy.

Resources from the Shadowfen

Aside from those fleeing legal repercussions, you would have to wonder why anyone would enter the Shadowfen. Dangers abound there, after all, and very little of what has been described as resident would qualify as especially tasty. Fishing along the river is as close as you get, and that can be done without going deeply into the fens at all.

There are four major resources and one minor one to attract brave outsiders, and they succeed in doing so with great regularity.

1. Oil
   From deep beneath the ground, sometimes what flows to the surface is more substantial than just bubbles of marsh gas. Dark black or blue slicks form little rainbows on the surface, killing many creatures – but when collected and purified (and, usually, perfumed), this supplies lighting for the village of Splinter and some of the larger hamlets of Gardenia.

2. Lumber
   Elves could supply all the lumber that is needed from their forests, but they manage this resource very sharply and occasionally, what they are willing to sell is not enough. The lumber of the trees that grow in the Shadowfen is quite different to the hard- and soft-woods provided by the Forests; it’s ideal for boats and light purposes because it contains little pockets of air, making in naturally light and buoyant. It’s also better, for the same reasons, for the construction of any tool handle that doesn’t need the resilience of a hardwood, being that much lighter than the alternatives – so rakes and brooms and the like. You would prefer not to use it for an ax or pick, but within it’s limitations, it can be the most desirable option.

3. Herbs
   There are a number of herbs that grow in the Shadowfen that simply will not prosper outside of it – mints, lemondrops, snowdew, and so on. Farmers have been trying and failing to domesticate these wild herbs for as long as anyone can remember. The dangers of the Shadowfen are such that supply of them can be irregular, but that only reinforces their popularity as an occasional treat.

4. Fungus
   There are also varieties of Mushroom that grow in the Shadowfen and nowhere else. Fanshrooms over one foot across; Thunderhead Mushrooms that stand 3′ tall and 1′ across, enough to feed a large family several meals on their own, let alone when married to meats and other vegetables; and Purple Glories, with their ‘thin’ six-inch stalks and broad purple crowns, up to four feet in diameter, large enough (but not strong enough) to seat an adult, and quite strong enough to bear the weight of a child of 5 summers. Each part of a Purple Glory carries a different flavor, ranging from creamy to nutty, and has many different recipes deriving from them. It is not uncommon in Splinter for them to be halved or quartered for sale. But first, they have to be found and gathered.

5. Fish
   I spoke dismissively of the fishing outside of the river with good reason; while there are many varieties of aquatic life that can’t be found outside of the Shadowfen, they are generally considered tasteless or bland or even unpalatable. That said, they can be cheap and abundant, and there are times when that outweighs other considerations.

   In fact, it is quite normal for a family to build a meal around a Flatfish, Pufferfish, Slime Eel, or Gray Catfish in order to save enough money to be able to eat better for a day or two afterwards.

   It is the height of cuisine in Splinter and Gardenia to make these fish palatable or even tasty. Sauces, herbs, and spices are the usual technique but the best answers use such expensive ingredients that they defeat the purpose of the cheaper meal. “Any fool who can burn water can make Slime Eel tasty by throwing enough wealth away,” it is said. The art comes from devising a new recipe that achieves the same ends without great expense, and doing so without employing overly-strong flavors is even more widely revered.

   Some examples:

        Flatfish:
             Pan-roasted Flatfish in Cress and Nut Soup;
             Fillet of Stuffed Flatfish Turine with Mushroom;
             Flatfish cured in Spiced Wine with Tubers.

        Pufferfish:
             Pork Stew in Pufferfish;
             Flambe of Puffer;
             Ground Puffer with barley and Herb Sauce.

        Slime Eel:
             Comfy of Eel in White sauce with radishes;
             Eel cooked in Mushroom Stalk;
             Dried Eel stewed in Lemondrops.

        Gray Catfish:
             Herbed Catfish with Wintermelon;
             Roast Apple and Catfish;
             Spiced Catfish.

Adventuring in the Shadowfen

No-one enters the Shadowfen casually; it is always done with a specific purpose in mind, and few remain once that purpose has been achieved. Threats will be encountered daily (if not more often) before that purpose is complete. Adventuring in the Shadowfen is clearly mission-oriented and episodic, and that means that it has never been systematically explored.

It follows that no-one knows what might be hidden away in there, waiting to be discovered. Surprises will only get uncovered by accidental discovery, an unexpected complication to an unrelated mission.

Regions Of The Shadowfen

All this means that little is known in terms of regions of the Shadowfen, and the tendency of smaller ‘islands’ to wander unpredictably only adds to this confusion. Still, there are a few observations that can be made.

North vs South

The Zugarth Mountains lie to the east – but a spur of them runs to both the North and South. From three sides, then, there are water-sources feeding into the Everflow – small wonder that the place is waterlogged, to put it very mildly.

The fourth direction, to the west, is no more welcoming. In this direction lies the Ironbarb Crags.

The Shadowfen is divided into two unequal parts by the Everflow, which enters from the Northwest and flows to the west before finding a gap in the mountain spur and turning to the North through it.

Unless, of course, you’re actually traveling on the river (see ‘Faster Ways Out Of The Shadowfen, below).

About 1/4 of the Shadowfen lies to the north of the Everflow, and 3/4 of it, to the south.

Largest Island

The largest island found within the Shadowfen to date is named Giselle – no-one remembers why. It’s a solid landmass about 18 miles across, roughly circular in shape, with a teardrop tail to the north that ‘droops’ to the west. Well, actually, ‘solid’ is a bit of a misnomer; it’s a bog with veins of dryer land running across it from the south to the north. As such, it’s one of the very few permanent features of the environment, and the center of economic activity. Located just south of the Everflow on it’s eastern side, it’s relatively easy to find and often acts as a staging point for deeper explorations.

Blackwater

Due south (more or less) of Giselle is “Blackwater”, a region of the Shadowfen in which the waters are unusually dark in tone. Sometimes Blackwater has a very dark reddish shine, but most of the time it’s an even darker blue. No-one knows what causes it. Islands that ‘float’ into the area and linger tend to die off (see the image above); whether this is related to cause or effect is not known.

Blackwater causes more deaths than any other single phenomenon in the Shadowfen, because – from time to time – travelers who cut across it (instead of circling around it) report seeing something glinting in the riverbed, like gold. Growing excited, they bend their efforts to attempting to retrieve whatever they have seen – finding nothing, but staying too long in the vicinity of a lot of hungry creatures on the dying ‘island’ landmass.

No matter how many times people get warned about Blackwater, though, people still get taken in by whatever causes the glinting, even though nothing of value has ever been retrieved from the riverbeds there.

Green Lake

Another strange and inexplicable phenomenon lies in the approximate center of the Shadowfen on the western side – a region about 12 miles across that is never occupied by landmass, only a vast lake of greenish algae floating on the water. It is speculated that ridges in the riverbeds shape the currents to produce this phenomenon, steering ‘land’ islands away from the ‘lake’, but no-one knows for sure.

From time to time there are reports of amphibious humanoids that live in underwater caves in the center of Green Lake. These reports are completely unverified – not even the existence of the caves is certain – but, if true, this is undoubtedly related to the causes of the Lake.

Faster Ways Out If The Shadowfen

There are, fortunately, more quick ways in and out of the Shadowfen than most places in Topologia. It can, in some ways, be considered the hub around which the entire setting revolves (though the same can be said of Splinter, or of the Zugarth Mountains).

• Splinter Sewer / Moss Curtain
  It’s almost impossible to find the other end of it, but wading through the sewers in Splinter sometimes leads you to an area where moss forms a curtain over a sewer pipe. Brush it aside and you emerge into one of the thousands of creeks and streams that separate floating islands in the Shadowfen. Turn around, and the curtain of moss is hanging from a tree limb – brush it aside, and there is just more creek beyond it. Unlike most of the topological worms that connect place A to point B, this is almost always just one way.

  But, at the same time, there can be times when you can be rushing up one of those streams and the sky will suddenly dim and grow dark, and you will find yourself back in that same sewer. And if you then reverse course, you end up back in the Shadowfen – but nowhere near wherever you were.

  Because the islands float around and rearrange themselves continuously, you can never predict either arrival point or where that ‘return passage’ might be – both are best taken as questions of sheer luck, good or bad.

• Rainbow Bridge
  I talked about this one under the heading of Gardenia. While this is a true two-way crossing, the location of the Shadowfen end of the bridge is largely unpredictable – but it is always somewhere close to the Everflow, and that makes it one of the more convenient choices – especially if you bring a boat that is suited to the environment.

• Stagnant Green Pool
  Not to be confused with Green Lake, this is a pool about three feet across, thick with algae and slime. Water currents heading toward it seem to mysteriously always turn aside, sometimes at the last possible moment, leaving the waters with a stagnant stench that is literally eye-watering. It is also comparatively deep, as waterways in the Shadowfen go, more than enough that the carpet of green is above your head if you stand on the bottom.

  When you do so, and look up, and dare to open your eyes, two sources of green light can be dimly seen through the foul water – one above you and one not. Swim for the second of these, and you will emerge in a completely different stagnant green pool deep in the Forest of Asthar.

• Hollow Tree
  I described this as a feature of the Glassdust Desert. This end of it works exactly the same way as the other. Where in the Shadowfen you arrive is once again unpredictable – this time, you might be close to the Northern mountain spur, next time in the central eastern regions, and the time after that, in the southwestern fens. The only certainty seems to be that it will be an inconvenient distance from there to wherever you want to go.

• The Everflow
  As usual, the path of the Everflow is critically important to the topological confusion that is Topologia. Downriver of the Shadowfen, you find the Ironbarb Crags, then the Glassdust Desert, Gardenia, and the town of splinter – beyond which lies the Everflow Plunge and the Shadowfen again.

  Unless, that is, you entered the Shadowfen directly from the Zugarth Mountains, in which case the Everflow – without ever dividing or joining with another watercourse of similar size – will flow from the Shadowfen into the Ironbarb Crags, the Glassdust Desert, the Forest of Asthar, Gardenia, and then Splinter.

  Upriver is far simpler – at least so far. The Everflow appears to head up into the mountains but enters a thickly wooded area that turns into the Forest of Asthar on the lower slopes, ultimately winding its way into those mountains – which have to therefore be 60 miles or more further away than they appear to be from the Shadowfen. Which, in turn, means that parts of the Shadowfen are up to 60 miles further away than you think.

  Such are the paradoxes of Topologia.

Wow, I hadn’t really intended to write anything of anywhere near this length for any of the Topologia posts, let alone one describing a single land within the campaign setting – but inspiration kept striking, I guess. Enjoy!

The good news is that at least 90% of this content can be isolated from the rest of Topologia and used as a standalone bog somewhere….