The Trackless
The Trackless stretches all along the eastern edge of the Great Land. To travel along the inner edge would take several Moons to go from the southern side to the most northern section.
Only this born within The Trackless can have a chance to navigate it. None born outside has ever made it more than a few days travel into it, without becoming lost. Legends and rumors abound of those lost in there for several handfuls of days being able to find their way out, physically alive. Few are the truths to such tales.
The Trackless is a massive stretch of swamp, bayou, and bog that runs along the eastern side of the super continent known as The Great Land. It extends at least 2000 miles in distance from top to bottom, having a depth estimated at least 500 miles or more at the widest part. An ecology and environment all to its self. In the Great Land there are other swamps and bogs and such. There is only one Trackless.
The nature of the place changes depending on where it is at. The southern portion is more mangroves, bayou styled land, hummocks and alligators abounding. Much more navigational on the waters, until the land closes in and the route disappears. The waters are full of alligators, water moccasins, and worse. Spots where one moment the soft ground underneath in the water gives way to a hole hundreds of feet deep with a rip current pulling the unwary to the bottom. Every step is a potential deathtrap for those not born to it.
The middle section is more swamp, more dry spots, just as many ways to perish. Filled with poisonous insects, toxic mushrooms and toadstools, and other humanoid perils. At times the muck will seem to grab a hold of a leg and something with teeth, or fangs, will gnaw and gnaw until only white bone is left on the screaming victim.
Heading more north it gets colder and colder until the waters are more frozen, the swamp is more peat and bog, and fog rises in strange patches all across it. Still one solitary land, with multiple landscapes within it. Up north the dangers are more frostbite, exposure, large predatory creatures searching for their next meal.
Common denizens all across The Trackless includes humans born within the space and able to naturally navigate the usually landmark lacking landscape, lizard like humanoids cursed by ancestral matings, witches and hags, all manner of poisons and toxins leeching out of the waters and soils and into the plant and animal life. In places are giant bears festooned with fungus and mange, competing with cougars and bob cats on dry land, while alligators in the south and crocodiles more in the center vie to control the waters.
Dangers lurk around every tree and in each pool of water for those not born here. For those native to The Trackless, the dangers remain but the instincts they come with aid in avoiding many things that others would fall prey too.
Welcome to The Trackless
Later posts will bring in more details, NPCs, encounters within The Trackless, as well as those that live just outside it and how they interact with the dangerous place that is just beyond their forests and homes.
No comments:
Post a Comment