![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thecrossingmods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
thecrossingooc2025-05-08 10:10 am
COMMUNITY WORLDBUILDING #2: THE MARSH
We're back again! Welcome to the Marsh. Thank you all for your patience and kind words while we got things put together; we'll work on finding a way to ensure the setting changeovers go more smoothly in the future!
That said, as with the Desert before, there are opportunities for you to help put some finishing touches on!
There are two options for players to contribute to the setting: creatures, and locations. These can be something entirely new that you cook up yourselves, or it can be inspired (directly or indirectly) by a canon setting, be it yours, someone else's, or one not yet represented in the game.
While it is definitely not required that these contributions be inspired by a canon setting, we encourage it as a way for the setting to begin reflecting characters back to them!
Feel free also to use this post to brainstorm, discuss, or plot as is helpful for you!
Creatures may be anything you like, plant or animal, so long as it generally correlates with the theme of the setting (ie, a swamp biome). While there is no limit on including predatory creatures in the bestiary, keep in mind that characters can't be hurt by anything outside of a Crossing event, so no creature can be used as a material threat to characters... until The Crossing, of course.
To submit a creature, fill out this form and reply in a comment here.
Locations should be small (in the sense that they could be easily explored/traversed by a single character), and like creatures generally be on-theme with the setting. They will be accessible to characters who choose to explore the Marsh via the available rowboats. In contrast to the Desert, it will be much easier to map things once they have been found.
To submit a location, fill out this form and reply in a comment here.
LOCATIONS
no subject
LOCATION NAME: Hertasi swamp
LOCATION DESCRIPTION: A section of swamp that's a bit warmer and shallower than the rest and full of plant and animal life. This is the territory of a specific population of hertasi, lizard folk who stand between three and four feet tall. You might not be able to tell at a glance that they've shaped it extensively to their needs, including by making it seem unpleasant. It smells like fish and rotting vegetation and the reeds grow higher than the head of anyone venturing in, making it easy to lose your way. Leeches and biting insects throng, though for the dead, leeches just kind of hang on to you for a while and drop off and biting insects just poke at you ineffectually. There are a lot of steep underwater drop offs, and bits of 'dry land' that turn out to be slippery mud under a bit of grass.
However there are 'paths' in this swamp vaguely marked by blue flowers. Oh, follow them and you do have to wade through up to waist-deep water or take a shallow boat (hertasi boats work for this but are kinda tippy), and they meander, but the footing is trustworthy, it never gets too deep, and pests are less prevalent. Follow a path and you might pass through rice paddies with ducks and fish to reach the hertasi village.
The village is on drier ground, built into a hill. It's canonically on the edge of the swamp but here it might be an island. Hertasi caves... you know what we'll compare them to hobbit holes. There's more of a tendency for beaded curtains than doors and it's altogether simpler but the homes are dry and comfortably furnished, lined with stone set into cement. With ceilings that are rarely above five feet. You probably can't find any hertasi weapons but there are small, sharp knives in their kitchens, which are reasonably well stocked.
CANON INSPIRED? Heralds of Valdemar
no subject
LOCATION DESCRIPTION: It's a marsh! ....in a cave!!!
...The region called "Waterfall" is a section of the caves where the rock is narrower than most other regions, with water flowing in streams and waterfalls or pooling in a lot of places. It's created fairly natural rooms and hallways over time, especially as the water level has eroded its way downwards. The stone is overall tinted blue-violet, thanks at least in part to the various glowing crystals embedded in the rocks (mostly in the walls and ceilings, in a mix of blues, purples, and pinks). I doubt an entire mountain will plop itself down in the Marsh, so maybe this is more of a small jagged hill overhanging the marsh, providing enough rock to simulate the effect from 1-3 sides?
Either way it's a dimly lit area, where much of the light comes from the glowing crystals, the occasional bioluminescent plants (flowers and mushrooms), and some regions of likewise luminescent blue water. There's streams winding back and forth and sometimes cascading down over a slope or ledge, there's dirt paths and rock ledges connected by the occasional short bridge.
And unlike the Cavern from earlier in the Crossing, there's plenty of flora to be found. Reeds and water lilies rooted in the currents, varied length blue grasses and brighter blue mushrooms up on the banks, with some taller stemmed growths that might be trees or mushrooms or something between. Here and there, people may catch whispering sounds emitting from brightly glowing blue flowers - and anyone who talks near one may find, on going near it, that the flower now echoes the last thing said nearby.
In other areas, there may be other flowers - bright pink, though not glowing, easy to uproot and move around (and immediately blossoming when transplanted in a row). For other forms of life, the occasional snail may be wandering around, some fish or frogs moving about in the water, and somewhat gelatinous slimes burbling on the banks.
On some walls, one might find old and worn out stone plaques, carved with scattered messages outlining a history and reflections on it: a world where monsters and humans once lived together, before the humans started a sudden war ending in the monsters' surrender and banishment underground.
This location submission is focused on a specific 'room' in Undertale, as depicted in this cropped map, because glowing water is pretty, and I wanted the option of Echo Flowers for people to play with if they want! But the Waterfall region overall is small enough that someone determined could explore it themselves fairly well, so I want all of it to be an option.
(I will say that the whole region is difficult to map, since the caves seem to twist back on themselves in ways that have made difficulty for fans over the years. Some attempts to map it have gone like this map (as compiled by Papikari and MaxDuBoisThesis of DeviantArt), with sections floating separately and symbols directing how they connect - some of the paths that seem to overlap each other. I personally prefer this depiction (by rqaa3721 of Reddit), as it lays out the overall "path" players take through the area, and conveys how wide the disproportionately small gap that the game's creator makes fun of in a song title might be.)
The history plaques scattered across Waterfall, written out, for reference:
CANON INSPIRED? Yes, from Undertale!