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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.
QUESTIONS?
CREATURES
LOCATIONS
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Pathologic Herbs
CREATURE DESCRIPTION: All are herbs found in the Steppe outside the Town-On-Gorkhon. They can be used to brew tintures, and even alcohol called Twyrine which is known for it's hallucinogenic effects. However you'd need special equipment and know how to do so, both of which Dankovsky himself does not have. (Perhaps another might? Time will tell.)
The pollen given off by the herbs causes dizziness, fatigue, and headaches. It also will make the Marsh smell distinctly of herbs as the scent is incredibly strong.
There's more information and pictures of all the herbs located here.
CANON INSPIRED? Pathologic!
Shell-Ebrant
CREATURE DESCRIPTION: Secretly? A slug. A nightmare I carry over from the SNES era. A creature who lurks behind the surface and appears randomly to unsuspecting people when the water is deep enough for it to snail around- (with a very flexible body, it doesn't actually require so much space. Perks of having no skeleton or shell despite the name). Once the stage is set? The slug will start 'singing' emitting unpleasant sounds with its trumpet like mouth and any attempt of escaping? It will be met with Shell-ebrant spitting water toward whoever he's interacting with as he attempts to push them in the water as punishment. A good excuse to have your character taking a bath in case you need one. Not really aggressive or dangerous, just infuriatingly loud and annoying.
CANON INSPIRED? Shamelessly stole from Donkey Kong 3 but not faithful to the canon incarnation.
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CREATURE DESCRIPTION: Some of the smaller houses in the village seem a bit newer and are on only two stilts each! Oddly thick stilts. These one or two-room huts are a little warmer and cozier than the larger ones, with featherbeds and plush comforters and other such furnishings, and they don't have any leftover items in them. The doors all seem to open at the merest touch of your hand and there's a certain sense of presence, but not a malicious one. There might be what looks like a doghouse, of all things, on the floor.
Get too comfortable in there and you may sense movement or hear splashing, but since the hut is being very careful ('tiptoeing', you might say, if it didn't have feet like this), it's very possible for it to abduct you without your knowledge and settle down elsewhere in the swamp, usually in the company of other huts.
Baby walking huts ('huttlets') resemble doghouses with legs and are a lot more active. They seem shy of most people and hide under the boardwalks when they sense them, but are bolder around people who've got abducted and like to sprint about and chase each other, retreating to the interiors of the adults to rest or hide from danger. The adults will attack anything that seems to be a threat to the young, may defend humans, and hate knobby white spiders. They crouch down and crunch killed threats under themselves and seem to be eating but it's hard to tell how, or if they're actually alive.
Walking huts won't go near the firedamp and don't park long in the groves. If one carries you off, eventually it will return to the village but it may take a while. Some of the huts come off as more malicious or mischievous, some more protective. You get the sense that they find people... cute? Maybe humans seem like huttlets.
CANON INSPIRED? These are inspired by Baba Yaga's chicken-footed hut from Russian mythology, but aren't the same thing.
and several from Star Wars Legends:
CREATURE NAME: Knobby white spiders and gnarltrees.
CREATURE DESCRIPTION: There are giant white spider-things scrambling around in the grove, ranging from fairly delicate and knee high to lumbering ones with the mass of a car. They're hunting animals (and huttlets) and being hunted in turn. Sometimes you find a big one that's stopped moving, plunged its "mouth" and legs into the ground, and started to grow branches and stretch upwards... then you notice that a number of trees have high, arched roots a bit like legs, and bark with a similar knobby texture.
The spiders are the young "spore" stage of gnarltrees, which feed and grow and find likely places to plant themselves. Little ones are common, larger ones increasingly rare. Car-sized spiders with branch-buds can sometimes be seen testing different spots, uprooting and relocating, but they're getting too big to walk and have to make a choice. There's a stage where their 'mouths' are rooted but they can still move their leg-roots and may kick away threats - they hate walking huts! After that they're totally sessile and as their bark darkens they become indistinguishable from regular trees. Spiders will venture nowhere near firedamp. They're flammable!
CREATURE NAME: Jubba bird
CREATURE DESCRIPTION: Goofy-looking big-mouthed birds(?) around a foot tall, with leathery tails and bodies and crests like pompoms. Flocks of them will drive off large knobby white spiders, kill and eat small ones, and nest in gnarltrees. They also eat insects and small animals.
Despite looking very clownish, jubba birds act quite proud and as if they're very beautiful, seeming to present their "best sides" for observers. They're very intelligent as well as vain, but their most notable trait is their song, an eerie whistle that's oddly soothing to anything that hears it. Admire them and their song, maybe rescue an egg or hatchling if a nest gives way, and you can befriend them.
CREATURE NAME: Nunas or swamp turkeys.
CREATURE DESCRIPTION: They look kind of like frogs crossed with chickens. Almost spherical green animals with two birdlike legs, no wings or arms, and wattles along their backs and near their wide, gaping beaks. They're mainly herbivores but also scratch for invertebrates, and lay huge striped eggs that hatch up to ten chicks which scamper after their mothers.
They are very curious and very stupid. Everything remotely predatory eats them and they are delicious, but they're fast and fecund so this doesn't seem to get them down. Walking huts seem to think they resemble huttlets and will transport them from place to place. You can find them anywhere, often inexplicably. On a roof? Way up a tree? Splashing through the grove? Past the firedamp on the far banks? Sometimes you see nunas there.
CREATURE NAME: Blarth
CREATURE DESCRIPTION: Imagine a rotund pug as big as a mastiff, with a long tail with 'fingers' on the end, a long licking tongue that drools copiously, and hairless blue-gray skin. They appear to be constantly smiling and are friendly, but careful, pet one too much and it will follow you around for a while, drooling and laying in inconvenient places hoping for more attention. Blarths are good swimmers and also surprisingly agile on land. While they are predators, it's exclusively of small animals, most of them lured or snatched by their tails. They'll eat nuna chicks but don't have the dentition to tear apart adults.
Exclusively found in walkway territory, especially near the village, but if you befriend one it may follow you deeper into the Marsh. This isn't a bad thing as long as you're not straining to listen for anything as they make a fair amount of noise panting and slobbering. Fall into the water near a blarth, and chances are it will jump in to rescue you like a dolphin might, buoying you up and trying to swim you to safety.
CREATURE NAME: Otta
CREATURE DESCRIPTION: These are just black and white alien otters with moustaches. They'll use stones to crack open shellfish on their bellies like sea otters. They scamper around and are fun to watch but are not amenable to petting, and have a mischievous tendency to creep up on lazing blarths, nip them, and scamper away. They'll also eat jubba bird eggs and nestlings. The birds hate them.
CREATURE NAME: Swamp slug
CREATURE DESCRIPTION: These are truly massive white slug-centipede-snakes with great staring yellow eyes and foul-smelling mucus, up to thirty feet long and able to rear their front ends up to about nine feet. They'll gulp down and eat anything organic, rasping it to slush with their countless esophageal teeth. If it's moving, first they'll subdue it by bashing it with their heads.
Everything hates swamp slugs. Walking huts kick them fervently and they're never close to the village. Spiders swarm and devour them so they're rarely found in the grove. Fortunately, if you encounter one on the boardwalk and can move away at a power walk, you can outdistance it and it won't pursue. Otherwise... look for a pale shape under the water, and stay away. They are not specifically predators of people but will try anything that gets close. The biggest ones could manage to swallow a human whole, which wouldn't be fun for anyone involved.
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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
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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!
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CREATURE DESCRIPTION: Echo flowers are blue and bioluminsecent, with a single six-petaled flower at the top of a stem, seemingly able to grow from soil and rock alike.
They're named for their odd magical trait of retaining sounds and echoing those same sounds when interacted with - let's say, when they move. So if someone talks near a flower, and then someone or something brushes against the flower, the same noises echo (until something else replaces it). If there's multiple flowers in close enough vicinity, their echoed noises start to overlap and blur together until the whole field is collectively emitting white noise.
I figure these might show up in other areas of the marsh, as a hook for characters who want to intentionally leave messages, an excuse for players who want something sensitive to get overheard, and an excuse for the skeleton to be less inclined to go wandering off - he's creeped out by them.
CANON INSPIRED? Yes, Undertale!
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CREATURE DESCRIPTION: This is a plant similar to lily of the valley, but swamp-living, and the flowers, rather than sprays of little bell-shaped white blossoms, appear to be teeth. They don't move or bite, they're just... harmlessly creepy and have a faint halitosis (bad breath) odor if you lean in and sniff. Flies regularly crawl around on the teeth. Are they pollinating the plants somehow? close your mouth you don't want them on your teeth.
CANON INSPIRED? None, I just saw that tumblr image and was like this would be perfect.
CREATURE NAME: Dianoga!
CREATURE DESCRIPTION: Here's a pic from the Wildlife Guide to Star Wars. Dianoga are seven-armed alien cephalopods with a single large eye on a stalk, which lurk underwater where they're hard to detect.
As on the Death Star, they tend to pop their eye up above the surface of the water, stare for a while, and (if you don't back away) grab you with their tentacles and pull you under, where they may or may not try and bite. Either way, after a moment they let go and move on.
This is a good excuse to dunk characters who otherwise aren't likely to end up submerged in the River. I will say dianoga of a size big enough to pull people under are rare here, and smaller ones are just weird critters that stare at you and get places they shouldn't. I'm also gonna have them be fundamentally cautious and not hard to scare off.
CANON INSPIRED? Star Wars (again)