Oft the swamps of the Reach could be described as warm, thick, sticky and a pain to trudge through. As you glance down to your feet mired within, it feels unfamiliar. Cold - or perhaps you are. And despite any will that may bid them to - your legs do not move. 

Your eyes, are blurred - what around you is shifting as though having difficulty deciding what it wants to be. It settles.

Fear, anxiety, pain. You feel as though you must flee. Away. Anywhere but here.

Figures, behind and before you. 

Then .. Familiarity. The cold receeds, replaced by the expected warmth. You may move again. Before you - a familiar face beckons you to follow. 

Your legs listen, you move, you attempt to. You stumble. You fall. You remain out of reach. They disappear. You wake.

It is not uncommon to hear stories of a mystical band of witches granting power in return for a sacrifice, however in more recent times these stories have found their way out of children's stories.
- The Portents, Compendium

They were spoken of in hushed, reverent tones. They were said to offer hope to the hopeless, whispers to the path for lost children, and answers to those too broken to pray.

Word among the Jacks is they’re gone. Not slain, not driven out. Gone. Departed. And some say, they departed with their due. 

Mad folk. Some pulled at their hair, some clawed at their faces. One day they knew where to step and where not to step with their eyes closed, now? they step into deep and shallow murk alike. Some drown. Some March. Most don’t speak, Can’t speak. Some started speaking in riddles about curses, callings and all sorts of ill omens. 

And among whispers some say, with the portents gone, other things have come to claim their place. 

The dream had led them here - to the swamps.
The one most haunted spoke of visions that clung even after waking. A place half-remembered, voices calling through rain. The others followed, through warm mists and the reek of stagnant waters, their boots sinking into the same pathless mire seen in the haunted's sleep.

It was there they found it - or what remained of it -
A village, once raised above on stilts of wood, now half-swallowed by the bog. Roofs sagged beneath the weight of moss and rain. The air hung heavy with fog, and beneath it, something moved.

Drowners.
A whole nest of them, their bloated forms stirring the water’s surface like rotted lilies. Yet even as the party fought them back, there were moments when the world itself seemed to waver.

One blink - and the fog parted.
The same village stood proud and whole beneath a bright sky. Another blink - and it was gone again, drowned and grey.

The line between memory and the present had thinned.

When the last of the Drowners sank beneath the black water, silence fell. The ruins stood still once more, but something about them felt watched. The mud beneath their feet clung heavier than before, as if reluctant to let them go.

The battle had ended. The swamp had gone quiet, save for the rasp of breath and the wet drip of rain from hollow beams. The adventurers gathered their wounded and steadied their hearts, speaking in hushed tones about what should follow.

That was when they saw him.

A figure, standing amidst the drowned huts - still, almost serene, as if he had always been there. His form was half-veiled by mist, his tone polite, grateful. He thanked them for cleansing the place, for ridding it of the creatures that had made their nest among the ruins. Then, without waiting for question or answer, he began to search - moving with purpose through the half-submerged houses, wading through the dark waters as though seeking something precious he had misplaced.

No sound of feet. No splash of water.

And then, without warning, one faltered. The haunted one’s eyes rolled back; his knees struck the sodden ground. The cold returned.

When the others turned, the figure was gone.
No prints. No ripple. No sign that he had ever been.

The air had changed, subtly. Heavier.
Something of the dream had crossed ..

You stand before the sunken hut, under rain and mist. You are searching, you look among the corners, in any nook ..

Garbled voices can be heard behind you as though speaking underwater, but there's no one behind.

You turn back to the hut .. 'not this one' you think .. then turn away to search the third and last one -

then the mists part, the clouds break. 

"Get going!" "Go" - words sound with no one to speak them

Your steps take you north - past the hut and to the river where a small raft awaits you -

You board, you are given its punting pole. 

You drive it deep into the river bed below and push yourself off - westward, downriver -

You sink into the water. The Water floods any breath. You wake.

The Haunted spoke of the raft, of the voices, of the river. And so the party returned to the drowned village, their boots once more sinking into the familiar mire.

They found the river soon enough - its flow thick with silt and rainwater - and followed it downstream. The path grew narrower, the ground less certain, until at last the earth gave way. A section of the bank had collapsed inward, revealing a gap where dark water rushed through earth and stone alike.

There - what once might have been a shrine. The remnants of carved pillars between the floor and the roof of the cave, overgrown and half-devoured by time. 

Bones lay scattered in the shallows - mostly human. And in the heart of the shrine, water welled up from beneath the stone floor, clear and luminous. A wellspring.

Whatever rites had once been held here, they had long since been swallowed by the swamp.


Three stood fore the spring. And within it they saw themselves. 

The world dulled, their limbs grew heavy, their eyes closed.

A thin veil embraced them, then parted. The dream did not resist them, it remembered them, though who could tell if that were for better or worse. 

You disembark onto the northern bank. the river is calm so you thrust the punting pole deep into the riverbed to keep it in place.

There is a sense of relief, of a journey finally coming to its 'grand' conclusion.

A feeling of finding your salvation.

A glance to your right hand reveals a coarse and scarred palm. Upon the 4th finger, is a simple silver ring.

a weight in your left .. you cannot see what it is, but you know it is important.

You traverse the vines, roots and the muk of the swamp to a small 'shrine'

Even now, Even then? .. it seemed old, ancient. 

you work without much thought, you prepare. 

You move from one shrine, then to another, then to the final one.

The basin fills, glowing dimly with a blue hue.

By now you have unrobed. You cup the water. It flows down one shoulder, then the next.

You cup with both hands, and take a gulp .. Cold. Frigid, all warmth leaves your chest. You wake.

The party reconvened at the ruin. Investigation of the fountain revealed that beneath it lay a concealed chamber - later understood not as a simple room, but the uppermost peak of a buried tower, buried by time. Water flowed unnaturally through narrow channels around a central well, draining endlessly downward as if into something vast.

Two descended into the chamber. The first formed a protective barrier to keep the water from direct contact. The second followed shortly after, tethered to the first and the rope above. And as they descended, The water grew calm, almost welcoming, warm and comforting, dangerously so.

The deeper they went, the stronger the pull toward rest and surrender became. Despite resistance, the influence intensified. One succombed, collapsing into unconsciousness as the dream took hold. The first diver fought the pull longer, her will holding just enough for her to act. With her last strength, she tugged the rope twice, signaling the party above before exhaustion claimed her as well.

Together, the party above strained against the stone edge and the unnatural drag of the depths, they pulled the two back to the surface. Both were bruised slightly by the stone but successfully retrieved.

The first diver regained consciousness. Dry, exhausted, and disoriented. She described the sensation as returning from somewhere far away, the details already slipping from her grasp. The second diver woke later, coughing up water, deeply fatigued, and unable to fully recall what she had experienced

 ... "The magic flows endlessly deep, perhaps... into the Nocturne itself." ...

The party then entered the dream deliberately, arriving by raft upon a pale, altered reflection of the swamp they had once traversed in the waking world. Though familiar in shape, the land was wrong. Mist-choked, washed in the light of a cold, silvery sun that gave no warmth. Each disembarked alone, yet found themselves together again upon the shore. The Haunted one drew upon his dreams and memories and confirmed the path ahead. He spoke of shrines. One, then the next. And cautioned the group to move slowly and remain unified in thought.

The party navigated between shrines buried within the dream-swamp. Those who had visited before noticed changes:

• Where two lanterns once hung, three now burned.
• Later, at another shrine, four lanterns shone where fewer had before.

The Haunted One recognized these as signs of progression rather than objects to be taken. At one shrine, he stepped into a ritual circle and spoke a fragment of an ancient tongue, partially understood by those familiar. Though nothing immediate occurred, the shrine was nonetheless marked as complete.

Throughout this traversal, the Haunted One began to fall out of sync with the rest of the party. To the others, his form flickered. Turned translucent. Vanishing and Reappearing in rhythmic intervals. He himself did not perceive this displacement. The group compensated by maintaining mental focus on one another, anchoring themselves through shared attention.

At the final shrine, the party found the wellspring dry, just as it had been before. This troubled the Haunted One. His memory insisted it should have been filled by now. As the group debated lanterns, water beneath the shrine, and whether something remained unfinished -

- a javelin struck stone,

Three humanoid figures emerged from the murk, their forms dark and lightless, as though light refused to touch them. Their voices overlapped unnaturally, taunting and condemning the party in the same breath. Combat followed. During the fight, The figures demonstrated impossible qualities - walking atop water, striking without fully closing distance. When the Haunted one pierced the veil through arcane effort, their true nature briefly revealed itself. Three arsa-sidhe, their faces already slipping from memory even as they were seen. The party realized these were not strangers, but echoes of the killers bound to the flow of memory itself. The vanguard was eventually brought low, kneeling, muttering of failure as their perception fractured. The flow of memory had broken. It had turned.

The change did not remain unnoticed. The Pale Sun watched. Those who returned its gaze noticed something deeply wrong. When they blinked, it blinked. When they looked away, it waited. When they closed their eyes, it did the same.

Soon, whispers began to plague the Haunted One's mind again. Fear. As though something sought to withdraw and hide from the rising gaze.

While that occurred, One approached the kneeling vanguard. Holding the fallen javelin, she reached out to understand. She invoked Dreamdiver and skimmed the surface of the being’s memory.

What followed nearly broke her. She experienced one full cycle of the torment bound to these shades.

She survived the delve, barely conscious, utterly exhausted, unable to feel her body or surroundings. The Haunted One anchored her, refusing to let her slip away as the memory released its hold. 

Before they departed, all were marked.

Each would, within the coming week, experience a single cycle of torment in their dreams.

Dialogue, lessons, understanding. All were present, but only served to broaden the web they found themselves caught in. They needed answers, They needed a way out, a path forward, to give only one last glance behind and leave the past.

One chose to delve within themselves ..

Another Chose to brave the sea ..

There are times, when stirred .. dregs from the depths rise. 

A new isle of the sea, but a once forgotten dream. Still, someone or something sought to rise. But another arrived to plunge it once more, to unravel the tethers that bound it still to the waking world.

The tides separated their party. And soon the cycle began anew. The flow of memory bid them to act. And the story assigned them roles. But the cycle needed be broken. 

The denizens of the isle resisted. The storyline attempted to hold itself. But again the tides were bid to turn.In their struggle, they learned to wield their own stories. Their memories. Their experiences. And even, their dreams. They brought forth their own storylines. 

The storyline entwined with another's, then another's and another's, and soon what was written split from what was remembered.

A knot was undone .. in place for another. And through it all, a record was kept.

But the Ancestor found their means to rest.