#swampdogs

Swamplights

Swamplights are seen in multiple cultures under various different names and functions, but always remain very similar. Their most common moniker is ‘Will-o-wisp’.

Swamplights are believed to be the souls or spirits of people who are sunk in the swamps and cannot pass into the Veilside for whatever reason. They do not communicate with the living often, rather content on being a simple ball of colored light floating around the countryside. There were stories of them taking human shapes and leading invaders away from rural communities, only to die by exposure, injury, or falling and drowning in swamps. Other than passing tales, they are generally seen as non-malicious.

Swamplights don’t stay in the swamps and have been seen flitting and floating around all parts of the country and beyond. They are one of few known local folk-creatures that infiltrate the southern lowlands.

Hallows Edition IV

Marshcats

No one is quite sure what these are. Not even the people who apparently see them regularly.

Marshcats are illusive cryptid monsters that inhabit the deltas and drainage of the swamps to the seaboard, having vague catlike shapes and dripping in muck and swamp-grasses with glowing white eyes. They sound like shrieking children and leave no lasting footprints. No one is sure where they come from or go to, only that they patrol delta flats.

They appear to be hostile, as those few communities who settled around such places have told the stories over centuries of how men, women, children, and livestock have gone missing over the flats. The monsters leave long immense clawmarks on structures and trees when they’ve been around.

Hallows Edition V

Swampdogs

An opposite to marshcats in look, but not so much in temperament.

Swampdogs -not be confused with swamphounds- are very large. About the size of a small bear with just as much bulk, they live in and around the most crowded burial pools. Their purpose is disputed between communities, but the two most common rumors dictate them as both cemetery guardians and also as carrion eaters. In correlation to the latter, they are also believed to be the reason swamplights exist.