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The following pages recount my travels and travails along the waterways of the Misty River and beyond. This guide aims to inform you of the people and challenges you will encounter on your own sailings. With this guide, perhaps you will see more success in this world than I have.
I am Markus of Thicket, known as the Old Bard among my own people, but we come from just beyond the Misty Rivers themselves, and tall tales are our heritage. If you are of the more worldly riverfolk yourself, you have heard me called Clemens Silvertongue, and hold a dimmer view. Nevertheless, I tell you - what follows are my true and honest recollections of my meanderings through your lands, and those beyond.
My own homelands are far to the south and west of the river lands, and not safely found by land - though in my later life I would make this treacherous journey as well. But my first great voyage would be to leave the forest downstream by boat, a journey not common to my people. It was a fortnight down the River Wash before we would make our way into the Great Shallow Sea. Not long after we alit, the trees of the thicket gave way to grasslands and sandy shores, and for days you could not set foot off the craft without sinking knee-deep into marshy, wet sands. At dusk and dawn, great flocks of birds would cover the landscape such that nary a blade of grass could be seen.
The River Wash meets the Great Shallow Sea much differently than does the Misty River. The Misty River delta is a dark place, shrouded in fogs and mists (thus its name) as well as vast cypress trees, lilies, and moss, and unseen dangers lurk ever-present just beneath the surface. The River Wash meets the sea under an oppressive sun, amid a giant delta of treacherous sandbars. Many an errant craft has beached here, its occupants lost into the eternal sands. We were lucky to navigate these sands with relative ease, and our first trials arrived only as we entered the darker Misty waters another week or so north and east.
My first encounter with riverfolk was not with yourselves, but with your distant cousins of the swamplands - they are a distrustful but resourceful people, which perhaps you must be to survive in their habitat. They came upon us while we made busy in defense against a horrendous lizard creature. With some difficulty of tongue, they agreed to be our guides in exchange for the carcass of the lizard. We happily accepted this offer.
The swamp folk are one with nature in a way I have still not seen evidenced in other peoples of this realm, and were my first exposure to true magic. Their magic attunes them to nature and guides them through the swamps almost effortlessly. At times, we were required to pull our crafts from the waters, over well trod levees, and into adjoining rivers, while at others several rivers seem to converge on a point only to flow away as completely different rivers all together.
Eventually, the darkness of the swamp gave way to a flat, sunny valley to the north. Here upon the Misty River proper, we parted ways with our swamp guides. They instructed us to stay on the larger river at each fork, until we reached the famous South Gate - but they refused to come further, saying they were not welcome among your people.
We paddled north from the swamp folk for days, seeing no significant settlements along the way. The distance was dotted with the occasional farmhouse on the horizon, and we made peace with the stray fishermen we encountered.
- Markus Clemens of Thicket