Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Finder’s Archives.
In this column, we take some of the lands from Magic: The Gathering and turn them into something you can use for your fantasy games.
The stats given in each entry assumes that you’re using Pathfinder 2 for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. This week we rustle up an old swamp boat and head out on the Bayou.
Bayou
The bayou is defined by the teeming life that can be found within, both benign and hostile. It swarms with insects, fish life and has plenty of nesting places for worse creatures. It is the home of many, but only truly welcoming to a select few. Most humanoids avoid it, so it’s rare to find a dwarf, elf, or halfling there, but humans – as always – have found ways to get around this, and have settled here, living off the land.
Lay of the Land
The bayou is a place where it’s difficult to tell what is ground and what is water. Only near the plentiful trees can you be relatively certain of firmer ground, and even that is not a given, as some trees are far larger, and reach far deeper than they appear to. The ground is mushy, and the waters brackish, a mix of fresh and saltwater, that somehow seems conducive to all kinds of fish and reptile life. Overhanging it all are the thick canopies of trees, mostly cypress trees, but with some willows and others in there, and at the center of it all, an oak so big that it is said to have preceded the world’s creation. While that is surely an exaggeration, it is thousands of years old. And in spite of its age, and its size – its canopy reaches nearly 200 feet across – life teems around it.
The towns are all located on the edge of the bayou, most reaching less than 100 feet into the marshy interior. This is due mostly to the difficulty of building on the unstable ground and keeps the towns small, except for the port town of Port d’el Vive. It is teeming with people and trade, transferring whatever fish and other goods that the inhabitants of the bayou have, onto large cargo ships, in exchange for much-needed goods such as wheat and cloth.
Dangers
Deep in the bayou lives an ancient dryad, the single most powerful creature in the area. And while she’s not actively hostile to those who enter the bayou, she does not tolerate anyone interfering too much with life in the swamp, and she has a special hatred for those who do not keep control of the campfires, due to an accident in the distant path, that has left the great oak scarred to this day. The great oak is her home, but she’s able to move freely throughout the swamp, though in recent years, she’s found that the further humanity encroaches on her beloved bayou, the less mobility she has within its boundaries. (For the ancient dryad, use the stats for PF2, PF1, and 5e – though she has an alignment of lawful neutral).
The other creatures found in the swamp tend to be reptilians, like alligators and plant creatures like treants and shambling mounds.
Anyone looking for more inspiration should check out my free book Fifty Swamp Encounters. 😊 (Yes, that is a shameless plug 😛 )
Kim Frandsen
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