D20 SYSTEM✦ Normal

The Drowned Wardens

# Wilderness# Intrigue

The ancient Moss Bed-Sinks of the Wetlands have always been treacherous, but the paths laid by the villagers of Mosshollow are failing. Something is awakening in the deep mud, a malevolent presence that seeks to drown the surface world. Two factions offer conflicting solutions: the Wardens, who seek to contain the threat through sacrifice and harsh quarantine, and the Rootwalkers, who believe the only path is to commune with the entity and offer it a new purpose. The players must navigate the collapsing wetlands, uncover the truth of the entity's nature, and choose who to trust before the land itself swallows them all.

Chronicle Prelude

The players arrive in the stilted village of Mosshollow, a settlement built on massive, rotting stilts above the bubbling wetlands. The air is thick with decay and the constant sound of shifting mud. Villagers eye them with suspicion and fear, clutching wards of woven reeds. The village elder, a gaunt woman named Valeris, approaches them with a desperate plea: 'The old paths are giving way. Our scouts vanish into the moss. Something down there is stirring, and it wants us all.'

Environmental Traits

The Moss Bed-Sinks are collapsing into a vast, subterranean aquifer controlled by a psychic entity known as the Miremind. The entity is not inherently evil, but a primordial force of preservation and memory, now corrupted by centuries of poisoned runoff and dark magic from a forgotten war. Its 'awakening' is causing the wetlands to liquefy and absorb everything, seeking to add all life to its preserved memory library. The campaign's endgame is reaching the Miremind's core in the Sunken Basilica and deciding its fate: destroy it, broker a dangerous pact, or become part of its eternal memory.

Legendary Archetypes

Rayan

HP:45

STR:16

WIS: 12

CHA:11

Key Factions & Autonomous Nodes (8)

Elder Valeris
An elderly woman with deep-set, weary eyes and long grey hair woven with dried reeds. She walks with a gnarled cane of bog-oak, and her homespun robes are perpetually damp. Her face is a map of worry lines, and she moves with the cautious deliberation of someone who has seen her home nearly swallowed more than once.
Commander Theron
A tall, powerfully built man in his late 40s, his face scarred and weathered by harsh weather and harder choices. He wears the practical, reinforced leather and plate of the Drowned Wardens, stained with mud and salt. His eyes are cold and calculating, and he carries a notched war-axe at his hip with an air of grim readiness.
The Oracle Lira
A woman of indeterminate age, her body lithe but her skin bearing a faint, network of greenish, root-like veins. Her eyes are a solid, milky white, yet they seem to perceive everything. She is barefoot, wrapped in living moss and vine, and a low, musical hum perpetually surrounds her. She moves with an unnatural, fluid grace.
Gruk the Hermit
A gaunt, wild-eyed man with a tangled beard full of twigs and moss. He wears layered, rotting rags and hides, and his skin is pale from a life lived in the shadows of the fens. He clutches a worn leather satchel to his chest and flinches at sudden noises, muttering to unseen presences.
Marsh Strider Alpha
A towering, bipedal reptilian creature, easily eight feet tall, with long, stilt-like legs ending in wide, splayed feet for traversing boggy ground. Its scales are a mottled green and brown, and it has a crest of sharp, feather-like plumes. Its large, intelligent amber eyes hold a fierce protective glint, and it hisses low, resonant warnings, punctuated by clicks from its toothy maw.
Rootwalker Priest
A gaunt figure in robes woven from living moss and water-reeds, their face obscured by a mask of carved petrified wood depicting a serene, weeping face. Their movements are slow and deliberate, and they carry a staff of twisted bog-wood that glows with a faint, sickly green light. The air around them smells of wet earth and decay.
The Archivist of Silt
A vaguely humanoid figure composed entirely of dark, wet silt and clinging mud, held in a semi-solid form by sheer willpower. Glints of amber and preserved leaves swirl within its mass. It has no distinct face, but a cluster of polished river stones serves as eyes, glowing with a cold, intelligent light. It floats a few inches above the ground, leaving a damp trail.
The Miremind Echo
Not a physical entity, but a psychic presence that manifests as a shimmering distortion in the air, like heat haze over water, filled with fleeting, ghostly images—a child's laugh, a lover's touch, the terror of drowning, the peace of a sunset over reeds. The air grows thick with the scent of blooming night-flowers and old tears. It communicates through intrusive thoughts and sensory fragments.

Chronicle Prelude

Environmental Traits

Legendary Archetypes

✦ Related Cases ✦

The Goblin Plight of Rivervale and the Cryptic Mine

The Lost Workshop: Heart of a Raging Core