Central wetland and floodplain system. North of Aetherial Towne the rivers coming down from the North Crown slow, spread and lose their banks before reaching the Central Lake. What's left is a reed sea the size of a kingdom: channels, peat bogs, willow islands and moonlit pools, all waist-deep and shifting. Thick fog banks roll across it every evening, and in the deepest of them the veil between this world and the next wears thin. Every spring the Great Flood comes and rearranges all of it.
Peat-cutters, eel-fishers, herbalists and the folk of Willowmere
Marsh clans and punt-guides — the only people who never get lost here
Mist-keepers of the shrines at the thin places
The Fogtouched: people changed by walking too long in the thin places
Scholars studying the fog
A crooked hut on stilts at the edge of the Gloamfen, the best herb grounds in the heartland. The fen sits in a hollow where the evening...
shrine · draftA ring of standing stones on a fog-bound island where the veil is thinnest. Fae mist-keepers tend lamps here so that whatever walks out...
peat hamlet · draftA low rise of firm ground where the peat is cut in long black trenches and stacked to dry. The cutters find bog-iron in it — and lately,...
lair · draftA dead willow so vast it could hold Willowmere inside it, standing in a dark pool at the marsh's heart. Its roots are full of eggs. This...
causeway · draftA raised stone road built in an older age, running straight across the marsh from Aetherial Towne toward Behemoth's Rest. Half of it is...
dungeon · draftA stone abbey that sank into the marsh a lifetime ago. Its bell tower still leans out of the reeds, and on still nights the bell rings...
stilt village · draftThe heart of the marsh: a village of stilt-houses and rope walkways built around three ancient willows on a low island. The walkways can...
Low-grade but easy to reach — the cheapest Tetsuei Ore in the heartland.
Only shows on clear nights after the fog lifts.
Not mineral families: fuel, thatch and building wood for every village around the lake.
The water rises up to two metres. Channels move, villages raise their walkways, rare creatures drift in from the North Crown rivers, a Rotroot Colossus walks out of the peat, and Vessmire, the Drowned Mother, leaves the Hollow Willow to migrate across the marsh.
Fog rolls across the marsh. Mistlings appear, paths shift and the thin places open; Void Moss and Astral Bloom can only be found in it.
Gloamfen herb grounds, damp banks
Basic remedies; seeds can be planted on the Aetherial Starter Farm
Fog-thick hollows near the thin places
Potent reagent; sells high
Moonpools on clear nights
High-tier alchemy; glows when ripe
Reed seas
Thatch, arrows, punts, baskets
Peatcutter's Rise
Smelting and cooking fuel
Peat beds
Refines into Tetsuei
Arm-long leeches that wait in the shallows. They latch on through boots and won't let go until salted or burned.
Snails the size of a loaf with gardens growing on their shells. Slow, harmless and — according to Wren — very competitive.
Fat freshwater crawlers with mud-caked shells that graze the shallows. Easy prey for new hunters; their shells line...
Fist-sized green frogs that sing all night. The first thing most players ever hunt.
Hand-sized dragonflies with glassy wings that hunt over the reeds. Fishers say a cloud of them means the Behemoth is...
Grey-brown hares with burrs in their fur, fat on stolen Moonroot. Marla pays a copper a tail.
Big grey toads of the wetland edge whose low croak makes people drowsy. Travellers who sit down to rest near them...
Hollis Dunmore's bees, or their wild cousins. Fat, slow and fine unless someone touches the hive.
Purple-banded snakes that lie among the foxglove and look exactly like it.
Clouds of grey flies that rise from rotting peat. Their bites cause marsh-fever.
Wild pigs whose bristles have grown into stinging nettles. They root up whole herb beds overnight.
Golden motes that drift over the beds at dusk, puffing sleep-pollen at anything that breathes.
Long-legged tawny cats that hunt through the reed seas and steal anything shiny from camps.
Black eels that shock their prey senseless. Willowmere's main catch — and the reason fishers wear rubber gloves.
Grey herons taller than a person, standing so still they look like dead branches. Their beaks go through leather.
Shambling heaps of grey, rotted moss that climb out of the Rotblight patches. Where they walk, herbs die.
Hairless, mud-coloured hounds that run in packs across the firm ground and hunt by smell through the fog.
A cat-shaped tangle of thorn and bramble that hunts gatherers in the fog. You hear it as a rustle that stops when you stop.
The abbey's lost monks, singing underwater in the flooded nave. Their song drags the living down.
Fog given a shape, drifting out of the thin places at Fogfall. They wear the faces of people you've lost.
Bodies preserved for centuries in the peat, still wearing the clothes of an older age. When the cutters dig too...
A pulled mandrake that didn't want to be. It grows little legs, runs, and screams loud enough to drop a grown warrior.
Pale moths with wings like lit paper that feed on Astral Bloom. Killing one dims every bloom around it; netting one...
The herbalist who wanted Void Moss without the fog. She's still in the heart of her glasshouse, moss-grown and...
A walking hill of peat, roots and drowned timber that the Great Flood washes loose every spring. It wades toward the...
The abbey's last abbot, still keeping his vigil in the drowned chancel. Moss has grown through his robes and into...
A pale stag whose antlers flower with Astral Bloom. It walks down out of the Gloaming on Bloomnight to drink from...
Hester's garden construct, built to carry soil and water the beds. The moss got into its joints and its orders. It...
A fen-toad the size of a house, ancient and patient, mother of every Bogwhisper Toad in the marsh. She sleeps in the...
Nobody walks the marsh. Learn to punt before you drown trying.
The Reeve needs supplies brought up the Old Causeway — and the Bog Leeches cleared off it while you're there.
Marla will teach you the herbs — if you bring her some first.
Reedcats have been stealing from the toll-shrine. Bek wants his coins back and the cats taught a lesson.
Pip's going eel-fishing tonight whether you come or not. Better come.
Pip Nettle went into the fog after an eel and didn't come back. The Mist-Keeper knows where the fog takes people.
The bell rang three nights running. Odric finally wants to tell someone what happened at the abbey.
Go down into the Sunken Abbey and end the abbot's vigil.
The cutters dug too deep and the peat sat up. Durn wants the Peat Wights put back down — and wants to know why they're there.
Corvane is mapping the thin places in the fog. He thinks they are moving toward the lake — toward the Murmur.
The water's rising early this year. Help Willowmere get ready for the Great Flood.
The Great Flood is here, and something is walking out of the peat with it.
Marla's busy. Wren has a list, and she's handing half of it to you.
Vessmire has left the Hollow Willow and is swallowing her way across the marsh. Turn her back before she reaches Willowmere.
Every herbalist needs to know the poisons. Dace knows all of them personally.
Thessaly needs her mandrake beds thinned, and she isn't going to do the pulling.
Once a month the whole fen flowers at once. Marla wants you out there for it, and she wants the first bloom.
Thessaly says the fen has a spirit, and on Bloomnight it comes down to drink. Rook says poachers are after its antlers. Find it first.
Grey, dead patches are spreading through the herb beds. Rook wants to know where they're coming from.
The trail leads to the Old Glasshouse. Gaffer Pell knows whose it was, and he has a page of her journal. The rest are...
Marla hands over the key she's kept for forty years. 'She was good to me. Whatever's in there now isn't her.'
Before the glasshouse, Hester kept heirloom beds. Pell wants the seed back before the blight takes the last of them.
Hollis's wild hives need harvesting, and his paws are too big for the smoker.
Someone has been stripping the Gloaming of Void Moss. Rook has found their camp. He hasn't found them.
Wren's snail is undefeated. Wren would like you to know that.
Every morning Marla pins an order to the door. Fill it before dusk.
Mild and humid; dense fog at dusk and dawn; spring floods raise the water up to two metres.
1–16 (starter-adjacent; the world boss at the top end)
Kingdom of Behemoth; Willowmere keeps a Reeve appointed by the steward of Behemoth's Rest.
Reeve of Willowmere
Head of the Guild of Punters
Last survivor of the Sunken Abbey
Eel-fisher's child
Keeper of the Gloamfen Herbary
Peat-Boss of Peatcutter's Rise
Mist-Keeper of Mistveil Shrine
Fogtouched scholar of the thin places
Keeper of the Old Causeway toll-shrine
Marla's apprentice
Warden of the Gloamfen