Peek: The Shrouded Bog

Ah, it's not often we see fog in our Wanderlands, much less fog this thick. Build the campfires bright, not only to drive away the fog, but to give me the perfect lighting for the tale of my most harrowing delve.

Yes, that should do. Now, the story.

Among strong delvers, one dungeon is among the most infamous: the Shrouded Bog. Most of the time, there's a wide selection of dungeons to test yourself against at whatever level you may be. But, for whatever reason, around the time of a person's second class advancement, the number of proper dungeons dries up. You could repeatedly delve a weaker dungeon, but that gets boring. You could risk a stronger dungeon, but the denizens also see a significant boost in power at that point. It's an option really only for those rich enough to buy a carry through something stronger.

You should have seen the looks on the adventurer's faces when I wanted to buy a carry to the Shrouded Bog! Not through it, mind you, but to it. Even now, I don't know if I could properly delve it, but what kind of bard would I be if I didn't take the chance to delve the Shrouded Bog when I had the chance?

A more sensible one, perhaps, but since when are bards sensible? Still, I had been planning this delve as soon as I had entered the elven kingdom. I purchased the best gear I could find, paid the Dungeoneers whatever fees they wanted for every scrap of information I could get. But it didn't properly prepare me for the Shrouded Bog.

It's deep in the south of the elven kingdom, where a river grows indecisive as they sometimes do, and instead of happily plunging into the ocean, it lets itself go, until river, land, and sea all blend together into a swamp. It's one of the few features we don't have in our Wanderlands. We have a few small marshes, but let me tell you, they are nothing compared to a proper swamp.

And a proper swamp is nothing compared to a swamp dungeon that specializes in undead. Ordinarily, undead are manageable. They're slow, brittle, or both most times. But past a certain point, they start to live up to the chills that run down your spine at seeing one for the first time.

Even strong undead wouldn't be too much of a problem for adventurers of that level, but the Shrouded Bog makes it impossible to properly prepare, and impossible to fight at your best. The ground is unstable, squishy, with grasses and mosses hiding pits and ponds. Having stable footing is impossible, unless you have some class ability designed for swampland!

Even the very air fights you, the fog thick and cloying, robbing adventurers of the ability to plan and prepare. It's like a maze that doesn't even have the courtesy of telling you where the walls are. You have to learn by falling into a wet and cold hole, and hoping there's nothing lurking to keep you from coming back up for sweet air.

And if all that is not enough to make it sound like a nightmare, there's two final pieces to this fiendish puzzle. The first are the ghosts. Incorporeal undead are rather rare. They can be debilitating when used properly, but most undead dungeons prefer the fairly simple tactic of letting delvers push through a mob of zombies and the like, only to slowly encircle and exhaust them. It works well for the belligerents, and not bad for adventurers, generally. Adventurers get a lot of kills, the dungeon gets a lot of mana from the slain denizens, and if the adventurers are foolish enough to not have an exit plan... the dungeon gets even more mana.

But ghosts work differently. An army of ghosts can be marched through, with the proper protection. There's another dungeon where the followers of the Shield actually harvest different ghosts for useful parts, relying on their powerful blessings to make the moaning monsters as harmful as a field of flowers. The power of ghosts is in combining them with other undead. They can slow or fear, chill or paralyze. Few can directly attack, but the Bog has figured out how to craft little bone daggers for its ghosts, able to go intangible along with the denizen.

Which brings me to the second and final piece: Lifedrinking. It's not an effect to ignore in the best of circumstances, but the bone knives of the ghosts of the Bog have that enchantment on it. Even worse, they can phase through armor. A powerful blessing can overcome that particular aspect, but it is still far too easy for a ghost to hide and swipe when an adventurer least expects it.

When the party I hired entered the dungeon with me, the very first things we saw were two ghosts. I was confused, but thankfully the party was not. They grabbed me and before I knew it, we were outside once more.

I was livid, of course. I paid for a delve! When I pointed that out and demanded they take me back in, they tossed my payment back at me. It was then I knew I had very much underestimated the Shrouded Bog. I gave them back half, they did get me in and out safely, after all. I never worked up the courage to return, especially not after being treated to horror stories of the bog by the same party.

My most harrowing delve was also my shortest, but if it weren't for them, it would have lasted the rest of my life.

-Onthar, Orcish Bard Historian