Adventure Location: Stonemire Swamp

[Grek]

The Stonemire Swamp is a massive stretch of wetland extending from the ancient Stonemire Rock, a spire of crumbling stone imbued with the power to petrify anything that touches its dark and diseased surface. Though the region is dangerous, many brave or foolhardy souls venture forth, in search for fossils from ancient times, beautiful samples of petrified wood or even for fragments of Stonemire Rock itself, both for its petrifying properties and for its use in the production of stone salves. It is said that a single pound of powdered stone from Stonemire Rock can produce a gallon of stone salve (128 applications), and that a single wagon's worth of the stuff would be enough to suppy an army.

The Stonemire Trading Company is the single largest employer of adventurers and explorers in the Stonemire region, hiring out over 4000 people of diverse skills and professions to keep the supply of rare goods from inside the deadly swamps stable. Though there are vast profits to be made in such trading, the dangers are many and great:

The oozing muck that drips from that place has contaiminated the waters for miles around with a strange disease native only to the Stonemire region; stone fever. Though the disease has no major symptoms upon contracting it, those infected, be they plant, animal or adventurer, slowly turn to stone bit by bit until they become yet another feature of the petrified landscape. Fortunately, the casting of a stoneskin spell, or, more commonly, the application of a stone salve to the body is sufficent to immuninize against stone fever for as long as it lasts.

The land itself is also a threat, for what appears to be a stable bit of land can just as easily hold a pit of putrid water covered in a thin and brittle layer of petrified leaves. Like a thinly iced lake in winter, the waters of the swamp are treacherous and deceptive, biding their time for the traveller to grow careless and fall to their doom in the deadly waters below.

Of greater danger are the countless cockatrice, basilisks, gorgons and medeusa that inhabit the swamps, immune to the petrifying effects of stone fever and thereby forming a stable ecosystem in the otherwise lifeless swamps. The cockatrice, a lithovore, is the primary grazing animal in the swamps, preyed upon by the large basilisks that lurk beneath the stagnant waters of the swamp. The native medusa gather in tribes, hunting cockatrice and basilisks with bow and spear. Herds of gorgons, steely skined and eternally enraged, can occasionally be found stampedeing through the swamps, leaving a trail of rubble and crushed stone in their wake.

Worse yet than the wildlife are the numerous cabals of wizards and evil clerics that have constructed their enclaves within the heart of Stonemire Swamp, where the fossilized remains are the oldest and strange beasts of scale and fang can be found still preserved and ready to rise up again at the necromancer's call. It is not unheard of for a party of paladins to enter the swamp, only to return with tales of a skeletal tyrannosaurus having been discovered by a necromancer and reanimated to blight the world again.

Perhaps the greatest threat however, are the swamps themselves. They have expanded year by year, inch by inch, without ceasing or slowing, for as long as men have bothered to record such things. Unless something is done to stop the spread, it is thought that Stonemire Rock will, in the end, turn all the world into fetid stone and cloying muck.

[echoVanguard]

Stephen R. Donaldson might like a word with you about your naming convention.

echo

[Grek]

*looks up Stephen R. Donaldson*

Bugger. New name: Stonemire Swamp

[echoVanguard]

Much better. Now, for actual feedback:

Overall: A nicely focused concept that would probably benefit from an additional adventure hook or two. You seem to have a good identity for your location and the sorts of events that should happen there. 4/5.

Specific Criticisms:

Paragraph 1 is fine, although the powdered-stone-to-salve conversion ratio is probably unnecessarily specific. It's fine to just use the second half of the sentence.

Paragraph 2 seems a little meta. It could probably be merged with paragraph 1 and the line about adventurers culled.

Paragraph 3 is fine, although "immunize" is misspelled. Paragraph 4 can be merged with paragraph 7.

Paragraphs 5 and 6 are excellent, although they contain the following editing errors:
- the plural of cockatrice is cockatrices, and the plural of medusa is medusae.
- "steely-skinned" is misspelled, as is "stampeding".
- "fossilized remains are the oldest" should be "fossilized remains of the oldest".

All in all, a nicely-written entry.

echo

[...You Lost Me]

I loves this. Very well done--I commend you.