|This story is part of a series, found here: Muck and Mystery in the Marsh|
Author’s Note: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written, and gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there. The heart and shape of the story are my own, but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI support in producing it ultimately.
Featuring: Vratni, Flent, Sansa
Location: Bree, The Prancing Pony, Common Room
Vratni Copperhand had heard many a tall tale in Bree... most of them brewed as strong and cloudy as the ale at the Pony. But a Dwarf learns to listen between the words, as even the tallest tale can contain a glint of truth if you sift through it enough, and tonight, Vratni was sifting.
The common-room of the Pony was heavy with pipe-smoke and half-sung songs. Vratni kept to a shadowy corner, his boots on a stool, his mug close at hand. He wasn’t listening, not exactly... he was hearing. It was a fine art, knowing when to nod along and when to lean in.
A couple of woodsmen at the next table had been talking low for some time now. Their words caught his ear... mentions of "ruins," "old stones," and "the deep marsh."
Vratni pricked up his ears without looking up.
"Marsh swallowed 'em, they say," one of the woodsmen muttered, voice thick with drink. "Old Arthedain ruins. Real old. Might be trinkets yet, if the bog rats haven't eaten 'em."
"Or the dead," the other said with a hollow laugh. "Folk that go out that way don't always come back."
Vratni itched to move closer but kept his seat. Instead, he tossed a copper to Sansa, one of the Pony’s more gifted barmaids, who bustled past, and whispered, "Top up their drinks, and keep 'em talkin', eh?"
Moments later, the woodsmen were deep in their cups and even deeper in story. They spoke of half-sunken towers and broken causeways... bones of the old kingdom, left to rot in the Midgewater Marshes.
Most folk, they said, were too scared or too smart to go poking about. The few who did often vanished - swallowed by mist, mud, or worse.
Vratni's mind whirred. He leaned back, weighing these whispers; Old kingdoms. Lost ruins. Forgotten gold.
Ruins meant relics. Or, at the very least, something he could polish up and sell as "genuine relics" to the unsuspecting.
The thought of it lit a spark behind his eyes. The trick would be getting there without being swallowed by the bog or gnawed on by whatever foul things lived amongst the reeds. He hadn’t set foot out of Bree since his travels brought him here by Caravan a long o’ ways back now.
Just as he was planning how best to enter their conversation, fate handed him a better way.
One of the woodsmen got up from their table and passed by Vratni, bumping into his table... an accident, it seemed, until Vratni caught a glimpse of what had slipped from under the stranger’s cloak onto the floor: a cracked, half-rotted leather map.
An ‘X’ marked deep into the eastern Midgewater Marshes for sure, with a shaky script reading: ‘Cairn of the Fallen?’ etched clear enough for the Dwarf to read.
Vratni made quick work of "accidentally" knocking his own ale over the table and onto the map. The stranger glowered at him, cursed and walked on, slipping out into the night, either not noticing he had dropped the map, or having seen it, thought it was ruined… either way they had left the soaked parchment behind.
Vratni plucked it from the floor with a knowing grin. A map. A real one. Or close enough.
But excitement soured into worry as he traced the rough marks. The path led straight through the heart of the marsh, a place spoken of in Bree with grim looks and lowered voices.
The Midgewater was no mere muddy puddle; it was a living trap. Folk said the ground could swallow a full-grown horse in minutes. Worse yet, there were things that lurked among the reeds; things that slithered and howled and hungered.
Vratni drummed his fingers on the table. He wasn’t daft. Bravado was well and good for selling trinkets to drunkards, but he had no wish to end up a skeleton in the bog.
He would need a guide. Someone who knew the marshes like the lines on their own palms.
One name came to mind, whispered more than spoken in Bree’s alleys and smoke-filled taprooms.
Boots… or was it Flent, he wasn’t sure.
A man of the marshes, weathered and wild-eyed, said to walk where others drowned. A loner, mistrustful, a fowler of skill… a man with a hard look about him, but no fool as Vratni understood it.
If Vratni was to have any chance of finding the ‘Cairn of the Fallen’, or of getting back alive more importantly he thought... he would have to seek out this Flent and strike a bargain for a guide.
The dwarf grinned to himself, folding the dripping map and slipping it into his coat.
"Well then, Copperhand," he muttered under his breath, "looks like yer next business venture’s going to be a bit... damp."
He gathered his gear, leaving Sansa a few extra coins on the table for luck, and made for the door. The night outside was thick with mist, and somewhere far off, a lonesome croak echoed over the fields, a sound like the marsh calling him in.
(Image created by AI, as an interpretation of my own hand-drawn map)
