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FOREWORD
I am very happy that you thought enough of Dreadmire, me, or Elizabeth, thatyou parted with your hard-earned mone to buy this book. Know that weappreciate your confidence, and we hope this story entertains you.
If you had told me ten years ago that I’d be authoring an RPG book, and thenthat same campaign world would be made into yet another book, I’d have calledyou nuts. Yet it became a reality, and here you are reading it. Elizabeth hasdone a great job of turning the background material from my game book into afantasy story, with the verisimilitude intact. What the heck is verisimilitude, yousay?
Verisimilitude is the semblance of reality in dramatic fiction. The actionrepresented must be acceptable or convincing, according to the audience’s ownexperience. But then you probably knew all that. I only bring it up because theentire production team hopes you enjoy this attention to detail. Most importantof all… have fun!
Randy Richards
Gary Gygax 1938-2008
Gary Gygax created a game that spawned the role-playing industry, which inturn fueled the Fantasy genre for a generation. Without him, this book would not
likely exist. Rest in peace, Gary. You will be missed. And thank you.
Randy Richards & Gary Gygax (1998)
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DEDICATION
This float trip through hell is dedicated to Randy Richards, creator of theDreadmire game and editor of this adventure, a man who reads draft chapterswhile hurricanes literally knock on his door. This isn't my world, folks. This isRandy's nightmare, a Louisiana bayou haunted by a force that does not respectthe delicate balance of life and death and rebirth that makes up the world - abalance the good people of Louisiana know better than anyone. Randy made theswamp; I just sent some folks through it. Thank you for everything, Randy. It’sbeen fun playing in your mudpile.
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PROLOGUE
The worst thing about the swamp was the mosquitoes.Not the monstrous mosquitoes that the old folk talked about, the giant eagle-
sized creatures that had roamed the swamp in long-ago times. Just the pests thathovered around Ursuline’s head as she stroked her paddle in the murky watersof Dreadmire.
The high-pitched whine of the mosquitoes right behind her drawn-tight,graying hair tormented her. Every time a drop of sweat tickled her neck or arm,she slapped at it, imagining another unbearably itchy bite. For all the mosquitobites she had suffered in her decades wandering the swamp, Ursuline wonderedwhy she had never become immune to that dreadful, deep-seated itch that coulddrive one mad in the still of the night.
Ordinarily, Ursuline didn’t mind the masses of wildlife in the swamp. She’dwandered the muck in search of her treasures for so many years that the swampwas a second home to her. Snakes and fish, and even the occasional luna moth -she knew which to avoid and which would make a good dinner.
But those cursed mosquitoes! As one buzzed right behind her ear, Ursulinewished the Great War could have taken all the mosquitoes while it was goingstrong. The swamp had taken a hundred years to recover from the cataclysm that
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ended the Great War, so why did the mosquitoes have to be the first to return?Ursuline’s canoe scraped along unseen roots hidden beneath the murky
water. The swamp was higher than usual today, with ominous currents thathinted at new water flowing from some faraway rainfall. The sun was low in thesky, and if she hoped to find the cave before dark, Ursuline had best hurry.
She stopped paddling for a moment, pulling the parchment from its rawhidebag tied loosely around her wrinkled neck. She examined it carefully, thoughshe knew it almost by heart after all these year. She waved off yet anothermosquito that buzzed too close to her ear before returning the parchment to itsbag.
Ursuline adjusted her course between the massive cypress trees, theircolossal, rippled trunks rising out of the water like pillars that could have heldup the sky if only left alone to grow so tall, and branches so thick and gnarledthey could block out the sun.
Her paddle moved to the left and right with the practiced ease of a womanlong used to traveling by the strength of her own arms. Of late, the paddleseemed heavier, the canoe more obstinate, or the water thicker than it had whenshe was a young girl accompanying her father into the swamp.
Back then, Dreadmire was a place of death. It was filled with the rotting,diseased remnants of the life that had once flourished there. Nothing grew thatwas green and beautiful, just the half-decayed mushrooms and scavenger beaststhat fed on the mass of death that lay there of a hundred years before.
But in the decades since her father passed, Ursuline had seen the greenerybegin to return. Year after year, decade after decade, the spring shoots foughttheir way up through the layers of mold and muck to peek at the sunshine. Sixyears ago, Ursuline actually saw a moon orchid blooming in the hollow of acypress tree. She had been tempted to pluck it as a remembrance, but in the end,she left it there to cast its seed and hopefully bring many more.
Up ahead, Ursuline saw the rise of dry ground and the mouth of the cave. Shecrowed with delight, raising her rawhide bag to her mouth and kissing it. Shehad spent untold years deciphering the parchment, and there still were a fewlines that no wise man throughout the Arable Republic had been able - or willing- to transcribe for her.
She anchored the canoe as her father had taught her many years ago, andhoisted herself out of the canoe with some difficulty. The decades of rambling inthe woods and paddling through the swamp had taken their toll on her achingjoints, but she was still stronger than a weregator.
Well, almost.After a moment’s pause, Ursuline drew the rawhide bag off her neck and laid
it in the canoe. It had no further instructions for her, and she didn’t want to loseit in the cave.
Ursuline hefted her walking stick and began to climb, stepping between thegnarled roots of the old trees with practiced balance. How wonderful it would beFather was with me, she thought. He had passed the parchment on to her afterdeciphering only three lines of its weird, confusing story. She had spent untold
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hours sitting with wise men and clerics, waiting as they puzzled out piece bypiece - and more often than not, they turned her away with dire warnings not tomeddle with treasures to be found in the center of Dreadmire. Such things werenot meant for humans, they said. Certainly not female humans.
Not far from the edge of the water, Ursuline passed an enormous tree. It wasdifferent from the monolith cypress trees she had passed on her way here -unspeakably large and somehow strange. Its mass of roots was tangled anddriven deep into the earth, a wide grasping canopy of twisted branches stretchedfar to the sky and outward to all directions of Dreadmire, with unidentifiablemoss and detritus hanging off it like decaying lace. It was massive, easily thirtyfeet in diameter from one end of its branches to the other, and its gnarled trunkwas barely visible between its roiling branches.
There was something about it that just seemed wrong, an asymmetry that didnot gibe with the natural form of a normal tree. Walking past it, Ursuline feltshivers race over her skin. She brushed at her arms impatiently, but there wereno mosquitoes feeding on her this time. In fact, there were no animals orcreatures around her, a thought that gave Ursuline a moment’s pause.
Moving through the swamp meant constant contact with life, with all itsmassive rush and power in sight, sound and smell. The chirping of randominsects, rustling of animals in the brush, the sliding rush of water as a springbacksnake slipped into the mire... all of it was somehow muted and far away, as ifnothing living ventured this close. The air felt heavy and thick, yet strangelyempty, as though the rest of the world were charged with electricity and this wasthe one place where nothing breathed.
Up ahead, Ursuline spied the mouth of the cave, cool and inviting after thesweltering stickiness of the swamp air. It seemed open and clear - far too easy.She slowed a few steps, allowing her breath to catch up, and spied the hellroseslining the entrance.
Grinning, Ursuline used the sharpened end of her walking stick to uproot onehellrose after another, watching them shrivel and die instantly when separatedfrom the rich, dank earth. Hellroses sucked the life energy of any creature theytouched unless first uprooted from the ground. That was the way of Dreadmire,creatures living off each other like parasites in an endless circle, sucking downlife with a hunger that was never satisfied.
It had been this way all of Ursuline’s life, but her father claimed it had notalways been so. In the time of his own grandfather, he said, Dreadmire was alush and green forest, inhabited by elves and fairies just out of sight as thepeople of the Arable Republic traveled through its abundant beauty. The daysbefore Dreadmire, he said, the days before the Great War scorched the earth andturned the vibrant forest into a blackened, stinking swamp with miles of watercoated with the dead. Some said the dark energy that killed the forest had alsokilled Tichiba and Creeplow, the two leaders whose endless war had consumedDreadmire. But others said their spirits still lived on between the trees, foreverseeking each other as an immortal enemy, determined to face each other onceagain.
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Or so went the story. Bedtime scares to frighten children, Ursuline believed.She had never seen anything more frightening than a quag creature inDreadmire, and she had traveled its reaches all her life.
Ursuline lit her torch and stepped over the shriveled remnants of thehellroses, passing into the cool, dank air of the cave. It smelled of peat and life,strangely pungent after the rotted death-smell of the swamp outside.
She spied parachute veil fungus ahead, a mushroom-like growth that wouldsend its spores after her. She held the torch up high and scurried past it. The lastthing she needed was a bout of parachute sickness, but the torch should fend offthe fungus well.
The light was completely gone, but unlike any other cave Ursuline hadexplored, there were no side passages or tight crawls. The walls were nearlysmooth, no more than a single, straight tunnel at a gentle decline into the earth,as though some massive creature had simply scooped a hole in the rock.
And yet the water had not encroached, nor had animals wandered in. Perhapsthey had been kept at bay by the hellroses, but that seemed unlikely. How was itpossible no one had been here before? Ursuline began to doubt herself at last -perhaps the parchment had been wrong about the prize hidden within the cave,or one of her translations had been incorrect.
She glanced at the mushrooms along the path and it seemed that they movedjust a bit. Surely mushrooms did not wave as if moved by a nonexistent breeze,unless they were part of a Shroom, the mythic giant mushrooms that supposedlyhad intelligence. These mushrooms looked harmless, except it was increasinglydifficult to step past them. Her foot slipped, squashing one, and she could swearshe heard it cry out.
Shaking off her nervousness, Ursuline looked ahead and crowed with delightat what she saw.
The witch hammer lay on a natural ledge with stalactites growing downaround it. It seemed to be carved from some opalescent substance, shining andluminescent in the dim light cast by Ursuline’s torch. It was a single-handedmaul, its heavy head carved and flat-ended, its handle long and curved to suit ahuman hand.
“Father, see what I have found!” Ursuline cried. Decades of peddling minorartifacts and treasures found in the muck of Dreadmire, remnants of long-deadcivilizations hawked to eke out a subsistence living... the witch hammer castthem all into shadow, the greatest treasure she had ever found, greater thananything her father or grandfather or great-grandfather had discovered in alltheir years of hunting.
And there was nothing in her path.Ursuline reached between the stalactites, breaking off a few as she pulled out
the witch hammer. It was heavy, but not enough to discourage her. It seemed tohum with its own energy, invigorating her through her hands and arms with agrowing heat like warm water seeping up over her skin into her body.
She turned to her path and was surprised to see many more mushrooms thanshe remembered, so many that she could not see where her feet had trod. She
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began to kick them out of her way, and there was no mistaking it this time - tinysounds like thin cries seemed to rise from each mushroom she trampled.
Finally Ursuline moved past the mushrooms and held the torch high todiscourage the parachute veil fungus. As she approached the mouth of the cave,she was surprised to see how dark it had become in the short time she had beeninside. Twilight lasted a long time in Dreadmire, but tonight the darkness hadcome quickly. She hoped that did not mean a storm was brewing.
Ursuline walked down the hill, her mind literally miles away in the ArableRepublic. In her imagination, she was already negotiating with the clerics for thewitch hammer’s price, swinging the glinting hammer lightly through the air asshe walked around that huge, twisted tree.
The hammer slipped in her grasp and lightly struck an outstretched limb.The impact jolted Ursuline to her shoulder with a power far greater than the
simple act of a maul hitting a tree. A thrumming force drove through her body,weakening her legs until they trembled.
A thick branch dislodged from the tree’s massive trunk, and fell on top ofher. Instinctively, she held up the witch hammer to protect herself.
The branch struck the hammer and she felt another vibrating jolt slamthrough her chest.
She cried out, falling to the ground between the roots. The slippery folds ofknotty wood could not bear her weight, and she slid down further. She tried topush away, but the hammer was so heavy, and it too was wedged solidlybetween roots.
Ursuline tried to stand, but her feet were held tight between the massive tree'sthick, fibrous tendrils. She scrabbled at them - surely she had simply caught herfeet in a crevice. White-hot pain sank into her legs, and she lost her balanceagain, falling onto her back. The roots seemed to tighten around her ankles,digging into her skin and drawing blood.
As she lay there, Ursuline could not believe what she saw - above her, a long,impossibly curved branch had twined around the handle of the witch hammer,drawing it away higher up into the canopy of twisted branches. The maulvanished into the tangle of bark and dripping moss, with barely a hint of itsopalescent beauty.
The branches moved toward her, entwining around her arms and chest. Shefought it, trying to pull away, but the branches tightened like iron, holding herstill and drawing her closer to the twisted trunk of the enormous tree.
She had enough breath left for a single scream.
Eventually, the slipknot holding Ursuline's pirogue came free of its moorings.The small boat drifted unheeded through the darkening swamp, with no one atits helm.
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CHAPTER ONE
No one could get too excited about an assignment in Toadsuck, Tam thought.Tam trudged along the grass-covered levee under the cool twilight sky with
the Moor Knights. To the right, he could see the lattice of country roadswending through scrub brush and stands of trees toward the larger villages,chimney smoke and hearth fires glinting here and there to indicate the presenceof living people.
To the left, though, all he could see was the shadowy, dank expanse ofDreadmire. No light penetrated it, and there was no sign that anything livingpaddled through its depths. At the moment, the breeze wafted from the swamp,and it smelled of rotted things long-dead and decaying beneath stagnant water.
The Moor Knights trudged toward Toadsuck, a rag-tag village - if one couldcall it that - where the Creeps eked out their meager living.
“You ever wonder why the Creeps call their village Toadsuck?” Tam askedKancethedrus. He always had to look up to talk to Kancethedrus, who wasuncommonly tall and nearly twice as large as Tam.
“Because it sucks you in like a toad in quicksand, and you never escape,”Kancethedrus suggested. “You can go in, but you’ll never get out.”
“Welcome to the muck,” Tam muttered.Kancethedrus opened his mouth to quip something, but his foot slipped and
he nearly fell off the levee. He would have fallen, and perhaps broken somethingvital, if not for Tam’s steadying hand. “Thanks,” he said.
Tam shook his head. Kancethedrus was clumsy when he was not in battle,and he lacked originality in strategy. He was also the best swordsman in thecadre - it was as though his natural clumsiness vanished when he picked up asword. Tam was glad Kancer - as the others called him, sometimes to his face -
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was his friend, and he would never have to face him in battle. Even as a child,Kancethedrus had never been able to untangle his feet unless a sword was in hishand.
“Maybe they like to suck on toads, you ever think of that?” snickered Ruebel,the leader of the Moor Knights cadre. The assignment patrolling the northernborder of Dreadmire was not exactly a plum job. Nobody wanted to be on thefront line of defense between the Dark creatures of the swamp and the normalfolk of the Arable Republic. There was often talk about building up the levees,creating a massive wall between Dreadmire and the republic, but for now it wasthe Moor Knights’ job to fend off the things that haunted the night. A thankless,ugly job, it didn’t draw the best and the brightest, but they did have a uniformlybad attitude and a disregard for the people they were called to protect.
It was the Creeps’ bad luck to constantly be in their way. The vagabondpeople drifted from place to place, and wherever they were was Toadsuck. Theyknew the land, knew the swamp, and how they lived was a mystery to Tam. Butwhen they crossed paths with the Moor Knights, blood invariably spilled.
“Don’t be nasty to Tam, he can’t help being a Creep-lover,” said Yajol,snickering at him.
“You mean elf-lover, right?” Ruebel said, grinning. The others laughed asthough Ruebel had actually said something funny. Kancethedrus gave them aglare, and they ignored him as they always did.
Tam ignored them as well, not wanting to get into this for the nine hundredthtime. Kancethedrus laid a clumsy hand on his shoulder.
Only the word had stirred a memory in Tam’s heart. Wynter fairly glowed inthe early-morning sunshine, as though the golden rays collected in her hair andshe shone with a light that came solely from her.
He had been lost on her from the day he first met her, venturing only a fewsteps into the swamp in search of a rampaging Dark boar. The boar had trampleda half-dozen chickens at a nearby farm, and Tam had been sent to kill it before itinfected half the farm’s livestock with dark pollen.
It blundered through the brush past the levee, sinking into the muck,bellowing in that strange, high voice that seemed to afflict Dark creatures oncethey had been corrupted. Sword drawn, Tam struggled after it.
There she was, standing beneath the cypress tree, all the white-gold rays ofmorning caught in her hair. Her eyes were luminous, her face perfection, and fora breathless moment he could not move.
The boar growled low in its throat, and Tam could see the next moment asclear as the morning sunshine - it would charge the lovely woman beneath thetree, pin her gentle form against the wood, tear her to pieces before he couldreach her. It was horrifying and impossible all at once.
She spoke, but not to him - to the boar, and her voice was the sweetest musiche had ever heard. It stilled to silence, and Tam staggered up to it.
Wynter’s eyes met his, those luminous sapphire eyes, and she nodded sadly.But even then she could not watch as he drove his sword into its side, turningaway as he killed it. That was when he first saw the delicate upturned curve of
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