Purple Lotus Swamp
From WikiAOC
In southern Stygia, the great deserts finally break into patches of stinking marshland with tropical trees poking from the unfarmable earth.
If one journeys further south, the marshlands turn thicker, the trees grow denser, until a traveler stands on the edge of the Black Kingdoms and the true jungles of those mysterious lands.
Between Stygia’s hostile deserts and the impenetrable jungles of the Black Kingdoms, the Purple Lotus Swamp spreads like a tropical smear across the realm. It is named and known for the beautiful, valuable flower that grows here and nowhere else in Hyboria. Large marsh snakes glide underneath the silt-darkened water, ready to drag wanderers down into a drowning doom. Deep tar pits dot the landscape, filled with the bones of the unwary.
The Purple Lotus flower is dear to the hearts of sorcerers and assassins alike. For the former, it is a narcotic to enhance meditation, for the latter, an aid to killing. Consuming a potion made from Purple Lotus petals leaves the imbiber paralyzed for many hours, though he remains awake and aware of his surroundings. Accordingly, the swamp is often home to bands of lotus-hunters, seeking the blooms for various purposes arcane or nefarious in nature – most often both.
In recent months, the swamp is claimed as hunting lands by the Asitambuke tribe of Darfar. These hunters are led by the beautiful, powerful shaman Wub – a priestess of the serpent god Damballah – with the slitted gold eyes of a serpent. Anyone venturing through the Purple Lotus Swamp is sure to run afoul of the Black Kingdoms clan at some point.
