2025 Apr 12: Sleepers in the Bog

 It is well-known that bogs can preserve bodies. They can remain under the surface for hundreds of years, and still retain their hair, skin, and flesh. Sometimes however, bogs preserve more than just the body. Sometimes people who fall in, instead of drowning, just fall into a deep sleep, from which they awaken as soon as they are fished out. The catch is, just like with the dead, this can last for decades, even centuries. There have been records of people fished out from the swamps so ancient, their language could not be understood by anyone.

While the exact causes of this phenomenon are a mystery, there have been some inquiries made into its nature. Sorcerers have been able to replicate the ageless sleep inside the bog by forging a pact with the spirits of the swamps, but spirits often express ignorance of the people preserved in their bogs, hinting that this may be more complicated than just the will of spirits and gods. It is also not clear how long one can remain in the bog for. Several sorcerers have sent in people, but after the deaths of those same sorcerers, most were forgotten. Currently the longest-running experiment is being conducted by a sorcerer named Wylld, who has an entire village of his descendants near the bog he sunk himself into, with the instruction that he is to be retrieved from the swamp after two hundred years. With some hundred and fifty years left of the experiment, many question if it will ever bear fruit, as in that time even an entire village may be depopulated.