The Klescha Marshlands were not always a place of horror. Once, they were the flourishing eastern half of Klescha, a realm of white-stone cities, mirrored oceans, and spaceports. Its people were space explorers, scholars, and engineers who helped shape Anarkand’s spacefaring ambitions. That ended abruptly when the Red Hex above Eastern Klescha failed in the late 9th Era, unleashing a slow, unstoppable collapse that twisted nature, poisoned air and water, and bent the very laws of life.


What began as a gentle dimming of the skies became a cascade of corruption. Underwater creatures grew limbs, extra eyes, and other weird appendages. Trees bled sap that glowed in the dark. The soil itself shifted, breathing like a living thing. When the first wave of disappearances struck the coastal towns of Voldo and Halkesh, the government called for evacuation. Half a million perished in the attempt.


Those who stayed were never heard from again, or if rumour and whispered tales are to be believed; were changed beyond recognition.


In response to the spreading devastation, the Kleschan government enacted the Emergency Directive of Separation, commissioning the Wall of Kharan. The wall, a colossal marble and steel barrier dividing east from west, consumed a generation’s worth of resources and manpower, but it held. The contamination, and the creatures that came with it, were contained.


From that point forward, the Marshlands were sealed off. Airspace was restricted. Oceanic trade lanes were diverted. The Temple of Anark officially designated the area a Global Quarantine Zone, prohibiting all unauthorised entry. This has now been relaxed, however most people prohibit themselves from going!


The Marshlands are a realm of perpetual mist and half-light. The Red Hex, now restored back to 98% efficiency, flickers powerfully above the skies - a scarlet haze that distorts the atmosphere. The air hums with static; the rain burns on contact. Vast swamps stretch for hundreds of kilometres, filled with brackish water and fluorescent fungi that illuminate the night.


What was once farmland has become a graveyard of bones. Cities like Voldo, Kastarel, and Olen Qan De Mur, lie submerged beneath layers of sludge and vine. Marble spires tilt and crumble, wrapped in black moss that seems to whisper when the wind passes through. The mutated descendants of Klescha’s old citizens roam the marshes, their bodies warped by centuries of exposure to Hex fallout and mutagenic spores.


The Temple’s reconnaissance units have catalogued dozens of new species, though none have been retrieved alive. There are persistent rumours of tribes and creatures who still dwell deep within the Marshlands.


The Temple of Anark Declaration: The World’s Most Dangerous Place


Despite the restoration efforts ordered in the 10th Era, the Marshlands remain the most dangerous and least understood region on Anarkand. The Temple of Anark advises against entry, and even official expeditions are rare and often end in disappearance. Radiation, mutated pathogens, and the sheer unpredictability of life within make prolonged survival impossible.


To date, no permanent outpost has survived longer than six months. Drones frequently lose signal beyond the third kilometre past the Wall, and the images they return show scenes of impossible geometry - landscapes folding in on themselves, gravity behaving erratically, and organic matter fusing with stone.


For this reason, the Marshlands have become a dark fascination for the curious and the brave. Few who venture...return, but those who do, speak of voices in the mist, of the Marshlands dreaming, and of something vast that stirs beneath the poisoned swamps.