Crane Lands - The Summerlands

[Vutall]

The Summerlands
Located in Wakiaiai Province, these wet, marshy lands teem with delicate reeds and cicadas. Travelers like to visit at the end of spring to await the cry of the insects. As it is a popular place to become inspired to write poetry, enough scholars, priests, and academically minded samurai visit that a cluster of inns has been built to house them. The mild weather, flat lands that allow a spectacular view of the sunrise, and warm temperatures suggest an idyllic retreat. However, those dedicated to experiencing the true Summerlands sojourn deep into the marshes for privacy and contemplation, surrounding themselves with the sounds of summer.

A traveler should be wary of con artists who sell maps to the Summerlands. Most are harmless, fakes that lead nowhere, but a few lead to bandit ambush-es. If a wanderer travels deep into the marshes, some-times they find a body or a skeleton of a poor victim of an attack or simply of someone who became lost. The bandits in the marshes exhibit strange behaviors. Some have a starved, frenzied look about them, more animal than human. Others seem desperate, constantly asking travelers the year and attacking when they don’t like the answer. A few have come to resemble the forgotten dead, proclaiming doom while dragging their victims deeper into the marsh.

Most visitors say that a map is useless, since the paths change every year. Given the fast-growing reeds, this shouldn’t surprise anyone, but some say that the land itself changes as do the seasons. At any point, the soft muddy ground might turn into a deep pool of water, the reeds hardly waving as an unfortunate slips out of view. One method of exploring the Summerlands includes joining a string of explorers. As long as each person remains in sight of the one before and after, any individual can follow the line back to civilization. The call to discover something new and unique, however, prompts many to forgo this human chain and wander the marshy lands alone.

Each solitary explorer has a different story to tell of their visit to the Summerlands. One has spoken of a perfect torii arch that leads to Enlightenment. Another claims to have visited a strange city, its peo-ple half snake or dragon and half human. The beings were welcoming and polite the explorer says, but they were reluctant to explain their existence and unable to acknowledge the visitor as a human. Still others say they found a unique treasure: a chest of silver, a strain of rice that can grow anywhere, or a sword made of dreams. In the end, the visitors also say they have never managed to discover anything like this again in the Summerlands: only the soft susurration of the reeds and the hum of the cicadas