Noit Quagmire

Place

Place Name:

Noit Quagmire

Biome:

Quagmire

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

Noit’s had enough chemicals dumped into it that the once clear water of the lake has… transformed, shall we say. Transformed so much, that dipping your little toe into its quagmire could spell your death if you’re of a weak constitution. Transformed so much, that breathing in its fumes for a dozen years is enough to halve your lifespan. Transformed so much, that even to look at it, and the crippled, poisoned people who live in the city floating just above it, is enough to scar you for life. I’ll leave you to imagine what the water looks like, since it’s rather beyond description.

Needless to say, anyone who falls beneath its thick, muddy, eerily coloured surface is never seen again, nor does anyone have the desire to look for the drowned corpses — ‘drowned’? No. Perhaps ‘absorbed’. The face of a man takes on a strangely horrific aspect as he sinks beneath the quagmire. No one wants to know what kind of sensation it would take to transform a man’s face like that.

Men have seen fish swimming through the quagmire. The inhabitants of Noit have come to the consensus that only a madman would try to fish for them. The city of Noit is half built of solid stone, which the quagmire has little chance of destroying. The other half is built out of wood which the quagmire could eat through at any moment, but hasn’t yet. Actually, very little of the wooden half of Noit has actually collapsed — there’s the odd rotting plank here and there, and that one time that a whole house with too many occupants suddenly dropped through the floor, but otherwise, the wooden half is still kind of safe… for now.

Every time one of its supports gets damaged, it gets replaced, either with a wooden pole, a stone pole, or a strange kind of floatation device strong and stable enough to float a building. Meanwhile, closer to the middle of Noit… the stone half of the city isn’t really any less a slum than the wooden half. It’s just a slum less likely to suddenly disappear within the year. It has the same filthy houses and the same filthy shops, the same filthy factories and the same filthy roads. The factories on the outskirts of the lake of Noit — now the quagmire of Noit — are still theoretically functional.

It’s entirely possible that the gigantic machinery inside of the factories would still work if you began pouring the standardly ludicrous amounts of electricity into them. It’s also entirely possible that every piece of machinery in the old factories of Blynhart Industries is entirely busted. And of course, there’s no guarantee that the factories would produce anything that’s remotely useful in this new era. It’s known that one of these factories specialized in the creation of an extremely expensive substance known as ‘Mood Ring Nail Polish’.

Which of course has uses only in the highest, most fashionable, and most ridiculous courts of the Third Era. For all anyone knows, the other factories could produce things equally worthless.

Plants

There’s a kind of moss that grows on the surface of the quagmire of Noit. Its official name is improper for polite company, but people with a disinclination to swear simply call it shltar. Not that anyone likes referring to it. It’s gross. shltar comes in a variety of colours, all equally delightful to behold — which is to say, of course, all equally disturbing to behold. Some people say that it absorbs sunlight, others say that it lives off the chemical slurry, still others say that it makes no difference what it makes its food out of and that it’s disgusting either way.

Sometimes shltar starts growing on the city itself. The men in favour of the theory that the moss absorbs sunlight point to this as proof, but everyone else just sighs and scrapes the moss off with tools made for the purpose. shltar, when scraped, loses all resemblance to anything other than the quagmire, and just collapses back into gunk. It’s rather fragile, it would seem. The people of Noit are unable to grow their own crops or otherwise produce their own food. It all has to be shipped in from elsewhere, received from the current kin’toni overlords.

Begged from the current kin’toni overlords, or stolen from the current kin’toni overlords. There is one plant that is commonly grown in Noit, though. One of two plants commonly grown in Noit. This plant isn’t food, but it’s something almost as nice. It’s a flower. The jalipi is a little white flower that doesn’t seem to mind the rancid chemical air. As a matter of fact, it produces its own fresh air. This smell of fresh air is a gift to anyone who’s never had a breath of it his whole life. The air is also slightly perfumed with the jalipi’s scent.

It’s a nice accent, but it’s not too strong. The real sweetness of the flower lies in the fresh air it provides. At some point one begins to wonder why people live in Noit at all. Even by today’s standards, it’s a pretty awful place. But when a skilled detective notes that the many chances to leave Noit for safer and more pleasant lands which a man who lives in Noit has all go by without the man taking advantage of them, he knows that there’s something else that he’s not seeing. The thing that he isn’t seeing is a drug, brewed from plants that grow extremely, absurdly well in the chemical infested city. ]

These plants, and the drug, are called noitra, after the city. Noitra just looks like an innocent little leaf, growing in flowerpots in people’s basements, fed light via a window. When ingested, it makes what would otherwise feel painful seem extremely delightful and pleasurable. In the days when people had stricter morals, Noitra was reserved exclusively for the use of women giving birth. Even then, it was given only in miniscule quantities, so that it wasn’t quite enough to block out the pain entirely — even by the standards of most drugs, the withdrawal symptoms of Noitra are extreme.

Most people experience them after the first dose. Nowadays, of course, noitra gets sold everywhere. The chemicals in Noit render it about twice as strong as it was in the old days, and render the withdrawal symptoms about ten times as strong. There’s tons of money to be made selling it, now that there’s no government in Noit to place restrictions on its use.

Animals

What is it that swims in the quagmire, that can even survive in the quagmire? It’s only ever referred to as qythrimmalya, and no man is too keen on studying it. Nevertheless, sometimes it flops up onto the docks of Noit, flops a short way into the city, and then decides to die there, so it’s useful to know how to deal with this situation. First, put on your protective gear. Full hazmat suits are preferable, but those are admittedly rare nowadays, so a ton of rags will have to do. Get gloves and a scarf so thick that you can’t breathe through it, at the very least.

If you don’t have gloves or an unbreathable scarf, you may as well throw yourself into the quagmire after you’ve finished dealing with the rotting carcass of the qythrimmalya. You don’t have to ask me why. By the way, just leaving the qythrimmalya there to rot is also a bad idea. Again, you don’t have to ask me why. Second, grab your tools. The standard qythrimmalya removal equipment would be a set of large and sturdy sticks or planks to use as levers, a piece of canvas to lever the qythrimmalya onto, perhaps some soap, ball bearings, or other lubricant to make dragging the canvas to the edge of the dock a little easier.

And a few friends willing to help you out (or at least a few enemies willing to help you get rid of this thing before it kills them too). Just a stick is fine if the qythrimmalya didn’t get that far from the quagmire and is in a position to be shoved back in without much effort. But this is seldom, of course. Third, actually get the blasted thing out of here. Use your levers to get the qythrimmalya onto the canvas. Then drag it away and into the water. Sometimes there’s trapdoors built into the floor of Noit for the express purpose of dumping qythrimmalyas back into the chemical slurry from which they came.

So you might want to check for one of those before you start any longer trips. Fourth, when you’ve gotten rid of the qythrimmalya, throw your tools and protective gear into the murk along with it. Unless you have some kind of disinfectant that you’re absolutely sure works on things that have touched dead qythrimmalya, (which, if you live in Noit, isn’t often) or unless you have some kind of a wish for a disgusting death (which, if you live in Noit, is often — but then again, if you had such a wish, why did you bother with getting rid of the qythrimmalya to begin with?).

There are specialized crews in Noit that are paid to deal with qythrimmalyas, so if you’re extremely lucky, one might come along and get rid of the qythrimmalya for you. The thing is, getting rid of qythrimmalyas isn’t a fun job, and the crews demand high pay for doing it. Naturally, they get paid with the most valuable thing that Noit has, which is Noitra. And consequently the crews are usually drugged or in a state of withdrawal, and are unable to do anything, including get rid of qythrimmalyas.

Historical Timeline of Ages

Age Name	Dates	Controller
Stone Age	Before 1E 0	Unknown
Copper Age	1E 1–1E 2200	Unknown
Bronze Age	1E 2200–1E 4400	Unknown
Iron Age	2E 0–2E 700	Unknown
Ancient Age	2E 700–2E 2200	Unknown
Middle Age	3E 0–3E 2050	Unknown
Early Modern Age	3E 2050–3E 2600	Unknown
Industrial Age	3E 2600–3E 2700	Unknown
Machine Age	3E 2700–3E 2800	Unknown
Atomic Age	3E 2800–3E 2850	Unknown
Space Age	3E 2850–3E 2875	Unknown
Information Age	3E 2875–3E 2900	Unknown
Genetic Age	3E 2950–3E 3000	Unknown
Awakening Age	3E 3000–3E 3415	Unknown
Twilight Age	4E 0–4E 500	Danynn Kin'toni Clan

Place

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

Noit Quagmire

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

This article is written by Xerxes Worldweaver. Copyright 2026 Xerxes Worldweaver. All rights reserved.