What does scare you in the swamps?

[alhoon]

The deadline for Sournage project approaches. So here it is...

When you're in a swamp (yes, you) what are you afraid of? I don't mean the usual staff snakes, disease, cuts from bushes etc. I mean when you relax... in the subconsious...
Does that strange looking bush give you the creeps because for some reason it reminds you a cross of a dead man and a lion?
Does this tree for a unexplainable reason makes you think (just for a split second, before logic kicks in) that it watches you with envy wanting to possess you and force you in its place rooted in a spot while it runs away with your body?

Perhaps I should ask children about that... We adults have already barricated our minds with logic and we don't see so much on a tree or bush any more.


BTW (but not totally unrelated) I want to say I enjoyed the Dark Tales & Disturbing Legends. Good work everyone.
I liked it because the stories there were already in our minds. If you sit down and let the paranoid, scared of the dark, little child of your first decade of life speak, you will see that you have thought about that.
Yes, you can admit that you have believed for a time that "believing in the bogey-man will make him come for you" but you couldn't help not believe in the bogey man!

[Glim]

Bubbly swamp gas at every corner

[BlackBoxGamer]

As a teenager, when I used to go out into the local wildlife preserve (which are very swampy marshland) I was always afraid of getting lost. The area had a tendency to get one to walk in circles, or to make things look all too familiar (even though you were a mile or two away from where you thought you were). It also had some herons that nested there that had some of the creepiest bird calls I have ever heard.

BBG

[Mortepierre]

Never being sure of what might be lurking beneath the (fetid) water <shivers>

[Bloody Morgan]

I've never been to a swamp, but in peat bogs I was always afraid of falling into a hidden bog hole. Drowing in what was basically very runny, black mud always seemed like a horrible way to go.

[alhoon]

Good ideas so far The experiment is working...

So we have a kind of swamp heron that makes people loose their bearings with its call... Perhaps a fey. (BBG)

We have sentient bog creatures that dig holes beneath the water surface and suddenly reach out unseen with their tentacles to grab a trespasser and drown him in what yesterday was a knee-deep hole. (BMorgan & Mortepierre)

[Rotipher of the FoS]

When I went to Equador last summer (trip of a lifetime, yay!), we stayed at a rainforest lodge in the interior, and went for night canoe-rides in a lagoon full of black caiman (an endangered species). We didn't see BIG ones up close, but there were little ones in the rushes all around us, with eyes that reflected weirdly pink-and-yellow to our flashlights. Spooky! Plus, a HUGE thunderstorm blew in on our way back to the dock, with sky-spanning lightning and pouring rain; I'm sure I wasn't the only one left wondering if the canoe would overflow and sink us before we got back ... and whether the big caiman would come to investigate, if it did. One of the canoes was a lot farther out than mine, when the storm hit, and we all had to shout and wave our flashlights from the dock for what seemed like forever (maybe 10 minutes) to help them find their way back.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I'm not sure I've ever been in a swamp, but the closest I've been I suppose is the bio-lumenscent bay in Vieques, Puerto Rico. It wasn't scary, but cool. (bio-lumenscent organisms in the water light up when disturbed. You can swim with them and it looks like you're swimming in blue light.) The only scary part was the mosquitoes.

[Isabella]

I've always felt the greatest fear in the swamp is that of the unknown... never knowing what is lurking under the waters or if your next step will send you plunging into a murky, water filled pit. But in my opinion, the alligators and natural swamp phenomina is scary enough. Who needs tenticles when you have a eight foot prehistoric reptile that you'll never see before it's too late?

Two things I read in the "Book of Jade" from the Legend of the Five Rings setting reminded me of Souragne's swamps:

First, the land moves. Even the most experienced tracker will go back the exact way he came in, and find nothing but more swamp.

Second, there are strange colored fields of swamp grass - black or brown, occasionally with pale patches in between them.
It's only if you choose to pull at them that you discover that the "grass" is human hair, attached to the skeletons of those who ventured in before you.

The last one creeped me out a little.

[Catman Jim]

I went canoeing last winter near my dad's place on Lake Okeechobee, Florida. Only saw a few gators, none as big as the boat. Truthfully, the only thing that made me apprehensive was the occasional delapitated shack I paddled past. I kept hearing 'dueling banjos' in my mind...

[MatthiasStormcrow]

Probably not the answer you're looking for, but as a kid growing up in southern Rhode Island, there was lots and lots of swamp about. And, as a kid you naturally want to go exploring/play around in it, and your mother always demands that if you go outside you not get too dirty. Exploring a swamp (without simply wading through the muck) usually involves leaping from tufts of grass or tree roots or rocks to other tufts, tree roots or rocks, and as a kid the only thing that terrified me about going in the swamp was that I would misjudge a jump, fall in the mud, and then have to go back to the house with muddy shoes and pants, and my mom would be mad at me.

I suppose spending that much time in the swamp as a kid kind of took the edge off of everything else; but, of course, it helps that swamps in Rhode Island don't have giant snakes or alligators or anything else more fearsome than an angry squirrel. (Hey! Those pesky squirrels can be pretty fierce!)

[Manofevil]

A very good resource for life in the swamp was a movie I saw a while ago called 'Gator Bait'. It gave a rather disturbing view of life in the Louisiana bayou. It can probably still be found in any Blockbuster video. The sequel is also fairly good in this regard.

[Brandi]

This isn't a fear thing exactly, but I find that the sound of many, many mosquitos, whining endlessly and seeking your blood, is a fair approximation of Hell.

[Fido]

Definitely the Australians. They make me crap my pants.



Wow! Absolutely amazing! Crikey! Stunning!




*shudder*


Seriously, I think you could actually base a darklord on this guy and it would just be totally awesome.

[Boccaccio Barbarossa]

Crocodile Darklord?...