The Mirebog Coven
The Mirebog is older than the maps that fail to chart it — a green-black sprawl of stilt-villages, sunken steeples, and water that keeps no straight channel twice. Here the hag-covens rule from a roothouse grown of a living tree, and every life in the bog is stitched to a bargain: a name traded for a cure, a year given for a safe crossing, a child promised against a hard winter. Will-o'-wisps lure the greedy off the boardwalks, gator-folk patrol the deep sloughs, a plague-spirit drifts the fever-channels, and the Black Ferryman poles the dead to whatever waits past the last cypress. Lately the bog-mummies have begun to rise from the peat, the witch-queen's debts are coming due all at once, and somewhere under the water, the church that drowned is starting to ring its bell again.
Rules of Reality
Everything Is a Bargain
Nothing in the Mirebog is given freely — every cure, crossing, and kindness is a contract, sealed by witnessing and binding as bone. The coven enforces these debts absolutely, and breaking a bargain doesn't free you of it; it simply lets the bog collect in full, with interest, in ways you won't enjoy.
Names and Years Are Currency
Here the coin of true power is the self: a true name, surrendered, lets a hag command you utterly; years of your life, signed away, can buy a miracle now and an early grave later. The bog's eldest are stitched from a thousand traded names, ancient past counting on borrowed time.
Still Water Holds the Dead
The Mirebog's standing water is a thin skin over the land of the dead, and the drowned never truly leave it. By night the still pools show faces, the bog-mummies climb up out of the peat that pickled them, and only the Black Ferryman's toll keeps the traffic moving one direction. Disturb the water and you invite what's beneath it up.
The Wisps Lie
The will-o'-wisps that float the fever-channels are not lost souls but swamp-fae, and they lure with exactly what you most want to see — a lantern, a loved one, a path home. Follow a wisp off the boardwalk and the bog takes you; but catch one, and it must answer one true question before it can flee.
Iron Salt and Holy Water Don't Work Here
The old wards travellers bring fail in the Mirebog — the bog is older than their gods and salt just dissolves in the brine. What works is bog-lore: a verse sung backward, a coin in the mouth, a name withheld, an offering left at a crossing-post. The coven knows the true protections, and they sell them dear.
Species & Powers
Humans
The stilt-village humans born to the Mirebog, weather-leathered and quietly fatalistic, raised from the cradle to know which bargains to make and which water never to wade. They keep more secrets than the peat itself.
Hags
The witch-rulers of the Mirebog, ancient and patient, their power woven from centuries of harvested names and years. A hag may wear the face of a sweet old auntie or a drowned bride, but underneath she is older than the cypress and reckons every kindness as an investment she will one day call in.
Gator-Folk
Scaled, slow-blooded, and longer-lived than any human, the gator-folk patrol the deep sloughs and remember the bog as it was before the stilt-villages. Some serve the coven as enforcers; others keep an older law of their own, and all of them measure a stranger first as a neighbour, then as a meal.
The Drowned
The dead of the Mirebog who slipped their toll or were never ferried at all — bog-mummies pickled brown by the peat, pale wading-wraiths, and the church's drowned congregation. They rise with the still water, hungry for the warmth they lost, and they remember exactly who put them under.
Wisp-Fae
The trickster lights of the swamp-fae, neither living nor dead, who drift the fever-channels luring the lost off the safe path. They are bound by old fae law to answer a caught wisp's question truthfully, and they are the only beings in the bog the hags themselves treat with caution.
Key Locations
Stiltwhistle
The largest of the bog-folk stilt-villages, a knot of weathered shacks and swaying boardwalks perched over black water, lit at night by lamps meant to keep the mist out. Its people are wary, weather-leathered, and deep in the coven's debt; the Moot meets here, and so does every rumour in the bog.
The Roothouse
The witch-queen's living hall, grown from a single cypress fed on traded years until its branches cradle a fortress of root and moss. Grandmother Sallow keeps the great ledger of names and years here, and folk who climb the boardwalk to bargain count their steps, because not all of them ever climb back down.
The Sunken Church
The drowned steeple of the dry-landers' lost chapel, its cross just breaking the black surface of a still southern pool. The Drowned Congregation waits below, and on quiet nights the bell tolls underwater — a sound the bog-folk bar their doors against.
Gloamfen
The deep eastern slough where the cypress crowd thick and the will-o'-wisps drift the fever-channels, luring the greedy off the safe water. The Old Scale Clan of gator-folk rules these dark sloughs, and the Wisp-Court holds its riddling games where no boardwalk reaches.
The Black Ferry Crossing
A fog-wreathed western channel where the Black Ferryman poles the dead toward the last cypress, marked only by a leaning toll-post hung with coins and older offerings. The living cross here only when they must, and only after they have learned exactly what the toll will be.
The Weeping Mounds
A cluster of peat barrows in the bog's southeast where the drowned were laid in the brown water that pickles them whole. The bog-mummies are climbing out now, silent and purposeful, and the ground between the mounds weeps a green water that never dries.
History
The Sinking
Beyond the oldest tale
The First Bargain — When the bog-folk's ancestors fled the failing dry-land into the green dark, the first hag met them at the water's edge and offered safe passage — for a name. They paid, and the Mirebog took them in, and the ledger of bargains has been growing ever since.
The Old Drowning
The Coming of the Ferryman — In the years when the dead first refused to lie still, the still water choked with the wading drowned until the bog itself was sick with them. Then the Black Ferryman came poling out of the deep fog, took the first toll, and the dead began, at last, to move on — for a price the living are still paying.
The Reign of Roots
Generations past
The Building of the Roothouse — Grandmother Sallow won her seat as witch-queen by out-bargaining every rival hag, and grew her hall from a single cypress seed fed on traded years until it became the living Roothouse. From its branches she hung the great ledger, and the whole bog fell under one coven's reckoning.
The Hungry Years
The Drowning of the Church — When dry-land missionaries built a steeple on a hummock and forbade the old bargains, the coven called in a flood that swallowed church, parson, and congregation in a single black night. The bell tolled once underwater as it sank — and folk swear it has begun to toll again.
The Coming Reckoning
Last green season
The Plague-Spirit Wakes — A fever-mist rose from a slough no one had disturbed in a lifetime, and the plague-spirit drifted out into the fever-channels, marking the Fevered with its green sweat. The coven sells protection by the vial now, and folk have begun to whisper that the bog is calling in old debts all at once.
This very season
The Mounds Open — The bog-mummies have begun rising from the Weeping Mounds in numbers, peat-brown and silent, walking toward the stilt-villages with purpose no one can read. The coven's ledger is coming due, the Drowned Congregation grows bolder, and even Grandmother Sallow has been seen, for the first time, to look afraid.