I initially though it was in the expansion to the first Dragon Age, but upon further research, rediscovered that it’s actually in a dialogue in Dragon Age II, in reference to events in said expansion, where some of your characters get into a discussion about how the suffix “-marsh” instantly turns a place-name into somewhere you don’t want to go.
Now, most of the good Something-marsh names suitable for a Fantasy locale are spoken for, so I had to go with deliberately ridiculous.
Copyright
J.B. Norman
“Be careful,” Scarlet warns. “The footing in the Stenchmarsh is notoriously unstable.
Right on cue, Kat feels her foot slip beneath her, yelps, and disappears into the bog water.
“Uh oh,” Dunstana mutters.
“I’d volunteer to help Katherine,” Amara muses, “but, well, I don’t particularly want to dirty up my adventuring clothes.”
Kat comes splashing back to the surface.
“And look,” Amara says cheerfully. “She’s fine!”
After resurfacing, Kat crawls back onto stable ground and sprawls out on nearby rock.
“Oh,” she groans, “a lot of that went into my lungs.”
She wipes a sodden strand of hair from her face.
“And thanks for the help,” she mutters bitterly.
“Hey, Kat,” Dunstana notes. “You smell like that stuff Dad drinks on the Harvest Festival and New Year’s!”
“Like I said before, be careful,” Scarlet says.
“I’m all for helping my friends,” Amara notes, combining low-level Wind and Fire spells to dry Kat. “But why am I helping my friends in the battle of this horrible bog?”
“Yeah,” Kat mutters, her mood not particularly improving. “Some help.”
“Quiet, you,” Amara replies.
“Short answer,” Scarlet says, “the University’s magigraphs are picking up some weird readings from within the marsh. The faculty thinks there are some magical artifacts that are getting unstable. If they get too unstable that would, well, that would be bad.”
“So, um,” Dunstana interjects. “Is the swamp supposed to be doing that?”
She points to where part of the bog is frothing and bubbling. Slowly, a vast, hulking, boneless form emerges from the swamp.
“I think that’s a Swamptopus,” Scarlet notes. “And think whatever magical energy is seeping into the swamp has made it grow beyond the size typical for the species.
The thing takes a swipe at Kat with one of its tentacles, catapulting her into the air.
“Not again!” Kat cries as she comes splashing down.
“I’ve got a rope!” Dunstana says. “I’ll help Kat!”
She dodges and weaves through a storm of tentacles, hurrying off to her sister’s rescue.
“Amara,” Scarlet says, “help me with the Swamptopus. And remember, its brains are in its tentacles.”
“Brains, plural?” Amara repeats incredulously. “It has more than one?”
“They’re truly a miracle of the Powers’ creation,” Scarlet mutters. “And they’re a delicacy in Natalis.”
“People eat them?” Amara asks, blanching. “Wait. The whole, um, squid, or the brains specifically?
“Especially the brains,” Scarlet answers.
“No,” Amara declares. “I don’t want to know. I don’t even want to think about it.”
As Scarlet and Amara fell the Swamptopus, Dunstana manages to fish Kat out of the water.
“Oh,” Kat groans, crawling back onto the same nearby rock. “Even more of that got into my lungs.”
She heaves a ragged sign and slumps onto the rock.
“I hate this place.”
Dunstana pauses thoughtfully.
“Hey, Kat,” she asks. “Do you smell that?”
“The swamp?”
“No. This smells good. The, um, squid-thingy. I think Scarlet and Amara just sort of roasted it with their magic. I wonder what it tastes like.”
“Oh, Dunstana,” Amara groans. “No.”
Inspired by an octopus-looking mid-game boss from the video game Sacred II“, Swamptopus” is actually one of the very first Realmgard ideas I ever had, way back before it even remotely resembled its current form.
Since then I’ve always had the fact that one of the first stories I tried to write was group of characters — including a drastically different version of the character that a eventually became Dunstana — adventuring through a swamp in the back of my mind, but I haven’t found a satisfactory reason for a group of characters to go to swamp since then.
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