Flooded Forest

The Flooded Forest was a swamp lying between Cormanthor, the Dragon Reach, and the Earthspur Mountains, between the lands of the Moonsea and the Vast in north Faerûn.

Geography
The Flooded Forest was a section of the great forest of Cormanthor that lay beyond the River Lis. However, it lay in a low bowl that filled with water, becoming a swamp surrounded by a ring of boggy woodland. The swamp was stinking and foul and the marshes around the southern edges tended to be wreathed in mists.

Maple and oak trees made up much of the forest. Although the trees had lasted centuries, most died when it turned to swampland; some were still standing a century later, but were so fragile they could fall at a touch. Fallen trees were a common sight, and falling trees were a common hazard to explorers. Mushrooms and hanging mosses were grew everywhere. Duskwoods lined the southern edge of the Flooded Forest.

Inhabitants
Lizardfolk and black dragons made their homes in the Flooded Forest. One particular black dragon was the one known as Velvet.

There were a number of carnivorous plant monsters, including assassin vines, dark trees, shambling mounds, and tendriculoses. There were also fungus creatures, such as shriekers and violet fungi. Other monsters include giant owlbears and stirges, and stranger things that were unknown and unnamed to the local hunters who encountered them.

Some of these creatures were not actually native to the area. This led to theories that they were being imported and released by some person, group, or power to drive people away.

Pirates and bandits made their hideouts deep in the swamp, particularly around its southern end.

History
Sometime around the mid–13th century DR, the forests here began sinking into swampland, becoming the Flooded Forest.

In the Year of the Prince, 1357 DR, Mestrel Hawkmantle, a Harper bard, travelling from Elventree, swam the River Lis and did a little hunting in the Flooded Forest before moving on.

Around 1370 DR, strange monsters began lurking in numbers around the Flooded Forest's southern marshes, including owlbears, stirges, and strange unknown creatures. Hunters from Ylraphon were forced to gather into large, well-armed bands and practiced great caution on their expeditions.

The Flooded Forest was encroaching on the eastern side of the town of Ylraphon around 1370 DR, and was in the process of reclaiming its northeast.

Locations
One unwilling settlement in the Flooded Forest was the town of Ylraphon on its southern edge and being steadily consumed by the swamp on its eastern and north-eastern sides. The outer ruins of the former city were left overgrown and submerged. They included several large, aboveground tombs and crypts, which provided shelter and hiding places for wanderers, bandits and pirates. Recurring local stories told also of ruined temples of Bane, Gruumsh, and Moander within these parts of the Flooded Forest, north of Ylraphon. One was the House of Moander. They tended to be built on raised and drier areas of the swamp.

On the southern fringe of the Flooded Forest, west of Kurth, stood the mysterious Mage's Tower, said by some to be the base of the even-more mysterious Mage Who Never Dies.

Legends and rumors
The ruins and tombs circling Ylraphon, in the fringes of the swamp, were a common target of adventurers seeking treasure or magic, but they'd been entirely robbed by orcs by 1370 DR, leaving little bar a few undead. However, with adventurers finding treasure in the House of Moander shortly before that time, more wealth was thought to lie hidden in the temples.

Folk in Ylraphon told of ghostly presences and screaming in the ruined temples of Bane, Gruumsh and Moander, and a few feared that they were being reused by living cultists. With the resurrection of Bane in 1372 DR, it was thought quite likely that his temple would be secretly renovated and reopened, perhaps to direct the church's influence into the Vast. Many, however, suspected that smugglers, bandits, or orcs simply stored their loot in these places, and that they made the screams to scare people off, or that they'd had a falling out. Evil groups and orcs regularly stocked up on supplies in Ylraphon before venturing into the Flooded Forest.

Some rumored that such bands served the mysterious Mage Who Never Dies, the master of the Flooded Forest. The Mage Who Never Dies apparently claimed the southern parts of the Flooded Forest as their dominion, including the Mage's Tower.

Strange stories of the deepest parts of the swamp told of half-sunken cities, weird mirages, vampiric pixies, and circles of giant frogs casting spells, and even worse things.

Many believed that the remaining treasure of the Turning Key adventuring band of Tavilar lay somewhere in the Flooded Forest, sunken in a bog, but this was too large and too dangerous an area to search.