Fen Revenge

One thousand years before the days of yore a great Thor warrior lead his band of invaders across the Fens of eastern Anglader. They had pillaged and raped their way from the coast and were now in the  wetlands that encompass the Anglader.

The Fens run slow, their waters brackish and undrinkable. Below their surface black mud can suck in and drown any unwary traveller that enters these mysterious lands.

Ferns and willows hide the water ways and only those of the fenns know the ways that can be trod. Small men with long beards and eyes of fire can sometimes be seen fleetingly. Their cause and ways unknown to mortal men.

The skies are low, they hang with rain cloud, seeming to touch the ground. Moaning winds come in from the sea, making the ferns stir into life, the water ripples and the deadly water snake races its winding way to the mud banks.

The Fen men lie in wait and snatch them from the water, cracking their backs with a whip like snatch. With much chuntering and groaning they sink their fang like teeth into the back of the snakes head and tear it off, squeezing the contents of the body into their open mouths.

Then they are gone, disappearing through the ferns and willows to their lairs deep in the fenn land marshes.

This great wetland area guards the way to the uplands of middle Angland, where it was told of old that the Kings of Mercia had great wealth. The Thor warrior had been told of this by his sooth sayers. They had seen it in the great moon of the middle year when it hangs huge in the sky.

Its ghostly light had laid its hand upon a girl with unborn child, which had been ripped from her body to show the glint of gold on its unnatural locks. The girl had screamed as the act was performed by the agents of the gods, her agony interpreted as ’across the sea‘, her body seared by unbearable pain, and yet it is said that she went to the gods with a smile on her face as the unborn child was laid across her breasts, her last cry of ’to the gods’ came out as ’to the gold’ as she choked on her own blood.

There followed much singing and carousing as virgins were deflowered and lesser men were raped until they were truly countered. They should have looked beyond the moon were the great gods brooded. Virgins were for them and them alone, and so they swore retribution.

The great marshes opened up and swallowed the Thor warrior, drawn down to the under marshes were the great snake dwelt. It consumed them all but found small warrior men unwholesome and spit them out where they forced to eat the baby snakes for ever.

The Fens today are peopled by men with staring eyes and snake like ropes of hair.

Dally not with virgin intent, you may invoke the curse of the gods!