Reed Village is situated on marshland with a wide, shallow, pebbled ford across the river quite close to the coast but before the river splits into many branches of a dendera.
The inhabitants are primitive, living as one large tribe who eat communally from the kitchen which has the only metal cooking vessel in the village, the great Cauldron, situated in a crude open-walled, woven-reed-roofed hut raised up on a hill made of pebbles, the top of which overlooks the marshes to the far distance in all directions.
The tribe fish in the mud for dozy flat-fish (mud-fish) and in the river for swim-fish of all sizes. They eat the frogs which add their voice immensely to the usually windswept sounds of the area. They catch nesting marsh-birds for meat, eggs and feathers. They bake buns from the reeds which produce a sweet, starchy powder somewhere between flour and sugar.
The reeds are the core of village life. Visually they look like bullrushes. Clumps of reeds surround hidden lagoons. Paths through the reed filled marshes are on top of pebbles gathered by ancestors for the purpose and surrounded in patches by Reed walls may of which curve around to form sections of tubular tunnels made from woven reeds.
Also of interest are the mud-covered but otherwise white chalky lumps to be found beneath the reeds in this region. The tribes collect and dry the ‘swamp-ore’ to trade with any travellers who might happen along. Their most frequent visitors are witches and other magic-users who recognise the purple-sparkling chalks mystical qualities. It is a core ingredient of the witches portable teleporting-circle-spell therefore is called by them ‘travellers chalk’.