Despite its favorable location at the trisection of three major roads, Castle Noth is not a favored destination for the merchant caravans of Vanth.  This is largely due to the dangers of navigating the Purple Sludge, the radioactive swamp which surrounds Noth in two great glowing arcs.  The origin of the Sludge is a matter of much conjecture: mytho-geologists claim they are glacial wetlands carved out during the Great Nuclear Ice Winter, while most galactic historians think they were likely caused by spent ultranium funnels jettisoned from a klengon Warhawk Space Destroyer.  Many believe that the Nothic Pole around which Castle Noth was built protected it from whatever cataclysm created the Purple Sludge.

However, none dispute that the Sludge is a fearsome place.  Those foolish enough to explore the marshland have found it to be home to wild mutants, winged goblings, manion devils, and gigantoid beasts of many sorts.  The east-west road is slightly safer, but during the spring deluges long stretches are impassible, flooded with toxic muck and infested with savage free-swimming radioactors.  For merchants, Noth is generally a hasty afterthought bracketed by a deadly parenthesis.

Those that do hazard the east-west road must contend with the Eel-Riders of the Purple Sludge.  These mutant banditos harass and harry any travellers they catch on the road.  Mounted on sleek and slimy giant eels, the Riders can outpace all but the swiftest of horses, and they know many secret channels through the swamp.  Specially bred Gob-Spitter Eels pick off outriders with mutagenic sludgeballs, and enormous Gulper Eels can engulf entire treasure wagons.  Those caravans with enough luck and enough guns to make it through the Sludge without being pillaged find themselves charged an exorbitant fee by the Eel-Riders for safe passage across the Mussel Shoals.  Spanning the innermost borders of the Sludge, these noxious lakes are home to giant fire clams, gooey ducks, and aquahogs in addition to relatively harmless crater lake monsters.

Though their depredatious ways are known far and wide, the Eel-Riders are otherwise largely mysterious.  In his memoirs the pioneer, warlock and doxy Horatio Algernon Hiss claims to have been born in the Purple Sludge.  The Riders, he writes, are divided into eastern and western tribes, the Mauve and the Puce, who trade with each other via deep-diving tunnels connecting the two halves of the Sludge.  Outlandish though it seems he goes on to describe an annual tribal moot at an underground lake of goo somewhere deep beneath Castle Noth.  During the Grand Congeries the tribes compete in Eel Races and mate-swapping tournaments, and pay homage to their living god/dess Mandora Hermangela, King of the Sludge and/or Queen of the Eels.  Of particular interest to biologists is Hiss's claim that all Eel-Rider children are randomly blended mutants born in spawning pools.

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