The Fens Basin
A public introduction to the basin, its settlements, its Keepers, and the Currents that run through all of them.
The Fens are a broad inland basin of flooded roads, old industrial scars, forest, coast, glass desert, high ice, drowned country, and one crater nobody has managed to explain away.
A basin held together by crossings
No settlement in the Fens is truly self-sufficient. Mirecross depends on freight and upland medicine; Kilnward depends on food and water routes; Brinewake carries half the coast when roads fail. Causeways, ferries, rail-skiffs, barges, and informal tracks are as much a part of basin life as the towns themselves.
Keepers do not share one vocation
The same Keeper seal may belong to a ferryman, archivist, trader, sanctuary worker, arena regular, field researcher, foundry hand, or Underway courier. What makes the seal meaningful is not occupation but the public record of the bonds and responsibilities attached to it.
The habit of keeping records
Formal acts in the basin rarely happen nowhere. Bonds are witnessed, transfers filed, routes posted, sanctioned matches recorded, and debts preserved in ledgers. The record is imperfect, sometimes forged, and often late. People keep making one anyway.
