Summerlands

The Summerlands were wet, marshy lands located in Wakiaiai Province. It was a popular place to become inspired to write poetry, enough scholars, priests, and academically minded samurai visit that a cluster of inns had been built to house them.

Bandits
A traveler should be wary of con artists who sold maps to the Summerlands. Most are harmless, fakes that led nowhere, but a few led to bandit ambushes. The bandits in the marshes exhibited strange behaviors. Some have a starved, frenzied look about them, others seemed desperate, a few had come to resemble the forgotten dead.

Exploration
One method of exploring the Summerlands included joining a string of explorers. As long as each person remained in sight of the one before and after, any individual could follow the line back to civilization. Each solitary explorer had a different story to tell of their visit to the Summerlands. One had spoken of a perfect torii arch that led to Enlightenment. Another claimed to have visited a strange city, its people half snake or dragon and half human. Others said they found a unique treasure: a chest of silver, a strain of rice that could grow anywhere, or a sword made of dreams.