"A steaming sprawl of parasynthetic vegetation - and a village. Barely a village. Holed walls, roofs in disrepair, stilts leaning dangerously. It looks to have been assembled by drunks in a hurry. Dock carefully."[1]
The Mangrove College is a swampy refuge for scholars and philosophers.
The Wise and the Wicked[]
"Sages, scholars, philosophers, naturalists, poets, dreamers - here to pursue their rarefied ideals in a land of muddy fecundity."[2]
The Mangrove College is a home for free thinkers from all across the Unterzee, a place where they don't have to worry about anything - except for their shabby living conditions.[3][4] The isles' vegetation is a source of easy sustenance, and the College lacks any significant dangers, provided that one doesn't enter the marshlands surrounding it.[5][6]
The Wisp-Ways[]
"Narrow waterways and quaggy paths. Marsh-lights and mud. Now and then, parasynthetic mosses like shaggy curtains. Now and then, a questing tentacle."[7]
The muddy swamps that surround the College are home to a variety of dangers, like amphigators, giant leeches, and enormous ants.[8][9][10] Some sections of the marsh have a very strong connection to Parabola, making them even more perilous.[11]
Solacefruit can be found here in very large numbers, suggesting the swamps as the parasitic solacefruit vine's point of origin.[12] The isles' humid climate also makes them a perfect environment for fungi, like blemmigans.[13]
The marshlands also contain many other oddities; from goats that carry precious blue scintillack with them,[14] to a sandstone pillar that recounts a tale of a person's journey to the East.[15]