Fen Loonies

The Marienburgers aren't just telling tall stories to scare newcomers: the Grootscher Marsh is home to the  'Fen Loonies' , a loose tribe of psychotics and mutants. These unfortunates are or were people too violent, too wild or too changed by the touch of Chaos to hide even in the warrens of the Doodkanaal district or the hovels of the Flats. Fleeing imprisonment in Rijker's Isle or the fires of a witch-hunter's pyre - or a lynch mob of their neighbours - the outcasts escape intothe trackless marsh, seeking by instinct for their own kind.

If they survive first the fens and then their new comrades, new Loonies join a society that looks like some tortured priest's nightmares. Hideous mutants break bread (or a captured trader two) with cleaver-wielding maniacs and raving madmen. Hiding deep within the marsh, far from the bonfires or gallows that await them in Marienburg, they spend their days gathering food and their nights fighting each other for status or dreaming of their revenge on the city. They even play games: one or two of their number will sneak back into Marienburg through secret ways and try to come back with a trophy - the most prized being the head of one of the Black Cap watchmen. Like the Marienburgers themselves, many Loonies just want to get a head.

The Fen Loonies are ruled by the strongest among them, for the last 30 years a former dock worker named Koos.

For the Marienburgers, the Fen Loonies are held at the back of their minds, and most people have convinced themselves that they are nothing more than bogeymen useful for scaring children. The occasional axe-wielding, spike-haired and mutated psycho killed in the poorer quarters is dismissed as an aberration, the product of the sordid ways of the lower classes. The City Council will sometimes make noises about "cleaning out the outlaws and riffraff cowering in the marsh", while the Directorate nods and goes about its business.

In fact, no serious effort has been made for nearly thirty years, when a company of Tilean mercenaries was sent on a search and destroy mission. They returned after a few days with the body of an obviously long-dead mutant and, to top off the fiasco, successfully sued in court for bonus money for "hazardous duty". Since then, so long as they can go on with their business, Marienburgers would simply prefer to not look over the wall.

Source

 * Warhammer Fantasy RPG 1st ED -- Marienburg: Sold Down the River
 * pg. 11
 * pg. 12

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