Like, is it just an allegory for diesease and pestilince that tends to grow in swampy, damp, dark places or is there actually a type of body of liquid that would be poisonous to tread through and not by injesting or infecting through an open wound? 🤔
I suppose I didn’t consider gasses from the swamp being the poison. That makes way more sense than the liquid in the bog poisoning you (as indicated in the games, especially with Elden Ring and how rolling through the poison sticks to you even after exiting the pool).
Yeah I found a better citation for what I remember from my phycology studies back in the day. I even recall it being having something akin to a ‘sulfur weed’ or similar common name but it escapes me at the moment.
The specific algae I was trying to remember was Sargassum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargassum
So if you are doing world building, Sargassum is some pretty cool stuff. It forms massive oceanic free floating mats, and when these get pushed ashore, it can result in the release of significant quantities of gas.
I know that some algal blooms can occur in swamps and some can produce cyanotoxins that take effect just from skin contact. If those two features can happen at the same time, I suppose that gets us there? But I have no idea if it can