Fantasy Ash & Moonlight

[Grey]

ASH AND MOONLIGHT

​

Smoke drifts down, and wraps around my ankles,


As if calling me back to the streets I knew so well,


But no one at home would listen


To the music that rose from the shell.


So I said goodbye to home and hearth,


And the serpent that guarded the well.


Set out to find my fortune, or die


Or bring back a story to tell.


Because no one at home would listen


To the music that rose from the shell,


As it sang of ash and moonlight


And gods under ocean swell.


- Wanderer's Song, Traditional


Exploration and Discovery: The world is a strange place, even without leaving your home city. Night-time streets that twist on themselves and weeping wraiths are matter-of-fact, smoke that falls like water and voices on the wind. What greater oddities lie beyond the walls, to be found and perhaps harnessed?


Beauty and Horror: Inspired by works such as Dark Souls, Dishonored, Tim Lebbon's Fallen, Lovecraft's Dreamland Cycle, this game will involve a world of things terrible and wonderful


Loss and Melancholy: Taking tonal cues from things like Dear Esther, Ryu Murakami, and some of my own work, this game will never be anything more cheerful than bittersweet.


Willingness to work with me in filling out some setting details while making character backstories, and tolerance for never being absolutely sure where the end goal is or what must be done, and plenty of initiative are all vital.


Will use a limited, diceless system for violent encounters and attempts at magic.


Characters will be mostly average folks who, by ambition or inducement, are going on a voyage of discovery.


Ideally 4 to 5 players.


Your character, mechanically, uses 6 Tags for influencing a situation - one word or a short phrase to encapsulate what it is.


The Tag categories are:


Archetype - This is a combination of profession and demeanour, examples being things like Weird-worker, Rat-catcher, Stoic guardian, and so on.


Homeland - Local knowledge, customs, wildlife, and things one needs to know for living in a specific environment, with skills naturally transferable elsewhere, like swimming. Naming the homeland here is sufficient as a Tag.


Motivation - Why are they doing what they're doing? Profit, revenge, faith?


Gear - A specific item or set of items in your characters possession, such as grandfather's sword, assassin's tools, alchemist's satchel, witches scrimshaw


History - This one is a bit trickier. If you can think of a defining moment in their history, or common theme, such as betrayed, abandoned, orfeared.


Failing - A particular weakness of your character. Are they a coward? Wrathful? Tactless?


A Tag can influence a situation negatively or positively, and sometimes it'll do a little of both.


There is one final 'Tag', Integrity. Every character begins with an Integrity of 'Mostly Sane'


Over-exposure to the Dream can change this, as can using forbidden magics, or emotional/physical trama. This influences how you see the world and how people react to you. A character whose Integrity has perhaps slipped to Paranoid will get the impression NPCs are plotting against them, while the rest of the party relatively unbiased descriptions.


Example Locations:

Spoiler

• High Lontarn
• Isle
• Eastvale
• The Glassy Coast

• 
  
  
  High Lontarn is the largest city of the north, a vast industrial hub built on high metal struts, lit by harsh bottled light from the mines below. It rises over the desolate plain of the northern heartland and bleeds smoke onto the ground.
  
  
  The upper streets, raised high over the smoke, are still grimy and narrow. Buildings of red brick and cast iron, streets of sheet metal hammered to resemble cobblestones. Homes for the wealthy, workshops and libraries, and the factories which dump their smoke into The Murk.
  
  
  The Murk is a slum; shanty houses squatting in the shadow of the upper town, the streets choked with smoke such that one needs a gasmask to go out at all. This is where the outcast and impoverished live, the most downtrodden miners and labourers.
  
  
  High Lontarn is also home to the Cathedral of the Caged Heart, the seat of the north's dominant religion. The church itself houses the Heart, beating slowly and sensually within its reinforced cage at the apex of the vaulted ceiling.
  
  
  
• 
  
  
  The Isle of Cacophony is located in the wilderness a little south and west of High Lontarn, a little visited place of pilgrimage and home to reclusive hermits and people who feel drawn to the singing shadows of the island.
  
  
  It hovers gently around twenty feet from the ground and a few hundred across, chained to hoops buried in the rock. They say it stop it drifting away, but who knows? The chains disappear into the stone of the island and clank gently with its soft rocking.
  
  
  The wind, when it rises - and that is often - sings through the links and spires of rock. It rings bells left on the skeletal trees by unknown hands. Pilgrims and settlers alike tend to hang bells around their homes, on branches, adding to the cacophony.
  
  
  Some settle on the island and collect traces of living shadow left torn and vibrating on sharp edges during the Dream, for when the Dream rises a procession of dark figures, lit by strange lanterns they carry, proceed through ruined streets come to life and along forgotten boulevards, into the well at the centre of the island.
  
  
  The locals and pilgrims are divided in opinion of the island. Some believe it to be the prison of a god, and ritually chain themselves in sympathy. Other believe a monster is trapped within the island and their piety keeps it sleeping. Still more consider the music of the island to be sacred and join in song as the Dream rises. Some join the shadowy procession and are never seen again.
  
  
  The island is said to be home to a coven of witches who work magic with carefully made bells of bone.
  
  
  
• 
  
  
  Eastvale
  
  
  East of High Lontarn and the Glassy Coast is a dark valley fed by a rare, pure spring. Evergreens gather into deep forests as they rise into the impassable mountains of the furthest east. And there, above the trees, on the slopes of the mountains, is the tower.
  
  
  This place is home to a cabal of sorcerers, obsessed with the Dream. They wear silver crescent moons on steel chains, and call themselves the Sleepless Order.
  
  
  Few venture to the 'vale, less to the tower. The woods are deep, and dark, and host to fearsome things that persist in the shadows left by the Dream.
  
  
  Some seek the spring that nourishes the valley, hoping for a cure to their ailments. Others come to learn under the Sleepless Order.
  
  
  Few are proven to have returned.
  
  
  
• 
  
  
  The Glassy Coast is the furthest northern point of the known world. It is bleak, but serene, inhabited only by the Glassies. The coast twisting, rough bays stretch to the sheer cliffs of the west and the ship-killing rocks of the east. The heavy clouds and harsh winds give way to fierce storms almost weekly, battering the the coast with gales and sleet. The rocks erode into the shimmering sand from which Glassies make their famous glass.
  
  
  The Glassies who live here build hardy harbours into what bays they can, then carve stone channels to feed the seaweed gardens and shellfish nurseries that in turn feed them.
  
  
  Further inland, a little safer from the storms, are soft grasses and willow-woods, and strange, stark glasswood trees (as, for all their creativity with glass and music, Glassies name things quite simply). Some tower old glasswoods, though, have a sinister aspect, seeming to drink in what little light pierces the clouds and housing Dream-lurks cunning enough to shelter therein. The Glassies, in a rare display of abstruseness, call them ruperthorns.
  
  
  Four-tailed deer in large herds provide meat and leather, along with a multitude of narrow-nosed rodents and tricksome weasels. The only real dangerous animals are the sand-cats, and brave Glassies will sometimes hunt those, too.
  
  
  Glassies, insofar as they farm, try to take care of the huge and spiderlike harvestmen that spin silk prized in for sails and lines, and the sea-hawks they have domesticated to keep thieving gulls away from fish markets.
  
  
  And those markets are precious to the Glassies, for the sea is as rich in bounty as it is terror. For every delicious and versatile mammoth shrimp there are the dreaded eight-fin sharks who can sunder ships in their teeth; for every gentle Dreamwhale is a raft of beautiful, venomous jellyfish.
  
  
  The Dream only brings bad tidings. The already miserable weather grows colder yet, and the thick air fills with a dark, ill fog. When a storm blows across the waves, the Dream fills the wind with the chilling whispers of the deep, and the rain with icy blades of heart-numbing cold. The more innocent creatures flee to their nests, and replacing them are the terrors of the Dream: the beasts from the ruperthorn woods grow bold, stalking the meadows with long, bone-chilling howls; the things from the sea drag themselves up from their evil lairs to slither the sand-bars and scour the crags for victims.
  
  
  The Glassies, however, fight back from their villages and their harbors: creating great balls of glow-glass to mount on their walls and ward off the creatures of the Dream. Watchmen prowl the streets and the walls, searching for signs of any Dream leaking through into the pleasant Glassy streets. Even the common folk have their ways of doing battle, gathering in taverns and eating-halls to drive back the gloom with wine and rousing choruses of great deeds and marvelous heroes. Certain brave craftsmen have been known to lock themselves up outside of town in hidden workshops, using the weird of the dream to create wondrous works of glass, which are fantastical even beyond Glassy standards. Occasionally, the Glassies will band together their best, and form hunting parties, which they send during the day to kill off as many of the dream-lurks as they can, that there might be fewer to deal with when the fog again descends, making swords heavy and glass quarrels fall short of their mark.
  
  
  Traveling to the Glassy coast is a complicated manner. There is little there to interest the common man; the rare resources of the ruperthorn forests and the dangerous waves are best worked by Glassies. Merchants who seek to trade in the precious goods the coast has to offer need simply to strike an agreement with the Glassies, who, owing to their timid nature, will generally accept most agreements, and will certainly accept if offered interesting things to put in their glass. The Glassies themselves, while not overly antagonistic, do not trust outsiders, and so visiting the coast is a lonely affair, as far as the locals are concerned. This, plus the dangerous environment that is the coast at Dream, not to mention at storm, and worst of all at Dream-storm, makes a trip to visit the Glassies a very rare thing indeed. Very few have had the pleasure of calling around the Glassies' doors, and fewer still have called it a pleasure at all.
  
  
  It is rare that a Glassy should be talked about outside of the coastal wastes, and even then, they are only brought up in passing. Even the most learned of scholars or most involved of community leaders have better things to think about. Such as dirty socks. Or their favorite method of contracting food poisoning. Not to say that the Glassies are so unpleasant – no, they are just so hard to bring to mind. Some say it is because they are so short and quiet. Many believe it is a side effect of their (supposedly) magical connection to glass. Others go so far as to say that it is not blood, but glass that flows through their veins, and that they are literally transparent. Whatever the cause, the effects are all the same.
  
  
  The Glassies
  
  
  Glassy houses are small, practical things, with much of the walls and ceilings being made of glass (Although they do use wood for their walkways and such), and are centred around the communal lifestyle that Glassies adopt. They keep themselves well fed off of the sea, fishing the wild oceans for whatever they can catch, and constructing farms to grow sea-weeds and shellfish. On land, too, they grow their fruits and vegetables, as well as spices, of which they make great use. Though the Glassies are simple, they are practical, and their villages contain countless workshops and smithies to counter the rough sea life. Present, too, are a number of large eateries and drinking-houses, kept well occupied on stormy nights (which are frequent).
  
  
  Their race is smaller than most of the world, standing at an average of five feet or so, for men and women, with very little deviation. Their legs are small but their arms are long for their frame, with even longer, lithe fingers attached to otherwise small palms. The race is known, and named, however, for their peculiar eyes, which appear as if they are made of glass – possessing an odd brightness and shine unlike any other sort of eye, not to mention amazingly detailed and intricately coloured irises.
  
  
  The name also stems from the unchallenged mastery of Glassy glassblowing. From an early age, Glassies are trained hard and fast in their craft, and even at that young age, Glassy glass is the finest. The race has an affinity for glass, powered by natural magical tendencies; their glass, by extension, tends to be of higher quality than any other, and comes with some interesting side effects.
  
  
  Glassies can seal away almost anything in glass for later retrieval, including living creatures and burning flames. They can create glass amplifiers that resonate with sealed music, create bulbs with the light of the sun hidden inside, and craft glass vials which hold more of their wine than a vessel of their size should carry. Even their conventional window glass, or the glass they used to create their dining ware, has strange properties, from an odd regenerative ability, to keeping food hot and tasty for days on end.
  
  
  Their workshops are full of intricate metal tools, strange sing-song invocations, and Glassies demonstrating the depth of their connection with glass: passing bare hands over molten glass with hardly a flinch as they carefully coax strange shapes and beautiful objects from its glowing red surface.
  
  
  Almost as remarkable as their glass is a Glassy's skill at sea. Their long days on the coast, full of fishing and combing the sands for interesting things to put in their glass, has given the Glassies an innate sense for the sea and its workings. Glassies are well versed in swimming, spending sunny days and stormy nights alike in the coastal pools and inland channels they carve for themselves. When they do have to go out on the wild waves (most often for fishing), they take to their beautiful glass boats, surprisingly strong constructs well suited for the stormy weather of Glassy coasts. They also have an uncommon knack for guessing when storms are about to erupt, and seasoned sailors are able to guess weather patterns into a full three days – beyond that, however, the sheer chaotic nature of the coast undermines even the Glassies' skill.
  
  
  It is said that Glassies themselves are much like glass: transparent, with nothing to block the view through them. To the rest of the world, this is very true: Glassies are shy, cautious people, taking years to build up enough trust for simple trading and business relationships. To ask for more than a bashful exchange of goods is to ask the impossible: Glassies have little to give past their usual wares, finding the wide world far too busy. Instead, they retreat to their secretive villages, content with blowing glass, catching fish, and weathering storms.
  
  
  Weathering storms is something that Glassies do quite well: despite their quiet demeanor, they can be unnaturally loud little folk when the tide is right, instruments are strung, and a little wine has been passed around. Glassies are exceptional musicians, playing a wide variety of glassy instruments, and singing long epic tales of the world beyond their doors.
  
  
  For all the cruelties of the lands beyond, it provides endless fascination for them, and they take to its tales with an unhealthy fascination. It has been hypothesized by those who knew a Glassy or two, that they make up for their own insecurities and fears by inserting themselves into their own fantastical tales: indeed, Glassies as a whole are an absentminded people, who put far more thought into their creations then they do their own dinners. Be so lucky as to eat with a one, and mind you make well sure your fish has actually been cooked (Glassies themselves have tough stomachs: They wouldn’t shy away from just eating the fish, stove be damned).
  
  
  Recently, the Glassies have been making forays into the greater wilds of the land, and this process has been slow. Their shy nature sends them swishing back to their shelters at a moment's notice, and their peaceful nature makes them at ill with a chaotic world. However, their unique skill set (beautiful, functional glass and skillful work at sea) grants them a chance to fit in with the rest of the world, taking up odd jobs from the corners and under the edges of society.
  
  
  

Spoiler

When the sun falls below the horizon, the Dream rises, and really, the Dream had never left.


Wherever light does not shine, there is the Dream. It is best not to consider those places the light of the sun has never touched.


During the Dream, distances and edges blur. Sounds become muffled or too-loud, or echo strangely. Motions leave coloured contrails in the air. Sometimes Glassies even swim through the thick air of the Dream. Light and colours and sounds emanate out of the darkness. Motes of green fire dance gaily around people as they sleep.


On the downside, the Dream varies in intensity, and when the Dream is strong, terrible things can happen. Corpses rise and rampage, compelled by some unknown intelligence. Machines come to life, briefly, and often take revenge on their owners for an eternity of slavery. Worse things than these exist, but are poorly documented.


However, what little magic people can work is best worked during the Dream, the stronger the better, catching little shreds of Dreamstuff in the act of creation.


Smoke falls. This is the way of things. Like water it drifts down and flows in currents. Rivers of smoke from some distant land can be found sometimes, or perhaps from somewhere else? Whole ecosystems have sprung up within and around such things, mostly the graceful sootrats, diminutive winged rodents that can swim through smoke, and the gossamer-thin smokespiders that tread delicately on the surface of the smoke itself.


Magic is... uncertain. More rural communities remain convinced that magic is real, and will often have a village weird-worker who my or may not be able to make little spells and charms. Urban communities tend not to be so superstitious, for the most part, but there is always a customer to be found.


Magic is a matter of ritual and sacrifice; you don't get something for nothing. It's hard to do, slow, expensive, and sometimes you can't be sure it even worked. Most magic takes the form of physical objects - string-bone-and-wood charms, tightly wound scrolls, intricate tattoos on the skin of some dread monster sewn into the flesh.


Of course, there is another kind of magic. Drawing directly on the power of the dream to effect wondrous, sorcerous feats. But this is not safe, not easy, and certainly not without risk. Inviting the Dream into oneself will, ultimately, drive someone mad or hollow them out. Rare individuals of singular will can control the Dream with skill and safety... for a while. Naturally such people are rare, and according to stories they don't die, they simply... go away.


Drawing on the power of the Dream is not safe, not at all. Each time it is used, it applies a little mark to your Integrity - accrue enough marks, and your Integrity slips. Six, to be precise. But the unfortunate thing is that your powers become greater in the process, it becomes easier and more tempting to keep drawing on the Dream.


Dream Sorcery is less effective in the light and might not work at all, and only in small ways. During the Dream is can dangerous to everyone around and hard to control. Dream Sorcerors are rare as a result, individuals of considerable skill and willpower. Some of the best ways to maintain control over the Dream is though self-mutilation; a grounding in the physical and application of ensorcelled piercings, tattoos, or other things. The Wardens of the Ashen Wood, for example, ritually cut out an eye and replace it with a stone retrieved from deep within the Dream - this is less effective than it sounds, but the method is not without merit.


Most who work with the Dream are called Weirdsmiths, shaping the raw essence of the Dream into wondrous artifacts. Safer than Sorcery, but not by much.

 

[Stickdom]

Pretty sure I signed up for this the first time this came around, I'd like to see this one up and running again Gonna throw my name in the hat here.

 

[AlexNos]

High or Low Fantasy?


(Im not stalking you, I swear.)

 

[Grey]

New Weird, I think, rather than either of those being applicable.

 

[Hellkite]

Looks awesome, I'll join if I may

 

[marorda]

This looks nice. I'll join!

 

[Xillia]

Always admired your work, and I think this time, I'd like to ask if I may join.

 

[Grey]

Good, good. Let's see some character ideas, folks. Show me you're serious.

 

[Stickdom]

Quick question, Grey, what is the height of modern technology in this setting? I kind of pictured as having a Victorian-noir feel somehow, are inventions such as steam-power and gunpowder applicable or is this more primitive than that?

 

[Grey]

Steampower and gunpowder are a-ok, yep. Even some primitive electrical devices.


Feel free to take some liberties, though - this is very intentionally a shared setting you guys can add details to. The Glassy Coast was @Doctor Calgori 's work, and Eastvale is adapted from a location @Wolf Rawrrr donated. I may even go back and get some of the places from the more recent attempt to run it.


For some references; smoke behaves sort of like water in this setting, falling instead of rising, flowing in rivers. Light can be mined from deep underground - somehow. I'm leaving some stuff vague.

 

[Stickdom]

Works for me, I'll have a charrie sketch up shortly.


 
One more quick Q: how's the global bestiary? Are many/any creatures that we would consider "supernatural" in the here-now common in this world, is there any opening for weird-based eldritch creatures/pets, or are they shunned and abhorred by the human species?

 

[marorda]

My idea is a spymaster bard with a history of being exiled, abandoned, betrayed and have lots of people close to her dying. She keeps an optimistic attitude, but it's mostly a mask to hide her pain and because she doesn't want other to suffer. O would love to say more, but I'm away for the weekend and currently waiting for my train. So I won't be back until Sunday evening

 

[Grey]

Works for me, I'll have a charrie sketch up shortly.
 
One more quick Q: how's the global bestiary? Are many/any creatures that we would consider "supernatural" in the here-now common in this world, is there any opening for weird-based eldritch creatures/pets, or are they shunned and abhorred by the human species?

Almost no animals in this world would be entirely familiar - close to real world ones, but distinctly weird. So a strange little pet is acceptable.

 

[Stickdom]

So, a creature of mount-size is possible as well? I wasn't going to make it too "overpowered", just found an interesting pic that gave me inspiration for a culture they would be used as pack animals in.

 

[Grey]

Pitch, and I'll help with refinement.

 

[Wolf Rawrrr]

omg you know wolfe is in just hope it lasts this time like third times the charm right


u dont need to see my char trust me i have something good planned


will post him as soon as game is up woof woof

 

[Stickdom]

Pitch, and I'll help with refinement.

Nomadic desert culture, wandering merchants and traders. The terrain depicted is not snow (as the artist originally intended), but smoke-covered, like wading in a shallow pool. The sky almost always covered in thick dark clouds that choke out the light, killing most vegetation, but acting as an insulator, keeping the majority of the heat enclosed under the cloud-cover. The main reason of the tribe's survival is their adeptness in finding the "wraiths" (or whatever variety of Dream-haunt you would prefer to insert), via their mounts, a typically docile species known as Inths, whose are somnivores, devourers of the Dream, or at least the residue left by denizens thereof. The nomads utilize this in their trade by offering safe passage across the arid wastes of sand and smoke, as well as the creature's sturdiness as a pack animal to haul their portable shelters, equipment, and passengers.


So, that's the basics, have at it and lemme know what you think

 

[Grey]

I like it.

 

[Stickdom]

Any news on this, Grey? Wasn't sure if I had missed the posting of the threads or if it was still a WIP

 

[Grey]

Waiting on acceptable displays of sincerity. You and Wolf are in.


Others must prove themselves.

 

[Stickdom]

Waiting on acceptable displays of sincerity. You and Wolf are in.
Others must prove themselves.

It is my pleasure to present material that is acceptable to your RPs, O Grey //lololol//

 

[marorda]

@Grey what about me? I posted my character idea, but as I mentioned I was away and I only returned today (to find the site not working for me)

 

[Grey]

@Grey what about me? I posted my character idea, but as I mentioned I was away and I only returned today (to find the site not working for me)

It's a fine idea. Tell me more about it.

 

[Bone2pick]

I'm not sure if I should pitch a character for this or wait for something more traditional from you Grey. But I am intrigued by this, even if it is vague and confusing.

 

[TheMadIceCreamMan]

I shall create something to prove my worth.


 

• Heaven in the Swamp
• Information

• 
  
  
  Whispers of the Swamp
  
  ​
  
  
  
  The man sat in the dark corner of the tavern. He pulled out his cigar and blew out a puff of smoke. His drink had yet to be touched. He was looking forward not at the the tavern owner or women. His view was placed somewhere far away. Three would be youthful adventures sat in the bar counter uttering word of false valor and pride. Their words would be of no interest usually to the man. Then from their lips slip out words that secure the man's fear.
  
  
  "You stupid fools have never been the Eastern Swamps! No soul ever leaves from there! I blame the Gacetor. Beasts hunt in packs." uttered one of the youths as he sloshed his drink left to right making a mess.
  
  
  "No I tell you it be wild tribes. Good strong men have went and I bet my coin that a pack of Gacetor couldn't stop them." back talked another of the youth who attempted to drink out is mug that was long empty. The third of the bunch stood up, "You all are wrong. It is simple a death trap that you get lost in until rot away." he spoke as if he knew the swamps well.
  
  
  The man looked the group of fools as they were charged with the highest crime. He pulled out his cigar and blew out one last puff, "You all are fools! You speak like you have stepped foot in the demon's domain!" he screamed. He couldn't allow for such false knowledge to float around.
  
  
  The three looked over to the man in his corner in shock. His face was hidden in darkness and the cloud of smoke he created with his eyes seeming to beam through at the three of them. The drunkest of the bunch stood up as if insulted, "Who are you to call me a fool?" he belched
  
  
  The man didn't stir from his position. "I'm the man who has exited those very swamps and knows of their true horror." he spoke calmly as he picked up his cigar and gave it another puff. "The meadow is the grave of most of those men."
  
  
  The three chuckled in response like they heard pure comedy exit the man's lips. "We speak of a fierce swamp not a meadow. What man, no what fool would die in such a place." said one with a cocky grin as he questioned the man.
  
  
  The man slammed his fists on the table. "Shut your jaws you fools and maybe my words will find their way to your ears. I will tell you of the souls that rot. Understood?" he said in a disgruntled fashion as he sucked on his cigar again.
  
  
  The drunkard sat down and another spoke up. "Fine then go ahead and speak of your tale." he said as he sipped on his drink.
  
  
  The man blew out a large puff of smoke.
  
  
  
  
  
  "The will to live and prosper. Those are the grandest traits that the Dream does indeed embrace in man. Trek through the muck and pools of poison for many days. The environment is not one that supports the life of man as we know. If the swamp fails to drive you to insanity or to claim your very soul then you must have a strong will to live and prosper. The place you are headed to is certainly for you. As you get deeper in the swamp won't let up in its pursuit as it eats away at you and your mind. Once you hit the brink and can only trug along the mist shall peel away to reveal the heart of the swamp lands. In front of you shall be the lush fields of gracious green and sky of brilliant blue. The meadow. You think the swamp as claimed you and heaven as claimed. You think you see but an illusion of want you. You would be best lest you step into the illusion. Turn back to the swamp's embrace. Still your mind and body are weak. Ahead you see the pure flowing waters in the meadow. It is only natural that you would wish to revive your self in its waters. Drink from the stream you shall but note it is as good as snake's blood. You walk deeper into the meadow's embrace and find at the heart of it a simple village. Turn back you should as the swamp is better. As you approach the humble village its residents clamber towards you in high spirits. They praise and glorify you as if royalty has stepped on their soils. Accordingly you are treated as such when they treat you to a feast. You dine on grape wine and devour delectable roasted four toothed boar. It is all so grand and warm, the opposite of the swamp that borders the meadow. Any man of simple logic would think to question this heaven in hell but your mind is stuck in the illusion. The town's folk ask you to meet their blessed one. It to wishes to treat you with praise and joy for your trek through the swamp. They bring you to their tallest building in the fine shape of a church. The only building of stone in the village and the only lacking windows. The put a blindfold over your eyes saying it is a town ritual. Who are you to think the people of the town wish you ill when they fattened you with hospitality. You enter the structure in full hope of more praise. You remove the blindfold and see their blessed one. You finally understand but the doors are locked behind you. That day red water runs and the sound of crunching fills their humble village in their humble meadow in its humble swamp. Darkness is your new embrace forever more."
  
  ​
  
  
  
  
• 
  
  
  Origin: The Outcasts of a Kingdom perhaps now gone ran through the eastern swamp in hop of crossing it and finding a better life for themselves. They started at over a hundred strong but ended up with only twenty-seven weak and broken. The swamp would have absorbed them like the others when a creature of the Dream offered a deal. These survivors lived through the murk by their strong will and the creature knew. They had not accepted Death as an option. They quickly accepted the deal. Suddenly the swamp around them receded and gave way to lush grass and cool waters. They rejoiced and gave thanks to the creature for its blessing. Suddenly there were only twenty-six as the creature picked one of them and feasted on his flesh. Rejoicing stopped as they realized what the cost was. With this known the people knew the swamp would kill them if they ran so they had to accept reality and as such continued on. Their easy life and the meadow was to keep so long as the creature was given a sacrifice every year. Thus the village came to be.
  
  
  Description: It is a humble town composed of around fifty log cabin homes, a bakery, a few taverns, and a central stone church. It is situated in a lush meadow encircled by the swamp lands of the east. Life is simple for the residents as they have access to pure water and meat a plenty. The children themselves are always happy as they run about the meadow in their bliss while most adults are filled with mead and wine.