The Marches Campaign

Scott · Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 2:44 pm Post subject: Tegel Village

A Brief History of Tegel Village

In the First Days, before the coastal village of Tegel had a name, the land squirmed with appalling things -- formless abominations, walking serpents, and the debased Men who served them.

But far away, a beacon of Law sprang forth to illuminate the world with the Revelation of the Nameless God and the rise of the Great Kingdom, the apex of earthly civilization, in the City Afar. Soon, the light penetrated even the dark distant shadows of the outlying Marches, as St. Hrothmir drove the serpents and their followers into the uttermost reaches, personally martyring the blasphemous infidels' High Priest. Peerless Hrothmir was himself mortally wounded in that battle, and was gathered by the Host into the Realms Above.

As the Marches were tamed and lifted from Chaos, so Tegel received the Word and prospered. Tegel was made a Barony and then a County under the protection of the redoubtable Rump clan, and a village now grew and thrived in the shadow of their Golden Hind banner. Missionaries of the Great Church arrived to build a temple, and later a monastery of the learned Holy Brotherhood. All seemed well.

But, as we know, perfection is not to be attained on this vile Earth. Generations ago, the issue of the Rump bloodline began to show signs of the eccentricity and idiosyncrasy that so often plagues noble lineages with the passage of time, to the detriment of their sworn feudal obligations. Heathen savages returned to squat in the ruins of their Lost City.

In the years since, the creatures of Chaos that beset the Marches have, near Tegel, become more common and more aggressive -- bearded flabby grey Gnolls, glistening squamous Serpent Men, the unspeakable Dearth Monster of Derfingel Marsh -- stalking the hillocks, swamps, and thickets of God's clean ground in obscene violation of the True Law. Old Nightfang, the boogeyman of children's tales, stirs more often, snatching wayfarers from the roads and babes from their cradles. The yearly berserk Merman swarm mobilizes the entire militia in defense of field and furrow, and the ghastly chorus of howling, hungry wolves makes winter nigh unbearable.

The family Rump, now ostensibly headed by one Runic, has been stripped of all but a nominal Knighthood, and ancestral Tegel Manor is universally pronounced haunted on a scale heretofore unknown, her silhouette jutting up from the seaside cliffs in what now seems an unearthly aspect. The Great Church has reduced its local temple in stature from a diocese to a parish, and the highest Cleric in the village is a Priest. The Sage in the monastery of the Holy Brotherhood has lapsed into simony, dispensing his wisdom to the laity only for exorbitant fees.

Perhaps most troubling of all in the last generation has been the construction and investiture of an idolatrous temple on a hill overlooking Tegel Village. Its Goddess is many-armed Nivatopredi, the Faceless One, whose worship is unknown in the annals of the Church; her High Priestess is Dubraibern, a seemingly ageless maiden whose great beauty and magnetism lures more and more smallfolk from Church to perdition.

Through this tumult, Tegel Village endures, her simple and properly ignorant commoners scratching out a modest living from the soil. Meat and eggs are the yield of teeming duckbunny hutches and warrens, supplemented by geese sprung from the odd stand of barnacle trees. A few scrub-tapirs are pastured here and there, mostly pressed into service as draft beasts but occasionally slaughtered for particularly important festivals; these placid creatures share their fields with goats, and pigs are allowed wild forage in the woods. A grove of peridexion trees attracts doves, and its cured wood is sent to the City Afar for use by would-be Dragon-slayers. Grains, pulses, and other staples, including the outland Harnic potato, provide the remainder of the village's agricultural lifeblood, rotated by year and season.

In these respects and most others, of course, Tegel Village resembles other settlements.

[More information about important personages, locales, and legends is forthcoming.]
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The penalty for success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you.

Scott · Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 12:33 am Post subject:

NOTABLE RESIDENTS OF THE VILLAGE TEGEL

Ternelmor: Mayor, war hero, militia organizer, planner of the village defenses. A no-nonsense fellow. Not a guff-taker.

Father Olath: Fat jolly village priest. Born and raised in Tegel. Took orders at the Monastery of the Holy Brotherhood. Liked by everyone. Seems unsure what to do with Father Valcerdies around.

Father Valcerdies: The new Curate. A foreigner. Disagreeably unwavering as to the necessity of practical measures against Chaos and paganism.

Mordacity Maghoula: Militia leader. A grim man of few words. Adept at various forms of hacking and stabbing.

Brinna Birgit: A blunt, enterprising spear-maiden. Mordacity's second-in-command.

Halaf Fec: A conniving, prosperous merchant. Relocated from the City Afar.

Hasnovar: Jovial taverner of the White-Horsed Sleigh.

Widow Arlenia: Young widow of undetermined pulchritude to be described at Nick's discretion.

Widow Altarontha: Old widow of determinate but negligible pulchritude. Disapproves of everything except her sons Shark and One Eye.

Quinta Demetria: One-eyed owner of Neptune's Trident Tavern. Bores patrons with myths of his alien god and tales of unlikely sea monsters.

Cretin Nodcock: Proprietor of the Bark and Bite, an unguilded hole in the wall from which he serves foul spirits. Ill-favored enough that his name seems apt. Provides unusual entertainments.

Marash-ar: A wily monger.

His Eminence, Sir Runic the Rump: In addition to being an inbred dullard, Sir Runic is renowned for his poltroonery. Wears the ancestral Armor of the Golden Hind. Frequently attempts to sell the Manor, often at ludicrously low prices. Terrified of his brother Ruang, who is off at University. Attended by four retainers in varying degrees of decrepitude or knavery.
_________________
The penalty for success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you.