5x5 Fronts: Chaos in Waychester: Front #2: The Regional Front (spoilers)

Tazitta bokor Witch Doctor

Background: For today's background, I'll talk a bit about the settlement patterns that made the Hill Country what it is. I'll also bold and red any references to places that aren't currently labeled on my map, so I can add them to my campaign map when I draw it. The map deliberately doesn't label coach houses and the small hamlets that support them, or ranches that employ many people and have small villages or hamlets of their own, and all kinds of other small settlements, but I'll need to refer to them at this stage, so I'll have to make a bunch of them up as I plan. Anyway, on to the background about the Hill Country and its settlement:

The Hill Country is the most recently settled of the lands of the Three Realms. For many years, it was essentially depopulated and empty; a little bit too far away to get attention from the Empires in the west—Baal Hamazi, Kurushat, and Tarush Noptii, although ancient petty kingdoms ethnically related to the Tarushans had once lived here. Little is known of the oldest of these other than their names; even their geographical boundaries are vague: Permia, Pezhek, Halych, Leszek, and Vuronezh—although the romance of this unknown Kin Twilight, as its called, means that elements of those names sometimes pop up as people want to recall them by association. All of these were united in a larger kingdom near the end of this era that encompassed the western portion of the Hill Country from the shores of the Darkling Sea in the east to the Sabertooth Mountains in the West, and from the Plateau of Leng in the North to the eaves of the Thursewood and the Chatterwash River, where it bordered with its ethnically similar cousins in Tarush Noptii.  This large kingdom was Kinzassal, and while little is known about it directly, it is referenced in records from Tarush Noptii frequently. It collapsed before waves of Hamazin, Kurushans, and the Colonists from the east passed over the area; lightly in the case of the first of those two. The Kinzassians disappeared as a people, although its believed that many of them fled as refugees to merge with the people of Tarush Noptii, and some few of them reduced to tiny hamlets of farmers, hunters and nomads still wandered the empty lands in tiny bands. The majority of the genetic descent of the Tazitta people probably comes from ancient Kinzassal.

The Kurushans explored this territory, but never settled here. The Hamazin did establish some small settlements, and even had a few significant colonies, although they all failed long before the Baal Hamazi empire itself collapsed; wars in the Boneyard with Kurushat either cut off access to the colonies, or pulled manpower away from them. The evil and jagged ruins of ancient Hamazin castles and towers can still be found, often not far from ancient standing stones, henges and menhirs left by the Kinzassians or even the kingdoms that came before, or even ancient Atlanteans that belong to the non-human peoples that predated humanity. The territory went for centuries, or even millennia as mostly empty wilderness until the coming of the Colonists from the east. 

The first wave to pass through were the proto-Timischers, who came from the land of Carlovingia far to the east. Few of them stayed in the Hill Country, as they set up their own new kingdom of Timischburg among the ruins of what used to be Tarush Noptii. However, Carlovingian peoples continue even now to pass through the territory; mostly homesteaders and new colonists, leaving their homes forever to join their far-flung cadet group in Timischburg. Some of them don't make it all the way to Timischburg, as they find that the current version of the Hill Country is to their liking, and they settle there instead and assimilate with the locals. 

The next wave is the one that truly established the Hill Country as it's own. They also came from eastern kingdoms; especially Culmerland. The language and culture of the Culmers is the baseline that all others have assimilated to, although certain pockets still retain customs, cuisine or clothing from other eastern kingdoms. The Culmers are relatively well organized and peaceful; while capable in warfare, and willing to do it for many reasons, their natural tendency is to establish peaceful farming and ranching settlements and to get along well with their co-cultural neighbors. Those who came from Brynach, on the other hand, are a bit more fractious. While the Culmers are already pretty anti-authoritarian, the Brynachans are much more independent yet. In Brynach itself, they are less prone to peaceful homesteading, and often make up clans and tribes where low-grade raiding and warfare are common. Today, those who identify as more Brynachan as opposed to Culmerish are less likely to settle in the cities, and more likely to be on the frontier and the ranches where they can live a more active and adventurous lifestyle, and have fewer people trying to tell them what to do. (Editor's note: The peoples of the Hill Country are meant to evoke real-life European peoples, or diaspora Europeans like the Americans. Carlovingia is clearly supposed to be similar to the Carolingian Empire of the early Middle Ages, and the modern Timischers are similar to Austrians or Germans. The Culmers are Anglo-Saxons and the the Brynach are the Celtic peoples of Britain, especially the Scots. The last two, which I'll cover shortly, are obviously Vikings and Normans, respectively.) 

After its initial founding, many more people from Culmerland and Brynach have come to the Hill Country, but that's only because it's been many centuries. The flow of Colonists is a bare trickle. It's not just a question of an overland journey, however; there's only one route from the lands of the east to the Hill Country, and it is both difficult and dangerous. Those who come do so in small numbers, and come permanently.

However, a few other peoples have come from the east as well, in smaller numbers. Physically and culturally, they aren't terribly different from the mixed Culmerish and Brynachan and Carlovingian Hillmen, so they usually assimilate fairly well; although there are still small towns or neighborhoods where a non-Hillman ethnic identity is at least partially preserved. One of these two groups are the people of Skeldale, who were famous as Reavers, but after their conversion to Christianity, they have become less of a threat and have embarked on more commercial enterprises.  In fact, more of them are coming from the east than any other people today, although the absolute number of emigrants from the East is and always has been fairly small. By far the vast majority of people here are Hillmen, and have been here for many generations, and no longer identify with their ancestral stocks, but rather with their current situation. Another people who have a complicated history with most of the other nations of the East are the Normaunds. Militaristic and aristocratic, they find that their social position in the Hill Country has meant very little. Most of the Normaunds who have come to the Hill Country were third or fourth sons, or daughters who disliked arranged marriages, etc. so they assimilate better than you'd think, since their social position was not tenable in Normaund itself anyway.

Front #2: The Hill Country This threat is a regional specific threat that will cause a great deal of problems for entire area that's west and south of the Darkling Sea. This means that it doesn't really impact the whole Grand Duke and Grand Duchess scenario that I described in front #1, on purpose. I've thought it over a bit since I wrote my initial summary of all of the fronts, and made some minor changes to this one, as you'll see below.

First, the Damsel In Distress from the Southumbria scenario is, as I said earlier, the daughter of, if not a Lord exactly, then certainly a landed gentleman, with estates in the very southernmost part of Northumbria, just across the Umber River from Rabb's Hill and a little north of the town of Waller's Grove. His lands, and the villages that have grown up around them are not on the map, but would be a bit north of Waller's Grove, but not all the way up to Cockrill's Hill. They're nestled in the fairly wide lands between the Chokewater Forest and the Waychester Bay. There's an inland village of tenant farmers and freeholders who provide food for the whole area called Rettersville, and near the shores of the bay itself is the small port town of Benchley. This isn't a major center of trade; it's on the top of a cliff that goes down to the water's surface, for one thing. There isn't a good place to land large loads of goods for miles, but the townsfolk have built a trail of switchbacks that goes down to a broad pier, and mules or donkeys bring smaller loads down to the water, or up to the town. Small numbers of passengers make this run too, because it allows easier access to the interior towns north of the Chokewater Forest, Chokewater Ridge, and the Copper Hills than wagon trains from the Dunsbury or the rest of Southumbria.

Joan Wilmere

I like this step because it kills two birds with one stone. It's directly tied to step one of the Southumbria front too, since rescuing the D.I.D. there is, voila! the same girl we have here; one Joan Wilmere. She's fairly young; hopefully the PCs don't think that a 16 year old girl should be traveling across the Hill Country on her own, especially as she's been a fairly sheltered and naïve 16-yo at that. But if for the some reason the PCs rescue her and just stuff her on a boat, then there's more hints here; she says that before her own kidnapping people had been going missing  in Rettersville and Benchley, and that gossip of strange disappearances were coming down the road from Cockrill's Hill and Pineytop even. They can also hear more gossip from sailors or traders at Burham's Landing, or on the ship before it stops briefly at the Benchley docks. Obviously something is threatening the good people of this area.

Which maybe needs a collective name: I like Brinchshire. This is the portion of Northumbria that's west of the Darkling Sea and north of the forests, not counting Bucknerfeld. Bucknerfeld is a Hillmen city, but it's technically geographically outside of the Hill Country proper, being on the shores of the Indash Salt Sea.

Anyway, this first box isn't usually how I do things. Rather than describing what villains are doing, it is just kind of a set-up and scenario for this particular column of the 5x5, and how the PCs would hear about it.

Secondly, Tazitta tribesmen have been targeting the narrow strip of land from the Copper Hills to the mouth of the Umber River; the majority of Brinchshire. This has so far been small raids on isolated farmsteads and homesteads, so only a single family or small group have been vulnerable. But there's an escalation underway. The village of Roan's Mill which is between Rettersville and Cockrill's Hill, has been attacked by a much larger raiding party, but given that Roan's Mill has some several score people living there and a low stone wall around the settlement, as well as—more by luck than by design—a more defensible situation, they've managed to hole up and hold out, and are under a minor siege. This isn't  going to last forever, but they can hold out for a day or two, and if—as I think is likely—the PCs have come to Rettersville or Benchley to return Joan to her father, or because of the rumors of trouble that they've heard, they can be right there when a desperate rider from Roan's Mill shows up looking for help.

Professor Alpon von Lechfeld

But, again, this happens whether or not the PCs come to Brinchshire, although naturally if they don't come, then Roan's Mill will be in a more serious situation, and will likely suffer many more losses; both deaths in the attack and kidnapped victims who are dragged into the woods for sacrifices. A more curious detail, which again, I'll have to figure out how to have the PCs find this out if they aren't here for the attack, but find out they will is that the Tazitta attackers have created little effigies of the PCs out of bones, feathers, a bit of cloth, etc, and hanged them (by the neck) with small cords from the branches of the trees on the eaves of the forest where they entered with their captives. Once in the forest, their trail is lost as they walked over rocks and through a stream to throw off pursuers. A man from Roan's Mill will know of a famous scholar who lives in nearby Cockrill's Hill after leaving a post at the prestigious Academy of Mittermarkt to retire to to the countryside. He supposedly knows more about the forest Tazitta than anyone, having spent many hours interviewing captives or quislings over the years specifically to gain this knowledge. This will, of course, be Alpon von Lechfeld himself, unless the players have already played CULT OF UNDEATH, in which case obviously he'll be dead, since that's the whole premise of CULT OF UNDEATH; that it starts with the death of von Lechfeld under suspicious circumstances. I love that tie! Of course, it's entirely possible that the PCs don't go to Roan's Mill or Cockrill's Hill. But the effigies are still there nonetheless. If the PCs ignore that for too long, they'll find that the Tazitta hoodoo witch doctors have some kind of voodoo doll like effect on the PCs, and they'll start to notice that things are happening to them because of this. 

Why do the Tazitta hoodoo witch doctors have these, and why the PCs? I'm not sure yet. Plenty of time to figure something out there, though.

In any case, what I think is most likely to happen is that the PCs will be in the area, will consult with von Lechfeld, and he will tell them that a Tazitta quisling a few years ago gave him a crude yet accurate and useful hand-drawn map of Tazitta sites in the Haunted Forest, including a few clearings with henges or menhirs, and a village deep in the woods almost against the mountains. There is the Mother of All Henges in a clearing in the forest. The sacrificial victims won't be sacrificed right away, although the PCs won't know that, so there'll be an element of trying to get there before it's too late. But they're waiting on a Nyxian sorcerer to perform the sacrifices, so if the PCs are in the area, they could get there before they're actually done. If they're not, then obviously they won't, and the sacrifices will be worse. In fact, they'll power the voodoo dolls against the PCs, and they'll start working almost immediately.

Ampelius Pictor

This Nyxian is from Lomar and he is even known as a researcher to Professor von Lechfeld, although he's not known as a cult-sorcerer; that's news to him. His name is Ampelius Pictor. I may, in fact, have a picture of him too! (see right)

If the PCs stop the sacrifices and kill or incapacitate Pictor, the threat from the forest Tazitta clans will be blunted. Honestly, they're not really into that whole Death Cult thing, and they were wary of the Prophetess all along. They'd love an excuse to give the whole thing up and slink back into the woods.

If they don't, they will still be unreliable and surly about their involvement, but they will remain a threat to Brinchshire nonetheless. Pictor is an ambassador from the Cult, sent to shore up their support with these sacrifices and a show of witchcraft meant to intimidate and frighten the people of the Haunted Forest.

Oh, by the way, the Haunted Forest, as its name implies, can be a source of all kinds of other bad news if more is needed.

The third stage is to figure out what the devil is going on with the Tazitta and why do they have a Nyxian sorcerer working with them; one who's actually well-enough known that people in the area can even give the PCs his exact address in Lomar! If the PCs are not around addressing this stuff, then this stage can be skipped, or if they decide that they'd rather tackle the greater Tazitta cult-lands head-on, they can also skip it. At least for now, although that will leave the greater Nyxian conspiracy (see below) unresolved. This involves going to Lomar, investigating Pictor's home and or office (Lomar also has a University on par with that of Mittermarkt, and Pictor was a scholar there professionally.) Lomar has problems right now; the Nyxians are getting a little restless and unruly, and while the Zobnans are sympathetic to their cousins' situation, being a mirror of their own in many ways, they also have established a new life here in Lomar, and become relatively friendly with the locals; they trade extensively with the Hillmen, and other peoples further west, for instance. And even before settling in Lomar, both the Zobnans and the Nyxians had a very different and mutually exclusive view on what it meant to be Hyperborean. The Zobnans have no desire to take on the Nyxians' strange dark cults and culture, and are starting to get impatient at their lack of assimilation. Pictor was heavily involved in sedition and treason against the government of Lomar, and his people have no desire to see the PCs or anyone else poking around in his affairs. One of the reasons that this particular box in the chart works well for me is because not only does it give an opportunity to explore a new area and new people, but it also has a different vibe than the rest of the arc, with intrigue and skullduggery being a major theme.

Pictor's death, if it happened, will set the Death Cults back a bit, but the potential fourth and fifth boxes, if  the PCs "trip" them and cause them to happen are related to this conspiracy. The Tazitta death cults have had their grip on Tazitta society slip in recent generations, and their witch doctors were on the lookout for a way to re-cement their role. The Nyxians, on the other hand, have been increasingly frustrated with the Zobnans in Lomar being unwilling to embrace what—to them—were clearly the "pure" form of Hyperborean culture and cultic religion. The Tazitta witch doctors and the Nyxian death priests, who were forced underground by Lomarian law, entered into a pact to enable each other, brokered by the true master of both cults. The Tazitta wanted to rid all of the Hill Country, or at least Brinchshire and the surrounding area, of Hillmen and return to their traditional way of life while the Nyxians needed a place to establish their own new city and settlements. The deal that the Death Cult of the Tazittans made with the Death Cult of the Nyxians requires that the Tazitta clans unite under the leadership of the Prophetess and the Nyxian death priests to drive the Hillmen out of the area.

The driving force behind both cults, in spite of their fairly different appearance among two very different ethnic and cultural groups, is one of the feared Heresiarchy of the Twelve, specifically Jairan Neferkare the Soulless. She hides Outside of the world, in a realm all of shadow and darkness. It may well be beyond the PCs to storm her fortress in the Shadowlands and kill her; in fact, I very much suspect that it is unless they are willing to muster an army of Hillmen to support them and still make it a Pyrrhic victory, if victory can indeed be achieved. If you've ever read Glen Cook, imagine a group of scrubby Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay characters taking on one of the Ten Who Were Taken. But still; players are clever. They'll probably figure something out.

Jairan Neferkare the Soulless