The Watchful Village

If you were to travel the Old High Road west out of Kalanakree, leaving on a bright spring morning, you’d find yourself crossing a gentle, well-watered land, rolling and green, where the fat sheep bleat complacently and the apple orchards thrive. The road passes through many little villages of stout, well-maintained cottages whilst large farmhouses sit beside meandering brooks or in the comfortable shadow of the low hills.  After a half day’s travel, you would reach a little roadside public house at an unremarkable junction where a dusty white lane runs off to the south, cresting a low ridge and losing itself in a shallow, wooded vale. Having enjoyed a sturdy luncheon of bread and ham washed down with a mellow ale at the tavern, you might on a whim, decide to explore that lane. 

The publican, a garrulous gossip, will tell you that the lane leads into the valley of the Chelme. If you were to follow it for the rest of the day, you’d reach a village at a crossroads – Barabbyn, he calls it – where there is a good inn. Then, you’d have four choices: you could return back the way you came, back north to the Old High Road and, ultimately the waiting heights of the mountains. Or you could travel due east, eventually wending your way on back roads to Kalanakree. You could continue south, alongside the lively and pretty Chelme, until it joins a larger stream. There’s naught that way but more and more farms until you reach the River Brejl, where you might catch a river boat down to the capital. Or he says, with a merry, if rather sardonic, chuckle, you could go west, further upstream along the dwindling Chelme until you reach the river’s source and the hamlet of Chelmsey. But that’s at the very end of the road, in the shadow of the mountains, and, he adds in a stage-whisper, a strange sort of place, where the folk are a little stand-offish...And well they might be, he says. Sometimes, mutant animals are born there. And sometimes worse, he adds, eyelids drooping in a raconteur’s wink. A hundred years ago, he says, a small troop of crusaders and priests went to Chelmsey, to put an end to some evil, some leftover thing or creature of Shroudfall. Although they succeeded, it was a close-run thing. None say, he continues a bit hurriedly, none say that the people of Chelmsey were to blame for the evil and the few who go to Chelmsey speak nothing but good of the place.  But better safe than sorry, no?

CHELMSEY

The hamlet of Chelmsey harbours some hundred and forty souls – although that is not immediately obvious, as many of the houses are hidden behind hedges, and the hamlet itself is quite spread out. It actually has three distinct parts: the Fork, where the lane splits into two at the entrance to the township. Here are found the Shepherd’s Delight Inn, the local Temple of Vlynn, the smithy and trading post. The left-hand lane runs for a few hundred metres before terminating at Lane’s End, a cool and shady dell that is home to a small cluster of cottages, shearing sheds and a saddlery. The right-hand branch of the lane follows the Chelme to its source in a reed-fringed pool. Where the Chelme emerges from the pond a water-wheel turns lazily and a rather ramshackle mill leans towards the stream as if preparing to leap in and swim. Here a row of cottages looks down on the tranquil pool from a low hillside. Just behind the cottages there stands a pillar of honey-gold stone, thirty feet tall and crowned with a bronze statue of Jureus brandishing lightning and smiling fiercely in the face of his manifold foes. The lane continues past the pool and pillar, heading up and over the hill and into the shadow of the mountains.

The only obvious difference between Chelmsey and any other similarly-sized village is the monument, and this single incongruity raises many questions for the discerning wanderer: normally such things are found only in places of great piety and wealth. But this monument is here for another, darker reason, and is a reminder of both the enduring presence of a great danger – and of the sacrifices made to contain it. One hundred years ago, the village was the site of a mystical struggle to contain a Chaos Well – an eruption of chaotic energies left over from Shroudfall that corrupted the district, producing plagues of both the body and the soul, destroying crops and warping human and animal alike. Not all of the products of the chaos were malign, but there was sufficient concern that the Church of Jureus gathered some of its highest ranking priests and warriors and sent them to Chelmsey, there to seal the Well. They were joined by priests of Vlynn and Karsatos and wild-spirited servants of Kamizadros. This unusual confluence of holy power enabled them to work a mighty ritual to cap the chaos flow. In this they were successful, but several lives were lost when the chaotic energy fought against those who would contain it. Now, although the Well is sealed, the residues of its presence still affect the hamlet and its immediate surrounds, and the danger remains that the Well will break its eldritch bonds...or that some inimical force from outside will come to Chelmsey and seek to liberate – and manipulate – the raw, brutal force that still abides.

A CHAOS-BLIGHTED APPLE

An example of the sort of thing the good folk of Chelmsey must contend with – even after the closing of the Chaos Well – is the enduring effect of so much chaotic energy upon the soil and water of the region. Although there have been several generations working diligently through plant and animal husbandry to mitigate the effects of chaos on their district, the aberrant energies do still produce odd progeny. The fishing around Chelmsey is best described as ‘interesting’, and the district is home to an unusually high number of Beast- and Plant-kin, as well as elemental hybrids. Plant-life can also bear the burden of chaos: whole crops can be lost, and tales are still told of the horrendous effects of a hallucinogenic potato harvest. Although things are not so bad now, there are still occasional mutations. The Chaos-Blighted Apple described below is one such: it has much the same dimensions as an ordinary apple, save for small, pale blisters around the base of the stem and the colour of the leaves – which can vary considerably from the parent tree, ranging from a brilliant, if lurid green, to a washed-out mauve. The apple will also taste much like any other apple, but will leave a strong, bittersweet tang on the tongue.

The effects of eating a Chaos-Blighted Apple always vary, although they are generally minor. If a Resistance Roll against Essence (3^rd level attack) is failed, roll d100, subtract the victim’s Constitution bonus (or add any penalty), and consult the following table:

Result	Outcome
less than 01	You feel great! Energy courses through your body, granting 3d10 Exhaustion Points. If this takes you above your natural maximum, the extra Exhaustion Points last until your next full sleep.
01-20	Something's amiss, though not in a bad way. You gain the effects of the Protean Awareness talent until your next full sleep.
21-40	OK, so this is weird. Everytime you try to speak, you are unable to sound consonants. This lasts until your next full sleep. (G)oo(d) (l)u(ck) o(rd)e(r)i(ng) (th)a(t) (dr)i(nk) (y)ou('ve) (b)ee(n) (cr)a(v)i(ng)!
41-65	Your eyes flash intermittently, with all the colours of the rainbow (and many others). No-one will make eye contact with you until you sleep it off.
66 UM	Between now and your next sleep, you may add +100 to the first Resistance Roll you are required to make (if any).
67-85	In addition to a distracting nausea (-10 to all activity), you now find yourself highly susceptible to all mind-affecting spells, resisting them at half your level. These effects last until you have a good night's sleep.
86-95	You fall immediately into a deep slumber that lasts for twelve hours. When you awaken, you find yourself subtly changed. You are now more sensitive to the ebb and flow of magical energies, but less cognisant of the material world. You gain a special +5 to the Power•Awareness skill category and a -5 penalty to all Awareness skills.
96-99	Until your next full sleep, you are protected as if you possessed the Talent Chaos Shield. You do, however, lose all Power Points, although you regain them at twice the normal rate.
100	The energies of chaos infect your mind, opening up new pathways and granting you knowledge and proclivities you never knew you had: you may learn the list Chaos Mastery as if it were an Open list of your realm (although no higher than level 5). If you already know or have access to this list as a Base List, you gain +20 to Spell Casting Maneuvers pertaining to this list.

Of the Talents Protean Awareness and Chaos Shield, there will be more later: I’ve created a lot of talents over the years and will happily share them, within the limits of IP issues and how much time I have to blog about them!

Additionally, discerning Rolemaster players might notice that the above table draws on Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing, one of Rolemaster’s various incarnations. This doesn’t indicate a personal preference – or at least, not mine! It simply reflects the fact that my players liked RMFRP and this material was created for the last campaign I ran under that system.