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There is a New World saying – "In Rilhaven, everyone carries a sword." Of course, when one considers the price of a sword, we know this can hardly be true. But it illustrates an important idea – that life in Rilhaven, and especially in the surrounding communities, is different than what we know here, in the breath and pulse of civilization.

Originally built as a military fortress from which to battle the Maelmuirians to the north, Rilhaven swiftly became a prime destination for the man of fortitude – a place where, with strength and tenacity, one could carve out a life from the wood of the forest and the stone of the earth.

It wasn’t long after the Raven Wars that small communities began to appear outside of Rilhaven. They were founded upon the trades of hunting and logging, fishing and mining. In the beginning you’d find the extended family all living in the same settlement, passing trades from generation to generation. And you’ll find the same now, which is what makes these towns so worthy of note – many of them have remained remarkably unchanged since they were founded 300 years ago. In fact, most – Tallman’s Vale, Riverford, Highrock and Towertree, Erik’s Hold and Washout Creek -- have simple names and simple roots. The people will show you the house where their great-grandmother baked bread, and point out the trees that they climbed as children. Only a few of them have changed with the times, pulling in significant gold through the exploitation of Eldritch artifacts or the establishment of trade-oriented businesses that combined the trading-force of numerous area villages.

All of them share one thing, however – the fact that they dwell in one of the world’s harshest and most unpredictable frontiers. Maelmuirians loom as a constant threat to the north while strange fae haunt the woods. Forgotten beasts scratch out lairs in old ruins, and packs of dire wolves scour the high plains and mountainsides. Dragons are perhaps more common in these lands than anywhere else in the world, and the recent scourge of the Kraeven hasn’t made things any better. And we mustn’t forget the influence of the Moors, for even though they lie many day’s travel to the north and east, none doubt that their strange magics breathe throughout the lands. It’s common woodsman’s lore that dusk is an unsettling time – the eyes will play tricks on you. But in the New World, the ears will play tricks on you, too. People learn soon enough not to follow strange sounds, glowing lights, or soft pleas for help.

These are places with laws of their own – they acknowledge Lord Niall as their ruler, but pay little in tribute, for they are each their own small province in a land that threatens, at any turn, to swallow them up.

Each of the three largest towns has a story to tell, and I’ll let them be told by the sage Jillian, who has composed a book detailing the surrounds of Rilhaven. This should give you a flavour for life in the wilds of the New World.

Hunter’s Den

Hunter’s Den was a tavern. And more than that, for it was built half a league outside Rilhaven, two years after the Raven Wars left the black birds with plenty of dinner. There were laws in Rilhaven back then, laws of the sort that one only finds in places anxious to define themselves as civilized. And since one of those laws was that women were not to sell their favors for gold, a few hardy woodswomen started up a little tavern out in the woods – a tavern where you could buy yourself more than ale or mead.

Hunter’s Den was one of the first, and it grew much after that as tradesfolk seized the opportunity to cater to the new traffic through that part of the woods. First came a fletcher, than a butcher and a smokehouse to provide the tavern with more flavourful meat. More followed, until today you’ll find a thriving town that can provide almost any basic need. Including, incidentally, that certain one for which it was first built.

Well, Hunter’s Den has a story, and it’s a story to please the soldiers, for this small village, when it counted its citizens at less than fifteen, became the setting for one of the most heroic tales of the struggle between the New Worlders and their Maelmuirian neighbors.

It was a dark and stormy night – no, really, it was! – and the population of Hunter’s Den, along with their guests, were huddled in the tavern, sipping hot mulled wine and feeding the flames in the fireplace. There were eighteen of them in the room, all quite unaware that a raiding party of twenty well-armed Maelmuirian warriors had chosen to make their small village an example of what would happen to New Worlders who strayed from the safe walls of Rilhaven.

The strike was swift and merciless – firejars were thrown through the tavern’s windows as the Maelmuirians waited outside, bows drawn back. There were screams and crashes from inside. The Maelmuirians waited as the glow grew within, waited until their fingers shook on the bowstring. But the screams died away, and all went quiet behind the windows.

A hand gestured, and three warriors approached the tavern’s door. They threw it open and stepped aside to give the archers an open shot.

But the tavern was clearly empty. Fires burned inside, slowly devouring chairs and furs, and even as they watched, one of the mead barrels burst open, pouring out to hiss and steam as it extinguished the very flame which had opened it.

Where were they?

And then the dogs came, six trained wolven that had been in a camp a few hundred paces south. They came silently, as wolven do, and tore into the startled ranks of the Maelmuirians. The villagers were soon after, coming from seemingly all directions, throwing axes, launching arrows, or charging in with swords.

Six Maelmuirians fell before they fled, retreating into the woods. Though eight villagers were wounded, one so badly that he never walked again, none of them died, and when the numbers were counted, it was an impressive fight. Twelve men and six women, none of them trained soldiers, had routed twenty Maelmuirian warriors, all of them armored and well-armed.

So how had they escaped the trap?

Elara, the founder of the tavern, had always anticipated an attack. Not by Maelmuirians, but by the authorities of Rilhaven, who sooner or later would be riding in to shut down her twilight house. She had built a tunnel, at great pains, mind you – a tunnel that her girls could use when the authorities showed up. They’d come in and find just a regular tavern with a few rooms for rent, but no sign of scantily-clad and well-painted women.

That tunnel, however, had proven even more valuable, and it was the speedy feet of a huntsmen who ran down to his nearby camp and came back with his dogs.

For the Maelmuirians? A costly embarrassment indeed.

The origin of this town’s odd name is lost to history, but it’s well known as the place where a terrible event occurred.

Kaelshodden was a thriving town that made its living off the vitality of the surrounding villages. The town magistrate was named Kirus Amaan, a rare (in those days) Shavay transplant who had rallied people around him so that he was, in effect, more of a baron than anything else. A remarkably charismatic man, he introduced elements of his native religion, and Kaelshodden grew wealthy under the auspices of foreign gods.

Then they discovered the ruins. A league or two north of the town they were, hidden in such a tangle of thorny undergrowth that it took a team of ten men (with Kirus among them) six days to hack through to the ornate, sealed doorway of the place. It was undeniably of Eldritch origin – a prize indeed, for the market for Eldritch artifacts was only getting better. They had discovered an ancient temple, unviolated by human or fae. Indeed, the temple’s very air must have been the air breathed by those strange and haunted people, for as they forced open the door, there was a rushing gasp of wind.

Inside it was stale and silent, the only life consisting of small, pale spiders, almost translucent, who scurried away from the light.

They filled their sacks with precious ornaments and artifacts – relics of a time long forgotten. It was while Kirus was picking up one of the small statues that he was bitten – he had inadvertently crushed one of the spiders under his finger, and its small fangs had sunk into his flesh. Whatever bled from those fangs into his blood is a mystery, but it meant the undoing of Kaelshodden.

Within an hour he was shaking and fevered, his dark skin going pale in the most disconcerting of manners. He was carried back to the town and laid down, where the village healer set to work on him. But he only grew worse. And by the next day, four of the men who had carried him, as well as the healer, were all afflicted with fevers themselves, and their flesh, too, was going ghastly pale and translucent, with veins plainly visible under the skin.

They dubbed it the ‘Eldritch disease’, and it spread swiftly through Kaelshodden. Three days or so after it set in, the victim went quite mad, speaking strange things in strange tongues and doing things no human would do. It was plain that a plague of horrific ferocity was devouring the city, and those who had not already fled began to make a mass exodus.

That was when the authorities of Rilhaven arrived. Some of the afflicted had fled to Rilhaven, and they had discovered the only way to stop the plague – to kill and burn the afflicted. ‘To keep this disease from consuming the world’, they said, and they slew those who would not return to Kaelshodden.

The town gates were sealed, and guards were posted all along the outside. Three times the citizens attempted to escape over the walls, and each time arrows stopped them. For fourteen days the guards stood outside, trying to close their ears to the eerie wails from within.

When all had finally gone silent, the guards returned to Rilhaven and set a log across the road to Kaelshodden.

It was fifty years later when an adventurer decided to risk entrance to the old town, and after he and his party cleared the bones away, they claimed the buildings as their own, and today Kaelshodden is once again a thriving woodland fort. But none venture north to the old Eldritch ruins. No doubt they are re-growing their thorny mantle, and hiding away whatever secret lies within.

Now I can’t leave you with such a dark tale, so we’ll end with the story of Ashwood, a pleasant village set on the edge of Elderberry Rill, a fine and sparkling river which surrenders many fine fish to the village residents. It’s always been a friendly place, if a bit rustic, but about twenty years past, they lost some of their men. Lost them to sweetness.

There was a trapper, you see – a man by the name of Brock who was pretty famous in those parts. He set out snares in the evening, and at first light he’d go out and bring back more fox, rabbits and groundhogs than you could count. They said that the animals gave themselves up when they saw him setting a snare – he knew just how to do it, and the rabbit would shake its head and bound right into the trap, knowing it was useless to try to avoid it.

You can imagine the surprise of the villagers, then, when Brock came back one morning with his burly back empty of game. He shrugged, said that all his snares had been sprung, and the village was a little hungry that day.

The next morning the villagers gathered at the end of the path, awaiting Brock’s return. When he came, there were murmurs of disbelief, for above Brock’s angry face was held a bundled knot of cord.

His traps, he told them, had been dismantled and tied all together to be left hanging from a tree.

That night he brought his bow and sword, vowing to catch the prankster, for prankster it surely was. He wouldn’t be back that night, he told them, for he was staying out to watch his traps. And indeed, he didn’t come back that night. Or ever again.

Three men were sent out on a search party the next day, and none of them returned, either.

Fearful now, the men constructed what they thought was an ingenious plan – two of them would go out searching, and three more would watch them from behind, lagging just far enough back so that they could see if anything went awry.

What they saw left them amazed. The two men were following along one of Brock’s old paths when they came upon a most beautiful young woman, eating spiders off a bed of moss. She seemed surprised, but quickly warmed to them, and the two men wandered off with her, despite the cries of their confused companions. Knowing not what else to do, the three watchers went silent and stealthily followed until they saw the woman lead the two men into a bright clearing. There she beckoned them into a large hole that opened in the side of the tree.

A dryad! The men fled back to Ashwood and told the story, and the remainder of the village’s men (there were only twelve left, now), took up axes as the three watchers led them to the clearing. They were quite intent on chopping down the tree, convinced that this would slay the wicked nymph and that they’d find their companions huddled somewhere among the roots.

Only two things stood between them and their intentions – first, that dryad trees don’t work quite like that, and second, that the watchers couldn’t seem to find the clearing. They were sure that it was just over this hillock, but down there was only swamp and cattails, the home of dragonflies and frogs. Perhaps it had been over there – but no, that was a forest of birches.

Faerie glamour had worked their minds into a knot, just as it had Brock’s snares.

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Jillian’s works, then, give us a taste of what life was like, and still is, in the frontiers of Rilhaven’s surrounds. It is a place of lawless pursuits and quiet villages – a place where huntsfolk must learn much more than woodslore. Few travelers go beyond Rilhaven, but there are indeed people out there – people living a simpler, more rugged life than ours.

People, perhaps, of a different breed and blood.

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