Nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, somewhere at the junction between West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, lies Barrow County. It is on no map of any of those three states, and its inhabitants variously claim to be citizens of any of them, or none of them at all. It hardly matters—Barrow County hasn’t had a representative of the federal government visit since the early ‘80s, nor any state-level involvement since well before that. Revenuers haven’t visited Barrow County since the heyday of Prohibition, when they learned well that government taxmen didn’t tend to come back alive.
Salvador Kingsley does not hold any official office in Barrow County, unlike his brother Rand, who has been sheriff for decades. Salvador—“Big Sal” when he’s not around, “Mister Kingsley” when people think he’s listening—is just a humble local businessman and landowner. That’s what he’d tell you, anyway. In truth, he owns a stake in just about everything worth anything in the county, from the now-defunct Amber Caves tourist attraction to the hardly-thriving storefronts on Main Street of Barrow township. His philanthropy keeps Ravencrest General Hospital open—and his unofficial “taxes” keep the whole county in poverty.
Kingsley lives in an opulent if somewhat rundown mansion up on Corbeau Peak, at the highest point overlooking Barrow township. His home—the grandiosely named “Raven’s Lodge”—looms over the town like a tombstone marking a grave. He keeps a small staff to attend his needs, many of whom choose to eventually move into the permanent servant’s quarters on the lodge’s grounds rather than commute up the peak every day for work. And if many of them are never seen by their families again during daylight hours, then what of it? They are kept busy by their employer from sunup to sundown, and the daylight hours are short in the hollers anyway.
Outsiders are rare in Barrow County. No interstate runs through it. It has no airports, no major waterways, and only one dilapidated bus stop with no regularly scheduled stops. Anyone from “outside” who shows up in Barrow is lost, one way or another. No one in the county owns a cell phone or has the internet—many of them have never even heard of the internet. Technology lags behind in Barrow County; the local video stores deal in video cassettes, and the local music stores in vinyl or audio cassettes.
There is a single gas station in Barrow township. The clerk, a wispy-bearded man named Seth, is on shift regardless of the time of day or night. The pumps have a sign noting that they are out of petrol and asking for their customers to be patient. The county has been on gas rationing since the ‘70s, with any imported diesel going right to the hospital for their lone ambulance or the school district for its only bus. Some enterprising locals have converted their old tractors and jalopies to run on ethanol, made from the local sickly strain of corn, which they moonshine in sheds hidden in the nearby woods. They always make sure to be back from the “shine sheds” before dark, though—the County isn’t safe after dark.
There are coyotes out in the woods, as well as bears. Some of the old timers claim that the government tried to reintroduce wolves back in the ‘60s, and many of them think that packs of the animals still roam the higher parts of the surrounding mountains. People also talk about darker things—hidebehinds, haints, and holler legends. No one laughs when someone claims to have seen the Mothman or mountain goblins—they just ask where to stay away from.
In spite of this, life continues on. Children are born and go to school at one of the three local elementary schools, before eventually consolidating into Barrow County Middle School and then Barrow County High School. Barrow County High’s basketball and football teams—the Fighting Ravens—are the pride of the town, despite not having made the state playoffs in living memory. Among the few outsiders locals ever see are visiting high school sports teams, playing against the Ravens on their home turf of Nesting Field, with special rancor reserved for the traditional rivals of the Ravens, the Raiders—whose lineup hasn’t seemed to change at all in a generation, and whose players always seem sallow-faced, hollow-eyed, and lifeless in their plays…
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Welcome to Barrow County, a folk horror setting for Savage Worlds in the vein of East Texas University and Pinebox Middle School! I'll be posting more about the project over the coming weeks and months, so watch this space!
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