Barrow County: The Devil Salvador

 Did I mention this is straight up an Appalachian take on Curse of Strahd and Ravenloft? Because it's going to become very obvious with this post.

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All of Barrow County revolves around the person of Salvador Kingsley in one way or another. Though he holds no office and rarely involves himself in the daily lives of the people of the area, no one can escape his influence. He originally came to Barrow County from Texas, the eldest scion of an oil family looking for new deposits to exploit. When his father died, he took his portion of the inheritance and went his own way, turning Barrow County into his own private fiefdom of coal, oil, and natural gas.

Salvador built a home in Barrow County, but he kept the locals at arm’s length. He thought of himself as better than the unwashed, uneducated, impoverished hillbillies who made up most of his workforce. He had spent his life building wealth for his family, never taking any time for a family of his own, so now he found himself vastly wealthy but also completely alone, save for his adopted brother and constant companion, Rand.

Looking to build a legacy and desperate for familiar company, Salvador invited his mother and his younger siblings, Sergio and Santiago, to come live with him. Santiago was busy with his own branch of the family business, but Sergio had always worshiped his older brother and jumped at the opportunity. Their mother passed away shortly after making the move, so Salvador was left with only Sergio for company.

The youngest Kingsley was twenty years Salvador’s junior, and his enthusiasm and joy brought new life to Salvador’s home. At the same time, Salvador found himself under intense pressure to live up to Sergio’s opinion of him as a man of learning, culture, and courage. Salvador was also put off by Sergio’s intense piety; Salvador himself had never seen religious faith as anything but a useful tool for networking. Salvador thought he would eventually be able to level the young man out with time and patience, but then Sergio met a girl.

Her name was Tanya, she was native to Barrow, and she was an orphaned high-school dropout who worked for the local diner and spent her spare time volunteering for the church. Salvador was instantly suspicious of the girl’s intentions, sure that she was a gold digger trying to entrap his naïve little brother, but every subtle hint or offer he made to her was either ignored or rebuffed. He considered himself an excellent judge of character, and he couldn’t find any motive in the girl besides genuine affection for Sergio.

The more time he spent trying to “unmask” Tanya, the more he became obsessed with her. She became the symbol of everything he had given up for his family, and he grew to resent Sergio more with every passing day for the young man’s spirit, his happiness, and most of all his youth. Salvador saw himself as an old man who had wasted his whole life in the pursuit of wealth that he would never get to enjoy, leaving the world with no legacy of his own. He wanted what Sergio had—and he began to contrive that he would take it for himself.

Salvador began to funnel his wealth into looking for a way to become young again, certain that Tanya would turn her eyes to him if only he was youthful and handsome. His enquiries brought him to the attention of a local cunning-woman named Miss Eva. She offered to put him on the path to eternal youth and immortality in exchange for his eternal favor for herself and her kin. He agreed without hesitation, and Miss Eva told him about a special cave deep in the Amber Caverns and the ritual he needed to wake up the thing that slept there.

Only Salvador can say for sure what happened in the Amber Caverns, but he was gone for long enough that people began to wonder if he was dead. When he finally returned, Sergio and Tanya rejoiced that he would be able to attend their wedding. Tanya even asked that Salvador be the one to give her away, since she didn’t have a father of her own for the honor. Salvador agreed, but secretly decided that the upcoming marriage would be for himself, not for his brother.

On the day of the marriage, storm clouds rolled in over Barrow County, and they’ve never completely cleared since then. No one who went up to Raven’s Lodge that day ever came back out again, except for Salvador himself and his brother Rand. When people talk about it at all, they say that Salvador made a deal with Old Scratch to sacrifice Sergio’s life for immortality. Some people in Barrow say that they saw a girl throw herself from the mountain that night, and they assume it was Tanya, who killed herself rather than marry her fiancé’s murderer.

Since then, Barrow County has been cut off from the outside world. Salvador Kingsley runs the area like his own private kingdom, paying people in scrip and buying up all the real money for himself. Supplies only come into Barrow County when Kingsley permits them, and manufactured goods are both rare and expensive. Kingsley himself is rarely seen outside of his crumbling manor, though his brother Rand maintains a more active presence in the county.

Regardless of the truth of his nature, Salvador Kingsley is a monster. He intentionally keeps Barrow County cut off from the outside world, running it like his a feudal domain. The law serves his needs rather than those of justice. He is capricious, cruel, and easily bored. If he has any virtue at all, it’s his old-school sense of honor—but that honor comes with a heaping helping of easily offended pride. Coming to Kingsley’s attention is one of the worst things that can happen to a person in Barrow County, so the locals avoid it whenever possible.

Unfortunately for them, outsiders are so rare—so interesting—that they won’t be able to help drawing his attention sooner or later. May God have mercy on them.