Astra Byzantium Apotheosis

It has been ten thousand years since the light of Old Terra was extinguished by the ravening hordes of the Machine Gods. The subsequent flight from darkness into the unknown reaches of the universe scattered humanity far and wide, bringing the children of Earth into contact with a multitude of previously unknown species. With the aid and knowledge of these new allies, humanity led a great crusade against the Machine Gods, finally casting them down from their iron thrones and paving the way into a brighter future—a future in which humanity would sit upon a throne over the whole galaxy.

The empire of Astra Byzantium—better known to its people as the New Terran Empire—controls countless systems across an almost unthinkably large region of space. For millennia, it has been guided by faith and science in equal measure, embodied in the personage of its emperoxes, living avatars of the One True God, and the soldier-saints produced by humanity’s cathedral-factories.

Though once allied with numerous alien races, the imperial ambitions of humanity have long since soured those relationships, driving away all but the most dedicated and fervent. Today, the allies of man stand at but three: the elves, immortal blood-drinkers; the dwarves, militant forge-masters; and the cynocephaloi, hound-headed beasts of war.

The vastness of space is filled with life, some of which languishes under the heavy hand of the empire, unwilling servants of the Adamant Throne. These “vassal races” are accorded many rights by the empire, but are not full citizens and have little say in their own governance. This inequality sometimes boils over into resentment, which in turn gives way to rebellion—and rebellion is not tolerated by the emperox or their servants.

Yet the sprawling New Terran Empire, though home to countless trillions, is not the only power in the galaxy. Though theoretically subject peoples of the empire, the elves and dwarves have their own massive polities whose goals are sometimes at odds with those of the Adamant Throne. On the fringes of the empire, the forces of the Stellar Caliphate gobble up neglected systems, converting them to their own faith—one that rejects the emperox’s claims of divinity.

Alien forces build their own civilizations outside the watchful eye of the empire, looking with greed at the green and pleasant worlds hoarded by humankind. Space-dwelling nomads and pirates haunt the lost systems, turning them from lonely shortcuts on the hyperspace ways into lethal ambush points.

And in the deep blackness of the void, the last remnants of the Machine Gods still sleep, occasionally half-waking to disgorge hordes of lethal drones onto their old foes in an eternal war of extermination.

***

That's the basic pitch for a Savage Worlds space-fantasy setting I'm calling Astra Byzantium Apotheosis. The basic premise is "What if Warhammer 40K, but less with less fascism?" Obviously, the setting has a lot more influence from Byzantine culture than the Western Roman Empire, and the "present day" of the setting is entirely intended to be a snapshot of the reign of Justinian... IN SPACE!!!

I might put up some more info about the setting over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I'm still working on Barrow County, Children of the Dark, and other projects, including a revamp of Exalted: Blood and Fire!

Barrow County: Haints and Whatnot

Ghosts (better known to country folk as “haints”) are very real in Barrow County. They dwell in abandoned houses, on lonely back roads, and in the forests where they died. Most ghosts are bound to a single place that was important to them in life, or else caught in a loop of the behavior they were performing in the last moments leading up to their deaths.

While most ghosts are scary but harmless most of the time, some become dangerous around specific times of year, like the Ghost Bride of Rester Falls, who kills anyone foolish enough to visit the falls on the anniversary of her death. Others are inimical to human life all the time, like the Gravel Crusher, whose presence killed almost a dozen men and women before the gravel plant was shut down and abandoned.

There are literally dozens of ghosts in Barrow County—enough that people simply accept them as a fact of life and do their best to avoid them whenever possible. Still, there are always people foolish or skeptical enough to not believe the stories, leading to at least a few deaths by ghost attack every year. Such deaths are generally reported as accidents or suicides by the sheriff’s department, but everyone knows the truth.

Statistics: Ghosts use the statistics presented in the Savage Worlds Horror Companion (page 131-132). All ghosts in Barrow County have the Salt Variant Weakness, and most have the Bane and Resolution weaknesses as well.

A ghost can be put to rest by burying its remains in consecrated ground and covering them in salt, but this only lasts until the salt washes away completely (which generally takes five to ten years). Some ghosts can be destroyed by dousing their remains in salt and then burning them, but powerful ghosts can survive this primitive form of exorcism. A ghost destroyed in combat (no mean feat already) will reform in 1d4 weeks unless its remains are destroyed afterwards or its Resolution condition is met in the meantime.

Dennis Strup, the Gravel Crusher (Wild Card)

Durst Quarry and its attached gravel plant were once a major employer in Barrow County. The Durst family’s fortunes began to decline when an accident claimed the life of one of the plant’s workers, a man named Dennis Strup, who fell into the crusher and came out the other side as a thick paste. Rumor said that he was pushed in during an altercation, but there was never any evidence to prove it. After a day of mourning and a thorough rinse for the crusher, the plant reopened and business went back to normal.

A month after Dennis died, another man was killed when the gravel crusher’s scoop fell on him. The month after that, three people died when a full load of gravel fell out of the hopper as they were passing by, smothering them before they could be dug out. This continued for months, until the mounting death toll finally convinced the Durst family to close down the gravel plant. The whole family moved away not long after, abandoning their remaining businesses to avoid lawsuits. (In fact, the Dursts never left Barrow County—see “Grim Inheritance” in the Hearts in Barrow Plot Point Adventure for more details.)

While the nearby flooded quarry is a popular hangout for Barrow’s teens, the gravel plant itself is shunned. Anyone who enters the gravel plant pit is likely to draw the attention of the ghost of Dennis Strup, who is spiritually anchored to the gravel crushing machine that took his life. The ghost can’t leave the pit, but he craves to inflict the death he suffered on anyone who enters.

Tactics: Dennis prefers to let his gravel crusher do the talking. When he senses the living in his home, he brings the machinery to life and does his best to distract intruders while focusing his attacks on one of them at a time. His favorite tactic is to use telekinesis to push someone onto a conveyor belt that will dump them into the gravel crusher’s maw and hold them there until they fall in. Typically, it takes 1d4+1 rounds for someone on a conveyor belt to reach the crusher, but knowing what’s in store for them provokes a Fear Check. A victim of this attack gets a Spirit roll opposed by Dennis’ telekinetic Strength (d10) at the start of each of their turns to break free, but if they’re still on the belt when the timer runs out, they’re toast.

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d10, Strength d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Athletics d8, Common Knowledge d6, Fighting d6, Intimidation d12, Notice d10, Stealth d10, Taunt d10
Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness: 5
Edges: Arcane Resistance (Imp)
Gear: Thrown rocks (Str+d6)
Special Abilities:
•    Bane: An active union membership card acts as a ward (HC 48) to Dennis.
•    Ethereal: May pass through objects; cannot be harmed by nonmagical attacks; may become invisible (–6 penalty to hit) as a limited free action.
•    Fear (–2): Ghosts cause Fear checks at –2 when they let themselves be seen.
•    Fearless: Immune to Fear and Intimidation.
•    Machine Control: Dennis can bring the machinery of the gravel plant to life at will, turning the gravel pit into Difficult Ground as conveyor belts move, gravel rains from above, and various other dangerous devices grind away. Dennis can make an Athletics Test as a limited free action against any character in the gravel plant while the machines are active.
•    Resolution: Dennis was pushed into the gravel crushing machine due to his union sympathies. He can be laid to rest by bringing his killer to justice, or by a true-blue union member intentionally sticking his hand into the gravel crusher in solidarity (which naturally costs the poor soul their hand). Destroying the gravel crushing machine only dispels the ghost’s influence until Dennis can repair it, taking 1d6 months.
•    Salt: Like all ghosts native to Barrow County, the Gravel Crusher can be hurt or driven off by salt. He can’t be killed by it, but it drives him off for 10 minutes per Wound he would have suffered, and he cannot cross a line of salt. The Gravel Crusher has no corpse to destroy, so he is not vulnerable to being defeated by this method.
•    Telekinesis: Dennis can move objects and push people around with the force of his spirit. He can use the telekinesis power as a limited action as though it had a Strength of d10.

Author's Note: A fun fact about me is that I literally grew up two miles down the road from a gravel plant. The place scared the shit out of me as a kid. For anyone who doesn't know what a gravel factory looks like, it's basically like this:

 

The entire area around the crushing machine, including the piles of gravel and the tanks, are called "the pit."

Barrow County: The Undead Scourge

Let’s just say it right out in the open: Salvador Kingsley is a vampire. Maybe not a Hollywood vampire, or a Dracula, but he’s an immortal undead monster who drinks blood and makes more of his own kind by feeding on humans. That’s close enough for government work.

In his pact with the Elder One, Salvador became patient zero for a monstrous infection. Those he drains to death with his feeding rise again as the undead. Their victims rise again as well. In theory, this exponential growth should shortly cover the world in a plague of the undead from which there is no escape. In practice, there are some serious limits to the way Salvador’s spawn can increase their numbers—the primary one being Salvador himself.

Salvador’s use of the black blood of the earth to increase his powers and bind himself to the land of Barrow County means that he only needs to feed on human blood about once a week. He rarely drains his victims dry, preferring to drink deeply enough to cause fatigue but not serious or permanent damage. This isn’t out of kindness on his part; he’s smart enough to know that reckless feeding would rapidly deplete his supply of victims. Since he can’t set foot out of Barrow County, he can’t afford that. Salvador also doesn’t permit his “children” to feed recklessly, though most of them will happily drain someone if they think they can get away with it.

Salvador draining a mortal dry can result in one of two outcomes: nearly mindless creatures of pure hunger he calls “zombies,” or much more intelligent and better-preserved minions he calls “leeches.” What he gets is mostly a matter of time and care. Sucking a person dry in one sitting results in a zombie, unless he takes special care to destroy the body afterwards. Making a leech takes weeks of careful feeding on a mortal, culminating in a final draining and feeding the poor wretch his own foul blood in return.

Leeches are hollow caricatures of the people they were in life, their complexities and contradictions filed down to the sharp edges of hunger and their worst personality traits. These bloodsuckers are ruthless sociopaths who view ordinary humans as cattle and one another as competition. If they weren’t all so terrified of Salvador, they’d be fighting each other for dominance almost constantly. As it stands, Salvador keeps the numbers of leeches low just to avoid having to deal with their nightly bickering, backbiting, and pettiness.

Beyond the time and care needed to create a leech, Salvador has one more major limitation: he can only turn natives of Barrow County. His tie to the land is so strong that he can’t pass on the full power of his curse to anyone who wasn’t born on land corrupted by it. It took him decades to find out about this limitation, and it constantly frustrates him, since it prevents him from turning useful outsiders into his minions, forcing him to rely on the less-educated natives as fodder or bringing outsiders into his service through more mundane means.

Leeches can’t make more of their own kind, no matter how much they’d like to. Anyone they drain, whether they take a long time or do it all at once, rises again as a zombie. The zombies they make are loyal to Salvador as well, not to them. This means that when a leech wants to drain a mortal dry during feeding, they must destroy the body completely to prevent it from rising again and tattling on them if Salvador gets curious about where it came from.

Zombies are pathetic wretches, consumed by their hunger and with only faint traces of their former personalities left in their rotting corpses. They look monstrous, with tattered flesh hanging from yellowed bones, sharpened teeth, and eyes that glow red when they catch sight of prey. They’re smart enough to use simple tools, but they’re incapable of long-term planning or restraint. If they see a mortal, they’re likely to attack unless they’re currently under orders to the contrary—and they can’t keep more than one or two orders in mind at a time.

Zombies are entirely able to subsist on animal blood, but they prefer human blood. Their victims generally get torn limb from limb as the zombie tries to get every drop out, so most zombie attacks don’t leave enough of a body behind to rise again. Animals can’t become zombies—at least not most of the time, see the Zombie Bear Savage Tale—so it’s easy to feed zombies if Salvador cares enough to bother.

Leeches require at least a pint of human blood every night to avoid starvation. They can “bank up” by draining someone dry once a week instead, but Salvador doesn’t generally permit it more than a couple of times a year. Salvador’s family mainly survive by feeding on the prisoners kept in the dungeons beneath Raven’s Lodge, rotating through the poor wretches and keeping them just on the edge of death.

Neither zombies nor leeches can die from hunger, but starvation can do awful things to them. A zombie that goes long enough without feeding shrivels up into a mummified corpse and falls into a stupor, probably burned up the next time the sun rises unless they were lucky enough to collapse indoors or down a deep hole. They revive instantly if something warm and full of blood comes near. A similar fate befalls leeches who go hungry, but they remain fully aware and in pain the whole time. The ones who return from this torpor are usually quite mad.

Salvador can command any zombie that can hear him speak, and they will follow his orders slavishly, even unto their own destruction. They fear nothing but fire, sunlight, and symbols of faith. Because of decades of vampire activity in the County, there are literally hundreds of the foul fiends wandering around in the wilderness, looking for a meal. Fortunately, running water confuses their senses, and they can’t be active during the day. This means that every little creek and runnel in the County is effectively a wall to zombies, and Barrow itself (which is surrounded on three sides by rivers and the last by a mountain) basically a fortress against them.

 

Vampire Powers

Zombies basically don’t have any “powers” of note, other than being undying, incredibly strong, damn hard to kill, and ugly as sin. Leeches are somewhat better off in this regard.

Every leech can blend in with the herd since they still look mostly human. When they feed, their fangs grow in, their claws extend, and their eyes start to glow, but until that happens, they just seem a bit paler and more intense than the average person.

Vampires can’t be killed by most attacks. Getting shot or stabbed still hurts like the dickens, which can slow them down for a few seconds, but it won’t put them down for the count. The only things that can do them permanent damage are fire, decapitation, or being pierced through the heart with a silver bullet or wooden stake—and sunlight, for zombies.

Even staking a leech doesn’t kill it outright—unless it’s subsequently decapitated or burned to ash, removing the stake lets the vampire reanimate a few moments later. (Salvador punishes unruly leeches by staking them and burying them in the caves under his manor for a few years or decades, until he decides they’ve learned their lesson.)

A leech is vastly stronger and tougher than a normal mortal, easily able to snap a grown man’s neck with their bare hands or flip a car in a fit of anger. They can extend lethal claws at will, and they have fangs that can bite through a tree branch. They’re supernaturally fast and agile, as quick as a jungle cat—and just as silent on the hunt. They can see in the dark, and they can track by smell.

Popular legend speaks of vampires being able to control minds, but leeches don’t have such abilities. They do possess a bizarre kind of charisma—an intensity that draws weak-willed souls to them and lets them dominate mortal predators with ease. Trained guard dogs slink away from leeches with their tails between their legs, while coyotes and wolves will obey them like faithful hounds.

Oh, and they can fly. Not very fast—about the equivalent of a slow walk, and no more than twenty or thirty feet off the ground—but they can definitely hover menacingly outside a second story window at night.

Salvador has a few unique powers of his own as well, which are discussed in his entry.

 

Vampire Weaknesses

It’s well known that vampires and sunlight don’t get along. For leeches, the sun is a painful inconvenience that can be blocked out with dark sunglasses, wide-brimmed hats, and heavy coats. For zombies, it’s outright deadly, with even a few seconds of direct exposure turning one into a tiki torch. Even Salvador prefers to walk at night and wears heavy shades on the few occasions he’s forced to be out and about by day.

Zombies get easily confused by natural running water, even if it’s only a few inches deep. They can also be turned back by prominently displayed religious symbols, regardless of the symbol’s origin. Most folk in Barrow County are Christians, but zombies are also repelled by the traditional dreamcatchers on Dusk Hills homes and the Star of David worn by its few Jewish residents. Leeches are only repulsed by active displays of strong faith, not simply inert objects, but they can’t set foot on consecrated ground.

Zombies have problems with mirrors—they have reflections, but seeing their own reflection tends to provoke intense confusion or insane rage. Leeches also have reflections, but those reflections don’t always behave right. Their reflections sometimes move on their own, or act out their inner thoughts, so leeches avoid mirrors in public whenever possible. A leech’s shadow is similarly unruly, though it’s harder to tell since they don’t often go about in bright light.

Fresh chicory, garlic, or wildflowers are repulsive to vampires of all kinds. Zombies won’t willingly go near them or enter a house where they’re hung at the entrances, while leeches struggle to contain their nausea at the smell. Preserved or cooked garlic don’t have a similar effect (Anna Karloff is particularly fond of Italian food).

Speaking of food, zombies can’t eat it. They have no interest in it—only in the hot blood and warm flesh of the living, devoured fresh. Leeches can eat and even seem to enjoy doing so, but they derive no nutrition from the act. A leech that eats three square meals a day still wastes away and starves if they don’t drink blood nightly.

Leeches have one additional weakness not possessed by zombies: they can’t enter a home uninvited. A “home” for this purpose is any permanent dwelling inhabited by living people, who must have slept a night in that dwelling sometime in the last season. A paid-off double-wide trailer counts as a home. Public businesses aren’t homes, but if the owner lives in a unit above their store, their apartment counts. “Invitations” have to be explicit to work. Holding the door open and standing aside doesn’t count but telling a leech “Why don’t you come in here and say that?” totally does.

Regions of Barrow County

Barrow County takes up around 900 square miles, being around 30 miles across and roughly circular. It is ringed on all sides by the Appalachian Mountains, with several small peaks within the bounds of the County itself. There are four incorporated townships in the County—Barrow, Hobb’s Corners, Dusk Hills, and Crescent—as well as over a dozen unincorporated hamlets and villages with less than a hundred people in each of them. Barrow County’s official population is around 20,000, but there hasn’t been a real census in decades.

Barrow County can be roughly divided into five areas—the regions around the four major townships, plus the uninhabited northern and eastern Low Woods. The basic character of these regions can be thought of as follows:

Barrow: Southeastern portion of the county. The county seat. Home of the sheriff’s department, the county clerk, and not much else. Lots of dying businesses and abandoned houses. The mayor is the popular Nicholas Calendar, but it’s well known that the Kingsley family basically runs Barrow.

Hobb’s Corners: Central part of the county. The most populous town in the county, with roughly half of Barrow County’s population living there. Slightly better off than Barrow, but still dying. Used to be a major coal town, now surviving on the bounty from the fishery and hydroelectric dam. Home to the Hobb family, town founders and vocal opponents of the Kingsleys.

Dusk Hills Reservation: Southwestern corner of the county. Home to the Dusk Hills band of Native Americans. The town of Dusk Hills is largely in ruins after a series of battles with a supremacist militia a generation ago. The major local industry is the casino, a caricature of Native American life owned and operated by Salvador Kingsley, forcing the locals to choose between starving or participating in their own oppression.

Crescent: The northwest part of the county. By far the wealthiest town in Barrow County, thanks to the Raven River Winery and the continuing prosperity of the local lumber mills. The Crescovich family owns the Crescent Mountain Lumber Company and has an uneasy relationship with both the Hobbs and the Kingsleys.

Low Woods: The eastern and northern portion of the county. Home only to a few lonely homesteads. Most of the Low Woods is part of a national nature preserve, making both logging and hunting illegal—though most people in Barrow wind up doing at least some of the latter, depending on the time of year. The northernmost part of the region is home to the Amber Caves National Park, a long-closed tourist attraction.

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.

***

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.

Barrow County, Appalachia

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…

***

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!

Ravenloft Reincarnated: The Amber Wastes Cluster Revised

I released the Amber Wastes Cluster for the original version of Ravenloft Reincarnated, so it was the first thing to get revised after the core rules. It's getting posted after Black Vault and Power of the Tarot because it's currently unformatted, in preparation for the Cluster Compendium, Volume I, which will include the Amber Wastes, the Frozen Reaches, the Shadowlands, and the Verdurous Lands. I won't be updating the master post until the Cluster Compendium is finished, so keep an eye out for that.

Cluster: The Amber Wastes (Revised)