Sunday, 16 February 2025

White Chalk (Almanac 25)

I'm so poor at keeping up with these annual challenges, so I thought I'd run my own.

Here is a single, 6 mile hex: it is divided into 30 one mile hexes, because PARIAH is a game of overland exploration (among other things). This is a development of White Chalk, itself an outgrowth of earlier proto-Neolithic Britain thoughts.

Initial 6 mile hex, divided into 1 mile hexes.
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The aim of this post is to provide an overview of a region by zooming into one six mile hex. Over the course of this year, I'll be producing regular posts providing typical events for this region as the game year. These include:
  • seasonal movements of birds, animals and humanoids
  • weather hex-flower specific to the season/month
  • Star charts and astronomical information (meteor storms, eclipses etc.)
  • plant and fungi information (foraging for food and medicine)
  • human cultural information (festivals, rituals, transhumance etc.)
Like my other PARIAH sandboxes this is set in a fantasy proto-Neolithic i.e. late stone age with many anachronistic elements. Unlike the other setting (City of 100 Gods, Atop the Wailing Dunes, City of Ghosts) the climate is temperate rather than tropical. In fact, the entire map is based on the south coast of England, not least because this particular part of the UK is right on my doorstep—indeed, it is my doorstep.

N.B. This was largely inspired by the many Neolithic sites around Sussex, Hampshire and Kent. If you have come to this blog as an outsider to the weird hobby of RPGs please understand this as a piece of speculative fiction rather than archaeology.

Overview of White Chalk: Stoneditch & Whitehawk


Whitehawk Camp

Digital reconstruction of the real life Whitehawk camp, https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/


Atop Whitehawk Hill sits the locus of power for the Chalk Coast People: a loose but subtly complex alliance of herders, fishers and arable farmers. The camp is the permanent home to the ruler de jure of that alliance: the Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter Queen. Alongside the Queen and her attendants there are 3 priests, each devoted to moon, sun and stars respectively. The "chief" of the Whitehawk clan, Split Lip, lives here alongside his family. His arch-rival, (Somewhat Awkwardly, chief of the 5 Barrows), has had a permanent home here for ten years.

At different times of the year the outer circles fill and empty with visitors for annual, seasonal and weekly festivals, conferences and rites: most importantly, goods and favours are collected and redistributed from this centre.

There are now only scattered trees about the 400ft summit: generations of systematic clearance and grazing have forever altered the landscape. Crop growing consumes the lowlands between the chalk hills, and the hills themselves are covered in the regions greatest treasure: sheep.

Lying beneath this structure, at the bottom of a covered well dug by a forgotten culture sleeps a demo: it thirsts for blood, and endures the torment of this thirst being slaked but once a year.


Stoneditch
Where the Whalebone river empties into the sea sits a small area of marsh, about which the fisher-folk have built their community. They spread their nets out along the banks of the Whalebone to dry, or trail rods to catch tiddlers from their stilt houses when the water is high. It's name arises from the large (and materially incongruous) sandstone boulders scattered throughout the marshes, said to be remnants of battles between giants.

The traditional fishing boats are colourfully painted dugout canoes, though for a generation or two coracles are becoming more popular as fewer suitable trees are to be found for new boats. Both types of vessel are found on the shingle coast a mile either side of Stoneditch, especially when The Lord's Sea is raging. 

Each household sends an elder to the Stoneditch council, to decide how their community's needs are to be presented to the Spring, Summer or Autumn queens. But one family always calls the shots, and they are the Silverscales. Rumours abound that the Silverscale matriarch—Wolf Eel—murdered her father while fishing in order to take control of the Silverscales and their Stoneditch.


Mother Sawtooth's Cave
Mother Sawtooth is a witch dwelling in a deep cave at the base of a huge chalk cliff. She provides legitimate magical healing for all maladies, though opinion as to her trustworthiness vary among the numerous communities around Whitehawk. Her cave is only safely accessed at low tides, when she is often seen scouring the rock pools for snails and herbs. Occasionally she ventures to the downs at the cliff top, and has even been spotted scaling the cliff itself to harvest gull eggs.

Mother Sawtooth wears layers of sack cloth, always covering her head with a hood. White wisps are occasionally visible. She stands with a pronounced stoop but meets most people's gaze at eye-level as she is (or was) exceptionally tall. Her skin is a deep chestnut brown and heavily lined from both her great age and a lifetime of living in the raw elements. Her name erases from her four visible incisors, which have each worn down to sharp points like the serrated edge of a saw

This gentle woman harbours a terrible secret: deep within a cave lurks a hungry intelligence that demands human flesh every full moon. It has convinced Mother Sawtooth that if it does not receive this food it will wreak a terrible plague on the land: thus she considers it her solemn duty—her burden—to continue this practice. She uses her magic to assume the form of a seal, orca or (occasionally) a spirit of the sea in order to abduct and murder fisher-folk. Mother Sawtooth seeks victim from as far away as possible, but sometimes taking from neighbouring communities is unavoidable.

Garlic Wood
This tiny woodland was once connected to the vast "Oldwood", itself a mere shadow of  its past glory. Only out of deference to the spirit Urug-Kha the Badger do the Whitehawk people allow this area to remain. The maintain hazel and linden coppices at its fringes, but the heart is all beech, oak and holly. Some of these trees are especially ancient.

Urug-Kha remembers the Old Ways and is a voice of authority on the lands to the north and east, which once were connected to his own. He is wary of unfamiliar humans, however, and requires proper propitiation to impart is wisdom.

The woods is named for the wild garlic that flourishes here in mid-late spring, usually before the bluebell moon. 

The Loveless
Atop this great hill stands a shrine to the spirit of the Oldwood. Once holy to the Painted Ones (who now dwell in the remaining forests of the Westwood), it is now home to the Loveless, a band of exiles 
loyal to the dwindling spirit of the Oldwood and surviving through hunting, gathering, herding boar and rustling sheep from the Downland.

The Loveless have an egalitarian power structure but are increasingly falling under the sway of the charismatic One-Eye, a powerful young woman exiled from the community at Rockshore (a few miles west of Stoneditch) after refusing to marry an envoy of the Bleak Isle Folk.

Downswatch, Drovewatch and Roundhill
These hilltop settlements appear to be little more than shelters for the shepherds during bad weather, but their purpose is multi-faceted. Each one is manned at all times by "warriors" ("noble" uses permitted to wield the decorative club and axes forbidden to other settled folk) and at least one priest. The priests facilitate the flow of information around the region, by sharing news from travellers and watching for the signal fires of neighbouring communities to the east and west. 

Downswatch pays particular heed to potential raiders from the north. Drovewatch keeps an eye on the passage of tributes to and from the nearby settlement of 5 Barrows. Roundhill mostly looks out for the activities of The Loveless, though in theory it is also looking out over the Lord's Sea for movements from Bleak Isle and beyond.

Flatfield Holding
This is a large community of 20 or so arable farmers that collectively crop the lowlands around Whalebone Pond. A small network of channels and ditches manages both irrigation and flooding. Unusual for an agricultural settlement in the region, the families of Flatfield are aggressively egalitarian, though this is somewhat tempered by the strict terms of what qualifies a "holder": the individual must be married and over the age of 25. This has led to some discontent among youths and young adults, some of home are quietly conspiring to run away and join the Loveless.

Fellbeech Hill
An even smaller wood than garlic wood to the south, Fellbeech Hill barely covers a square mile. The eponymous Fellbeech is an undead tree at the hill's peak, where a small band of Painted Ones made their last stand against a much larger force of Bleak Isle Folk. All but one slaughtered where they stood, with the last of the Painted Ones being impaled to an ancient beech tree and left to die. With her final breath she swore oaths of vengeance: the Lord of the Dead bound her spirit to the tree and there it remains, terrifying all would enter the domain.

Unable to stray far from her host tree, the warrior's vengeance has been seriously limited: yet her presence has enabled this pocket of woodland to endure. Though the Fellbeech itself is an undead husk, the remaining woods are a haven for wildlife, their habitat protected from human exploitation by the presence of the wrathful spirit. Indeed, the sole wolf pack of this corner of the White Chalk Coast retreats to Fellbeech Hill after its night's hunt. 

Notes on Climate, Ecology, and Landscape

The lands of the White Chalk Coast are chalk downland, rolling hills of sheep pasture kept from maturing into forest by the continual grazing of sheep. Scattered shrubs and solitary trees litter the landscape, occasionally congregating in copses that stubbornly resist firewood collection and felling for timber.

The southwest wind is warm and mostly wt, and prevails over all others for the majority of the year, though the north wind triumphs in the darkest hours, and his daughter the northeast wind carries bitter snows from dark and distant lands. Mostly grey clouds gather in the sky and threaten to piss down profusely, but never quite follow through—except when it's least convenient, and the lowlands are turned into impassable mires.

The Whitehawk family and the peoples of the Chalk Coast have chased away the worst of the predators, but ghosts still stalk blasted hillsides, and in the depths of the weald the cave bear sleeps only fitfully. For the most part, however, this is a land of foxes, badges and occasional wolves, picking at the scraps of inter-human conflict. In pocket hide the Painted Ones, launching spiteful sorties against their once allies in Whitehawk. These former friends now look to the promises of the Bleak Isle Folk to tame the wilderness for good: but it is possible the ambitions of the pale foreigners far exceed their means.

~

Into this mix slips an outcast band—the pariahs—whose otherness might allow them to tiptoe carefully across many different territories, or might find them accused of trespass by everyone. 

Next post in this series will look at the events in the first lunar month.


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2 comments:

  1. maxcan717 February 2025 at 13:45

    I've always liked the use of garlic especially, but also other aromatics and herbs in the ecology of a fantasy setting. Fragrances and flavors often get underutilized as part of the sensory experience of fantasy I guess. I'd probably give the Garlic Woods some legend associated with the wild garlic, if not make it magical-y garlic.

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    1. Sofinho - Alone in the Labyrinth17 February 2025 at 23:12

      This is a series following this hex over the course of a year. I'll come back to the garlic when it's ripe for the picking (after the fourth full moon I would have thought)

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