Village Government

Government Locations

Village Hall

The village council, the court, and Mayor Clare's trashy apartment are all within the Village Hall's main building.

Spoilers follow. If you play with me, don't read the rest.

Village Council

Council members are elected to their office. There are two members. Tom is fat and loud. Jim is thin and shy. They agree about everything that might require a vote, but disagree with open hostility about everything else.

The two council members share a political viewpoint that is opposite to the sheriff's beliefs. (Flip a coin after choosing two opposing political perspectives. Example: the sheriff is conservative and the council members are liberal.)

Village Court

Only council members are eligible to be judges. They're the only ones qualified to interpret the law, since they are the ones who know how to make laws.

Many of the cases they face are not crimes and are based on charges the sheriff made up. Additionally, the defendant is often accused of doing something that the judges support.

The council usually follows the law, but they sometimes make new laws when they can't find any in the book that fit the situation.

Mayor Clare's apartment

It's messy and small. There is a small, translucent window. Looking through it is like looking through wax paper.

Mayor Clare is usually here, sitting on her bed (because she has no other furniture), rocking back and forth, looking embarrassed and anxious for anyone who is visiting to leave.

Notable NPCs

Sheriff Dixon

Sheriff Dixon has no understanding of the law and thinks his job is to stop other people from doing anything bad. He prioritizes whatever seems most important and has a quota of deeds to do, but will always act against any badness at all.

He thinks lying is admirable if the lying is done for a good cause. He's an extremist with a political viewpoint opposite to that of the city council. (Flip a coin after choosing two opposing political perspectives. Example: the sheriff is conservative and the council members are liberal. Example: the sheriff is a tyrannist and the council members are democratists.)

Mayor Clare

No one cares about her or her job. She is pathetic and knows she is pathetic, but she depends on her weekly payment. It's like welfare because she doesn't do anything. She is desperate for change. She disagrees with the Village Council about most things and disagrees with Sheriff Dixon about most things. She has a third point of view that doesn't align with either of the other political stances.

Traveler's Pond

Characters who start in Village City have been exiled because the government has officially deemed them a nuisance. The player characters must not return to the Village without sufficient sp to buy their way out of exile. Before leaving, they may visit the Travelers Pond.

The player character may throw half of their Starting SP into the pond or drip some blood (-1 HP) into the pond to summon the Traveler's Pond Spirit who instantly gives the player a blessing.

Roll to determine the spirit and roll again to determine a detail about its personality.

d6	Spirit	d6	Personality Detail
1	Tadpole	1	Ancient & grumpy
2	Crawdad	2	Toddler-esque
3	Snail	3	Tells false rumors
4	Green scum	4	Believes world is friendly
5	Lily pad	5	Tries to take back deal
6	Water hyacinth	6	Gives farming tips for ponds

White Horses

White horses are carved in chalk into some hills throughout the land. The carvings are older than anyone's memory or any book's documentation of them. Most of them are silhouettes.

One white horse on Uffing hill, possibly just outside of Village City, sits alongside 8 others. This one, however is more of a line drawing. Rumors say that standing on its eye and spinning three times, clockwise will compel the horse to grant a wish.

It actually just compels the real white horse that is magically attached to this chalk horse to attempt to grant a wish. It can't do anything a normal horse can't do except speak the most common local language.

The Uffing White Horse abhors wish-robbers, partly because it's tired of trying to grant impossible wishes, but even more because its chalky eyes are blind and sore from all of the wishes. It is as intelligent (and innocent, and as subject to tantrums) as a child, but is very old, tired, and world-weary, despite it's youthful body. It would like to die, but it hasn't noticed that yet.

Uffing White Horse2HD10HPMovement rate: as a mountattack 1d4-1to-hit -3

Uffing Horse

Chaotically Helpful Harriet

Harriet lives in Village City. She wears patchwork leather armor over a flour sack dress.

Harriet really likes to help people. She'll investigate to find someone who needs her help to accomplish their goal. She doesn't care in the slightest what the help is or who she helps or what their motivations are, so long as they're willing to explain their motivations to her.

She has no moral compass whatsoever. She just likes to help. She will find someone to help immediately, if possible. She's impatient to get it done as quickly as possible and will use whatever means necessary to speed things up, no matter how evil or risky to even her own life. As soon as she's completed a helpful task, she'll immediately focus on acquiring the next job.

She won't ever work for the same person twice. She's fond of acting as if she has a grudge for anyone she worked for in the past, but it's really just a fun thing to pretend. Acting as if she's upset makes her giggle.

No matter how important what she's doing might seem, she'll stop everything for bedtime (8:00 pm) and for lunch (noon.)

Village City

Every citizen of the village believes it is a village. They're right. In every respect except size, the village is a village. Nothing is expensive, nothing is well made. No one is cultured and local culture is strange and backward.

However, the village is one of the larger cities in the area, if measured by population. If measured by geographical size, it is the largest city in the country, if not the world. This is because buildings aren't often near each other and because it's rare to see a structure much taller than one man standing on another man's shoulders. Farms are more common than buildings.

Rot Monsters

Village energy emanates from them, keeping everyone who remains nearby more than a week under the impression that they live in a village despite knowing how big it is. (This includes player characters.) This is to prevent them from building a plumbing system in its underground home, where its family lives.

The monsters are symbiotic.

They care for plants from below, making the farms and gardens above flourish. This keeps the villagers fed and able to export the best produce in great quantity. They build tunnels to outhouse pits so they can gather fertilizer. They dig underground irrigation. Deep rooted plants (including grapes, the main crop) need no water.

The monsters eat only waste and rotten things. They're very intelligent but not educated or scholarly. They like the simple life.

They look like radish humanoids. The radish is the head and leaves and roots are the body.

Church of Rot

The only local church is the church of rot. Members collect compostable material and toss it down well-like structures at the front of each church, where other churches might have an altar.

Members believe they are making offerings to an evil rot god underground that will blight everything, including people, if angered.

Some church elders know that the compost donation is for a practical purpose, but they don't know about the Village-ness magic.