Crooked Mile
Warning:
Black Ichor Scenarios include "soft" horror text and graphics.
It may not be suitable for children or the skittery to read.
Opinion of the writer: PG-13 material.
What Goes Up Must Come Down into the Valley
Demographics
While the Fairelands charmed industrialists, political & religious imperialists, serfs, peasants, professionals, commercial marketers, criminals, and college elites, Crooked Mile attracted settling residents, merchants who house and fed explorers, ship builders and farmers. The population is diverse, but what everyone, except the farmers, have in common is their desire to build homes in the valley. Because of the wind stream that dumps the shiver snows and mountain river runoff into the valley, it isn't an industrialist choice to build in the soggy basins. The Berkside Mill thrives near the canal. When times get tough, the ingenious few want electricity, and the mill can power it.
Before the Six Years’ War, and after the Berkside Transit Train burrowed a train tunnel through the Location Scarlet Woods, the Bridleborne Mountains, and Underground Crooked Mile, the valley’s demographic changed. During the war, it became a refuge for politicians on the way out. Military industrial workers, came from Faraway and Otherwhere villages, but couldn’t afford to live in the up-and-coming Location Newfaire, while they awaiting middle class housing. Other businesses, including a college annex, schools, merchants and even local entertainment, opened their doors in the sleepy areas of the valley. Persons with unique expertise are required to man these enterprises.
There is a difference between city life residents and rural residents, who commute or travel long distances to find festivals, high end shopping or nightlife. The residents of Crooked Mile enjoy a few hours of rushing, but they want a less rushed life most of the time. They are elated to see the war end and a return to the pastoral life Crooked Mile never had. Their memories are aspirations, not necessarily a reality.
Government
On Crooked Mile Independence Day, July 19, 1907, the village opened it's first official meeting to the pulic. Until then the community deferred to the authority of the Fairelands Triumverate. It continues to buy its security from the Periphery and the Berkside Transit Train System is still managed by the Primacy, but the village met its goal of 50,000 coins bank and a population of 1800, so that it could begin to govern the valley with their own policies. Crooked Mile's Committe doesn't say it publicly, but it considers itself to be a less corrupt and a fair minded group unlike its neigbhor to the west side of the Bridleborne Mountains. Unfortunately, Flare thinning and bleed seeping through that thinning began to affect the valley long before the notion of governing itself was weighed.
Only two members of the Committee do not belong to the Crooked Mile Circle, a secret society that was brought into being for the purpose of dealing with supernatural rot and unexplained phenomena, regardless of good or bad intent. Bleed is bleed.
Districts
Because districts formed over time, the borders between neighborhoods wobble in and out of one another. Since it is a “everyone knows everybody so far” town of 2,000 residents and growing, there is no specific design that keeps persons apart with different incomes and interests. After a few weeks, one time strangers know who they can confide in, and those who will betray them. Even the traders who use the underground transit route, and other times the stealth passageway are known by their nicknames.
The Public Districts include:
- Old Town Village: First eastern Scarlet Woods District that is home to transportation businesses.
- Goose Valley Landing: Middle class neighborhood built after the Six Year War to house veterans and theri families.
- Crooked Canal Lochs: A river rapids and calm waterway route that was first used in 1855.
- Bulkhead Seaport North Crooked Mile: A mix of businesses that started up before the War in 1898.
- Drumkeeploch Manor and Cirsea Isles: Owned and Imagined by Jason Garamund, Crooked Mile Chapter Founder.
- Theater District: Niche shops located in Southeast Crooked Mile. The theater is a community playhouse. Briarbank College, the Lending Library and the Crooked Mile Chapter House are renovated buildings donated and supported by wealthy, long time residents of Crooked Mile.
- Market Neighborhood: Includes the community built trolley system, quaint farmer's market stores, the public school and Berkside Hosiery Mill.
History
Crooked Mile grows by twist and turn. Like many other settlements, it starts with waterways. The Perpetual Seas and the Glass Sea takes turn transporting seafarers from one environment to the other. Before long shipping companies built their ports in the Fairelands and Crooked Mile. Nature takes care of canal and river transportation. The waterways spring up and go dry with the weather. Villages with populations of less the 30 spring up north of the mainland to support the ports and merchants.
Perpetual Seas & the Glass Sea
Vast Chasm & Tributaries
Crooked Mile Waterways by Ruby O'Degee Design
In the west near the Bridleborne Mountains, foot paths take explorers up over the mountains down into the valley where they can take a raft or canoe to the seas. Nature prompts the popularity of this alternative route. Where the two seas come together, a vast chasm resulted in many shipwrecks for forty years after the shipyards were built. In 1890, the Bulkhead Shipyard Shipyard Company and Faireland’s Location Hollow Harbor built bulldozed a nautical route that wasn’t affected by the vast chasm of waterfall influence. The footpaths are less traveled, but smugglers find ways for making use of the treacherous, less publicly known loops both above and underground.
Points of interest
The settlement grew into a prosperous farming community before the Six Year War. The smaller villages were shielded from bombing while Oldfaire suffered during the war. Beverage and munition smugglers took up residence in barns for a nominal charge. The farmers appreciated the security they provided, and the criminals tipped the best cooks for their meals.
Spouters Tavern is the first inland business that thrived. Canal users who needed supplies stopped there for goods and news about the community. Because the tavern staff issues no prohibitions for its patrons, gambling, drinking, and bringing escorts to the establishment is a common pastime for sailors and narrow boat owners who enjoy a night of carousing.
Harvest Temple Temple, a well-known revival mission, was built in 1875. Either before or after an evening at Spouter’s Tavern, locals attend their services. One of their performed rituals includeddunking sinners to rid them of the contagions spread by decadent time with strangers. Another service is held for drunks and elixir users who suffer from ailments associated with habitual recreational use.
Once wealthy, Circle Founder, Jason Garamund began building his sprawling Manor House near the east end beach in 1885. He wanted to surprise his wife, Cathaleen Garamund with a comfortable home away from his grumbling family. Cathaleen never lived in the completed home, but she visited the build site. In between the time the first brick was laid, many financial setbacks held up construction. In 1905, the home was completed. Jason renovates out buildings and gifts them to the up and coming Crooked Mile village.
Crooked Mile West Bridleborne Mountains
What Goes Up Must Come Down into the Valley
Founding Date
Founded 1835, Committed July 19, 1907
Founders
Type
Village
Population
2,000
Goose Valley Landing
Crooked Mile Residents Open Census 1906
Crooked Mile Residents by ROD w/Midjourney
Berkside Mills
Briarbank Annex Night College
Cooked Mile Courthouse & Jail
Crooked Falls Cemetery
Crooked Mile Circle Chapter House
Crooked Mile Market
Harvest Temple
Lightkeeper Theater
Perpetual Seas Landing
Spouter Tavern
Crooked Mile Valley is home to Black Ichor Scenario’s Crooked Mile Circle, a secret society that belongs to the Radiant Order. Candela Obscura and hundreds of other circles belong to this order. Games are often opened with an introduction by a homebrewed circle like Crooked Mile. During a paranormal assignment, the player group that accepts an invitation to share the episodic scenarios creates their own Circle.
A map is considered an illustration and should not be confused with a pre-determined route. Game masters and player characters choose their own routes and transportation to find clues. A map is a way to clear the clutter, so that a story is written by a Lightkeeper and player characters with less fog about where these clues (reveals) are located.
The Crooked Mile Map is a detailed build map that can be studied, but it doesn’t mean the map is used for only one scenario. The valley is a source for several scenarios with the expectation these scenarios will be written into stories by GMs and player characters. To better isolate and narrow a scenario (plot) focus marker groups and layers can assist with pacing. The drop-down menu and a Features Pin explain the process.
Since Crooked Valley is a fiction-first narrative measuring the valley in advance of the mysteries that come out, it is premature, but a good estimate is that the valley is about 2/3 the size of the Fairelands. It is the ambiguous pastoral community kept free of the Oldfaire city’s corruption and arcane alchemy until the war broke out and the train tunneled through the Bridleborne Mountains. Now it’s a cracked, yet not broken mirror trying to hold back the flare bleed.
With the expansion map layers coming soon, Lumensmere, the home brewed version of the Fairelands and the Cirsea Isles, it will grow much larger, along with the many scenarios already in the editing stage. For now there is plenty of ground to cover, and World Anvil’s pinning by layer and overlay helps to clarify where characters can find satisfying outcomes. Writers won’t get lost and players will learn the game’s gist in no time.
Crooked Valley is a homebrewed adaptation with only distant scenario derivation. Nevertheless it is important to credit the originator where possible.
by Darrington Press
Cool settlement. I love the details about the founders and the sort of people who live there. Also about the buildings.
It's all sort of an experiment. Writing a world that differs from the world that inspired it, so I appreciate your commenting.