Kryvan March
Take the contract off the shrine post, pick silver, iron or fire, and find out why the thing came. The vampire counts are watching.
- Monster hunting
- Folk horror
- Vampires
- Dark fantasy
folk-horror dark fantasy 1 memberBuilt by Worldtable
Kryvan March is a frontier province where every village nails its monster contracts to the shrine post and pays whoever comes back with the head. Above the passes, vampire counts keep a hundred-year-old bargain with the towns below, and that bargain is starting to break.
Where it all began
the Red Winter
A hundred and forty years ago the vampire courts of the Telvian mountains went to war with each other and with the valleys below. For one winter the dead walked, wolves hunted in packs of fifty, and half the villages of the March were emptied. The church's knights held the churches, the first Tempered hunters held the passes, and in the spring Count Ozas Arges turned on his own kind, burned House Cournon in its castle, and came down to the cathedral door at Verensk to make the Bargain: the counts police their own and leave the valleys alone, and the mountain towns pay a tithe of blood each autumn. The March has lived inside that deal ever since.
The lands
Golynia
the Shrine Valleys
river valleys of rye and birch, shrine-post villages, and the cathedral city of Verensk where the Church of Saint Lunia sits
Every village in Golynia has a shrine post at the crossroads, an oak pillar under a little roof with a saint's icon on top and contracts nailed below. A full post means a frightened village; a bare one means nobody can pay.
Dubria
the Old Oaks
an oak forest that is alive and moves its paths, charcoal towns along its edge, and a witch's hut somewhere inside
The forest of Dubria is alive and it is listening. Paths move between one visit and the next, a tree you cut on Monday has a sapling in its stump on Wednesday, and the charcoal towns along its edge leave bread on a stump every morning so they can find their way home.
Loiva
the Lake Country
cold lakes, reed marsh and stilt towns of the singing Lakefolk on the southern coast; drowned brides in the reeds
In Loiva the lakes keep what they take. Girls who drowned before their weddings rise as brides with river weed in their hair and walk the reed beds on summer nights, and a man who once broke a promise to a woman does not go near the water after dark.
Telvia
the Castle Mountains
mountain passes under the vampire counts' castles, where the towns pay a tithe of blood each autumn and are safe because of it
Telvia is the safest place in the March to walk at night, because the counts who own it allow nothing else to hunt there. Every autumn every adult in the mountain towns gives a cup of blood at the church door, and the tithe carts go up to the castles under guard.
Vorodia
the Cold Border
the northern border of pine, moor and early snow: wolf country, frontier forts, and the hunters' keep at Sterz
Vorodia is where the March runs out: pine, moor and early snow, forts with log walls, and wolves that sing every night. The hunters' keep at Sterz stands on a crag above it, and every child in the north knows that a family who cannot pay a hunter can promise him a child instead.
Who you can be
Human
The farmers, priests, charcoal burners, soldiers and healers of the March: broad-faced, weathered, dressed in wool and linen embroidered red at the collar against the evil eye. They are churchgoers who still leave bread for the house spirit, stubborn about their land and quick to blame a stranger when the cows sicken. They bury their dead with a coin and a sickle laid across the chest so nothing gets up. Lifespan about seventy years in a hard place. Best at: anything they commit to, from the Litany of the church to a witch's hedgecraft.
Lakefolk
The tall, pale, flaxen people of the Loiva lakes and reed marshes, who live in stilt towns and smoke saunas and fish from long black boats. Their lips and fingertips are a little blue from cold water and their voices are deep and slow. They believe that knowing how a thing was born gives you power over it, so every child learns the birth-songs of iron, fire, frost and the wolf before they learn to read. They are polite, unhurried and hard to anger, and they never forgive a broken promise. Lifespan about ninety years. Best at: song-craft, boats, swimming in cold water, and patience.
Tempered
Hunters made, not born: children given to the keep at Sterz in payment of a debt or a famine, trained for years and then put through the Trial of elixirs that kills seven in ten. The ones who live come out with slit pupils that shine yellow in lamplight, hair that greys by twenty, a slow heart, and the strength and reflexes to fight things that eat soldiers. They cannot have children, they heal in a night what would lay a man up for a month, and the church calls them abominations and hires them anyway. Most are taciturn and mercenary because the March taught them to be. Lifespan unknown; the oldest at Sterz is past two hundred. Best at: hunting monsters, night sight, swords, elixirs and the hunters' Signs.
Wolf-blooded
Families where a wolf's blood got in generations back, through a bite, a curse, or a great-grandmother who married something from the woods. They are heavy-browed and rangy, with amber eyes, coarse hair that greys in a streak, and a sense of smell that can follow a man across a river. Under a full moon or in a killing rage they take a half-wolf shape for a while, and silver burns them like fire. Villages drive them out, so most live in the northern forests in packs that hold together by loyalty and shared meat. Lifespan about sixty years. Best at: tracking, strength, fighting in the dark and surviving the winter.
Dhampirrare
Children of a vampire and a living mother, or people a vampire fed on and turned halfway before something stopped it. They are pale and fine-boned, with a pulse that is slow but there, eyes that redden in anger, and the ability to smell blood through a wall. The sun makes them sick and sore but doesn't burn them, and they can enter any house they like. Both the courts and the church distrust them; the counts use them as messengers, the knights as hounds. Lifespan about three hundred years. Best at: hunting vampires, moving at night, swordwork, and walking between two worlds that both want them dead.
Vampirerare
The young blood of the mountain courts: men and women turned within the last lifetime, who have left or been sent from their sire's castle. They are cold to the touch, beautiful in a waxy way, with no reflection to speak of and a hunger that has to be fed every few days. Daylight smokes and weakens them, running water stops them, and they cannot enter a lived-in home without being asked in. Under the Bargain a vampire who feeds on an unwilling person in the valleys is hunted by the counts themselves. Lifespan: until something kills them. Best at: strength, the Blood, seduction and patience.
Magic
Beyond the gates
- Tuha. the dead shore beneath the Loiva lakes, a grey country across a cold black river where the drowned wait and the old ferrywoman asks what you came to take back