Ghaste

Ghaste is a small village within the Feywild Expanse of Kutloc, near The Violet Vixen's cottage.

Ghaste is a small place, with a feeling of melancholy joining in the faint smiles of the people who live there. They don't trust easy - especially if 3 or less people are together (think could be Hag's in disguise).

The people are superstitious against colours (green, black and violet/purple) and the number 3

The Ghaste winery makes a nice wine - red and white. (2sp per bottle)

THE MORNING LORD CHAPEL

holy ground
Diety = Lathander/Amaunator The Morning Lord.
Priest = Olik

"Why would we worship the night, when that is when the Hags are more likely to come along. The morning - especially at dawn they stay away."

The symbol of the sun in silver and gold is large in front of the small church chapel - walk under it to enter (Hags can't).
Yellow roses with large buds and heads grow around called Golden Morning.
Up the hill behind is the outside dawn worship area - not a circle but square.

Galmili's Masonry

Stonemason
The workshop of a female elf stonemason named Gamili, who is unknown to lead a sector of the cult of Lolth the spider Queen, an aberrant Demon Lord who The Enchantress Ezmia did loosely align herself with.
Gamili's female servant Abitta has a round face, with wild red hair and narrow amber eyes. She wears modest garments, and carries a long knife. Abitta seems absent-minded, and always off somewhere as if searching for a missing item.
Gamili does not bother the girl except for meal times (she will be 13 in three months time).

Weaver's Spot

Wool garments and items
Outside on porch is blind old Halfling Joygracie Springfingers spinning wool. Missing her younger brother taken as a baby.
Wooden building with living quarters above. Clerk is grandson Cambri.

Little Samet

Ice cream Parlour
Store has a yellow and blue striped awning - A wooden building with steps up to serving counter - benches on porch. Grape flavour is on special.
Samet is the third child, of 16 years old, of the couple who own The Haven B&B. His elder sister Kelsi serves at the Morning Lord chapel. His elder brother, given name Olson, was a 2nd child - he never returned when the Hags took him as a baby.
Samet (from around 7 years old) was forever trying to figure out ways to keep the Hags at bay or detect who was a Hag. he tried sweets and pits (accidentally trapping old man Loop instead). He found out these Hags don't like cold foods ... especially ice cream.

THE HAVEN

Bed & breakfast
Owners - "Rubye Smyth" = Human male aged 49 years old tall, handsome and serious; "Zoka Silverwind" = Wood Elf female of 72 years old
Baldarim (Goliath male Druid) had animals of the Rust bag of tricks all appear to live in the B&B (this is where they come when not "out" - fire hearth is a portal.

The Broken Axel Inn

STAFF
Owners: an older Half-Elf female with grey hair and brown eyes, named Louisset Fengar - a member of the town council, with her older brother, a bald Half-Elf with brown eyes, Spencet Fengar - who is hard of hearing and is in a willow wood wheelchair.
Bartender: a tall male red Tiefling named Brogan Rinder - He is fascinated by sprites and fairies.
BUILDING
Northwest of a slim stream. The street outside is strewn with debris from an overturned cart, pigs are running away through the nearby streets with the pig farmer solemnly chasing them.
It is a single storied half-timbered building, with unusually low ceilings. Accommodations consist of several wooden cots and straw mats from the cellar placed near the hearth.
Menu
Roasted Cabbage, Mug of Perry (2 cp)
Roasted Pork Sausage and Barley Bread, Tankard of Beer (11 cp)
Porridge, Mug of Mead (4 cp)
Barley Bread and Hard Cheese, Mug of Ale (3 cp)


RUMOURS
* Something has been travelling a network of chambers beneath Ghaste. The amount of spiders around the hamlet has increased in last few years.
* The female children taken will become Hags
* The male children taken are abandoned in the Prime Material Plane - not expected to survive.

Government

governed by a council of elders, loyal to appeasing The Violet Vixen and her two coven hags.

History

WHEN THE HAGS DIED
All the 2nd born daughters fell to the ground foaming at the mouth and looking startled. They return to conspicuous in the child like state - barely able to speak, remember nothing of those years.


CHILDREN TAKEN
After much negotiation, The Violet Vixen agreed to leave the people of the Hamlet of Ghaste in peace, as long as they are given the people's of Ghaste's second born babies. Therefore, most couples only ever have one child. A drawn is done each year to which 3 women will become pregnant for the second time, and given up their babies at a month old ... it is no easy request.
The one year the town chose to not give any baby, The Violet Vixen took all the babies straight from the mothers' wombs - the town found 23 females dead in their beds in one night - at different stages of pregnancy. Also, a storm magically appeared centralised over the Hamlet of Ghaste.
It took a lot of negotiating for the council to appease The Violet Vixen enough to bargain for second born, instead of the first born. As long as three babies are given to the hags each year, they stay away from Ghaste.
(Bella was to go and collect the newest baby).
The male children are never seen again - they are not all killed - mothers' swear their boy is still alive out in the world.
(They are blinded, then rolled into the material plane, left to age suddenly - the hag's tell each other horror tales of what happens to the boys, not that they ever check what happened to them.) Those that are found alive, then become The Sunder Jamban.
The female children, who live, are returned to their grieving families. It does little to appease the grief, for everyone fears the child turning 13 - turning into a Hag.
In the past, the people of the town have tried to kill these girls, or abandon them in the forest away from Ghaste. However, this only angers The Violet Vixen.

RUMOURS: Hags propagate by snatching and devouring human infants. After stealing a baby from its cradle or its mother's womb, the hag consumes the poor child. A week later, the hag gives birth to a daughter who looks human until her thirteenth birthday, whereupon the child transforms into the spitting image of her hag mother. Hags sometimes raise the daughters they spawn, creating covens. Otherwise a hag might also return the child to its grieving parents, only to watch from the shadows as the child grows up to become a horror.

Type

Village

Population

Approximately 370; mostly elf, human, and half-elf, some satyr.

Inhabitant Demonym

mostly elf, human and half-elf, some satyr and sprite

Location under

Feywild Expanse