Last updated 2001/8/16, appended 2002/4/7
Here's some background info on Rivers Bend, your home thorp. Feel free to ask questions or request changes; I've left the twelve families open so people can decide for themselves how many siblings they have and such, but I can provide more detail if that's preferred.
In addition to this you should refer to the campaign background section of the house rules; that's mostly not repeated here.
You were born and have spent all your lives in Rivers Bend, a small isolated thorp deep in the great forest, where nothing ever happens. Rivers Bend is nestled beside a river deep in the forest. There's been little or no contact with the outside world since the bridge upstream washed away in the Great Storm, 15 or so years ago, but circumstances will result in the PCs needing to leave the only home they've known and venture into the vast world beyond the forest.
Everyone already knows each other, you grew up together. Players should develop their characters together, and know their families. The first game or possibly even first few games may take place in or near Rivers Bend itself, before they set forth into the wide dangerous world. You can be related or not, since there are a dozen families in the thorp.
Current PCs are:
Because of your childhood, the following skills can be bought as class skills for all classes during character creation (but are bought as normal after character creation): Craft (Basketweaving, Leatherworking, Pottery, Weaving), Handle Animal, Profession (Farmer, Fisher, Herdsman, Tanner), Swim, Wilderness Lore.
There's one other gnome, Brad's Mom, the town's ale-brewer. Everyone else in town is human: 43 adults and 12 children in addition to the PCs, in a dozen families.
That includes The Stranger, who came to town on the night of the Great Storm, and hasn't left or married. He's known to be very strong, having once lifted a huge log far enough off someone who had been trapped as the waters were rising so they could be slid free. He doesn't hunt, but he does more than his fair share of the plowing and harvesting and so no one minds his presence, even if it seems he's never going to satisfy the town's curiosity. He doesn't talk much. If you know how to fight with a sword, its quite likely that you learned from him, using a wooden sword. There are no metal swords in town. Think of him as played by Paul Newman.
The hunters use slings (for small prey), bows, javelins and spears. Hunting squirrels is taboo, but anything else is fair game.
Rivers Bend is by no means wealthy, but you rarely go hungry. There's fishing, some hunting, gathering of acorns and beechnuts and berries and roots and other bounty of the forest, 220 acres of fields (half left fallow each year) which are mostly barley, with some beans, flax for linen, and vetch for cattle feed. Each fall you slaughter most of the pigs that grow fat browsing in the forests each year, have a big feast, and smoke the rest of the meat. The grain is ground by handmills and either eaten as porridge or baked into bread or drunk as ale.
There are two teams of 2 oxen to pull the ard when plowing the fields, half a dozen milk cows, a dozen sheep and a couple of dozen pigs (in the summer). There are around 80 assorted chickens, ducks and geese, mostly kept for eggs. You're too deep in the forest and too hard to get to for anyone to bother you about taxes, which the elders seem to think is a good thing, although you're not sure what "taxes" are.
Winters are cold and rainy with occassional snow. Summers are cool and rainy. Clothing is typically linen tunics made from flax, with woolen cloaks.
Each family has a round hut 10' across and dug a couple of feet into the ground with a timber frame, wattle and daub walls, and a thatch roof. Typically a single room with open hearth and a smoke vent, and a beaten earth floor covered by rushes. Sometimes there's a small separate room for grandparents, or a loft for the kids. On cold nights the cattle come inside too and help keep things warm. The kitchen is in a seperate building or lean-to.
Typical possessions consist of three or four benches and stools, a trestle table, a chest, a brass pot, a little pottery ware, wooden bowls, cups, and spoons, linen towels, wool blankets, bronze tools (very precious since they're not easily replaced), a handmill, and livestock. A reasonably prosperous villager owns hens and geese, a few fat hogs, a cow, perhaps a couple of sheep. The two richest families (relatively speaking) each own a pair of plow oxen, which the other families borrow in exchange for labor. There are no coins or iron in the village.
Outside each home is a little fenced farmyard with chickens and one or two outbuildings, and a half-acre garden plot cultivated by spade, with peas, beans, onions, cabbages, leeks, spinach, parsley and the like. Possibly some fruit trees: apple, pear, cherry.
Inheritance is entirely to the eldest child, with younger siblings either helping out, finding someone in a nearby village with land to marry, or going forth to seek their fortune (and typically never being heard of again, although not always). Clearing forest to make more farmland is rarely done, because of the risk of offending the forest spirits.
In years past marriages were arranged with other villages, but in recent years contact has fallen off with the other villages and the elders are clearly worried about what to do with the four of you as you reach marriagable age.
8 of the 44 adults are hunters, although one of them is so old by now that he rarely ventures into the woods. 28 are farmers (including The Stranger) or fishers or both. There's a baker, a smith, a carpenter, and a tanner (who also farm because there's not enough work to keep them busy fulltime), the town midwife, a healer who also serves as the closest the town has to a priest(ess) (who may or may not also be the town's midwife), and the gnome ale-brewer.
Some of the elders have been to the outside world, and tell exciting but improbable tales.
For names for the humans, I recommend the Welsh or Celtic charts at http://www.flick.com/onomastikon/ but you can call yourself anything that isn't destructive of mood; after all we're translating the language the characters are really speaking into english, so there's no reason the name doesn't get translated right along. Note however that last names aren't in use yet.
Cian (17) is an only child. Cian's mother died in childbirth and his Dad (Padryg) hasn't spoken to Dahud, his mother, the midwife (grandmother of Azilis and Cian) since.
Azilis' father is Padryg's brother, Paolig, son of Dahud and Telo (dead). Her mother is Marai.
Azilis (16) has an older brother, Brivael (20) married with a girl, Clair (2). She has two younger brothers, Telo (14) and Cerialtanus (10). Vaughn is her oldest brother, no one's been told he's adopted.
Dahud is the daughter of Medoc and Joela.
Medoc -- Joela
|
Dahud -- Telo (dead)
|
------------
| |
(dead) -- Padryg Paolig -- Marai
|M17 |
Cian --------------------------------------...
|M20 |F16 |M14 |M10 .
? -- Brivael Azilis Telo Cerialtanus Vaughn
|F2
Clair