Tuulinen
a Wuthering Plain of Lost Time & Salt-Mines
A listless, jaundiced sun scowls down upon a vast expanse of tall, bleached grasses that sway incessantly with the ever present winds that billow, push and pull.
Winds that come as though carried by the hands of some eyeless, angrily drunken, godless cleric flailing desperately to keep at bay whatever half-starved beasts give rabid chase from one low slung horizon to the next.
The few trees that broke this salty ground, in ages past, now stand leafless and stark against the blue; their only fruit half-rotted ram-skulls that knock and turn above ashen bark cracked like the chafen-skin of those rare, gaunt souls residing here; near-silent, forsaken folk, who scratch at a measly life from their lonely, tumbledown scattered shacks leant a mile or so apart from their nearest neighbour.
The brash heat of the day renders these abodes mere shimmers and dreams, whilst the all-consuming darkness beyond dusk makes of them such shrouded specks of suffocated lantern-light they appear as unreachable as the very stars in the endless inky-night.
The Traveller here would be ill-advised to loiter long, for strange aspects turn within the breathless earth.
Some scribes believe the land infernally cursed, allowing only the most meagre, suffocated of crops to grow; other histories, older and long forgotten now, speak of how the Many-Planes here fuse and conflate with such lingering proximities that any seeds scattered sew only night terrors and bilious apoplexies.
There are whispers in the wind, too, of a foul nest of vileness that clings and crawls deep beneath the grasses and at the corner of one’s gaze, kept at bay by maddeningly strange knots and rowan sprigs tossed upon the parched earth cracked like acurséd Witherling’s skin.
One lost and dusty Tome of note recalls no such name, even, as Tuulinen; instead, this incessantly mistral-harrassed plateau perched atop an age ago abandoned salt-mine is recorded thusly as :
“The Devil’s Fen”.
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A dry, sparse, wind-bitten fenland plain where half-starved folk await the gods.
The ancient salt-mine beneath the fen is said to house all manner of strange spirits that harass and meander through the tall, dead grasses above.
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Use this section as a quick reference during play, or at the start of a Session to refresh your GM senses!
Sights
Tall, bleached grass incessantly swaying in the windsSkulls tied to dead trees
Lonely, tumbledown cottages constructed of brittle, bone-dry, mismatched planks & timbers
Patches of pure white earth where salt & chalk congress
Sounds
The parched whistle & howl of the windPained cry of starving animals
Knocking of skulls in the dead trees
Salt grains whipping against dead timbers
Smells
SaltLinseed, sage & thyme
Sack cloth
Death
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Residents farm patches of meagre scrub surrounding their lonely shacks, with perhaps a goat or two for a thimble of milk, and a few haggard partridges that on occasion might lay a paper-thin shelled egg.
People greedily, jealously hoard what they have, secreting scraps of bristly dried meats beneath floor-boards, or pickled who-knows-what in jars behind wood-wormed chests or many-locked cupboard doors.
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Once each new moon a lone cart comes bundled clumsily, impossibly high with all manner of teetering goods, not to stop but passing at a deathly pace through Tuulinen.
It is pulled by an aged and weary Catoblepas, sporting bridle and blinkers, and whose incoming stench announces its arrival long before one might see it. Locals know to place their coin into a brass box strung from the creature’s tusks lest its tail greet them with deathly disdain.
One after another folk take turns to approach, to clamber about the cart for particulars, and to pay for their provisions.
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Generally speaking, most would say, “Not so much as a fist full of salt-dry dirt nor a sprig of sparse grasses!”
This is, in a manner of speaking, quite true.
What crops grow here are barely sufficient in number for those who reside here.
However, there are some who say that strange wares and concoctions are placed upon the Catoblepas’ cart by some, and that this is how the people earn their coin, though none can speak of these things with much confidence.
Some hopeful outsiders, however, cling to rumours that the abandoned salt-mines beneath Tuulinen hold minerals of much worth and great value, though few dare descend their depths enough to explore.
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Scruffy shacks of various timbers that are most ugly to appraise, but sufficient for the residents and their meagre needs.
Each abode has a stone chimney, along with an outhouse situated some feet away in slim yards ringed with reed-fencing; some shacks even cradle a porch upon which one might sit awhile, were it not for the incessant winds that buffet and billow, spitting salt and grit.
Within each house one might find all manner of mismatched furnitures once brought from a town or city, heirlooms of all manner and variety brought here to accumulate dust, and dirt, and terrors.
The skeletal-like remnants of several age-ago abandoned Windmills litter the landscape, too. Most now give shelter to wild beasts or Travellers who have strayed far from the road.
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People stay well clear of one another here in Tuulinen, and there is little need for any sort of law or system of governance.
No taxes are paid, no levies raised, and none would encroach upon their neighbours to claim themselves as Reeve or Sheriff or Mayor.
Any here who would dare to break the accepted social norms, if such a term may be applied, would quickly find themselves devoid of hands should a roof need shingle refreshed, or an acre require an extra plough, and this abandonment ... this loneliness ... leads only to disaster, derangement and death.
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Death, farming, and superstitions; the ternary of Tuulinen.
Marsh Marigolds grow in the midst of variously forgotten, rotted-jawline-looking clusters of leaning gravestones; markers of the many who have come here, lived here, and lost their will to go on.
None carry a name, the dust-strung winds having worn such slight engravings bare. Some, however, would say that the names have been taken by whatever stirs here.
The living spend their days toiling anxiously at the dry earth, repairing tempest damage to their homes, occasionally aiding one another in their weary labours, silent and tense.
There are no entertainments to speak of; no joyful pastimes or pursuits.
Twilight finds people seated before their maudlin fireplaces, doors bolted, windows shuttered.
It is here they begin, in earnest, to mutter aloud taut prayers and incantations to keep Bodaks and Boggles and any other inumerable, nameless wanderers brought forth, they say, by the wind that calls and whispers onwards into the night.
All await, in fear, the sound of knocking upon their doors, for this is the sound of death come to dine; indeed, the Traveller here may find one place at table is always set (with everything except for salt) for just such an occasion; or else, the Tuulinen folk say, t’would be the soul of one alive that should find itself feasted upon, instead.
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This list is by no means exhaustive, and is intended simply to stir the pot of your own imagination. Use what follows as starting-points, or ignore them entirely in favour of your own Adventure Hooks!
- The Holy Artefact rumoured to be found could be responsible for keeping the earth dry and near-dead. Finding it, and removing it, may return prosperity to this fenland, but death to all who reside here. It may be that the artefact’s properties are being quelled by the salt held in great mineral stores beneath the surface.
- The artefact might be a creature; a Dragon, even! The salt mines may make an ideal lair for such a beast!
- The many possibilities of the Longstone Twins - they might be Fey creatures, keeping a hold upon this strange, wind-strewn place. Or perhaps part of a False Hydra? Or a single soul split into two by something else that affects the people and land here?
- Something, or someone, is about to catch up with the old soldier, Bolbec; whatever you choose this to be, it comes seeking revenge.
- There is another strange and otherworldly mineral in the abandoned Mines, capable of warping time, itself.- Uurenzarth’s mutterings are puzzles, clues to the goings on in the abandoned salt mines beneath the surface of Tuulinen. Perhaps something is awakening, using the wind to traverse and travel in search of sustenance and form until such time as it might be fully formed, or using the breezes to send out its message and foul mutterings.
- The abandoned salt-mines offer a superb opportunity for some dungeon-delving, should your Party so wish. Simply drop any dungeon map of your choosing below Tuulinen! You can, of course, also simply collapse and block off the deeper chambers to limit this option, if your Party is not interested, or suited, to such subterranean excursions. The location of the entrances/exits are entirely up to you to decide; perhaps where the gravestones are, beneath one of the resident’s shacks, or hidden by a nest of rocks and ruins?
- The fenland plains of Tuulinen can also be used as something of a Fae-Crossing, or even a strange, warping aspect of the Mirror Planes. Spirits and strange creatures abound here, and all manner of interesting and challenging encounters are possible!
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ROLL 1d20 for a TUULINEN TRINKET
1 - A mummified rat dressed in a pinafore and gown
2 - A flute roughly fashioned from a mandible
3 - A sugar cube from which drips a dark red liquid
4 - A rusted tin toy that dances whenever music is played
5 - A horned-owl feather encrusted with salt and minerals
6 - A scrap of leather upon which is written a fragment of love poetry composed in the tongue of devils
7 - An incomplete map of a cavern complex, annotated with bizarre scrawls, diagrams and ramblings
8 - A rusted medal of military service, seemingly hundreds of years old
9 - A egg-shaped pendant - the colour of dusk - covered in eyes which flicker open at different phases of the moon
10 - A small wooden box with a single fox's tooth carved with a name and wrapped in red leather
11 - An owl figurine stuffed with scorched hawthorn leaves
12 - A stuffed muskrat stuck through with large pins
13 - A paper crane animated with a gentle wing-fluttering motion
14 - A thin leather necklace decorated with a single nutmeg
15 - A warped glass jar full of fish spit
16 - A tattered, embroidered patch upon which is roughly stitched : "HELLO MY NAME IS BARJILL - ASK ME ABOUT SALT"
17 - A rusted hand-scythe that, when swung, starts fires
18 - A dried bean wrapped in a delicate thread of silver wire
19 - A pouchful of sanctified grave-dirt
20 - A small, brass pocket sundial from which the shadow of time swings in reverse
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Roll 1d6 for a Tuulinen Encounter :
1 - A skeletal swarm of Dragonflies has descended upon an abandoned shack, consuming it entirely.
2 - A Party member stumbles upon vents inlaid into the salted earth; heat emanates from deep within them.
3 - A Party member disrupts a circle of pebbles in the dry earth, prompting deathly screams from a Resident nearby.
4 - A pack of emaciated, starving Wolves circles a homestead wherein a child has been just been born.
5 - Brother Vleshyn has plucked out his own eyes, and is screaming curses at a worn and wind-battered gravestone.
6 - Time has begun to move backwards in Tuulinen; slowly, at first, but with increasing speed.
7 - There are suddenly several Uurenzarths, each tearful, and desperately proclaiming themselves “real”.
8 - Corpses - naked, salted and drained of blood - are being left strung upside down from makeshift gibbets across the wind-swept Fen.
Residents of Note:
ancestries have not been allocated, allowing the GM to assign as appropriate
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A Balding, bulbous, bleary eyed preacher obsessed with the coming of a nameless god who will bring both salvation and chaos; to Tuulinen, first, and then to all.
He is often seen, dressed in filthy black smock and dark, dust covered boots, with all manner of religious amulets about his wide neck, drunk and rowdily reproaching the graves of the dead.
He appears at one end of Tuulinen, or at another, almost as though in an instant, sober one moment, wildly, violently inebriated the next.
Brother Vleshyn is said to have first come to these parts in search of an ancient, and long ago lost artefact of great significance to his Holy Order, though such a task seems far beyond him now.
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These two sisters live quite apart, each in their own small run-down shacks.
Everything within appears to be all at once mirrored, and yet the very opposite, of what their sibling has rendered; all, that is, apart from their appearance which is alike in every way.; both with one eye blue, the other hazel, each with neat, high lace collars buttoned carefully to hide long scars - or perhaps abrasions - about their necks.
Their hair neatly braided, and rigidly striding in long, quickened steps beneath billowing, coal-black pinafores wherever they should tread.
As one sister speaks, so the other becomes silent. A door closed shut in Corin’s home would be found ajar in Enera’s; a sewing pin lost in Enera’s lap, then found in the finger-tip of Corin.
Corin lives with her husband, a mute by the name of Flint, whilst Enera lives alone, jealously pining for the affections of her sister’s beau, longing for such a love as has been brought to her sibling.
Each twin is with child, but does not yet know.
The many departed spirits who live with, and talk to Enera, however, most certainly do ...
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A most courteous, smartly dressed old soldier who will happily converse upon all things, except how they came to reside in this lonely place.
They walk, with much pain, bent almost double, a cane of beautifully carved jade stone in each hand, their long blue hair speckled with Tuulinen dust and dirt.
They have with them, at all times, a strange pixie-like creature called “Spruck” who, claims Fjarn, lives only to assist and aid. The creature is capable of speech but, oddly, everything it speaks appears backwards, as though reversing through time.
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A half-naked, matted haired, muck caked creature of the wilds.
Some would say, is in fact a doppelgänger and necromancer living somewhere in the old salt mines deep beneath the near-dead, wind stricken surface of Tuulinen.
Others believe this creature is the real Flint, and that the individual living as Corin’s husband is, in fact, some strange and unnatural fleshy apparatus; a foul spirit masquerading as the twin’s groom.
None would utter aloud such imaginings, nor wish to divine further for fear of the deathly apparitions of wind and night delivering punishments upon them.
Many fear the whispered mutterings of Uurenzarth, who seems only to speak the names of the many daemons believed to roam unfettered through these parts, perhaps even calling them to this place.
