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  ISBN 978-952-67263-3-5 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  People 
  Of 
  Pembrooktonshire 
  
   
  1
  Author’s Notes 
   
  While working on No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides and placing three adventures that were 
  unconnected in my campaigns into a single location that came to be called Pembrooktonshire, my mind 
  started to be filled with the possibilities for fleshing the place out. Early on I decided that it was probably 
  best to leave the adventure itself alone and make the “fleshed out” material into its own book. It had to be 
  released separately from (for those that just wanted the adventure) and simultaneously with (I hate when 
  game companies rip off their customers by publishing additions or changes to their games or settings after 
  the fact) the original adventure. 
   
  But how to best flesh out the setting in a way that was modular, entertaining, and personally interesting? 
   
  • The players in my home group seem to enjoy NPC interactions as much as actual adventuring. So when I 
  run games, I often think of weird and sometimes disturbing personalities on the spot for NPCs. 
   
  • I am a big fan of The League of Gentlemen, the British TV series which takes place in the fictional town 
  of Royston Vasey. One of the things I enjoy about the series is how every person in town seems to have 
  a different sort of defective personality. 
   
  • While responding to a post on the Grognardia blog back in March, I made a quip that people will 
  determine there are 137 of us in the Old School Renaissance. It was just a throwaway comment but 
  people picked up on it as an in-joke. 
   
  Suddenly, I had my focus. I’d do what I normally do – come up with strange characters – to make 
  Pembrooktonshire truly an adventure in itself rather than just a backdrop to adventure. All I had to do was 
  come up with 137 weird and distinct NPC ideas. Easy, right? Hah! Towards the middle of the process I was 
  considering a third book called Nuke Pembrooktonshire because I was beginning to despise the place. But 
  doesn’t that happen in all projects somewhere between “REALLY COOL IDEA!” and “Finished saleable 
  product”? Luckily I caught a second wind that the last half was easier to complete than the first. 
   
  The inspiration for the individual characters came from many sources. Some were standard thriller-fare. 
  Some were straight out of pop culture. Some were from my imagination. Some were designed to be horrific. 
  Some were designed to be frightening in a more sophisticated kind of way. Some were meant to be comedic, 
  and some were meant to be downright goofy. Some were intended to be a moment’s diversion in a game, 
  some were meant to be able to anchor an entire scenario. 
   
  There were some moments of doubt when writing this. Is this a valid and smart thing to work on and 
  release? Will anybody care? Is it “old school” enough? In the end I just had to trust my own instincts. 
  Whether this book gets bought or used or not, I would have felt the whole Pembrooktonshire creation to be 
  incomplete without it. So here it is, and I can now close this creative chapter without regrets. 
   
  I hope it enriches your game, I hope it provides some entertaining reading, and I hope it inspires more 
  original creations of your own! 
   
  James Edward Raggi IV 
  Helsinki, Finland 
  August 6, 2009 
   
  Labyrinth LordTM is copyright 2007, Daniel Proctor. Labyrinth LordTM and Advanced Labyrinth LordTM are trademarks of Daniel Proctor. These trademarks are 
  used under the Labyrinth LordTM Trademark License 1.0 available at www.goblinoidgames.com… This product uses the OSRIC™ System (Old School System 
  Reference and Index Compilation™). The OSRIC system text may be found at http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric. The OSRIC text is copyright of Stuart 
  Marshall. “OSRIC” and “Old School Reference and Index Compilation,” are trademarks of Matthew Finch and Stuart Marshall and may be used only in 
  accordance with the OSRIC license. This product is not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast… Swords & Wizardry, S&W, and Mythmere Games are the 
  trademarks of Matthew J. Finch. This product is not affiliated with Matthew J. Finch or Mythmere Games™… People in Pembrooktonshire is copyright 2009 
  James Edward Raggi IV. Lamentations of the Flame Princess and LotFP are trademarks owned by James Edward Raggi IV. Only one real person was used as 
  inspiration within this book. Really. 
  
   
  2
  How to Use People of Pembrooktonshire 
   
  Many traditional role-playing campaigns don’t bother with “the town” or social interaction or political 
  intrigue. That’s perfectly fine. But some do, and in general these games have been underserved by gaming 
  supplements. No Dignity in Death is largely an in-town adventure, and while details are given for the 
  principal characters for the situations detailed therein, it gives almost nothing for interactions that are not 
  related to those situations. Pembrooktonshire is obviously not your run-of-the-mill village, and obviously the 
  possibilities for intrigue and adventure don’t have to stop with No Dignity in Death. 
   
  People of Pembrooktonshire provides a toolkit for fleshing out the town and making it interesting while 
  other adventures are experiencing downtime as well as a repository for triggers and hooks for entirely new 
  adventures, all disguised in the form of character bios.  
   
  Nothing in this book is “official.” The only version of Pembrooktonshire that is “official” is the one found in 
  No Dignity in Death, and even in that adventure it is just a convenient background/excuse for the matters at 
  hand. There isn’t even much requiring the use of Pembrooktonshire in that adventure in the first place, 
  especially if the given adventures are placed by the referee in different locations. 
   
  Nothing in this book supercedes the information found in the original adventure unless the referee so 
  chooses. There, Constable Stark is gone on holiday, and that is not so unusual for a resident to do. Here, 
  since foreign holidays are unconscionable to the average citizen, it is instead revealed that he was murdered. 
  In the original campaign that spawned the adventure, he was at some sort of policeman’s convention 
  elsewhere in the kingdom, however it was worded at the time. None is more correct than the others except 
  what the individual referee decides. 
   
  It is not expected that the entirety of this book will be used by any one referee. The characters in this book 
  introduce a great variety of tones and elements into the town. By deciding which characters and/or elements 
  to use, the referee can decide whether this town is to be played for laughs, as a political dystopia, as a horror 
  setting, as a surrealistic farce, or something else, or even all of these at the same time.  
   
  By the same token, many of the characters’ oddities have little connection to the character itself. Elements of 
  a character can be mixed and matched with other characters found here, or in other supplements (Hommlet 
  or The Keep could have just gotten much more interesting), or NPCs of the referee’s own design. 
   
  Be aware of the effect that any change will have in other areas. For example, if a referee dislikes the idea 
  about dwarfs being the secret overlords and protectors of the area, then The Great Games portion of No 
  Dignity in Death will require a major revision, if it is to be used at all, and there will also need to be 
  effective fighting men in the town. Small Town Murder would require no adjustment at all in this situation, 
  and A Lonely House on a Lonely Hill would change only in backstory that players will very likely never 
  discover to begin with. 
   
  Even if not one word of this book is used as-written, it is hoped that simply reading this text colors one’s 
  impression of No Dignity in Death and inspires ideas about fleshing out the town. 
  
   
  3
  About Pembrooktonshire 
   
  The less said about Pembrooktonshire in general, the better, in order to allow the individual referee to tailor 
  the setting. However, there are certain assumptions made in the character writeups that must be addressed. 
   
  The Environs 
  Pembrooktonshire is nestled in a mountain valley, several days’ journey from the nearest settlement. The 
  town itself is surrounded by a network of hills, between which are a series of fields and pastures. A river 
  runs from the mountains into the hills forming a series of ponds, and there is a large pond near the town 
  itself. 
   
  The hills form a barrier from the outside world, and the area is difficult to travel through unless knowing the 
  proper routes. There are even forks in the road that lead only to dead ends in the hills. Many travelers 
  seeking Pembrooktonshire never find it, spending days lost in the network of hills before giving up. 
   
  The townsfolk believe that the mountains are haunted with the spirits that guard the town, and people never 
  go there. Sure, some foolhardy teenagers and curious adults will tempt the mountains, but as often as not 
  they do not return. 
   
  The secret of the mountains is that a large nation of dwarfs claims the mountains as their own, and do not 
  want humans encroaching on their territory. They have a network of tunnels throughout the hills surrounding 
  the town, and are always on the lookout for trouble. They protect the town in order to keep up the spirit ruse, 
  and nobody in town knows that the dwarfs are there. 
   
  General Culture 
  Pembrooktonshire has turned tradition and correct living into a way of life.  
   
  There is a complicated mass of customs and courtesies that govern what people should do in many 
  situations, from offering (and accepting) tea and how to pay for goods in a shop to courtship and how to 
  behave differently on different days depending on phase of the moon and day of the week. It’s not so much a 
  set of learned behaviors so much as a built-in means for everyone to feel superior over everyone else, as not 
  one single person can keep it all straight and still function in daily life. Of course the niceties are less 
  important for those doing work and socializing amongst friends, but they are essential when dealing with the 
  important people (who often have advisors whose sole job it is to prompt them on proper etiquette). 
   
  The end result is something resembling a giant movie version of a high school clique. You’re either in or 
  you’re out. And nobody wants to be out. 
   
  The Law 
  While there is a mayor and town council, these are effectively figurehead positions elected in what amounts 
  to popularity polls. They basically rubber-stamp activities initiated by important private citizens and perform 
  Master of Ceremonies duties at festivals and such. 
   
  The only official laws really have to do with property rights, physical violence, and theft. While even these 
  are subject to the whim of the mob, convincing the general public that a murder or blatant fraud is 
  acceptable will be nigh impossible. 
   
  The Great Families 
  The Great Families are the de facto rulers of Pembrooktonshire. Not because they have power in a 
  traditional sense, but because they are the rich trend-setters that everyone wants to be. Most gossip and 
  dinner-table conversation in town revolves around the various members of these families and what they are 
  up to. 
   
  
   
  4
  The great families behave like they are eternal institutions, and it certainly seems so at any point in time, but 
  in fact the families that are considered “great” constantly change over the generations. It’s prestige, not 
  power. 
   
  Marriage 
  Marriage is a very powerful political and social tool in Pembrooktonshire. Only the lower classes will marry 
  simply for love, and that usually assumes that neither party believes they have a chance to advance socially. 
   
  There is also an intense social pressure to marry and produce children. Those who are not interested in 
  marriage are considered in many ways unfit for general society. Those who seek to marry but are unable to 
  find a partner are pitied. Couples who do not produce children are shunned, and an infertile person will find 
  themselves divorced in short order. In this situation, both spouses generally blame the other, but the truth of 
  the situation will normally come out as each finds another mate. 
   
  Once married, couples are expected to behave as if they are hopelessly in love. Adultery is considered a very 
  serious (social) offense in Pembrooktonshire, and anyone caught committing it can expect many, if not most, 
  of their close friends, acquaintances, business partners, and/or customers abandoning them. 
   
  Names 
  When a couple gets married, there is no assumption that the wife will take the husband’s surname. What 
  happens is that the people involved, and their families, negotiate as to which last name will be taken. Gifts, 
  bribes, and subterfuge is almost always a part of this process. Lower-born people will want the couple to 
  take the name of the higher-born partner, in order to attach themselves to a greater family. Higher-born 
  people will want the couple to take the name of the lower-born partner, if they approve of the wedding at all, 
  in order to not dilute the importance of their family name. 
   
  Sometimes families can not come to an agreement (usually because the families are so close in status), and 
  the married couple each retains their original name. But then come children, and the issue of which name 
  they will carry flares up, far more intense than deciding what the married name will be. 
  Pembrooktonshiretonians do not use hyphenated names. 
   
  Religion 
  Pembrooktonshire follows the religion of All, which is a monotheistic religion which recognizes one creator 
  which set the universe in motion and monitors it to keep it in good working order. Worship and prayer to All 
  ensures that the well-being of the worshippers is included in the definition of a universe in “good working 
  order.” 
   
  Magic of any sort is generally considered to be an offense against the working order of the universe, and is 
  generally feared and shunned, as are any practitioners. 
   
  The Church of All does recognize a number of saints. The saints are generally martyrs to All, or sometimes 
  just great achievers who were also very pious, that are ascribed a certain profession or trait which they had 
  in life, and those who admire or possess those traits or professions will generally also pray to the particular 
  saint. 
   
  Organized worship is held every Sunday. There are six churches in Pembrooktonshire, one on the market 
  square which can hold over 500 people, and five others scattered about that hold between 100 and 250 
  people each. The main church is decadently decorated, while the others are simple affairs. 
   
  From the point of view of what the believers do and how they express their faith, the Church of All is indeed 
  very close to Roman Catholicism. However, what they actually believe is quite different. There is no mortal 
  manifestation, or savior, or judgment day or great adversary in the religion of All. Hell is considered a real 
  and awful place, but the danger is that wicked living will attract a demon to take one to hell, not that a 
  wicked soul will go there after death. 
  
   
  5
   
  There are no other religions openly practiced in Pembrooktonshire. To practice another religion, or even to 
  acknowledge the validity of such, would mean becoming an instant and permanent social outcast. Outsiders’ 
  religion is tolerated much as the strange imaginations of a small child are tolerated by adults. Any attempt to 
  prosthelytize or engage in theological debate or even openly practice will not be taken kindly. People 
  displaying holy symbols of other faiths will be told to cover it up. 
   
  Commerce 
  Pembrooktonshire is a very rich town. It is stinking, filthy rich. Most of that wealth is concentrated in the 
  hands of the upper classes of course, but even the lowest dirt farmers live better, freer, and surely far more 
  securely, than those in similar circumstances elsewhere. 
   
  The wealth is generated by the reputation of Pembrooktonshire’s artists, craftsmen, and fruit wines. Nobility, 
  royalty, and wealthy people in general pay premium prices for Pembrooktonshire goods, and for all that is 
  wrong with the town, the people that create these high-priced items earn every penny. Pembrooktonshire–
  made or –crafted items can be placed as treasure in random hoards throughout the land, because people will 
  buy it. 
  
   
  6
  Pembrookshiretonians 
   
  Elroy Aldersey, Stationery 
  Pembrooktonshire is an amazingly literate community, with even the poor children expected to learn how to 
  read and write. While books and access to the printing press are available only to a few, letter-writing is 
  alive and well throughout all the social classes. Indeed, it is quite fashionable to write letters to keep people 
  updated on family business, even if the recipient lives next door. 
   
  Quills and paper and ink are readily homemade, but custom demands that important news be written on 
  expensive paper using proper ink. Aldersey produces both items (even he has given up on trying to get 
  people to buy quills instead of plucking poor passing geese) and does a steady trade. 
   
  Aldersey now concentrates on making the ink since hiring on two apprentices that seem to make paper even 
  better than he. The problem is he spends so much time on his work, and is becoming more and more 
  absentminded, that he goes out in public stained with ink and sweating like a pig, and always winds up 
  smearing the stuff on everyone and everything. 
   
  He’s not very popular lately. 
   
  Anthony Alford, Furrier 
  Pembrooktonshire may be situated in the most tame and settled area of existence. This creates a problem 
  because come winter, the rich people want furs, and they want them in the latest styles. But where to get 
  these furs in this area? 
   
  Despite being nestled in a mountain valley with no other civilization for miles around, there are no 
  appreciable furry animals. No bears. No wolves. Not even any deer. No lynx or ermine or anything that 
  might have fur in any quantity, let alone of any value. 
   
  It would be humiliating to buy fur from abroad. So what’s a fur-man to do? 
   
  Rats and squirrels and chipmunks, that’s what. And neighbor’s kittens and the stray hunting dog that 
  wanders onto his property. 
   
  Alford is an absolute wonder at taking these tiny, mundane creatures and making items of luxury out of 
  them. But if a truly valuable pelt were to land in his lap… he’d have no clue what to do with it. 
   
  Frederick Amcotts, Corn Farmer 
  Frederick makes a good enough living from his cornfields to support himself and his extended family, but 
  this is not enough for him. He needs more. 
   
  He longs for the days of communal entertainment gone by, when the crowds would gather, vendors would 
  serve snacks, and together the people would all cheer as they were spectators to entertainment of the most 
  thrilling and noble sort. 
   
  So Amcotts has cut down a large patch of his cornfield and built a gallows, hoping that if he builds it, they 
  will hang. 
   
  Marcus Arbuthnot, Sculptor 
  There is a vibrant artist community in Pembrooktonshire. A quality artist can make a fortune selling his 
  work abroad, and an artist that becomes successful abroad also becomes the hot fashion in town as well. And 
  then there’s the case of Marcus Arbuthnot. 
   
  
   
  7
  Arbuthnot specializes in statues, architectural sculpture, and busts. He is very good, and his local patrons are 
  always well satisfied. 
   
  Pembrooktonshiretonians celebrate Arbuthnot for his ability to capture the natural shape of things, and 
  portraying the tiniest details of people, making his statues and busts frighteningly lifelike. 
   
  Foreigners are also amazed by his statue/bust work, but only the first time they see it. For some reason, and 
  this is not at all noticed by the locals, all of his work detailing human features winds up looking exactly like 
  Marcus Arbuthnot. 
   
  Owen Auden, Child 
  Auden is the youngest child of six, and is painfully shy. He never speaks louder than a whimper and tends to 
  be ignored and forgotten. 
   
  Then one day Auden discovered that people actually couldn’t see him. He had faded into the background so 
  completely that he actually became invisible. Now, although still very shy and unwilling to speak to anyone 
  and feeling uncomfortable at times he must be seen, he wanders into different places to observe people 
  doing things. He finds it interesting how people act differently in private than they do in public. 
   
  Auden is also delusional. He’s not actually invisible, it’s just that people think so little of him that they 
  simply don’t care if he is around. 
   
  Sebastian Auvunet, Ironmonger 
  With access to the mountains cut off, Pembrooktonshire has to import all of their metal. Pembrooktonshire’s 
  artistic and craftworks are in such demand that gaining this material is not difficult, but someone’s got to 
  organize it. 
   
  Because it would be bad form for the artisans or craftsmen to organize their own export arrangements, and 
  because it would also be improper for one broker to be an all-in-one organizer, different traders for different 
  goods, even if stemming from the same overall deal, have sprung up to fill both the demand for materials 
  and the need to be proper. 
   
  For many years the ironmongers of Pembrooktonshire have been importing inferior ore. The brokers are 
  buying it from the source, then selling that ore to third parties at inflated prices (“It’s Pembrooktonshire ore, 
  superior as all our exports are!”), and then buying substandard iron for import. And of course, pocketing the 
  difference. 
   
  Auvunet continues this fine tradition. 
   
  Matilda Bainbridge, Slovenly Trull 
  Matilda has always been a scandal, deciding to live the life of pleasure and sin instead of being a proper 
  young lady. Ostracized in public and rarely alone in private, life has caught up to Bainbridge: She is now in 
  her forties with five children from five different fathers with the sagging body to show for it, and the 
  “gentlemen” are no longer calling. 
   
  Now it is even worse: She feels she is going insane. Two of the more cruel members of the great families of 
  Pembrooktonshire have made a bet on whether they can make Bainbridge go insane, and so they have hired 
  ventriloquists to follow her and talk to her while they stay out of sight. 
   
  The voices are telling Matilda to do horrible and humiliating things. And her will to resist is running out. 
   
  Horton Baker, Butcher 
  Horton is a family man. He’d better be, since he has twenty-eight children. And he’s only thirty! 
   
  
   
  8
  Horton and his wife enjoy engaging in marital relations more than most, and as is usual with the common 
  folk in these situations, his wife Hellenne often finds herself with child. Only it’s never one child. Or even 
  two or three. Every time she gets pregnant, she delivers at least four strong and healthy children. 
   
  The neighbors are getting upset as the younger litters cry all night and the oldest children run rampant 
  unsupervised throughout the neighborhood. It’s getting harder and harder to support the family as pressure 
  continues to mount to use his access to livestock to feed the family instead of practicing his trade and selling 
  to others. 
   
  Baker is getting desperate, and with every chop of his cleaver he comes closer to making an irreversible 
  decision. 
   
  Alec Balfour, Town Crier 
  It’s not all that often that there are public pronouncements to be made, so Alec works most of the time as a 
  dishwasher at a local pub. When something needs to be communicated to the people, Balfour dons his 
  official uniform, goes to the general public gathering areas, and does his civic duty. 
   
  The problem is he experiences terrible stage fright, and the normally well-spoken man develops a terrible 
  and severe stutter while making pronouncements. Every time. 
   
  Gordon Balladeer, Lamplighter 
  Gordon is a middle-aged man who has the unenviable task of lighting Pembrooktonshire’s oil street lamps 
  every night and keeping them clean. It’s a filthy job with horrible hours, and after fifteen years of this labor, 
  he has become jaded and old before his time. 
   
  Gordon always was a good-natured kidder and practical joker, but as time has worn on his good humor turns 
  ever more often to sarcasm. However, in recent months, Gordon has become very upset as people are taking 
  everything he says seriously and act as if it’s the truth. His forty years of habit has made it difficult for him 
  to not throw in a snide or pithy comment in every conversation, but now he is horrified that people are 
  putting full stock on his every word (but not when he tries to explain that he’s kidding…) and is gaining the 
  reputation around town as something as a folk sage. 
   
  Dennis Bergelin, Blubberer 
  Oil is a valuable commodity, and it seemed to Bergelin that importing hideously expensive whale oil was a 
  losing proposition for Pembrooktonshire. But the town has no access to the sea. What to do? 
   
  The answer came as Dennis was out hunting one day perilously close to the mountains. He found a 
  grievously wounded troll down an embankment. In a mix of greed and foolhardiness (for whatever wounded 
  the troll must still be very close and very powerful, else the troll would no longer be wounded nor indeed 
  wounded at all!) he crept close and lopped a finger off of it before burning the rest (who hadn’t heard the 
  stories?). 
   
  In the days that followed he found to his horror that the finger was growing. A few days later when there 
  was almost an entire arm, he did some experiments… and found that troll blubber oil works as well as whale 
  oil. 
   
  Now Bergelin sells his super-secret oil (which he advertises as extremely perishable – use within days!) and 
  is getting rich off of it. 
   
  There are only two possible problems: If Bergelin is away from home for more than a week or so, or unable 
  to work, that hand (currently hung on an iron hook) is going to grow into enough of a troll to free itself. That 
  won’t be good. 
   
  
   
  9
  Two, some people are stockpiling oil by buying through intermediaries. If enough of this oil is stored in one 
  place, it will have enough “troll essence” and soon some rich people are going to have real live angry trolls 
  in their storage spaces. 
   
  Nigel Bingsley, Taxidermist 
  Like most working men in Pembrooktonshire, Nigel is very skilled at his work, has a loving family, and 
  works hard to fit in to the social scene and come across as a moral and proper gentleman. He’s even 
  overcome the unpleasant stigma of engaging in a professional that involves playing with dead things! 
   
  But Nigel’s workshop is constantly being burgled. He can’t figure out what’s going on. The watch is 
  similarly clueless. Every so often, one of his pieces disappears, with no signs of forced entry (and he’s had 
  his locks changed a dozen times), no clues, and the pieces (some of them quite large) are never seen again. 
   
  It’s like the damn things just got up and walked away… 
   
  Theodosa Birkbeck, Maid 
  Birkbeck is an aging spinster who just isn’t up to dealing with livestock anymore, so has moved into the 
  more upscale work of cleaning the homes of rich people. It’s really not so bad as work goes, as the well-to-
  do tend to be tidy people, and the worse she has to deal with from her employers is being completely 
  ignored. It’s better than getting kicked in the face by a horse. 
   
  Her only problem is that since she doesn’t much communicate with her employers, and they tend to live in 
  such large houses, she doesn’t know exactly who is in the family and who is not. She is also coming into 
  direct contact with the ghosts of many of the families’ deceased members, and neither she nor they realize 
  they are dead. And so she carries on conversations, fetches things, goes on errands, and for all intents and 
  purposes acts irrationally as far as any witnesses (her employers, mostly) are concerned. 
   
  Lloyd Borcellino, Farmer 
  One of Pembrooktonshire’s numerous and seemingly interchangeable farmers, Lloyd does his best to work 
  his fields and raise his livestock. 
   
  He is pitied by those that know him because he has been married for many years and he and his wife have 
  not managed to have any children. 
   
  Or so everyone thinks. The truth is that the couple has been having children, many of them, over the years. 
  But they’re not human. They’re animals. Piglets. Lambs. Calfs. When they are born, Lloyd just takes them 
  out and puts them with the other animals and pretends one of his livestock just gave birth. 
   
  The couple have no idea why this is happening, or even how – Mrs. Borcellino’s body was quite ruined after 
  the first birth and is no longer able to have marital relations at all. And she’s not into bestiality. 
   
  But whatever the cause, the couple agrees on two things. It’s their secret, and boy oh boy is the meat from 
  those animals the tastiest they’ve ever had! 
   
  Clive Brodhurst, Pigeon Breeder 
  Clive is a man of mystery. He’s undoubtedly of the town, but nobody can remember growing up with him. 
  He also has a knack for being able to hang around public places without being seen. 
   
  He bought an old man’s outlying homing pigeon farm some time back, and bought a large building near the 
  center of town to house the business. He “didn’t want to be so far away from where the action is,” he said.  
   
  Brodhurst is a spy, but he has no idea who he is spying for. He thinks there is some monastery within several 
  days’ ride that has taken vows to never be in direct contact with the outside world, but wishes to receive 
  news of it. So Brodhurst makes daily reports about events both mundane and noteworthy and sends it along 
  
   
  10
  via carrier pigeon. The townsfolk, used to the birds flying around with messages tied to their legs, think 
  nothing of it. 
   
  And not even Clive knows who is receiving his messages. 
   
  Shane Bunting, Consumption Victim 
  Bunting is an unfortunate man, the greatest poet of the age (his favorite topic was criticizing the lower 
  classes) slowly wasting away in bed. Well-loved and always the life of the party when healthy, he is now 
  shunned by all but his caregivers for fear that his illness will spread (although some believe he has become a 
  vampire). 
   
  The truth is Bunting is not ill, but haunted. An evil witch appears some nights (not every night, and never 
  while Bunting is attended) to steal his spirit and ride it to the witches’ Sabbath. During this time Bunting is 
  awake but unable to move or even breathe, and feels the pain and terror of suffocation even though death 
  cannot occur because the spirit is bound. By morning, the witch returns the spirit and flies off cackling, 
  promising to see him again. 
   
  The townsfolk think he is hallucinating, as this often happens with people in the next room (and standing 
  guard outside, as he was believed when it first started happening) and nobody has seen anyone coming and 
  going. 
   
  Bunting’s time is running out. 
   
  Thurston Butcher, Candle Maker 
  Baker is a conscientious man of about thirty years of age, and after an early period of unsteadiness, has 
  turned himself into an excellent candle maker. He even creates expensive candles, intricately carved and 
  adorned with precious metals and gems, to sell to far-off royalty. The honor received from such works 
  makes all of Pembrooktonshire proud. 
   
  In public, Baker is seen as an exceedingly polite man, always overdressed for the occasion with his 
  expensive scarves and silk gloves and ever-present overcoat. 
   
  Thurston has been dead for twelve years. 
   
  Jaime Böhmer, Milkmaid 
  Jaime is a young woman who makes ends meet by milking cows for several farmers. Being an unmarried 
  young woman, she of course still lives with her parents, but they fear they will never be able to marry her 
  off. 
   
  Böhmer is a very sensitive woman. So sensitive that she deeply feels any emotions happening around her. If 
  someone else is a bit sad, Jaime breaks down crying. If someone else has received good news, Jaime is 
  jumping up and down for joy. If a man smiles at her, she falls in love with them. If someone stumbles over 
  something she left in a corner and they are momentarily annoyed, she feels the same guilt and shame as if 
  she’d dropped their baby. 
   
  People really don’t like being around her. 
   
  Lucas Chappelle, Goatherder 
  Happy with his and his family’s lot in life, Lucas only wanted a quiet existence out in the hills and pastures. 
  But even this simple pleasure has been torn from him. 
   
  Some time back, a few of his goats uncovered a previously unknown cave in a low hill. Chappelle found 
  them inside, drinking from a strangely colored pool. Ever since, they have become ravenous carnivores, 
  gobbling up every rabbit, squirrel, hedgehog, cow, and horse they have come across. 
  
   
  11
   
  Chappelle spends his time in mortal fear, desperately herding the goats away from all people and away from 
  the town. 
   
  Abraham Charrington, Banker 
  Charrington is the man responsible for receiving payments for many of the goods sold from 
  Pembrooktonshire. He also runs a strikingly modern banking system, storing the gold of various families 
  while issuing credit and allowing them to pay various businesses using vouchers, or cheques, that allow the 
  recipient to redeem them for hard currency later. 
   
  As the foremost member of one of the great families of Pembrooktonshire, most consider him honest to a 
  fault, and the perfect man to perform this job. 
   
  They shouldn’t. He aggressively uses his foreign contacts to channel the real gold out of Pembrooktonshire 
  and replace it with an almost identical-looking crystal (not iron pyrite!). Over the years he has basically 
  robbed the entire town of all of its wealth. 
   
  All of the money in circulation in Pembrooktonshire (not money stored in private vaults for quite some time) 
  is not made of precious material, and the same can be said about most of the jewelry in town. It is worthless 
  to the outside world. 
   
  But this doesn’t matter the way Charrington believes. Pembrooktonshire exports, not imports, and if 
  someone were to find out that all of the gold in town was fake, the town is collectively delusional enough to 
  declare that their “gold” is what is truly valuable and that the foreign stuff is the forgery. And good luck 
  exporting anything after that! 
   
  Abraham Christiannse, Canemaker 
  An important status symbol for men in Pembrooktonshire is the cane. Everyone who is anyone has a 
  walking stick complete with custom-made heads made out of precious materials. 
   
  Christiannse’s customers, simply attempting to obtain a fashion piece, swear that walking becomes much 
  easier when using these canes. What is happening is that Abraham’s work on the cane heads is preternatural, 
  and the canes actually do make walking easier. The problem is that men who use the canes frequently over a 
  period of time start losing the full ability of their legs when not using the cane. 
   
  Abraham is aware of this, and wish it wasn’t happening, but he’s not about to stop selling his canes. 
   
  Peregrine Cleverdon, Locksmith 
  Peregrine is a rising young star in both the social and artisan scenes of Pembrooktonshire, and has the 
  according attention of many young ladies hoping that he’ll want to marry them. 
   
  He’s garnered this reputation for his ostentatious custom-made locks which he seems to be able to crank out 
  with ease. Everybody who is anybody wants one of his locks on their front door so that every passerby 
  knows that the owner of the building is in tune with the latest style. 
   
  There’s just one problem. Cleverdon is very good at making unqiue, attractive and prestigious-looking lock 
  casings and keys, but not so good at making actual locks. Every single lock he has ever made can be opened 
  with the same key. But he hasn’t realized that just because they look different, they don’t function 
  differently. Nobody else has realized it yet either. 
   
  Edwin Clover, Cockfighter 
  Even in a town as image-conscious as Pembrooktonshire, there are smoky backroom entertainments. While 
  it doesn’t get as vulgar as some other locales, there is a healthy (?) interest in cockfighting. 
   
  
   
  12
  Clover is a champion cockfighter, training his fowl in all manner of foul tactics. His birds have won the 
  championships four years running. 
   
  Under Clover’s influence, the fights have gotten bizarre. Weapons and armor are added to the dumb cluckers 
  in order to make the fight more spectacular to onlookers, thereby increasing attendance and hopefully the 
  betting pools. 
   
  First it was razor claws. Then a beak-blade. Then eye protection. And so more and more was added… now 
  chicken fights resemble clockwork mecha duels more than anything else, including oil-based one-shot 
  flamethrowers and automatically triggered darts. The fights end up with the roosters having to tear through 
  their opponent’s armor and ripping off various devices before any fight can be concluded. Spectator injuries 
  are frequent but usually minor as the rooster-sized armaments are not so large. 
   
  But someday somebody is going to figure out you can put all this stuff on a man… and that man will die 
  quickly as of course none of this is motorized and the sheer weight will render the wanna-be cyborg soldier 
  near immobile in actual combat. 
   
  Gerald Constant, Farmer 
  Gerald Constant is a loving husband and father of twelve rather well-behaved children. During summer 
  months he is up at the crack of dawn and goes to bed at sunset. He sleeps a lot in the winter. 
   
  But he’s not always out in the fields, or caring for the farm animals. Sometimes he’s in the secret basement 
  of one of his tool sheds, mocking and humiliating and torturing an elderly dwarf he was able to corner alone 
  while taking a walk into the forbidden mountains some years back. Constant is perhaps the most depraved 
  person in the entire area, and the dwarf’s mind shattered under the cruelty long ago. 
   
  Cows #125, 163 and 265 
  The farms and pastures around Pembrooktonshire are peaceful, rolling, and beautiful. The livestock is 
  healthy, the land is fertile. The usual drudgery and uncertainly that farmers elsewhere face is instead 
  rewarding and profitable here. 
   
  Long ago, longer than any of the current citizens can remember, Pembrooktonshire welcomed visitors, had 
  their own men worthy of note, and on occasion had problems common to outlying communities: monsters. 
  All of these qualities are now distant memories, but there are reminders to be found if one knows where to 
  look for them. 
   
  Some time back there was an infestation of doppelgangers in the area. Four of them set themselves up in 
  Pembrooktonshire. Their activities were stealthy enough to be undetected by the powers that be, but in their 
  own subtle way, they caused much mayhem, not to mention the number of villagers they murdered, ate, and 
  replaced. They were eventually defeated by a traveling group of powerful adventurers, but instead of killing 
  them, the adventuring wizard decided to have some fun. He polymorphed the four into cows and made sure 
  they did not remember their lives previous to grazing and saying, “mooooo!” Collecting their treasure, the 
  adventurers went on their merry way, never again returning to Pembrooktonshire. The cows became known 
  as good quality stock, giving plenty of milk and somehow never growing old, so they have been sold and 
  thieved and traded by the townsfolk over the years. 
   
  Today, cows 125, 163, and 265 are coincidentally part of the same herd again. The three still graze and give 
  milk, but if the magic that keeps them bound to these forms is ever dispelled… 
   
  Thornton Cummerbund, Town Planner 
  The people of Pembrooktonshire are a fertile lot, having been encouraged to have many children and all. 
  With such population growth, new buildings and indeed new neighborhoods spring up fairly regularly. 
  Someone has to oversee all of this construction and make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. 
   
  
   
  13
  That someone is Mr. Cummerbund, a progressive man that believes an ever-evolving community is the key 
  to a live and vibrant society! 
   
  This translates to tearing down old buildings to make way for new ones. The more respectable families in 
  town don’t need to worry about their property, but the lower-born often find themselves forced to move 
  further from the center of town as their property is marked for destruction and rebuilding. 
   
  Cummerbund hates walking around town and seeing commoners about, so he is attempting to drive them all 
  away. 
   
  Alfred Cunningham, Barrister 
  Alfred has always been fascinated with the idea of debate and is intensely interested in justice, so it was 
  natural to become a lawyer. Unfortunately, given that the legal system in Pembrooktonshire is largely fixed, 
  and certainly no one of consequence would ever hire low-born legal counsel, Alfred is very poor. 
   
  Instead of giving up on his dream (not to mention at this point he enjoys annoying the establishment with his 
  attempts to argue against them), Alfred has figured out a way to make his profession feed his family, even if 
  his clients don’t have much money and he never wins his cases. 
   
  He requires all consultations to happen at the client’s house, over dinner which the client must provide. And 
  Cunningham brings his entire family (and he’s got a lot of kids) over to eat as well. 
   
  Veronica da Vinci, Expensive Doxy 
  Of the dozen or so prostitutes operating in town, only one has a degree of respectability. Of course, this has 
  been gained by being so expensive that only a very few can afford her, but her parlor in the middle of town 
  never fails to gain attention as its façade and décor are changed seasonally. It’s always a sensation. 
   
  Da Vinci’s (public) bedchamber is the most impressive display of splendor and decadence in town. Among 
  its delights is the heavy use of an exotic incense… which renders men utterly impotent while in its vapors. 
  Once before her, da Vinci ridicules them and threatens to expose their shortcomings to the world (not being 
  able to perform in the chambers of Ms. da Vinci would be a fatal social blow) unless they return, paying full 
  price, at least twice more, and spread the word about how ecstatic their experience with her was. 
   
  Lancelot Dashwood, Eunuch 
  Young and unmarried ladies must be allowed out of the house every so often in order to experience the 
  vulgarity of town society, but it is imperative that they be protected and chaperoned at all times by a member 
  of the stronger sex. Family members often have duties to attend to, and having these young women be left to 
  the company of other men would be scandalous! 
   
  Castration is not a punishment in Pembrooktonshire (they consider it as utterly barbaric) so eunuchs are very 
  rare. A eunuch has not much to lose socially (no chance to marry, let alone marry well) by admitting his 
  condition, but much to gain professionally as concerned rich parents are always looking for non-threatening 
  minders for their daughters. 
   
  Enter Mr. Dashwood. The problem is, Mr. is actually a Ms. Lucretia Dashwood has always been a tomboy 
  farmer’s daughter, with a stocky build and not many curves or feminine facial features. Dressing up as a 
  man and fooling the townsfolk isn’t difficult. 
   
  And being alone with so many innocent young women gives Dashwood an opportunity to commit many 
  scandals-in-the-making of her own. 
   
  Martina de Almeida, Housewife 
  The typical woman in Pembrooktonshire is subject to a lot of stress and work, but not so much pressure. 
  Keeping the home and raising the children while the husband performs some sort of trade is tough work, for 
  
   
  14
  sure, but the family’s name won’t come under scrutiny if one has a bad day housekeeping. Unless important 
  guests drop by, but how often does that happen to someone who can’t afford cleaning staff? 
   
  At least that’s how it is in the town proper, if not in the outlying farm areas. Out on the farm the wife is right 
  there with the husband, doing all of the heavy lifting… and taking care of the kids and keeping house. 
   
  Many wives, when out of earshot of the men and the cultural elite, decry this as unfair and demeaning. De 
  Almeida, on the other hand, would love to be able to have the option of devoting her life to her man and 
  keeping a lovely and splendid home. But she can’t. 
   
  She doesn’t know who her husband is. She thinks she remembers the man she married, but every day a new 
  man walks in the door. He looks different, has a different name, and is indeed a different man, but he calls 
  her Dearest, and is called Daddy by their three children. 
   
  Polly de Kook, Cheap Trollop 
  Being known as the town’s cheapest whore hasn’t done much to make Polly’s life enjoyable, but it manages 
  to pay the bills. 
   
  Polly is also a horrible gossip, and combined with having a genuinely friendly and curious personality, 
  learns more about her clients than they wish to tell, and spreads that information around. This attracts the 
  attention of “clients” more interested in her information than her services, but de Kook seems blissfully 
  unaware of the intrigue that surrounds her. 
   
  She is also completely unaware that much of what she knows is wrong. Polly suffers from intensely lucid 
  dreams to the point where she can not tell what has happened and what was dreamt. She is not an 
  imaginative girl and her dreams are basically alternate versions based on her real life, reinforced by her 
  opinions of the people involved. So, for example, as she believes her married clients are for the most part 
  bad men, she dreams of them doing or saying bad things. People that she likes do good and kind things in 
  her dreams. 
   
  And she gossips about it as if it were all real. 
   
  Helio DeCameron, Cobbler 
  A middle-aged bachelor, DeCameron has been very lucky in business and not so lucky in love. 
  Unbeknownst to him, a number of shoe fairies have long inhabited his property, and wish to remain hidden. 
  When DeCameron begins work on his shoes, the fairies put him to sleep and do his work for him, all the 
  while frolicking in their shoe fairy manner. They are quick to hide when visitors come, and DeCameron, 
  after all these years, credits his blackouts to some sort of transcendental state of crafting. 
   
  But he can’t find a wife. The last woman he brought around must have run off when he went into one of his 
  trances… but were his customers ever so pleased with the quality of the leather shoes he made that day! 
   
  Hector Degauchy, Postman 
  The oldest and most respected of the small Pembrooktonshire postal service, Degauchy manages to deliver 
  more mail in less time than anyone ever has. His six-hour route takes him merely four hours. 
   
  That’s very unusual, considering that half of his mail are letters written by people that don’t exist, is 
  delivered to addresses that don’t exist, and were sent (with proper postage!) from addresses that don’t exist. 
   
  Giles Denton, Beekeeper 
  Giles is a man in his early thirties that prefers the finer things in life, from clothing to furniture to women. 
  The premium he charges for his honey supports all this and more. 
   
  
   
  15
  Giles has delusions of grandeur and has taken to learning how to control his bees using pheromones, and is 
  convinced his bee army could be used to make him ruler of Pembrooktonshire. He has successfully 
  engineered the death of several local animals this way, but has been hesitant to try it on a human. If only 
  there were some strangers that could be used for the test… 
   
  Warren Diadoro, Jeweler 
  Diadoro is one of the more trusted men in Pembrooktonshire. He is the man who creates, repairs, polishes, 
  and modifies jewelry for the richest people in town. 
   
  The thing that annoys Warren about his job is when people want him to repair or polish items that he didn’t 
  create. When doing these duties, he heats these items up over a flame. And damned if half the jewelry worn 
  by the nobles doesn’t have some sort of weird foreign squiggly writing that appears only when heated. 
   
  Louis Diggle, Wagon Maker 
  Many of the rich hate that they must walk on the streets like commoners, so the demand for wagons and 
  coaches is far above what it should be for a town of this size. Many of the wealthy use coaches to travel 
  across their own estates or even courtyards! 
   
  Louis is the main man responsible for creating these coaches. Because this is a matter of upper class pride, 
  the coaches are becoming exceedingly extravagant and decadent, with ridiculous amenities that make them 
  resemble mobile homes more than conveyances. Many commoners don’t live in accommodations as 
  luxurious, or sometimes even as spacious, as a nobleman’s coach. 
   
  As time goes on and Diggle’s designs become even more outrageous, and then become standardized so even 
  more middle-class clients can afford certain upgrades, previous wealthy clients feel their coaches need to be 
  improved, so Diggle and his team always have plenty to do. 
   
  Not all of the added luxury is unnecessary, as the ingenuity of Diggle and his team have resulted in wagons 
  and coaches that feature superior handling, comfort (no matter how rocky the road, the passengers enjoy a 
  smooth ride), cleanliness (the pulling horses’ refuse never touches the ground), and safety. 
   
  Diggle also hires people to perform random acts of vandalism on coaches and wagons, just because enough 
  business is never enough. 
   
  Edward Dilhorne, Clockmaker 
  It takes a detail-oriented and fastidious man to successfully build a working, dependable clock from scratch. 
  Unfortunately, Dilhorne is not a detail-oriented or fastidious man. 
   
  His clocks are things of absolute beauty, have no doubt. And they work. Dilhorne’s problem is consistency. 
  He has great difficulty creating clocks that tell time at the same rate as other clocks. 
   
  Luckily, his clocks are sympathetic to his plight and do what they can to protect his reputation. Clocks that 
  are near each other, say within a city block, synchronize themselves to each other. However, they may be 
  hours off from clocks across town and significant minutes off from clocks several blocks away. 
   
  But when someone checks their neighbor’s clock, it matches theirs. So most people in Pembrooktonshire 
  can not agree on how long a particular trip or errand takes, or believe they are very fast, or experience great 
  periods of lost time. 
   
  Herbert Dooley, Tobacconist 
  One of the few importers operating in Pembrooktonshire, Dooley is under constant scrutiny to be sure he is 
  not falling under foreign influence. But a certain percentage of the population loves their tobacco (the upper 
  class smokes it, everyone else generally eats it) and it doesn’t grow anywhere near the town. 
   
  
   
  16
  The thing is, Dooley’s supplier realized very quickly that neither Dooley nor anyone in Pembrooktonshire 
  actually knows what tobacco really is. Dooley’s first attempts to import it brought the real thing, but the 
  coughing and wheezing associated with first-time smokers made it unfashionable. After complaining to the 
  tobacco growers who supply him, they began to send a “better” batch of tobacco which was easier to smoke 
  and better tasting. It immediately sold better and became fashionable to smoke during social events. 
   
  But it isn’t tobacco. 
   
  Joseph Dornford, Soldier 
  Very rarely, a Pembrooktonshiretonian leaves the town to spend a good amount of time abroad, and is 
  accepted back into society when he returns. Dornford is one such man. He left town as a young man to 
  follow his dreams of excitement and glory as a soldier, and was gone for fifteen years. 
   
  Because he wrote letters home every day, and because his family is generally well-regarded, and because he 
  was very dismissive and downright insulting of outsider culture after returning, he was received as a 
  returning hero, and acknowledged as the fiercest fighter Pembrooktonshire has ever seen. 
   
  The problem is Dornford has never seen actual combat. When he served, he looked good in his dress 
  uniform, followed orders well, peeled a lot of potatoes, and guarded his general’s tent well. But never once 
  did he cross swords with or even so much as fired an arrow in the general direction of an enemy. 
   
  Not knowing the difference, the townsfolk will always believe Dornford’s stories and advice on combat, 
  battle, and strategy over anyone else… even if they are veterans of actual wars. 
   
  Edmund Dusserre, Diplomat 
  There are dungslingers and manual laborers and plumbers and gravediggers and all sorts of undesirable jobs 
  in Pembrooktonshire. Then, worse, are jobs which almost require exposure to foreigners, and worse than 
  that, travel to foreign lands. Brokers and export merchants are considered to have a tough job for that reason, 
  but at least they bring in all the wealth that fuels Pembrooktonshire. 
   
  But a diplomat? That’s a grubby, thankless, miserable job if there ever was one. 
   
  Pembrooktonshire is rich and non-militarized. It takes hard work, leverage, and keen negotiating skills in 
  order to keep Pembrooktonshire free from outside interference. 
   
  Sure, Pembrooktonshire is technically part of some far-off noble’s territory or within the borders of some 
  empire or another. When history is written, if Pembrooktonshire is mentioned at all, it will be considered as 
  just another town in some greater power’s holdings. 
   
  But the reality is Pembrooktonshire is self-governing and unsupervised, thanks to the efforts of Mr. Dusserre 
  and those diplomats that came before him. He is responsible for going “abroad” and maintaining this state of 
  affairs. 
   
  In the past, this has been done through bribery. The outside ruling power gets a cut of the trade leaving 
  Pembrooktonshire, plus tributes custom-made by the finest craftsmen in town. Today, this doesn’t happen. 
  Dusserre doesn’t visit anyone. He keeps the tribute and levies for himself, and lives the high life when not in 
  Pembrooktonshire. 
   
  What he has done is convinced the powers-that-be that another village, a rather poor one, is 
  Pembrooktonshire, which has resulted in heavy persecution of that village for its refusal to pay its “fair 
  share” and for hiding its assets from the auditors that come to assess what that fair share should be. And for 
  trying to deceive the crown as to the very name of the place. 
   
  
   
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  And after one of the frequent purges, Desserre will then prostrate himself in front of the ruler asking for 
  mercy, spinning such a web of lies as to keep the real Pembrooktonshire safe and hidden. 
   
  Whenever dealing with a different ruler, or when a ruler (or advisor) changes, Edmund chooses another 
  place to be “Pembrooktonshire.” At present there are five different villages which he has so named, all five 
  are being heavily persecuted by the regional rulers, and there is even a war being waged between royal noble 
  houses over who has dominion over one of these “Pembrooktonshires.” 
   
  Charles Englefield, Barber 
  Charles is one of the town’s barbers, cutting hair, shaving customers, and performing dentistry all day long. 
   
  Englefield has a list of “approved” hair, moustache, and beard styles, which he himself determines according 
  to what he believes to be proper for a Pembrookshiretonian. Customers are not shown this list, but anyone 
  who chooses a style that is not approved is also diagnosed with a dental problem. Painful surgery follows. 
   
  Bernard Eyre, Leech 
  Eyre is head of one of the great families of Pembrooktonshire, and is the foremost man of medicine in town. 
   
  His methods are barbaric. He does use leeches, he bleeds his patients nearly dry when they are ill, prescribes 
  near-lethal poisonous “remedies,” and generally is sadistic to those that dare need his services. He also 
  prescribes courses of laxatives and even more disgusting “fitness regimens” for healthy patients seeking 
  ways to remain so. 
   
  He is so highly thought-of socially that it is considered a deliberate insult and a scandal if someone that can 
  afford his services chooses not to. And how ungrateful and lacking in social graces it would be to dare to not 
  improve if under Dr. Eyre’s care! On occasion when one of his patients dies, the deceased’s family is so 
  mortified that their relative would have the audacity to die while under the care of someone so well-
  respected that they pay the doctor a generous sum of money as an apology for the impertinence. 
   
  Titricia Finn, Midwife 
  A spinster in her early 60s, Ms. Finn handles the deliveries for the majority of Pembrooktonshire’s births. 
  She’s very good; she’s never lost a mother or a child in her care. 
   
  While she goes to church every Sunday and keeps up appearances, Titricia is not what she seems. She 
  worships the Outer Powers, and they have given her a task. After delivering a baby, she takes it into a 
  private room to “be cleaned.” She insists on privacy, and because of her flawless reputation, no one argues. 
  Here the child is traded to an agent of the Outer Powers for a changeling; a facsimile of the child so perfect 
  that neither the parents nor the child will ever realize it isn’t a natural human. Changelings are more 
  impulsive and stubborn than the norm, and tend to be more physical than intellectual (-1 intelligence and 
  wisdom, +1 strength and constitution), but otherwise are human. The only clues that they are something else 
  are that protection spells affect them as if they were summoned beings, and because they have no true souls 
  they can never be raised from the dead. 
   
  Because she does not handle every birth in town, and because sometimes she just doesn’t have the 
  opportunity to do the switch in time, there is a 1 in 4 chance that any Pembrooktonshire native under the age 
  of 30 is a natural, normal human. 
   
  Horace Fitzherbert, Philosopher 
  A stunningly calculating merchant and leading producer of sweet candies in his prime, Horace has stepped 
  down from active work, and his position as head of one of Pembrooktonshire’s great families, in order to 
  write books and reveal the nature of the universe to the people. 
   
  His writings of course are very traditional, recalling golden days that never were and ideals that are 
  impossible for people to live up to. 
  
   
  18
   
  His most famous work is called Suspicion as Proof. It supposes that people have excellent intuition, and that 
  while an individual may be mistaken, the collective opinions of a group of people would not be. Therefore, 
  if there is mass suspicion, it should usually be taken as proof that the suspected thing is true. 
   
  The book made him famous and well-liked about town, and he is considered one of the foremost 
  intellectuals in Pembrooktonshire history. He is often consulted on matters he knows absolutely nothing 
  about, but that’s OK, since it’s his intuition that is important more than his knowledge. 
   
  And to those that disagree with his theories, the question must be asked: What are you hiding? 
   
  Selina Foxlowe, Expensive Doxy 
  Selina is one of the more accepted mistresses in town. Some say she is even fashionable, as she has made a 
  career of comforting wealthy and influential widowers in their grief. 
   
  Foxlowe creates more discussion amongst the common folk because of her hair. Rumor has it that she has 
  never cut it, and it is kept in perfect condition. Her hairstyles, especially at large social gatherings (and 
  especially when she is on the hunt for a new man) are legendary. 
   
  The truth is she hates her hair and is unable to cut it. It is indestructible, immune to pulling, cutting, tearing, 
  burning, or anything else that has ever been tried to control it. 
   
  Richard Frost, Poet 
  Frost is a teenager studying philosophy under the wise men of the town. However, Frost sees himself first 
  and foremost as a poet of the people, being able to give voice to the young and underclass who normally 
  have no say in the running of the town. He actually fancies himself as something of an anarchist and 
  revolutionary. 
   
  The reality is he is a grubby little guttersnipe, quick to assert dominance when he believes he is in control 
  but cowering and shifting blame when anyone is in the least way forceful with him. While fronting as an 
  anarchist, he will be quick to summon the authorities if he witnesses any illegal behavior. 
   
  And he can be quick to notify the authorities about anyone he doesn’t like, on charges he gleefully invents. 
   
  Theodore Geurts, Thief 
  Geurts is one of the few ne’er-do-wells of Pembrooktonshire, never having done an honest day’s work in his 
  life yet somehow always managing to keep his head above water. 
   
  His rationale for living like this is it just isn’t fair that the Geurts name has been maligned through the years, 
  and should be higher up on the social ladder. He can name ancestors that did “great” things and how the 
  town should have celebrated them. 
   
  His only problem is that there are no fences in town so it doesn’t do him any good to steal items of value 
  (not that it stops him). It has to be coins only if he is to receive any immediate benefit from it. He knows that 
  someday he’ll have the opportunity to leave town on a trip to sell his various stolen goods, so in the 
  meantime he has started feeding his jewels and small valuables to ducks that live around the local pond. 
  Most days he can be found there, feeding and being very defensive of these ducks… 
   
  Thomas Grayson, Shipbuilder 
  Pembrooktonshire is near a river and has a rather large pond (it is a bit generous to call it a proper lake), but 
  it is essentially landlocked. The river is non-navigable by anything more than a kayak, and the pond isn’t 
  worth much more than a romantic canoe trip. 
   
  But Grayson is building a boat. A very large boat. 
  
   
  19
   
  Up until a couple years ago, Thomas was an accomplished and popular woodworker, being favored for all 
  sorts of jobs. After earning enough money to realize his dream, he quit and began his shipyard. 
   
  Behind a hillock, out of sight of the town. Near neither the river nor the pond. The people laugh at him, 
  forcing him to pay premium wages for hired help on the project. 
   
  He claims that there will be a great flood and the only way to survive will be aboard his vessel. He claims to 
  have been contacted from above and given the holy duty to save two of every family in Pembrooktonshire, 
  one man and one woman, so that after the world is washed away, the townsfolk will finally claim their 
  rightful inheritance – the entire world. 
   
  To this end, his boat (about 20% finished at this point) is being constructed as the finest luxury boat ever 
  conceived, at least for the areas reserved for those of sufficient status. His deck plans are a thing of 
  architectural beauty and madness. 
   
  Grayson is right. There will be a flood. Someday. In this lifetime, in a hundred generations, who knows? 
  And when it happens, the laughing will stop. Two by two the chosen survivors of Pembrooktonshire will file 
  onto the craft. 
   
  And it will not float. 
   
  Boyd Grützmüller, Carpenter 
  Grützmüller is a hardworking family man who is serious about his craft, never assuming he knows best and 
  constantly seeks to learn new tricks. He is obsessed with being better than he is, forever fearing to become 
  complacent. 
   
  This obsession has caused Boyd to tap into a state of superconsciousness while working, and the result is 
  very unusual. Even the simple work that he does looks very artistic. The demand for his work is increasing 
  as people become aware of the unique appearance of a Boyd-crafted piece.. 
   
  Boyd’s work is physically impossible, and operates on laws of physics alien to this dimension. Still, 
  everything holds together. If for some reason magic were to be dispelled in the area of anything he has 
  worked on, it would fall completely apart. 
   
  Royston Haddingfield, Builder 
  Haddingfield is a smart and still-strong middle-aged widower, who along with his sons Tony, Reggie, and 
  Vasey, performs most of the major construction and renovation work around town. There are few 
  residences, and fewer public buildings, that have not been improved by the work of the Haddingfields' 
  skillful hands. 
   
  In his spare time he socializes and plays darts down at The Last Stop, and is an accomplished whittler. Every 
  Saturday morning he dutifully takes a beautiful bouquet of flowers to the grave of his wife. He has never so 
  much as thought about another woman in the six years since she passed. 
   
  Haddingfield and his sons scam the town in one particular way: They always screw up their jobs in minor, 
  but noteworthy ways. They then offer to fix it for free, and are willing to construct a secret cellar in return 
  for the client not speaking about the mistake and thus ruining the Haddingfield's perfect reputation. They've 
  been running this scheme for two generations now, and so most of the people of Pembrooktonshire have a 
  secret place of their own that no one knows about, and they also think nobody else has such a place. 
   
  
   
  20
  Randolph Harnsworth, Dog Breeder 
  Harnsworth is one of Pembrooktonshire’s great families. While Rudolph is not the leader of the clan, not yet 
  anyway, he is the most highly thought of as he is in the prime of his life (which is considered the 40s in 
  Pembrooktonshire) and socially active. 
   
  It is he who breeds and trains all of the dogs for one of the favorite pastimes of the Pembrooktonshire elite: 
  Foxhunting. 
   
  Because dogs are not native to the Pembrooktonshire area, the Harnsworth family, several generations back, 
  imported chihuahuas to be used as foxhunting dogs. They’re perfect, as there is a high turnover rate (foxes 
  can easily deal with one chihuahua, while a pack can take down a fox) and few people can stand the yapping 
  of dozens of chihuahua puppies. Luckily, Randolph is deaf. 
   
  Esther Hart, Haughty Courtesan 
  Esther has worked hard all her life attempting to rise above her farming roots and make something 
  spectacular of herself. As the years went on, she was getting desperate… she was almost 20! It was almost 
  too late! She was almost old! 
   
  She set out to intensely study the manner and custom of the upper class, and soon was seen on the arms of 
  gentlemen of the upper class. 
   
  These days, she is always in the company of an influential and well thought-of member of society, and is so 
  scared of returning to her lower class standing that she actively scorns those of lesser station. 
   
  Oh, and she has a functional extra eye on the bottom of her left foot. 
   
  Maurice Heathcote, Pontifficator 
  The oldest member of this great family of Pembrooktonshire was in his prime the highest ranking priest in 
  town. He was also one of the first people to publish his philosophies and thoughts, and thus his influence 
  and importance rose to even greater heights. 
   
  His book Personal Holiness established the tone of Pembrooktonshire religion forevermore. It describes the 
  “correct” ways to hold ceremonies, how often people need to go to church (every Sunday barring 
  extraordinary circumstances!), and most importantly how to detect unbelievers through everyday behavior. 
   
  More relevant to visiting adventuring parties, according to Personal Holiness, traveling far from home is 
  considered a warning sign for devil worship, as is not being close with one’s family. Heathcote’s view has 
  always been that magic use, including and perhaps especially clerical magic, is sinful. No priest native to 
  Pembrooktonshire will use clerical magic. 
   
  Phoebe Herculanu, Brazen Strumpet 
  One of the dozen or so “working girls” in town, Phoebe takes her share of grief from the more upstanding 
  citizens. Then she takes her share of money from their husbands. 
   
  Those that “spend time” with Herculanu experience hallucinations and don’t remember the time they are 
  physically with her. What they do experience is some sort of spiritual awakening, and begin volunteering at 
  the church, or helping out the less fortunate. One thing they don’t really do afterwards is patronize 
  prostitutes. 
   
  The truth is Herculanu is very religious, and performs her profession as a means to spread the word. She 
  considers it especially important to share her beliefs with foreigners, since they are more at risk for unholy 
  behavior. She’s willing to be a social martyr for the cause. 
   
  
   
  21
  William Hoffmann, Interpreter 
  Most Pembrooktonshiretonians do not like to speak to foreigners. Hoffmann has turned this fact into a very 
  popular living. 
   
  On the rare occasion that an unexpected outsider wanders into town, most folks will pretend to not 
  understand what they are saying, claiming they do not speak the outsider’s language (and plainly saying so). 
  Everything the foreigner says will be treated as complete gibberish, and the local folk will openly speak 
  about the poor manners and habits of the people in front of them. 
   
  Enter Mr. Hoffmann. Luckily, he knows both languages, and he will offer to act as the foreigners’ 
  interpreter at a very special price! The townsfolk know his schtick, and they will speak to him, who will then 
  repeat the words to the foreigner, and repeat the process back, even though everyone is speaking the same 
  language. 
   
  And he doesn’t understand any other language. 
   
  Tobias Holmes, Playwright 
  Tobias is one of the few people who are celebrated locally while remaining totally unknown outside of town. 
  As Pembrooktonshire’s foremost playwright and producer of popular entertainment, Holmes is sure to cater 
  to the hometown crowd. 
   
  He does this by completely ripping off plays written abroad, down to the last stage direction, changing only 
  the names and nationalities of the characters so that all the good guys are from Pembrooktonshire and all the 
  bad guys are from anywhere else. And the bad guys always wear masks on stage, as it is considered taboo 
  for Pembrooktonshire actors to portray foreigners. The masks don’t hide their identities but it is understood 
  they are following tradition so nothing untoward is considered to be happening. 
   
  Many a murder mystery has been given away in the first minute by the fact that only one character is not 
  local. 
   
  The punters don’t seem to mind, as they enjoy seeing Pembrooktonshire portrayed positively on the stage, 
  and since foreign entertainers never travel here on their own, not even the most well-educated have ever so 
  much as heard of the most famous plays, songs, or dances. 
   
  Holmes exploits this ruthlessly, and has the most self-important attitude imaginable to boot. 
   
  Myron Hunsley, Shoe Salesman 
  Because the upper class of Pembrooktonshire dislike dealing directly with those who get their hands dirty 
  (craftsmen!), and because footwear is perhaps the hardest piece of clothing of all to fit properly, a very small 
  group of people now make their living selling shoes. 
   
  Hunsley is something of a podologist, able to read people’s personalities just by feeling the contours of their 
  feet. This has given him much stress. Intellectually he knows every one of his customers is an upstanding 
  leader of the community… but the feet never lie. 
   
  Perhaps he should read his own feet, and then he would think twice before attempting to concoct a variety of 
  poisons in order to “save” the town. 
   
  Rupert Irving, Chemist 
  While Irving is indeed a professional chemist and concocts many remedies to cure what ails the townsfolk, 
  in his off-hours he is a full-blown, all-out mystical alchemist, searching for the formula to turn base metals 
  into gold. 
   
  
   
  22
  Like all alchemists before him, he has been unsuccessful. However, lately he has been able to create an odd 
  green rocklike material from iron and copper. He isn’t quite sure what it is, but he is sure it has some arcane 
  properties. If only he could discover what they are… 
   
  Barnabas James, Chimney Sweep 
  There are few jobs less glamorous than that of a chimney sweep. Up on roofs all day, continuously covered 
  in soot…  
   
  You can find the most amazing things stuck in chimneys. Especially when half the population thinks it’s 
  clever to make a secret compartment behind a brick in the chimney. James makes it a point to take all of the 
  items he finds in chimneys, and switch them all around, so everyone has someone else’s secret stuff in their 
  own secret place. 
   
  Frances Kingsford, Farmer 
  Kingsford had long enjoyed the rather peaceful life of a farmer, thankful that he had a large landholding and 
  the freedom to do as he wills. 
   
  This changed several years ago when a meteorite crashed in the middle of his cornfield. Kingsford was at 
  first pleased because the soil seemed super-fertilized by this occurrence, and the crop grew healthy and fast. 
   
  But also violent. The corn, while still rooted in place, became animate and seemed unwilling to be 
  harvested. Frances had to become an agricultural warrior, cutting down the stalks one duel at a time. 
   
  But the resulting corn was so sweet and large and profitable, and he feared people wouldn’t buy it anymore 
  if they found out it was alive. So Frances kept his secret, and became a “bad neighbor,” erecting fences and 
  yelling at kids to stay off his property and not inviting folks over for supper, ever. 
   
  This has put a great strain on his family, but after his young son was almost killed by a cornstalk, they know 
  it is for the best. 
   
  But of course there are always a few people every year that disappear without a trace because Kingford’s 
  field is such a tempting shortcut between town and a nearby stream… and many of the prospectors who 
  supposedly never return from the mountains never actually reach the mountains. 
   
  Abigail Laffey, Housewife 
  Abigail was orphaned at birth. Her father was killed when he attempted to throw his wife down a flight of 
  stairs only to have the tables turned on him, but Abigail’s mother died in childbirth. Growing up, she was 
  teased and abused by other children for being so crass as to not have a real family, but eventually found her 
  inner strength, found a husband (for the Laffey name was still strong), and has over the years produced a 
  large family. 
   
  The couple’s sixth child has just been born, and Abigail awaits the seventh, for she knows it will grow to be 
  a person of great power and influence in the world. 
   
  Yet still she fears the gallop of approaching horses… 
   
  Addison Lakely, Retiree 
  Addison Lakely is a centenarian who still enjoys surprisingly good health. Long ago he was known as a 
  master gardener and herbalist, but for the past thirty years he has been living off of his savings and the 
  goodwill of the townsfolk. He is a well-known personality about town, being its oldest resident and taking 
  frequent long walks around town, conversing with the people and playing with the children. 
   
  However, his mental state has been deteriorating for some time, and his short-term memory is almost non-
  existent. When he greets neighbors, he often forgets that he has met them before, even if he has greeted them 
  
   
  23
  every day for the previous month. This, combined with his frequent mumbling to himself, has caused many 
  people to avoid him. He has perfect memory of things several decades old, however, and does tell such tales 
  that entertain the people... the first time or three he tells them. 
   
  Addison is very concerned about the happiness and well-being of his neighbors, and so takes care to 
  maintain the cheery, folksy appeal of Pembrooktonshire life. To accomplish this, he uses a talent he 
  cultivated long ago: Lakely is a magic-user of some small ability. Eighty years ago he apprenticed under a 
  great magician, and although he had great aptitude for the magical arts, social pressures convinced him to 
  give it up. He did manage to attain fifth level, but these days has but three spells in his book: Read Magic, 
  Detect Magic, and Dispel Magical Aura. Due to age and other factors, aside from his spell usage he is for all 
  statistical purposes a normal man. 
   
  Addison's long walks are often just an excuse for him to detect magic around town, so that he may then 
  follow it up with Dispel Magic Aura. This third level spell removes the magical signature from an 
  item/area/person, but not the magic; it functions as normal but no longer detects as magical. The spell is 
  permanent (until dispelled by magic!), but anyone detecting magic while using a scrying spell can see the 
  obscured enchantment. 
   
  However, in his senile state, Addison thinks he's dispelling the magic altogether. So for over twenty years 
  now, every magical thing in Pembrooktonshire has existed in secret, and nobody knows... 
   
  Justin Laroux, Glassblower 
  Laroux is a master of his craft. Few people on the planet can make works of glass art as skillful as Justin 
  can, nor can they make everyday jars and wine glasses appear so exotic. 
   
  Justin is also a painter, and one of his favorite pastimes is to scope out a local store selling some durable 
  good, make a very fragile glass replica and paint it to where it is indistinguishable from the original item 
  barring close inspection. Then he replaces the item. Hilarity ensues! His favorite is when he replaces food 
  items at a market stall with glass and sees some poor bastard get a mouthful of glass shards. 
   
  Sophie-Rosemary Laverick, Housewife 
  All Rosemary ever wanted was to marry a wonderful man and raise a lovely family. She thought she was 
  blessed to live in a community as close-knit and strong as Pembrooktonshire, and indeed married well and 
  thought her life was going to be absolutely perfect as soon after she found herself with child. 
   
  But her life has turned into a nightmare. She has discovered that her husband has made a pact with the devil 
  to impregnate Sophie-Rosemary with the guarantee that the child will grow up first to elevate the Laverick 
  family to the level of the great families of Pembrooktonshire, and then to rule over them all. Sophie was 
  horrified, but could live with this. Her child would be successful and influential! 
   
  And then she was visited by an angel who informed Laverick that her unborn son will indeed grow to rule 
  Pembrooktonshire as promised, but during his rule will cause the downfall and finally the total destruction 
  of the town. The only way this can be stopped is if Sophie-Rosemary sacrifices her son when he is exactly 
  one year old. 
   
  The angel thought it was bringing joyous news to one of the oppressed souls of the town, and reassuring her 
  that nothing can stop it if she does nothing. The angel did not for a moment consider that the citizens here do 
  not realize how wicked the place is and want to see this way of life continue forever. 
   
  Sophie of course considers this horrible news! On one hand… influence and power! On the other… infamy 
  and failure! She can’t possibly harm her child… but she also won’t let any harm come to the community. 
  What will she do? 
   
  
   
  24
  Algernon Le Strange, Youth 
  A boy of just fourteen, Algernon is being groomed for greatness as the heir of the Le Strange legacy. One of 
  Pembrooktonshire’s great families, the Le Stranges are embroiled in a bitter generations-long feud with the 
  equally powerful Quedgely family. 
   
  Tensions between the families are bound to rise, as Algernon has fallen in love with Elmira Quedgely, a girl 
  just one year his senior. More than a few members of both families would kill to prevent their youth from 
  becoming “corrupted” by a member of the other family. 
   
  So Algernon and Elmira find ways to escape into each others’ arms, unseen by all… for now. 
   
  What nobody realizes is that due to a string of coincidences facilitated by Juliette Wilcox’s masks, Algernon 
  Le Strange and Elmira Quedgely are brother and sister. 
   
  Wendy Lillywhite, Wanton Wench 
  As a barmaid at the Squicky Wicket, Lillywhite has earned quite the reputation. She is drop-dead gorgeous, 
  and very friendly to all who pass through the door. When someone with a bit more money than sense comes 
  in, she really goes to work. 
   
  She does everything she can, including heavy flirting and even promising downright obscene things, to get 
  the person drunk and up to her private room above the bar. There she drugs them and robs them. If they live 
  nearby (and she will find out where they live while flirting with them), she will take their key, visit their 
  home, and take valuables from there. 
   
  The victim is then taken back downstairs into a back room, where the owner (who gets a cut of the action) 
  will attest to the victim simply having too much to drink. 
   
  Raymond Lolley, Village Idiot 
  Raymond Lolley’s parents died when he was a baby, and he was soon adopted by the Lolley family who 
  herded sheep to the south of town. A troubled child who kept to himself, Lolley found himself more 
  comfortable around the sheep and the sheepdog than with other humans. His adoptive family died in a house 
  fire when Raymond was 13, and there was no one else to take him in. 
   
  Doing odd jobs around town, Raymond made enough money to keep himself (in the same apartment he still 
  lives in over Church Street off the Market Square) but withdrew even more as the people of this crowded, 
  crowded town continually mocked him and pretended that they remember him doing things and having 
  conversations that he never did. Now Raymond Lolley is acutely paranoid and neurotic, never coming out of 
  his room unless he absolutely must, for fear of the townsfolk taunting him with their imaginary 
  acquaintance. 
   
  Raymond Lolley, Street Sweeper 
  Orphaned as a baby, the boy who would be named Raymond was adopted by the Lolley family, who were 
  professional dyers whose pungent profession ensured that they would not be very popular in social circles. 
  When that family died after their dyes caught fire, Lolley went to live with Lolley family relatives in another 
  town. 
   
  When he returned in his teens, for the family he lived with never considered him one of their own, he found 
  that nobody seemed to believe that he’d ever been gone. They treated him as if he was an addled soul of 
  childlike mind, and found that he was laughed at when he tried to become an apprentice to various craftsmen 
  around town. 
   
  Living now in a small apartment over a shop on High Street (near the Market Square), Raymond almost 
  fears going out in the day. He fears he is going mad, as the townsfolk often greet him and have a laugh about 
  things he doesn’t remember. The people of Pembrooktonshire are not cruel or mad in Raymond’s eyes, so 
  
   
  25
  the problem must be him. He knows he is losing his mind, and lives in fear that one day he will blank out 
  and never come back. So now he performs his duties at night, tries to avoid being seen, and waits for 
  oblivion… 
   
  Homer Longacre, Serf 
  Pembrooktonshire is obviously not a shining example of a progressive community, but in truth the 
  oppressive nature of the town is overwhelmingly due to social, not legal, pressures. Even the lowest-born is 
  still a free man, able to seek and earn his fortune in just about any way he sees fit. In fact, doing so is the 
  best way to ensure that one’s children aren’t the lowest-born of their time. It’s a long, cruel road but there is 
  opportunity, both economic and social, for anyone willing to be soulless enough to chase it. 
   
  But not the Longacres. An artifact of the old days when Pembrooktonshire was more of a proper feudal 
  holding, the Longacre families are serfs in the literal sense. They are tied to the land, forbidden from seeking 
  other professions, and are basically owned by the owners of the land they live and work on. 
   
  This is not an oversight. The wealthy of Pembrooktonshire think this is hilarious, and in fact trade and sell 
  this spot of land amongst themselves for a pittance, just to allow everyone an opportunity to own their very 
  own peasants. Some treat the situation as a learning exercise and to experiment, others use it simply as an 
  exercise in cruelty. 
   
  What costs something more than a pittance is bribing parents and other family members to pressure children 
  to marry Longacres, because nobody would do so willingly, and if they didn’t then future generations of the 
  idly privileged wouldn’t have people to torment. 
   
  Quentin Lorenzetti, Plumber 
  Indoor plumbing is a very rare thing in Pembrooktonshire, and only the most extravagant homes have it. It’s 
  very primitive in any case, and requires a great deal of maintenance. Few are qualified to do that work. The 
  owners certainly aren’t the sort to do anything that might risk coming into contact with refuse, and the lower 
  classes tend to view an indoor lavatory with only slightly less trepidation than they would an altar for human 
  sacrifice. 
   
  But Lorenzetti is up to the task, and barely a day goes by when he doesn’t have his sleeves rolled up and his 
  arms elbow-deep in crap. 
   
  What he didn’t count on is that the nascent sewer system of Pembrooktonshire has connected to an 
  underworld kingdom ruled by a dragon turtle that commands a vast army of mutant servants. He has heard 
  rumors of a captive myconid princess, but he has not been able to determine exactly where she is being held. 
   
  Gilbert Lumley, Tailor 
  Creating and mending clothing is considered woman’s work in Pembrooktonshire, but Mommy always 
  encouraged Gilbert to do what he was best at. And he was best at the terribly unmanly job of fitting clothing. 
   
  When Gilbert’s mother developed arthritis, their shop began to engage in deceit. Before, Gilbert had been 
  the face of the store and took the measurements, but his mother did the actual work. Afterwards, Gilbert did 
  everything, with his mother playing her part and acting like she was still doing the work. 
   
  Now Gilbert’s mother has died, and keeping up the ruse is more difficult than ever. He has not reported her 
  death, and indeed has found himself rushing to the upstairs workroom and imitating her voice for the 
  reassurance of customers downstairs. People believe the story that Mommy Lumley can no longer walk, and 
  for now they do not seem suspicious. 
   
  But how long can this go on? 
   
  
   
  26
  Eugene Madget, Farmer 
  Eugene is a lonely man in his thirties that spends much of his time growing very tasty rutabagas on his 
  modest tract of land. 
   
  Eugene verbalizes his inner dialogue. There is not a thought that crosses his mind that he doesn’t express. At 
  market he’s often heard to be having conversations with himself: “This apple seems rotten, very rotten. That 
  one looks nice. Ooh, rather soft. I need to find a good selection of apples soon, I need to pee.” Nevermind 
  when he sees an attractive woman. “Oh, I’d certainly like to raise quite a large family with that lassie. Oh 
  wait, she’s got a man already. It would be wonderful if he got run over by a coach.” 
   
  Madget isn’t in any other way mentally deficient. He is a reasonably intelligent man who quickly comes to 
  proper conclusions, but with everybody being privy to all his private and quickly-discarded ‘what-if?’ 
  thoughts, they think he is quite the simpleton at best, and a complete maniac at worst. 
   
  Cain Magellan, Perfumer 
  While Pembrooktonshiretonians bathe far more frequently than is normal in their world, there is still a 
  healthy trade in cosmetics and colognes. Magellan is the most prominent creator and merchant of such 
  things. 
   
  Cain Magellan is completely anosmic, and is unaware of how any of his concoctions actually smell. He 
  creates his fragrances through specific formulas, and then tests the results out in public. He is very aware, 
  through these tests, what elements in what combinations tend to be pleasing and which are not, but because 
  he has no first-hand knowledge, grievous combinations do occur. 
   
  This is complicated by the fact that one of his most well-respected clients is also herself anosmic. One time 
  when circumstances demanded Magellan to present a completely untested fragrance, there was an odd 
  moment of uneasiness as two people unable to smell were looking to the other to confirm whether or not a 
  perfume was pleasant smelling. They came to the mutual conclusion that it was. 
   
  But it wasn’t. It actually smelled like a combination of burning beetles and a trampled skunk. But who was 
  going to tell this lady that she smelled like a carrion crawler’s farts? And wasn’t it natural then that her 
  fragrance, which she was quick to praise, would become a fashion as people wanted to be more like her? 
   
  For awhile half the town reeked like a troglodyte swimming in formaldehyde, but luckily the fad soon 
  passed. Some still cling to the fragrance though… 
   
  Oliver Manley, Ropemaker 
  Poor Manley. He sees craftsman after craftsman become wealthy and gain fame and social status by selling 
  their wares to people outside Pembrooktonshire. But rope is rope, and Manley ropes aren’t any more special 
  than ropes anywhere else. 
   
  But he still does a good job and makes a fair living, so people get annoyed at his bitterness. This in turn 
  makes him more irritable and paranoid, and he has begun to take shortcuts with his work. 
   
  He’s using bonding agents that deteriorate under intense heat for most of his rope these days. He won’t sell 
  that to blacksmiths or the like, but for general rope use, sure, why not? 
   
  But for some reason his rope, when hanging slack, seems to find its way around people’s necks… 
   
  Toliver Maxwell, Exporter 
  Toliver handles most of the work of contacting and arranging the sale of Pembrooktonshire’s goods to the 
  outside world. Given that most of Pembrooktonshire looks down on the outside world, not many people are 
  eager to get in on this action, even if it does make Maxwell very wealthy. And the townsfolk are worried 
  that Maxwell is being corrupted by foreign ways. 
  
   
  27
   
  Maxwell keeps his distance from the outsiders well enough though, keeping in touch and playing the 
  wheeling dealing businessman just well enough to bring in the big money. He does have one little quirk: 
  Whenever he deals with a new client from a new place, he always sends one of his “inventory assessors” to 
  that place to murder a member of the local merchant’s family and bring back a trophy. 
   
  Minerva Meijer, Fashion Model 
  Not many people get to be the physical representation of the feminine ideal, but the fashion community of 
  Pembrooktonshire needs people to model their creations, and Meijer is the best of the bunch. 
   
  She is a wretched, disfigured caricature of a human being. The makeup she has used over the years has 
  permanently dyed her face. Her lower ribs have been broken and re-healed in a manner that constricts her 
  innards and she can no longer eat solid food. The circulation in her feet had been restricted so many times 
  that they had to be amputated, and now she manages to walk in her fashionable boots only because of long 
  practice with the primitive prostheses her employers have financed for her. Her hair has been styled with 
  dangerous chemicals so often that it has fallen out, but the designers say that just putting wigs on her is far 
  simpler anyhow. Her teeth have been removed to give her jaw a smaller bite and to help her lips achieve the 
  perfect expression (models should never open their mouths anyway). 
   
  All in all, corpses that have been in the grave for months look more alive than Minerva does, and this is 
  immediately obvious to any outsider that looks at her (or smells her – she reeks of rot). But due to the 
  consensual perception of reality that Pembrooktonshire has chosen to accept, the locals look at her and see 
  only perfect beauty. 
   
  Oscar Mohl, Laborer 
  Oscar was a man down on his luck who rubbed his rabbit’s foot and wished he could live his life all over 
  again and get it right this time. 
   
  His wish was granted. He’s lived his life thousands of times now, memorizing every detail, trying to figure 
  out what the perfect path to happiness is. He’s even gone on to be a great conqueror in some of his attempts 
  at life, he’s tried his hand at being a vicious murder, and had a go at being the age’s most prolific lover, but 
  in the end he’s decided that being a manual laborer and doing physical jobs around his hometown give him 
  the perfect blend of security and freedom from real responsibility. 
   
  That he knows, from trial and error, exactly how to get what he wants from pretty much everyone he ever 
  meets, only helps his enthusiasm for this simpler life. 
   
  Mohl will involve himself with the PCs only if it benefits him. He can’t be cheated, he can’t be harmed… 
  because this has all happened to him before, and he knows what will happen and how to twist it to his 
  advantage. He will always make a saving throw, always win initiative, never miss a roll, and never be 
  harmed by others’ actions. 
   
  Luckily, he wants to help… for a price. If the PCs have a problem, he’s already researched the answer 
  before they ever meet him. Do they need help in any way? He’s there just in time to give them the aid they 
  need. And they’ll pay up, too. If they didn’t, he’d know from previous experience, and wouldn’t have helped 
  them this time. 
   
  Alexandra Morgan, Schoolmarm 
  Ms. Morgan is the local schoolteacher and the foremost authority on manners and custom in 
  Pembrooktonshire. Courted for her expertise when festivals and important events occur, she is normally not 
  engaged socially as most of the townsfolk believe she takes the rules of social behavior a bit too far. Her 
  interpretations of everything from proper dress to courtship are subjects of discussion all over town amongst 
  adults of parenting age. Older folks are set in their ways, and of course the younger folk don’t care. 
   
  
   
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  Or at least they think they don’t care. Pembrooktonshire youngsters are incredibly better behaved than most 
  children after about age nine or so, directly due to the influence of Ms. Morgan. That family-aged adults 
  seriously debate her opinions is no accident either. 
   
  Some decades ago, when Alexandra was a pre-teen, a local man set off to seek his fortune. This angered Ms. 
  Morgan as she took this to mean that the perfect town of Pembrooktonshire was not good enough for this 
  malcontent. What an insult! When he returned years later with an alien bride, Alexandra was furious and 
  mounted a campaign of social condemnation that drove the couple away into the nearby mountains (another 
  blasphemy – nobody goes into the mountains!). 
   
  She swore such social contamination would never happen again. For decades now she has been the school 
  teacher in Pembrooktonshire, and the prosperity of the town ensures that most children receive at least a 
  basic education. At exam time, Ms. Morgan knows that she has her students’ complete attention and that 
  others would not disturb such intense study time, so she uses her talents at mesmerism to not only impress 
  the real lessons into the children, but make them more susceptible to and place far more importance on 
  tradition and social pressures. Her hypnotism skills are quite weak, and without such a captive audience and 
  an overall environment that supports her intentions, it would never work. But she has both, and so 
  Pembrooktonshire grows more uniform and insular as the years pass by… 
   
  Jasper Moulds, Physician 
  Social influence and pressure is enough to maintain the status quo in Pembrooktonshire, but some are not 
  satisfied with that. One of these is Jasper Moulds, patriarch of one of Pembrooktonshire’s great families. 
   
  A man of science and reason, as he is known, Moulds made his name first as a doctor, but now explores 
  unknown knowledge. His specialty is genetics, genealogy, and philosophy. 
   
  He became interested in the subject after he passed by a commoner that dared look him in the eyes and even 
  wiped his brow in his presence. That it was in the middle of summer and the man was carrying a rather large 
  load of produce on his back is irrelevant; Moulds was deeply offended. 
   
  He has been working hard for a quarter of a century now to prove that the high-born are biologically and 
  spiritually superior to the low-born. His research began, as he feels all meaningful research does, with a 
  question: Why are the great families better than the rest of the population? 
   
  In his studies, he finds the disturbing trend that the lower-born families spread their genetic stuff far wider 
  than the great families do. That this is true because the great families consider far fewer families worthy of 
  consort does not factor into his thinking. “The lower classes must be brought into line!” 
   
  To protect the bloodlines of the upper class, Moulds has proposed a great many solutions. Restricting the 
  breeding of the great families only to other great families was well-received, if not exactly universally 
  practiced (and was an edited version of what Jasper really proposed: enforced incest). His attempt to have all 
  of the lower classes sterilized was a hotly contested issue, defeated only by the lesser members of the lower 
  class asking the question, “Then who would actually do work?” The only reason this was brought up by 
  these people is because they knew the answer would be “Us!” 
   
  Other suggestions he’s come up with (that are always debated but never seriously considered) are 
  unbreachable walls around the great families’ estates (which would make them prisoners while the 
  commoners roamed free), reproduction by the lower classes only by license, and euthanizing any child with 
  any sort of birth defect (such as cleft palate, nearsightedness, red hair, left-handedness, body hair, weighing 
  less than or more than the statistical average, etc). 
   
  Yeah, he’s nuts, but is still considered a serious and influential thinker because of his last name. 
   
  
   
  29
  Drusilla Myklebust, Aged Madame 
  Drusilla is a maker of baby clothes, and as such makes a tolerable living from the lower classes of 
  Pembrooktonshire. She herself is very image- and fashion-conscious, and always takes great pains to look 
  immaculate. She frets over every wrinkle, in both her clothing, and in recent years, her face. What makes 
  aging even more horrible is that she has the means to fix it. 
   
  Whenever Drusilla sleeps with a man, he ages one year and she becomes one year younger. It is an ability 
  she can not control and does not want. But it’s true, and she is very distressed about it. She doesn’t want to 
  get older but doesn’t want to hurt anyone. And she doesn’t want to be alone. 
   
  She has ended up with a horrible reputation. She has the occasional fling, each time with a different man so 
  as to minimize the harm, but what she really ruins her socially is her willingness to throw herself at the rare 
  foreigner who passes through town. She feels no guilt about this. As far as she is concerned, if you’re not 
  from Pembrooktonshire, you’re not a real person. 
   
  Walter Narquin, Farmer 
  The Narquin family’s world was turned upside down when their family was visited by an alien life form. It 
  was short, with stubby legs and a big nose and pointy ears, but spoke in the human language. The Narquin’s 
  youngest son decided to call it “Elf.” 
   
  The creature has a ravenous appetite, and especially enjoys cats. The Narquins have such a time keeping it 
  away from their little Fluffykins… and after the children developed a shine for the weird creature, the family 
  has had a worse time keeping it hidden from the neighbors and the Pembrooktonshiretonian authorities. 
   
  Meanwhile, Elf is wondering who these idiots are that don’t recognize a gnome when they see one. 
   
  Roger Nelthorpe, Tinker 
  Roger is the eldest of one of the great families in Pembrooktonshire, but he was never considered an 
  important member of that family. He married poorly (“selfishly thinking only of love,” as his relatives 
  would say) and pursued his invention of small and useless gadgets. 
   
  Nelthorpe had hoped to create items which would make life easier for everyone, but instead he was treated 
  as an eccentric fool, although he did make a comfortable living making mechanical trinkets for children. 
   
  After his wife died, Roger began experiencing health problems. He began to use his mechanical skills to 
  replace his failing body parts. With the help of several old friends he trusted to keep his secret, he first 
  replaced an eye. Then a knee. Then his liver, one lung, and finally his beating heart. After that, he really got 
  busy improving himself. 
   
  Today Roger Nelthorpe is more machine than man. 
   
  Nicholas O’Shaunnessy, Dungslinger 
  Nicholas is a bitter old man, having been ostracized for decades because his uncle dared to marry a 
  foreigner, bringing great shame to the O’Shaunnessy name and ensuring it will die out. He has always been 
  forced to do the most demeaning jobs usually reserved for young boys looking for a few extra coppers. 
  These days, he gathers manure and spreads it over crop fields. 
   
  Nicholas is actually a member of a sacred order, just as his uncle was. Luckily his profession coincides with 
  his quest: To find the hiding place of the Black One before the Obsidian Tower reappears. Why he’s 
  performing his search by digging through dungpiles in Pembrooktonshire is anyone’s guess. His frustration 
  with life increases but he never realizes that notable entities tend not to hang out in such places. 
   
  
   
  30
  Gavin Old, Gluemaker 
  When an animal dies and can not be eaten, it gets sent to the Old family. Gavin is an expert gluemaker, and 
  guarantees his adhesives for years. 
   
  Of course, his best glue isn’t made from animals at all. He believes that the best glue is made of people – the 
  more noteworthy, the better. So whenever somebody important dies, he spends many nights staking out the 
  burial site, waiting to find a time when nobody’s looking so he can steal the body. 
   
  Many of Pembrooktonshire’s graves and mausoleums are filled instead with animal remains. Old would 
  consider it disrespectful to empty a grave without leaving something in return. In the quite rare occasion that 
  a body is exhumed, this has been used as evidence that the deceased was a witch… sometimes resulting in 
  the burning of some of their still-living relatives. 
   
  Julius Oliphant, Armorer 
  Julius is a middle-aged man, massively built from his many years at the forge. As the years wore on, he 
  found his true talent was making armor and weapons. These days, his work is sought after by wealthy 
  collectors and warriors as the Oliphant name on a sword has been enough to end fights all by itself. 
   
  He is also a radical pacifist. He doesn’t care if the outside world kills itself off so he is happy to supply real 
  arms and armor for foreign sale, but he refuses to sell real tools of war locally. He just doesn’t tell anybody. 
   
  So all of the items for sale in his Pembrooktonshire showroom are exquisitely crafted and beautiful to 
  behold, but they do not stand up to the rigors of battle. Armor loses one point of effectiveness after every 
  attack (not hit) made on the wearer, and his weapons have a -1 damage modifier, cumulative with every hit 
  made. 
   
  Benedict Onions, Junior Priest 
  Onions is the youngest priest at the church in Pembrooktonshire, yet his artistic talent and impeccable 
  calligraphic skills have caused Father Rhydderch to put him in charge of archiving and copying of old texts 
  (presses being considered too vulgar to duplicate holy works). Onions enjoys his duties immensely. 
   
  Benedict is also quite the forger, and is a former employee of the Reuter bookbindery, where he learned the 
  ins and outs of book manufacturing. Onions has been rewriting the chief texts that Rhydderch uses for his 
  sermons one page at a time, and then replacing those pages late at night. The rewritten passages carry the 
  same general meanings as before, but when taken as a whole are beginning to resemble something else 
  altogether… 
   
  Sybil Orhan, Old Crone 
  Scorned by the citizenry and abandoned by her children and grandchildren, Sybil lives off of her meager 
  savings in a small cottage on the outskirts of town. 
   
  She is a bitter, bitter old woman, always talking about the way things used to be, and making the point that 
  things were better back in the day. 
   
  Although no one knows it, she is the one that highlights the real tragedy of Pembrooktonshire. While the 
  town has always been socially rigid and bound by tradition, during Sybil’s lifetime she has seen this true 
  conservatism usurped by self-interested demagogues and the trend-following masses. The traditions that 
  Pembrooktonshire now follows are not the actual traditions that Pembrooktonshire thinks it follows, and 
  nobody knows the difference, or would believe the difference if it was pointed out to them. As Sybil has 
  learned to her ruin. 
   
  Imogen Oxnard, Shepherd 
  Imogen is a middle-aged widow who tends to one of the large herds of roving sheep in the foothills under 
  the great forbidden mountains. Her sons have all moved out on their own, and for some reason she declines 
  
   
  31
  all offers from those interested in buying her property. She even forcefully rebukes those that suggest she 
  could profit more (and work less) by simply selling some of the herd for slaughter rather than keeping the 
  entire herd and just selling the wool. 
   
  Oxnard refuses because some time back, a traveling wizard transformed her husband into a sheep. The 
  wizard was quickly apprehended and executed after some other shenanigans, but Imogen never spoke of her 
  husband’s fate to anyone, and of course immediately lost track of which sheep in the herd is indeed her 
  husband… 
   
  Kenneth Patterson, Undertaker 
  Patterson is the man responsible for preparing the deceased for funerals and then burying the remains. He is 
  a handsome, well-tanned man that has none of the stereotypical gauntness or deathlike peculiarity about 
  him. 
   
  He does have one rather disturbing habit. When the body of a young and attractive female passes through his 
  door, as part of the preparation process he will dress it up and take it out to the lake and dance with it on the 
  shore. So good is his skill at makeup and, well, puppetry, that he has been witnessed doing this and nobody 
  has suspected that he was with a corpse. 
   
  Bartholomew Peacock, Messenger 
  While not the largest city, delivering a message across town can considerably disrupt one’s day. Most 
  wealthy families and businesses have servants they can dispatch to deliver notes. Others don’t. 
   
  And Peacock is there. For a fee, he will take messages to anyone, and prides himself on hand-delivering 
  messages to people even if they do not want to speak to visitors. But he also expects a tip from the people 
  who hire him. 
   
  Those who do not pay the tip will have their messages go undelivered. However, they will not know that, as 
  Peacock is an expert forger, and as part of his service always returns signed delivery forms. He will simply 
  throw the message away, forge the signature and time of day in the hand of the intended recipient, and forget 
  all about it. 
   
  Miranda Peaver, Housewife 
  Mrs. Peaver is an aging woman who is obsessed with the success of her eight children. All boys, they have 
  been groomed since birth to be proper citizens and honor and promote the family name. However, they 
  aren’t the brightest group of lads in the world, and for the talents they do have, they are only human. They’re 
  not perfect. 
   
  Miranda realizes this while at the same time finding it completely unacceptable. She has made it her life to 
  be in all her sons’ business, whether it be professional or personal. If there is a superior rival to one of her 
  boys, she goes out of her way to ruin that person. No deed is too dirty for her to perform if it means her sons 
  will meet with greater success. 
   
  And if it comes to the worst, her father was a chemist, and she knows how to make all sorts of undetectable 
  poisons. Funny how half her sons’ first wives all died suddenly. Just like some of their more accomplished 
  classmates back in school… 
   
  Jefferson Pembrook, Cooper 
  As a descendent of Pembrooktonshire’s founder, Jefferson finds himself often asked for advice from all 
  corners, on all subjects. And he’s not even yet a middle-aged man! He tries hard to give good advice, and is 
  as helpful around town as he can be. 
   
  
   
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  The one thing that Pembrook can’t deal with very well is numbers. He’s not stupid, but keeping his attention 
  span focused on mathematics and counting is painfully difficult for him. He’s hired a young man to deal 
  with his business affairs so as to keep himself out of the poorhouse. 
   
  He never lets anyone watch him work, and seems anxious whenever someone makes a large order. For some 
  reason every thousandth barrel he makes is a gate to some infernal netherworld, and gremlins pour out of the 
  newly completed barrel until he can manage to smash the thing and close the gate. 
   
  Samuel Pfaff, Buttonmaker 
  Pfaff (the p is not silent) is a hypochondriac of the first order. But he thinks he is mentally ill. Which he is, 
  but not in the manner he believes. 
   
  His trouble started when a highborn gentleman was so pleased with the buttons made for his new suit that he 
  invited Pfaff over for tea. While conversing, business came up, and Pfaff was left alone in the sitting room, 
  and started paging through some of the books on the shelf. There he came across a copy of A Catalog of 
  Maladies of Perverts, Lunatics, and Maniacs. 
   
  Not understanding how things work, Pfaff believes one catches a mental illness the same way one would a 
  cold (foul vapors, of course!), and that they pass in the same way a rash might. So every couple of weeks he 
  believes he has a new mental disorder, and acts out in order to be treated for his condition. 
   
  A major problem is that there is no one in Pembrooktonshire who even recognizes the concept of “mental 
  illness.” Pfaff’s host only had that book to look up dirty words in the “Pervert” sections. So when Samuel 
  decides to have a split personality, or go catatonic, or become psychotic, the response is the same. 
  Somebody cracks him over the head but good, and he gets thrown in the stocks until somebody gets tired of 
  his wailing. 
   
  Reuben Pontier, Plague Inspector 
  There is much the social machine of Pembrooktonshire can do, but one thing it cannot is shame disease into 
  avoiding town. As many are aware of this (even though they think something must be done!), the current 
  thinking is having someone whose sole job it is to be a lookout for disease. 
   
  Pontier is the current Plague Inspector, and as such he has full authority to inspect any person or animal at 
  any time. Usually he is positioned in the market square and when someone sniffles or coughs, he is there 
  demanding to see their tonsils and checking for buboes. He is also authorized to enter any building at any 
  time without permission, as long as the owner is present. 
   
  In all, he does provide a valuable service and has detected health problems early, even if he has never 
  detected plague. 
   
  But power corrupts, and Pontier frequently uses his power to demand humiliating strip searches and home 
  searches of a very disruptive nature if someone displeases (as in, refuses to stroke his ego) him.  
   
  Maximilian Pratt, Scarecrow 
  Pratt makes his living as an exterminator, killing rats and insects in town and dealing with rodents and crows 
  out on the farms. 
   
  In recent years he has taken to dressing up like a scarecrow while advertising and performing his work. 
   
  Most people assume it’s a publicity gimmick, but the truth is Pratt is growing straw instead of body hair (he 
  keeps his head and face shaved) and this is his way of keeping that covered up. 
   
  
   
  33
  Roger Peter, Carpenter 
  Peter is a well-liked, average sort of family man, but he’s got a complete inability to care for plants and 
  jokes that they die in his presence. He thinks that’s a joke, but plants can not survive in his presence for 
  more than a couple of days. His parents’ farm, on a good tract of land, immediately failed when Roger 
  became old enough to run and play in the fields. His wife keeps no garden, so this has not been an issue for 
  some years. 
   
  Felix Quaif, Farmer 
  Pembrooktonshire is in the ideal location. It is nestled in a mountain valley but there is enough space in that 
  valley to support many farms. Quaif’s corn farm is one of the more productive agricultural enterprises in the 
  area. 
   
  Several months ago, after a meteor shower, Quaif found an odd plant growing in his fields. It refused to be 
  pulled out of the ground, and Quaif was trying to figure out how to get it out of his field when he saw it 
  capture and devour two passing rabbits. Quaif decided there might be money in this thing and decided to see 
  how big it would grow. It is now ten feet tall when standing fully erect, and Felix is feeding it whole lambs. 
   
  And now it has started talking to him… 
   
  Basil Quedgely, Scribe 
  Quedgely, part of one of the great families of Pembrooktonshire, has for fifty years been the official scribe 
  of the town. It is his job to record the arguments and results of criminal proceedings, record and file arrests, 
  marriages, divorces, property acquisitions, and town council meetings and legislation. 
   
  About forty years ago he became utterly bored with his work. He always wanted to be a great writer, not a 
  simple recorder of events. So he stopped worrying about accuracy and began writing creatively. Every 
  criminal incident, from juvenile vandalism to improperly marked stalls in the market square, becomes part 
  of a greater criminal conspiracy. Every simple trial becomes a courtroom drama. Every marriage begins (and 
  ends) with a torrid affair. Every business transaction recorded here is a result of backroom wheeling and 
  dealing. Every town council matter, from the lamplighter’s pay to the fee to use a public garden, becomes a 
  struggle for absolute supremacy between rival factions. 
   
  A Quedgely or not, if anybody ever bothered to read the town records, Basil would be quickly and forever 
  silenced. Because even though he thinks he’s making all of this up… he’s accurately recording the truth of 
  all these matters. 
   
  Charlotte Quessy, Harlot 
  Charlotte might be the most naïve woman alive. For twenty of her forty years she has been a prostitute, and 
  is waiting for her dream man to find her and take her away from this miserable life. 
   
  Unfortunately, she has become so desperate that she believes every client just might be her dream man, and 
  so falls in love with everyone that passes through her door. This is even more so for repeat customers. And 
  yet more intense for foreigners (which doesn’t improve her standing with the locals any…). 
   
  Penelope Rambottom, Housewife 
  Penelope is absolutely disgusted with how women are disrespected and disregarded in Pembrooktonshire, 
  and she has decided to do something about it! She has formed the Honorable Organization for Maidenly 
  Emancipation. 
   
  HOME seeks to educate the population about the role of women in society. Of course HOME is horrified 
  that women walk the streets unchaperoned, of course HOME is horrified that women speak when they are 
  not first spoken to, of course HOME is horrified when a woman seeks to do a man’s work and earn money 
  instead of keeping a proper household. 
   
  
   
  34
  Of course HOME is in competition with all of the “proper women’s leagues” to be the most influential and 
  respected in town. The feuds and rivalries are vicious. 
   
  And of course all of HOME’s pronouncements and public business is conducted by the members’ husbands, 
  as it would not be a good example for the wives to be protesting or being seen as independent activists. 
   
  Cecil Ranahan, Nailer 
  A lot of construction happens in and around Pembrooktonshire, and the load of constantly making nails 
  wore heavy on the established blacksmiths’ time, so one apprentice decided to open his own forge and 
  specialize in making nails. 
   
  He makes a decent living and is raising a respectable family. 
   
  Except for their cat. Their cat is a bastard. Literally. Pet genealogy is kept track of as strictly as human 
  family trees in Pembrooktonshire, and to own a cat of low, or unknown, breeding is considered very low-
  class. 
   
  But Cecil won’t get rid of it. He’s found that he has gained eight of the cat’s nine lives. And he’s used four 
  of them up already. Or is it five? And what will happen to Cecil if the cat’s only life ends? 
   
  Clarence Ravensdale, Tax Assessor 
  As part of one of the great families of Pembrooktonshire, Clarence is the ultimate political appointee. He is 
  the town’s tax assessor, and in some ways the most feared man in town. He also has a crippling case of 
  dyscalculia. 
   
  Because of this, he does not care about financial records or taxation history or even monetary tax payments. 
  He has decided that all taxes shall be paid in heads of livestock. He has set up three pens on the outskirts of 
  town. People listed as “poor” must fill up the small pen with livestock. “Freemen” must fill up the medium 
  pen. “Gentlemen” and “Ladies” must fill up the large pen. One’s status is determined by how impressive-
  looking Ravensdale deems one’s home. 
   
  All of the great families are somehow classified as “poor.” Clarence’s explanation? “Those houses are much 
  too big for my liking. They would take forever to clean.” 
   
  Tobias Reuter, Author 
  Tobias is a greatly respected author and founder of the Reuter press and bookbindery. Now in his 80s, he 
  lives just outside of town in a large villa. It was his dream to move the Reuter family up to the level of the 
  great families of Pembrooktonshire, but it was not to be. And Tobias is livid. 
   
  The reason the family never ascended is because his son, Kurt, married downward, and when he took over 
  the press he opened up commissions to foreigners, thus encouraging the Reuter family to be exposed to all 
  sorts of alien thought (foreign-penned works are officially banned for sale within the town). Only Tobias’ 
  reputation protected the family, but their chances of being important as a whole have passed. 
   
  Reuter’s own claim to fame is his book On Paper As On Stone, which was the first book printed on his 
  press. It is completely self-serving, promoting the printed book as being authoritative just by virtue of being 
  printed, and carrying far more weight than a spoken argument. This led to many wanting to have their 
  thoughts published, which of course would have resulted in many divergent views being printed, which 
  would have ruined the perceived authority of the written word and given voice to too many unimportant and 
  unconnected people in town. Reuter revised his famous tome to include qualifications for print, which 
  includes sponsorship by a member of the great families of the town. This was Reuter’s bid to greatness; the 
  original printing had been a scandal precisely because Tobias was of the common folk and the great 
  families’ stranglehold on influence was threatened. 
   
  
   
  35
  But instead of being the revolutionary that would have transformed Pembrooktonshire, Tobias threw his lot 
  in with tradition and the great families, and even today is more loyal to them than to his son and son’s family 
  who he considers to have destroyed the Reuter name. 
   
  Georgine Revesby, Wealthy Procuress 
  Revesby is a social crusader and a moral standard in Pembrooktonshire, often giving public speeches about 
  the importance of clean living. Of particular importance to her is the purity of young women, and has been 
  the loudest voice in a generation calling for chastity in social life. 
   
  Her efforts have made it extremely unfashionable, barring exceptional situations (or personalities) to engage 
  in or discuss physical relations, even so much as a kiss on the cheek. Many families feel so guilty about their 
  carnal urges that married couples go for years without touching each other “improperly.” This has also 
  created something of a sexual counter-culture as well as a general “what we do in private is far different than 
  what we say in public” repression. Revesby loves this because it continues to give her crusade ammunition 
  and relevance in public life. 
   
  She also loves it because she is the most ruthless pimp in Pembrooktonshire and does her best to corner the 
  market for her girls. 
   
  Gemma Rouleau, Dancer 
  The fine arts are as appreciated by the upper class of Pembrooktonshire as they could possibly be in a 
  culture which detests outside influence. In addition to the more usual plastic arts, the performing arts are 
  well thought-of, and command enough of a fee at public and private functions that accomplished performers 
  can spend weeks or months between performances simply preparing for the next one. 
   
  Gemma was a beautiful young woman, extremely graceful and unbelievably flexible. Her performances left 
  audiences speechless. Then one day at rehearsal she had a bad spill and suffered a spinal injury. Unable to 
  turn her head, or lift her arms over her head, or bend at the waist, she decided that her next performance 
  must go on anyhow and then figured that would be it. She stayed in seclusion for months, depressed all the 
  while and gaining weight. 
   
  It was a private function and the hostess had hyped the dance performance so much (she had insisted on 
  seeing an early rehearsal) that the guests dared not do anything else than raucously applaud as this 
  uncomfortably plump woman in a leotard simply wiggling slightly and dipping at the knees every so often. 
  Unnerved at the positive response, Rouleau declared this was her “Interpretation of the Struggle of Honor,” 
  and became an instant sensation. 
   
  Her health isn’t getting any better, her waistline isn’t getting any smaller, but for all big occasions it is now 
  almost mandatory to hire Gemma to perform her sensational new dance. And the style is catching on. 
   
  Randolph Sabouin, Puppeteer 
  Sabouin is an insane, insane man. He creates puppets and performs delightful shows for young and old alike, 
  but when the curtain is drawn, Sabouin retreats to his rented room above a shopfront and goes to war. 
   
  He believes his puppets are alive and pressure him to commit crimes and be socially unacceptable. He is 
  resisting their more hellish suggestions, but finds himself succumbing to the simpler mischief just to placate 
  them. 
   
  He’s tried to destroy some of the puppets, but this hurts his business as the most popular puppets to the 
  crowd are the ones that are most fervently pressuring him. He’s had to re-make them. 
   
  But Sabouin’s puppets are not at all evil, and they do not encourage evil. However, the meaning of right and 
  wrong in Pembrooktonshire is different than in most of the world, and puppets trying to convince someone 
  to promote an egalitarian, free society will be seen as quite wicked indeed. 
  
   
  36
   
  Neville Savage, Chastity Beltmaker 
  Propriety and decency is important in Pembrooktonshire, so much so that the chastity belt is an important 
  device in society. Proper gentlemen expect to see such a device on their wedding night, and Savage is the 
  man trusted to make these all-important items. 
   
  The Pembrooktonshire style of chastity belt is soft but tough leather which covers not only the groin but the 
  torso area as well, as a corset. They are sophisticated enough to prevent interference with bodily functions 
  but will not open without compromising the integrity of the belt itself. 
   
  They are fitted when a woman is 17. Savage keeps all specifications on file, and so if a belt is opened for 
  legitimate reasons (medical procedure, baths) with duly respected witnesses, he will fashion a new one to the 
  new specifications. 
   
  Under no circumstances will he construct a new belt for someone without witnessed and confirmed 
  legitimate reasons for the breaking or removal of the old one (and he has been offered vast fortunes to do so, 
  but always refused), nor will he make an individual’s belt to any other specification than the original 
  measured when the recipient was 17. He does not condone a gluttonous lifestyle! 
   
  Gabriel Silverdale, Standard Master 
  Every family wants their standard to be the most impressive in town. Only a few can afford the artists skilled 
  enough to achieve this. Moreover, every standard must be approved by the town’s Standard Master. 
   
  Originally intended to simply forbid the registration of continuous new standards by families (keeping up 
  appearances is such a full-time job after all, and the Joneses just got themselves a new crest…!), bribery and 
  utter lack of taste have reduced the office to simply collecting fees and rejecting scandalous crest 
  applications. 
   
  Silverdale amuses himself by accepting fees and then rejecting applications for no good reason, but 
  “suggesting” changes that would allow a resubmission to be approved. He doesn’t attempt this with anyone 
  truly influential, or families that truly can’t afford it, but that middle class is ripe for fun. 
   
  Thus, many middle-families have quite odd crests featuring donkey rear-ends, tadpoles, three-legged dogs, 
  pink posies, and psychedelic color schemes. 
   
  Morris Simons, Bard 
  Morris makes his living composing great musical works for great orchestras in larger cities, but around town 
  he’s known as the minstrel who performs down at the Good Shepherd. He’s a young man for his abilities, 
  merely in his mid-thirties, but he has an old haggard look about him. Sometimes it seems like he’s staring at 
  things that aren’t there. His performances always draw a crowd because people never know how he’s going 
  to act. 
   
  You see, when Morris plays an instrument, and it doesn’t matter if it’s his lute, a violin, his mandolin, or 
  even his prized dragonskin drum, he sometimes travels through time. There seems to be no pattern, no way 
  to predict when or if it will happen. When he does time travel, he always appears in the midst of other 
  performing musicians, sometimes in rehearsal, sometimes in performance, and a few times, on live 
  television. Because he’s never playing the same thing the others are, the performance breaks down 
  immediately, and when Simons stops playing, he is instantly transported back to his own time at the same 
  moment he left; onlookers don’t even notice that he’d gone. And that’s the moment his performances 
  become eccentric and interesting. 
   
  Jonathan Smith, Cowboy 
  Every morning, Jonathan Smith straps on his chaps, dons his ten-gallon hat, picks up his lasso, and saddles 
  up his horse for another day of cattle rustling out in the fields.  
  
   
  37
   
  Jonathan Smith feels paranoid, alone, and cut off from the world. He believes himself to be an unlikable 
  freak, unable to fully participate in society. 
   
  This is because Jonathan Smith is the only sane, honorable, honest, normal person in Pembrooktonshire. 
   
  Bianca Snoddy, Dollmaker 
  Bianca is a dollmaker without peer. Whether it’s lifelike girly dolls, tough and durable wooden soldiers for 
  the boys, or even a simple teddy for any small child, Snoddy can make it, and quickly. 
   
  Bianca is especially proud of her porcelain dolls, and these special pieces she spends many weeks 
  perfecting. She gives strict instructions to the buyers that these are to be treated with respect and are not 
  meant to be thrown around by a careless child. 
   
  To protect these creations, she places a live adder in the body cavity, drugged with a special poison that 
  slows its metabolism to a crawl until again exposed to open air. If it is broken, out comes the adder to bite 
  whoever is nearby. 
   
  Leonard Snow, Barrister 
  The law in Pembrooktonshire is not very well placed in precedent or even decree. It is for the most part 
  determined by fashion and public opinion. And fashion and public opinion are largely determined by the 
  important people in town. Whatever wouldn’t cause a riot is allowable. 
   
  Thus legal counsels are not so much experts in law as much as experts in rhetoric and marketing. 
   
  Belonging to one of Pembrooktonshire’s great families and being trained as a lawyer means Leonard creates 
  law as much as he argues it. Merely hiring Snow as one’s attorney is usually enough to settle a matter, as 
  one so respectable would never represent a client who isn’t correct, and arguing with the man would be so 
  gauche. 
   
  Legal battles between proper litigants are often introduced, fought, and decided in secret, with the public 
  revealing of the dispute, complete with the announcements of the legal counsel, being the end result after a 
  settlement is reached. 
   
  Alisa Somerbaker, Child 
  Alisa is a farmer’s daughter, not yet eight years of age. She is something of a rough and tumble tomboy, and 
  has whupped quite a few of the male children while “playing.” 
   
  She has told a number of other children that a necklace she found in the fields holds great power, and that if 
  the other children don’t obey her every command, a great demon will come forth and eat them. The children 
  thus far believe her, and their odd behavior in serving Somerbaker has caused their parents to be worried. 
  None have yet taken any action, wondering if it’s just children being children. 
   
  But the amulet does contain a demon, and if Alisa were to summon it, it would eat the children. Her, too. 
   
  Christopher Sparrow, Child 
  Christopher Sparrow is the leader of a wild gang of six-year-old farmer youths. They roam the countryside 
  (never straying too close to the mountains, of course) looking for trouble. 
   
  One time, Sparrow was wandering alone and came across a curious meeting of a small brown bear, a bunny, 
  a pig, an owl, and a small tiger. Enraged by this obvious pagan sorcery, he gathered his friends and stoned 
  the offending animals to death. 
   
  
   
  38
  Since then he and his gang have similarly disposed of three pigs living in houses as men, a large white rabbit 
  that nearly escaped down a hole, a pig that seemed to spin webs as if a spider, and a broadsword-wielding 
  duck. 
   
  He and they are now constantly on the lookout for animals that do not seem as animals. 
   
  Lucius Sprockling, Casino Boss 
  Of course there’s a casino in Pembrooktonshire. With so many idle rich, why wouldn’t there be? And 
  Sprockling is the man who needs to make sure everything runs correctly. 
   
  In addition to dealing with movers and shakers who believe the mere utterance of the words, “I want to 
  win,” should be enough to make it so, and commoners spending their literal last silver hoping to win big, 
  Sprockling has to deal with the fact that the odds are preternaturally fluid in his casino. 
   
  Card decks which are witnessed as being legitimate full decks somehow become stacked during play. 
  Roulette wheels, painstakingly tested for balance, become fixed. And there doesn’t seem to be anything that 
  anyone can do about it. Sprockling even arranged an after hours all-nude card game, just to prove there is no 
  cheating going on, and the cards still went all wonky. 
   
  If the customers were getting rich, Sprockling would hardly be concerned. But the problem is all of the 
  shenanigans happen in favor of the house. He can’t give money away with his games, and he’s tried. The 
  gentlemen are getting angry. Sprockling is running out of time. 
   
  Percival St. John, Landlord 
  As a member of one of the foremost families of Pembrooktonshire, and wealthy due to being one of the 
  largest landlords in town, St. John has the money to pursue his odd tastes and the status to not be publicly 
  castigated for doing so. 
   
  In recent months St. John has taken to sleeping all day and only being seen at night. Never a well-tanned 
  man, he has taken on a cadaverous complexion. He goes for long walks at night, but prefers only his own 
  company and will duck down alleys and generally flee rather than pass by someone on the street. 
   
  His new schedule also means he never shows up at church, and this more than anything else has gotten 
  people talking. He is unpopular with his tenants around town, and their talk of him being a “bloodsucker” is 
  being taken literally by those just now becoming interested in the situation. 
   
  There is nothing supernatural about St. John; he’s simply eccentric. But the rumors are spreading, and more 
  and more people are convinced he is indeed a creature of the night. It’s only a matter of time before 
  someone takes action… or hires someone else to do so. 
   
  Nathaniel Stallone, Farmer 
  Slopping the pigs and plowing the fields isn’t the most thrilling or easy-going work on Earth, but Nathaniel 
  is glad to do it. He loves the fact that he can make things grow and that even if nobody was interested in his 
  produce, he and his family would be completely self-sufficient. 
   
  Stallone just can’t seem to keep money in his pocket. Every time he has a few coins, they disappear. There is 
  not one copper to be found in his home. Whenever he goes into town, people around him seem to lose their 
  wallets and coin purses as well. Many a time has Stallone been accused of theft. 
   
  But Stallone never has the money, and at this point, after many searches, everyone is aware that there is 
  never any coin in his home. Merchants can attest to the fact that he never buys anything with coin, either. 
   
  Money just disappears from around the man. 
   
  
   
  39
  Virginia Stark, Rich Panderer 
  As the matriarch of one of Pembrooktonshire’s great families, Stark wields great power about town. But she 
  is a bitter, bitter woman. Years ago, she caught her husband with another woman (not even doing 
  anything… just conversing with another woman, completely innocently). The story she told is that he 
  humiliated her and ran off with the woman to foreign lands (a sure way to get the townsfolk to consider 
  them scum!). The truth is, they are buried in the town’s largest park. 
   
  Ever since, Virginia has been resentful of happy relationships and downright hateful towards men. Stark 
  expresses this by playing matchmaker with the town’s married folk, carefully selecting combinations she 
  believes will lead to affairs and then exposing those affairs once they happen. 
   
  This has given her a reputation as a moral defender of decency in the town and only increases her status. 
   
  Edwina Strokes, Great Dame 
  The eldest member of the great Strokes family, Edwina is famously unmarried and even more famously 
  claims to be a virgin. 
   
  She is over 90 years old, and makes frequent pronouncements concerning the improper behavior of couples 
  in Pembrooktonshire. In recent times, she has decided to give something back to the community: Its 
  decency. 
   
  She has created the Honor Society, an organization committed to recruiting young (under-10) girls and 
  having them commit to doing the right thing – promising to not soil their bodies or dignity. Girls in the 
  honor society must pledge to remain a virgin not only after marriage, but they must wait until their husband 
  has given them a child first. 
   
  Because Strokes has so much social clout, and because the truth about such things is not spoken of in polite 
  company, nobody has spoken up to reveal the flaw with this scheme. The original Honor Society girls are 
  now in their mid-20s, and while many do drop out of the program, many are so image-conscious and enjoy 
  the prestige that goes along with being an adult member of this group that they keep their promise, and wait. 
   
  And wait. 
   
  And wait. 
   
  Octavia Teixeira, Princess 
  Her father deposed and her family put to the sword by the invading forces, Octavia fled her life of luxury, 
  and ended up in Pembrooktonshire. She’s confident that nobody will ever find her here and approves of the 
  rather rigid social structure of the town. 
   
  She creates a problem for the populace. She is a foreigner, but she is of noble blood. Out of respect for 
  someone that is truly not a commoner, she has been given her own modest household, with sponsors 
  donating servants. It is expected that she invest in (not actually work at) a trade to provide a future income. 
   
  However, she spends all of her time simply making demands and ordering her servants around. No reason 
  she should change her behavior because she’s in a new area, right? The Pembrooktonshiretonians constantly 
  seek audiences with her to get advice about various matters, which she gladly provides. 
   
  She thinks they are deferring to her noble blood. She doesn’t realize that they are treating her like a 
  curiosity, or a zoo exhibition, and show up to laugh at the advice given by an ignorant foreigner. 
   
  
   
  40
  Portia Tissit, Milkmaid 
  Portia is a popular young lady who lives and works on one of Pembrooktonshire’s many outlying farms. 
  Otherwise a plain looking girl aside from her rather buxom figure, Portia has recently begun avoiding her 
  suitors, and social life in general, to spend almost all of her time working. Even at the oddest hours. 
   
  The thing is, it’s not the cows that Portia is milking. 
   
  Sylvester Tither, Potter 
  Sylvester is one of the unnoticed and unheralded craftsmen of Pembrooktonshire. He creates simple work 
  intended to be used by normal working folks, and is not interested in reputations abroad or becoming a 
  celebrity in town. 
   
  Tither is the most intelligent, albeit not formally educated, man in Pembrooktonshire. His advice is always 
  good, his reflections thoughtful. Unfortunately he has a complete inability to speak clearly, and his vocal 
  manners are identical to those of a retarded child. Even his wife thinks he’s an idiot. 
   
  Herbert Umpleberry, Fruit Farmer 
  Umpleberry tends to the orchards on his property, harvesting great numbers of apples and pears every year. 
  The majority of these are used to make cider which is famous across the realm. 
   
  Herbert has a special ingredient he uses to give his cider apples that little something extra. In his garden, he 
  also farms an odd species of worms, and makes sure that all of his cider fruit have one of these worms living 
  in it before it is scratted. It gives the fruit a tangy flavor unique to Umpleberry Cider. 
   
  Being a worm wrangler is probably not the easiest job in the world. He has to keep it secret, else his 
  customers become disgusted. And the little purple bastards keep escaping the worm corral he built into his 
  home garden and burrowing away into the ground… 
   
  Vernon Vallancourt, Artist 
  Vernon is a young artisan more interested in making people happy than in creating great works. He spends 
  most of his days doing sketches of people for small sums in the market square. He does do some more 
  lucrative private commissions too. 
   
  Vernon’s paints are personally made using an odd combination of berries and liquids found in the immediate 
  area. Somehow, he has managed to unwittingly create a potent magical effect: Any living creature he depicts 
  in a portrait has its soul sucked out of its body and trapped into the painting. 
   
  Vallancourt doesn’t realize this, and this isn’t the sort of thing Pembrookshiretonians would notice. 
   
  Roland Valmore, Child 
  Roland is a farmer’s 8 year old child that believes with all his heart that on All Hallows Eve, a great spirit 
  appears in the pumpkin patch and gives children a present. 
   
  Since believing this, Valmore has not been able to convince any of his friends to stay with him in the 
  pumpkin patch and wait for the great spirit. They tease him mercilessly about it, and even adults have heard 
  about the kid’s obsession. 
   
  This year will be different. Roland has begun to read Suspicion as Proof, and has passed on some of its ideas 
  to the other children. Now scared to believe Roland wrong, Charles, Lucille, Patricia, and Sallyann plan to 
  accompany Roland to the pumpkin patch this year. 
   
  At that time they will learn that Valmore has been telling the truth. The spirit will appear, as it has every 
  year, and grant a wish to Roland, as it has every year. And this year Roland will wish for the demise of the 
  cruel people that have teased him for years when he was telling the truth. 
  
   
  41
   
  Margaret van Mook, Typical Streetwalker 
  Margaret is an everywoman, having just typical enough features to be seen as neither ugly nor beautiful and 
  being able to blend into a crowd. When on the make, Margaret dresses in typical streetwalker dress. 
   
  But when out of costume, nobody seems to recognize her. Oddly, people only seem to remember her by 
  what she wears. When in a new outfit, she just seems vaguely familiar. “I’ve seen her someplace before… 
  but where?” 
   
  She milks this for everything it is worth. 
   
  Henry Waxman, Baker 
  Every day, Henry Waxman opens his bakery and presents the morning’s efforts. And every day the people 
  in the Market Square of Pembrooktonshire remark just how amazing Waxman’s bread and pastries are. 
   
  He also doubles as something of a marriage counselor for the local church. It seems that when he is around, 
  people don’t fight. Ever. He isn’t allowed around the field for the Great Games because it was discovered 
  that the contestants felt “too embarrassed” to compete in front of him. 
   
  Sylvia Wayne, Child 
  Sylvia is a six year old child that is terrified of the dark. Her father, a mid-level merchant, often takes her 
  into caves that line the foothills around town and leaves her there in the dark. “To build character so you 
  won’t be scared of anything when you grow up.” 
   
  She used to cry and scream as the bats flapped around her and tugged her hair and scratched at her face. 
  Then one day the Constable heard her and came to help. 
   
  Sylvia’s father came upon the scene as Constable Stark was carrying her out of the cave. Believing he was 
  kidnapping her, Mr. Wayne beat Stark to death with a cane and buried the body in the cave. 
   
  He told Sylvia that if she ever cries again when placed in the cave, Constable Stark will rise from the dead 
  and eat her. Sylvia now stays very, very quiet at all times. 
   
  Millicent Wellesley, Saucy Tart 
  Millicent is an apple-picker and a favorite of the rebellious young men of the town. She never shirks her 
  duties, but she also makes sure her free time is always taken. 
   
  Whenever she sleeps with a different man, she attracts a fly which then follows her around. If the fly is 
  killed or otherwise greatly removed, it is soon replaced by another. 
   
  She’s got quite a swarm, but believes that the city itself is just becoming more infested. 
   
  Matthew Weyhofen, Gardener 
  A luxurious frontage is a must if one is to be well thought-of in Pembrooktonshire, and nobody provides 
  better than Matthew Weyhofen. 
   
  He is a master of arrangements and plant care, and nobody else in town can make flowers bloom so 
  vibrantly, or grass grow quite so green. And like most masters of his craft, he guards his secrets carefully, 
  and often works only in the dead of night. 
   
  The truth is, while Weyhofen does have an excellent eye for garden arrangements, he doesn’t know the first 
  thing about actual plant care. The one thing he does know is that he is the best fertilizer he’s ever heard of. 
  Anything made of him, or cast off of him, makes plants grow like mad. Hair, flakes of skin or dandruff, snot, 
  urine, feces, other bodily fluids, all make plants grow quite quickly. 
  
   
  42
   
  He learned early on that people don’t take kindly to him pissing (or worse… or much worse) on their plants, 
  so he prepares his “secret formulas” in private, and so increases the mystique of his work when odd looking 
  and smelling “chemicals” are poured and sprayed out of bottles on the plants. 
   
  He has made out a will stating he wishes to be buried with acorns in his grave, and he figures the biggest, 
  fastest growing tree ever will sprout from his grave as a fitting monument to his life. 
   
  He is scared of what would happen if he is ever with a woman, so he has avoided this situation so far. But 
  it’s only a matter of time before someone of his talent and renown is going to be socially pressured into 
  marriage… 
   
  Rachel Whispers, Landowner 
  Whispers is a comely young widow, just twenty-three years of age. She now runs the decently-sized apple 
  tree orchard that’s been owned by her husband’s family for generations. She’s an able administrator and a 
  kind employer. 
   
  Rachel Whispers is scared to death. She became convinced that her husband’s death from falling from a 
  ladder was no accident, and she came to believe their three year old son was responsible. She came to 
  believe he was possessed by a demon. On one stormy night, when she was struggling with the decision to 
  turn him over to the priests, the child said something particularly blasphemous and in a fit of pure terror she 
  killed her only child. Her panic only increased as she realized what she’d done as the boy’s dead, innocent 
  face stared up blankly at her. 
   
  Knowing this would mean she would go to the gallows, Whispers brought the body to her secret basement to 
  give herself time to think about what to do next. To her horror, when she woke up the next morning, she 
  found her son playing in the front yard, talking to the neighbors. Firmly convinced of his diabolic nature, she 
  killed him again when he came inside and brought the body down to the basement, no longer troubled by 
  guilt. 
   
  But every morning, there the child is, laughing, playing, being seen by the neighbors. And every late 
  morning, she brains him with a cast iron frying pan, or a piece of furniture, or perhaps even stabs him with a 
  large knife. The ways she kills her son seem to be different every day. But nothing stops him from being 
  alive and happy the next day. 
   
  And Rachel’s basement is getting full… 
   
  Katrina Wilberforce, Housewife 
  Have you ever regretted a decision that you made so much that you believe your entire life would be 
  different if you had just made a different choice? 
   
  Katrina sure does. She married her high school sweetheart instead of the man who had a more respectable 
  name. So for her entire adult life she’s had love, caring, respect, but not a lot of influence. She hates it. 
   
  And she did something about it. Her husband is a farmer and works ridiculous hours all day to help the 
  family get ahead. The man she thinks she should have married works long into the night in order to maintain 
  his lavish lifestyle. Katrina has decided she’s going to marry that other man as well. So she sneaks out while 
  her husband is at work to spend time with the wealthier man, who believes her to be newly divorced. 
   
  She is exhausted and now flinches at shadows as she is scared her deceptions will be revealed, but is 
  managing to keep up her double life. 
   
  
   
  43
  Julianne Wilcox, Maskmaker 
  Pembrooktonshire has far more than its fair share of wealthy citizens, and one thing the upper class enjoys 
  more than anything else is the quarterly masquerade ball. 
   
  Wilcox makes a fine living, as it is considered very low-class to wear the same mask twice, and everyone 
  demands masks custom-made to express their individual tastes and to impress everyone else. 
   
  Wilcox’s masks completely and totally conceal the true identity of whoever is wearing the mask, no matter 
  how small or flimsy the mask is… provided that there are at least nine other Wilcox masks being worn in the 
  immediate vicinity.  
   
  Henriette Woolcombe, Housewife Activist 
  Woolcombe is not just the stereotype of a nagging wife. No, she is so much more. She has been brought up 
  to believe in the traditions of Pembrooktonshire and she is always vigilant against aberrant behavior. She has 
  a large collection of books written in the past few decades and has compiled an extensive cross-reference of 
  details about what the “proper” social customs are. And she has perfect recall and a willingness to verbally 
  assault others who aren’t measuring up to what her research says should be the standards. 
   
  You know the expression “More catholic than the Pope”? Woolcombe is the type of person that would claim 
  the Pope isn’t even catholic for a variety of unimportant reasons. 
   
  Benedict Wroxley, Sly Pimp 
  Wroxley is a revolutionary. He believes that Pembrooktonshire’s overall moral stance is unhealthy for its 
  people and wants the citizens to just relax and have more fun. 
   
  His solution to the problem is to charm some young women into entering the glamorous life of prostitution, 
  where everyone likes them, they get paid for doing something they enjoy, and everyone lives happily ever 
  after. 
   
  He’s such a personable young man that he has actually got a few lasses believing this. He’s just saving up 
  for a storefront. 
   
  He has no clue. 
   
  Arthur Wyndham, Vintner 
  Wyndham Apple Wine is the most famous of the Pembrooktonshire wines, and Arthur Wyndham is the head 
  of this great family. 
   
  In addition to overseeing the running of his business and administering to the great apple orchards his family 
  owns, Wyndham is also a social activist who despises the more free and “irresponsible” lifestyle of the 
  Pembrooktonshire youth. He declares this a “foreign influence” and seeks to eradicate it. 
   
  His method of doing so is to codify exactly what it means to be a Pembrooktonshiretonian, and actively 
  campaign against behavior and circumstances not included in his definitions. He has published many books 
  and pamphlets on the subject, and recently he has been hinting about a list of twenty-eight “secret 
  foreigners” who have been seeking to undermine the moral fabric of Pembrooktonshire youth. This has 
  created a keen interest in genealogy, as close family bonds and a dedicated interest to family history is 
  indeed a cornerstone of Pembrooktonshire citizenry… at least it is now, according to Wyndham’s 
  declarations. 
   
  In truth, Wyndham’s writing is very contradictory, and nobody, nobody, could possibly live up to the 
  standards as described in the numerous long, rambling, poorly-written volumes that Arthur has produced. 
  Anybody could be ruined based on these books, and the populace would go along with it for fear that their 
  
   
  44
  shortcomings in the same area as the accused would be revealed. And challenging the books or Wyndham 
  himself is considered a dread attack on the fabric of Pembrooktonshire society itself. 
   
  Beatrix Ødegård, Housewife 
  The Ødegård name means almost nothing in Pembrooktonshire. Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s treated 
  with scorn, as worse than nothing. 
   
  Immigrants to the town face an unbelievable battle for acceptance, and it is normally not until three or four 
  generations, if members of the family marry well and basically make their foreign name disappear. And the 
  Ødegård name has letters that don’t otherwise appear in Pembrooktonshire, making their situation that much 
  worse, and after five generations they are still treated as complete outsiders. 
   
  The Ødegård family problem is that their heritage is important to them, and they are all so beautiful. Not in 
  the affected Pembrooktonshire manner, but in a true natural sense. Social climbers can often resist it, but 
  low-ranking folk have no reason not to respond to it, and the Ødegård women typically have so many suitors 
  that they get to set conditions for marriage, and this includes keeping the name. 
   
  As the matriarch of perhaps the lowest family in Pembrooktonshire, Beatrix works very hard to keep the 
  family name vibrant. That she is a witch of the traditions of her family’s native land only helps this effort. 
   
  The magic of the North Country witches is subtle and takes much time and preparation. Beatrix’s current 
  enchantment involves beauty. Everyone living in the immediate area (say, three city blocks) becomes 
  minutely and barely discernably uglier, but the total stolen beauty is then gathered within a growing child. 
   
  No one has yet discovered this is happening, or the Ødegårds would surely be burned. 
   
   
   
   
  People of Pembrooktonshire 
   
  Writing 
  James Edward Raggi IV 
  lotfp@lotfp.com 
   
  Artwork 
  Laura Jalo 
  alderfly@hotmail.com 
   
  Proofreading 
  Maria Kyytinen 
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Lamentations of the Flame Princess (osr)/Adventures and Settings/LotFP - No Dignity in Death The Three Brides - People of Pembrooktonshire.pdf