Old Rag Mountain - Part II
something 'bout the sticks...
Welcome back after an unexpected delay! I had FULLY intended this post to go out a week ago on Monday, but last weekend was burgled by events beyond my control. Regardless, I appreciate your patience for the unexpected break and we will resume regular programming as of today.
And now, on with the show.
Last post, we explored the potential origins of the name “Old Rag” for Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park, USA. If you haven’t read that post yet, you may want to give it a once over by clicking the handy dandy big box below:
We will be building on some of the themes we explored in that post, and how to apply them TTRPGs, so it’s definitely worth a gander.
Now.
Imagine.
A land of rocky hills laced with heavy forests. A river slashes through a cleft in the mountains, running east-west towards the sunset until it reaches a narrow valley in the shadow of a brooding mountain whose ragged peak whipsaws against the sky. A small tributary from this valley joins the river as it wends around the mountain and out onto the fallow floodplains beyond. Half a day’s journey beyond this scene, a slat-wood town appears like an eyesore on the edge of the river.
This is Velligren.
The Birth of Place
Ok, so I had some trouble here, as I don’t want to immediately recreate Old Rag and its surrounding environs (which I could absolutely do, but then I would have less to write about). So let’s back up a few steps and identify what we have to work with from an inspiration standpoint:
Old Rag as a place-name may originate from the outline of the mountain against the sky, the topological profile of the mountain, or from the folk that used to live in the hollows near the mountain (shortened from ragamuffin or people dressed in ragged clothes). → Uncertain origin / naming, ragged mountain.
Old Rag has a different geologic base made of plutonic granite during the Grenville orogeny. → unique hidden thing about the mountain. Grenville is a good name.
The hollows around Old Rag were thought to be isolated but were materially connected to the outside world, had their own culture, farmland, etc. before Shenandoah National Park was created. → Distinct culture from mountain group / non-mountain group. Why is there a difference?
People from outside of the hollows saw the hollow-dwellers as a throwback to an earlier era, an anachronism of earlier America. → tension between two groups. Where does the tension come from?
No one lives in the hollows now. → mystery / hook?
So what do we do now that we have some threads? My favorite exercise, of course: spaghetti slinging at the old wall of creativity!!
I’m going to go in no particular order and start with the name “Grenville”, which I anagrammed into Velligren. Boom, we have our town. This is going to be the roots of our non-mountain culture. Now we need a mountain culture (or at least a name for the mountain culture) to counterbalance them.
In the previous post, a certain - and fantastical- Edith Wendle of Stonetown made reference to Kin’s Holly (a dialect version of Hollow that I created as a quasi-realistic take on the actual Appalachian dialect of “holler” instead of “hollow”). For continuity’s sake, our mountain culture will be the Folk of Kin’s Holly, or the Holly-Folk.
fuhfuhfuhfuhfuh-fuh-FRICTION
Based on this, I am creating a place for players to encounter or go to. For this, the players need to be motivated to go there, which usually means we need to answer a few questions, like “why do we [the players] care about this place?”
I’m not going to answer those questions right now.
Why? Because I can’t. I first need to identify a source of friction between Velligren and the Holly Folk to create a compelling narrative for our players to get involved in, and then a couple of NPCs for them to interact with and get attached to. This is me building up the HOOK. The domino, the fart atop a mountain that starts an avalanche. But you guys are gonna have to the deed, so to speak.
Back to friction. We need something tangible. Something big. Something so obvious it can be seen from space. Well, maybe not that big. I’m going to select something quite obvious, and that is the mountain itself.
Speaking of, what should we call the mountain? Ragamuffin! Why? Cause I said so (but you can call it whatever you like).
What are some reasons that the mountain may be a source of friction? Well, a classic colonial narrative is extractive/destructive vs nurturative/preservative…which is a good surface level conflict, but let’s go a bit deeper.
The folk of Velligren want the stone of Ragamuffin Mountain - let’s call this type of stone “ragrock” for simplicity’s sake - as they prize it for its durability, beauty, and ability to create resonances between similarly cut blocks (functioning a little like a telephone). Ragrock is highly prized within the greater Empire that Velligren is part of.
The folk of Kin’s Holly also value ragrock as they use it for creating portals to transit between this world, the realm of Faerie (oh yeh things are gonna get weird), and back again to other hollows in the mountains to the West of Velligren.
Unfortunately for both, the ragrock is actually the shed scales of a slumbering elder dragon that lay down to take a nap eons ago and hasn’t woken up…yet.
Velligren
If you’ve been following along (which I assume you have) then our next step is to sketch out Velligren (next section is Kin’s Holly). For these next two sections, I used the Culture Creator over at Hook & Chance for inspiration - check ‘em out if you are interested!
The folk of Velligren are recent arrivals to the area, settlers and miners from the distant Ollajapurian Empire (or insert your proto-colonial culture of choice). They are a resourceful folk, likely the cast-offs of greater society seeking to make new lives for themselves in a distant land. They are an intense and persistent lot, and a strong work ethos runs through most of the people here. For all of that, they are open to taking in outsiders and welcome additions to the town with land grants, provided you can work the land or make it in the Ragamuffin Quarry. They value salt of the earth common sense and are willing to channel their small but considerable resources towards ventures with good potential that may benefit the town.
Of course, the Velligrenese have come into contact with the folk of Kin’s Holly on multiple occasions, often trading with them. I am not sure whether their relationship is a contentious one or not, and I’m not sure it matters that much. The primary emphasis here is that the Velligrenese and the folk of Kin’s Holly are different in their approach to life, but still get along fairly well - after all, it is a dangerous world out there. How to emphasize that difference? Well, I think it boils down to the fact that Velligren is part of a wider empire and Kin’s Holly is not - as such, Velligren probably sends much of its quarried ragrock back to the Empire proper, where it fetches a hefty price and rumors of the nascent wealth of Velligren have begun to spread back in the Empire…perhaps useful as a hook for a party of would-be adventurers, eh?
Ordinarily, this paragraph is where I would put some npc’s for you to read about and interact with, but I’m not going to do that here as this post is less about people and more about environment. I may revisit Velligren and add some npc’s over on my Patreon at a future date.
Kin’s Holly
Right-o. So who exactly are the folk of Kin’s Holly? Well, I’m not so sure. I had originally intended them to be a little whimsical - a cross between mountain-men and faeries - but I think they have a bit more ruggedness about them that comes from a strength and self-reliance as newcomers to these mountains themselves who settled the area about 200 years before Ollajapurian settlers established Velligren. Indeed, the folk of Kin’s Holly are just the most exposed of a network of hollow-dwellers that inhabit this section of the Western mountains.
These “holly folk” live in a rigid matriarchal society and have a highly developed sense of empathy while valuing physical and mental strength and fitness - for such traits are needed to survive in the isolated mountains. For all that, the holly folk are willing to share whatever they have with people they meet, especially if they think those people need their help, as they are always on the lookout for ways to strengthen their communities. They live simple lives, but as for flavor, I will leave that up to your imagination for what suits your world best (as I said above with Velligren, I am going to flesh them out more on my Patreon).
The holly folk are connected to each other and travel great distances quickly using raw ragrock, roughly hewn to resemble a beehive, which was then activated via ritual to open a portal into the realm of Faerie (or elsewhere - the realm isn’t that important, just that it is elsewhere i.e. not of earth). These portal stones - called leyels by the holly folk - have the peculiar property of interdimensionality – that is, they show up across dimensions. By activating them, the holly folk essentially created shortcuts between the various hollows that dot the Western mountains. Indeed, the stone referenced in Edith Wendle’s tale is one of these portal stones:
one day, this big band of ‘em comes to town haulin’ a massive piece o’ round stone with smoke curlin’ off it like some dragon’s egg–they was haulin’ it along a series o’ short logs that young’uns ran up to and brought ahead as the strong among ‘em hauled on thick braided ropes.
The paths in this other dimension betwixt each leyel are well-trod, and woe betide any who step off the path. Which brings us to the final part of this post: our mystery.
Gone but not forgotten...
Some years ago - between 20 and 50 I would say - the folk of Kin’s Holly offered up a leyel as a gift to the folk of Velligren, as reported by Edith Wendle:
That’s when their leader–big bushy bearded feller–steps forth an proclaims to all in earshot that the Earth opened wide atop the peak o’ the Ragamuffin and belched out this stone, which the folk of Kin’s Holly (that being the place they called home) dragged here now as an offerin’ o’ eternal friendship twixt them an’ us ‘softfooters’, an’ that if the town is ever endanger, all we must do is break open the stone an the holly-folk’ll come.
Well, after that day no one has seen hide nor hair of the holly-folk, though if you ever make yer way through the forest (follow the old cart path that starts just over the ford) to the foot of Ragamuffin Mountain, I swear there are eyes watchin’ from the trees. Mayhaps it’s the holly-folk. Mayhaps something else.
The stone, known as the Holly Stone by the local Velligrenese, stands out like a sore thumb at the edge of town, facing towards the whipsawed peak of Ragamuffin Mountain. If players ask about, the locals will all tell various versions of Edith’s tale – which you should embellish with as much fancy and falsification as you like – with two commonalities: the Holly Stone came from the peak of Ragamuffin Mountain, and no one has ever seen the holly-folk since they brought the Holly Stone.
There is one final piece here that you may want to incorporate: about a year ago, smoke started to trickle from the summit of Ragamuffin Mountain. This foreshadows the emergence (or waking) of the dragon which lies at the heart of the mountain, whose shed scales are what people have mistaken for ragrock. Perhaps Ragamuffin Quarry is beginning to go dry simultaneously, leading to tense worry amongst the Velligrenese quarriers.
I will leave it up to you to decide what happened to the holly-folk. I myself am not completely sure…maybe they are still out there. Maybe something came through one of their leyels. Maybe something sucked them in through a leyel. Maybe they aren’t missing at all. Whatever you come up with, I would love to know in the comments below.
Walking paths untread,
N