The Village of Thornhill
Standing on the fringes of the vast and noisome Salt Mire, Thornhill is a miserable, hard place.
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Its folk are insular and superstitious, keeping to the old ways and worshipping the spirits of the marsh. Surviving on a mixture of hunting, fishing and desultory trade with nearby tribes of lizardfolk, the villagers care little for the world beyond their dismal domain.
Thornhill stands atop a large island in the centre of the Fenwater’s deep but sluggish waters. A once formidable stockade of aged, sodden timbers surrounds the place. Stands of sickly, dense thorn bushes grow over much of the island; the villagers have deliberately let the bushes grow wild to form an almost impenetrable barrier around the island’s periphery.
Most of the village’s buildings are single-storey and of wooden construction. They are low, rambling affairs and often in poor repair. As well as their human occupants, most also house livestock—mainly pigs and chickens—which roam about the village during the day.
Worn wooden causeways snake their way through the village. In places, planks are missing or rotten and unwary travellers can find themselves unceremoniously dropped into the mud beneath.
A wooden palisade surrounds the village; between six and ten feet high, it would not stop a serious assault, but the thick masses of bramble bushes growing up against much of it give even the thickest-skinned interlopers pause.
Mud Bridge: This often muddy, stout wooden bridge is the only way to easily reach Thornhill.
The Drunken Lizard: Thornhill’s inn is a dank, shadowed place. The food and drink are adequate at best.
Wennell’s: Thornhill’s trading station is filled with all manner of mundane things.
Aelfgar Wymer’s House: Here dwells the reeve, Aelfgar Wymer, and his spiteful, shrewish wife, Ricola.
Hall of the Sun: Dedicated to Darlen, elaborate carvings of the rising sun decorate this otherwise humble chapel.
Gyric Walwin’s Home: An elderly sage, Gyric Walwin, dwells in this ramshackle old building.
Osred’s House: Home to Ymma Winbow, this stone building is the oldest and largest in the village.
Blacksmith: This large building features a workshop at the front containing not only the normal accoutrements of the blacksmith’s trade but also a small pool.
Yonwin’s: The stench of this place permeates the whole village. Here the villagers sell their excess fish to Yonwin, a crippled halfling merchant.
Isle of the Lizards: A single hut stands upon this island, which the lizardfolk claim as a holy place. Most nights, the lizardfolk shaman Zissren leads her fellows in worship of their primitive gods.
Credit
This is a short system-neutral extract from Villages of Ashlar which is available from Raging Swan Press in 5e, Pathfinder First Edition and OSR/System Neutral editions. Words Creighton Broadhurst Cartography Tommi Salama.
Special Note
The download for this One-Pager includes Tommi Salam’s fabulous tagged and untagged maps of the village of Thornhill
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