While stories of the sea and its secrets pass along every coast in Avistan, the shores of massive Lake
Encarthan prove little different, with traders and fisherfolk spreading tales of strange things lurking beneath the murky waves. The austere town of Thrushmoor marks the northernmost point of the vast lake, and though its sheltered docks and well-used fishing dories suggest nothing more than a community of hardworking seafarers, the town’s elders make the spiral of Pharasma over their hearts as they swear weird currents carry all that’s strange and unnatural into the depths of Avalon Bay.
Whipped by frequent storms and rough seas, the old town looks worn and rugged, no amount of care or paint erasing the wear upon the spume-blasted docks and mossy quays. While the homes and structures upon the lake show the damage of lashing waves and frequent f looding, those on the higher ground—the territory of the town’s “quality”—posture as the homes of wealthy landowners, with pristine picket fences, sharp gables, and columned facades. While few in Thrushmoor are truly wealthy, the townsfolk go to great lengths to keep up appearances.
At some point, the piety and unity one typically finds in fishing communities went sour in Thrushmoor. Although daily devotions are still offered to Pharasma for bounteous catches and safe returns, such prayers ring hollow among a congregation more concerned with their seating in church and whose family presents the finest appearance. Standing, respectability, and abstemious lifestyles concern most of the townfolk, who do all they can to avoid embarrassment and the critical eyes of their neighbors. Yet in the shadows of attics and basements languish the sins and repressions of Thrushmoor, where deranged children, possessed artists, and the adherents of unnamable gods form an uncounted population of freaks and lunatics just beneath the town’s mask of propriety.
Locations in Thrushmoor
Despite Thrushmoor’s parochial reputation, several sites stand out among the community’s peeling paint and gullhaunted roofs.
Iris Hill: Home to the Lowls Family since the rule of Pragmus Lowls over two centuries ago, Iris Hill meanders over the summit of the rise with the same name, the central estate attended by stables, servants’ quarters, and guest cottages. Until recent times, the manor held the title of Thrushmoor’s most elegant home, but over the past year it’s fallen into utter neglect. The count’s long-time servants dismissed, ivy and weeds besiege every structure, loose shutters creak in even the slightest breeze, and several broken windows admit the wind and weather. Yet Iris Hill has not been abandoned, and within Count Lowls and his shadowy foreign assistants occupy themselves tirelessly amid the manor’s ever-expanding library, interrupted only by the occasional midnight delivery by unmarked black coaches.
New Chapel: More than half a century old, New Chapel serves as the religious heart of Thrushmoor and the most frequently attended social venue for people of quality in town. Many hold that the church is jinxed, though, as rodents can frequently be heard scratching beneath the f loorboards, a persistent skull-shaped stain mars the structure’s whitewashed eastern face, and two priests have mysteriously fallen from the bell tower’s narrow window.
Old Chapel: The steeple leans like the spear of a derelict watchman atop the former home of Thrushmoor’s Pharasmin congregation. The pious abandoned the sunblistered gray structure nearly 60 ago, supposedly in favor of the freshly constructed New Chapel’s more central location. Yet some old folk whisper of another reason. Supposedly a religious hysteria claimed Causton Creed, the town’s former priest, and his plot to lead his entire fellowship to the grave forever tainted the holy ground.
Pier 19: No one goes out upon the sagging, treacherous timbers that stevedores call Worm’s Hook. Rumors say that years back a reek that sickened the whole boardwalk boiled up from beneath that dock, literally melting three men fishing at its end. The fishermen’s metal bait pail still rusts upon a post at the pier’s end.
The Sleepless Building: The Sleepless Agency advertises that it sells security—though what form that assurance takes varies depending on the organization’s diverse clientele. Run by its founder, the mysterious Cesadia Wrentz, this well-connected, highly organized, and unscrupulously professional agency of guards and detectives hires out to anyone with the coin to pay for its services. While the organization touts its successes at finding lost persons, exposing corruption, and guarding precious treasures, it downplays many members’ inclinations toward invasiveness, sabotage, and strong-armed harassment.
Star Stelae: The scholars of the Sincomakti School have long attested that no true Kellid tribes lived in the Versex region in the land’s distant past, yet Thrushmoor’s Star Stelae seem to refute that fact. Three 12-foot-tall, semicircular monoliths situated in an equidistant triangle stand atop the town’s hills, each etched with unidentified, non-Kellid runes and a misshapen star. All three face some vague point near what would today be the community’s heart—or, rather, they would had not one of the stones been destroyed or removed with the construction of Iris Hill long years ago.
The Stain: Typically patronized by shiftless bachelors, veteran fishermen, and rough dockworkers, the tap house of Captain Emman Gulston numbers among the most honest places in Thrushmoor: the whiskey isn’t watered, the two simple bunkrooms are sparse but clean, and the salty crowd knows better than to dismiss even the wildest tale.
Rumors in Thrushmoor
Although the people of Thrushmoor tend to be private and judgemental of their neighbors, few things unite acquaintances like tales of others’ misfortunes.
The Cursed Count: It’s been no secret that Count Hasterton Lowls disdains his responsibilities as lord of Versex, but in recent months, the arrogant lord has transformed into a complete recluse and has become ever more eccentric. Plotting to capitalize on the count’s negligence, Magistrate Padgett spreads rumors of madness and unholy worship at Iris Hill, hoping to provoke a rebellion similar to those that formed the Palatinates, but one that would see him come to control the entire county. The only hindrances to his plot are the count’s assistants, who possess an uncanny ability to detect his prowling and whose veiled faces he’s begun to see even at his home’s gates.
Wake of the Watchers: Those who ply the unpredictable waters of Avalon Bay tell of strange sights upon the sea, of monstrous eels, inexplicable waterspouts, and ghostly fishing vessels that cast nets after the living. The most frequently told tales concern the deep watchers, an elusive race of ichthyoid seers said to follow ships destined for ill fate or to trade fishermen their catches for blasphemous idols of cursed gold. Many sailors refuse to set foot upon ships that bear the webbed claw marks of the fishfolk, and ships lost at sea are often said to have had “watchers in their wake.”