Many sensitive to the intersections of arcane ley lines, the rotations of reality’s spheres, and the conjunctions of heavenly bodies journey to the mysterious land of Versex to commune with forces esoteric and occult. Yet those aware of the dread things separated from the vulnerable world by unimaginable expanses of aether shun Versex for the same reason. Here the fabric of planar lucidity wears thin, and stains from a sea of unperceived insanity taints an unassuming realm and unprepared minds. Worse, as naive arcanists and reckless mediums worry existence’s fragile stitches, some of these tattered strands give way, and sanityshattering forces not meant for Golarion set eyes and limbs without names upon a defenseless world.
Few precisely know the corruption that taints the hills and coasts of the uneven county. Many have lived here all their lives, and though escaping the tales of insane prophets and portentous importunities is impossible, they may never have suffered night terrors or witnessed a hunter from a hungry star. Although the living were scoured from this land during the Whispering Tyrant’s rule, the county bears few scars of the lich’s reign, as if the region were swept clean and then purposefully avoided. When the living again ventured into the land, they migrated to places of ancient inhabitation, drawn by voiceless calls to the same sites where Ustalavic psychopaths indulged the drug of suffering, Kellid outcasts performed rites taboo even to their savage brethren, and things that revel in ruin cavorted and crooned during the Age of Darkness. Today, few communities linger on ground that wasn’t inhabited thousands of years ago, and memories that should have long passed from the land cling to inexplicable and malevolent wills.
Versex’s hills meander from mountain to coast, their rocky slopes gradually shrouded by a mixture of stunted grasses and dense mosses strewn with eerie spiraling fairy rings. The earth proves ill suited to farming, with most crops growing stunted or crooked. Only tubers grow with any reliable success in Versex soil, but most possess bloated, strangely suggestive shapes when finally wrested from the spongy earth. The beasts of Versex have long suffered from similar unwholesomeness, with wild animals and livestock alike falling victim to “phage,” a starving aff liction distinguished by unnatural paleness, starved appearances, erratic violence, and horrifyingly deformed progeny— tumorous bodies, limbs akin to other species, and multiple heads proving most common.
The county breeds a stiff, private people, shackled by traditions of reservation and aloof civility. The beliefs that proper folk don’t meddle in the affairs of their neighbors, and that the upright don’t make their lives the worry of others, socially isolates townsfolk and city dwellers alike. Most of the county’s inhabitants don’t bother with their neighbors, and if they do, it’s typically only to malign their improprieties. Such exclusivity extends even between townships, with the residents of one community harboring all manner of prejudices and slanders regarding such outsiders’ depravities. Elevated living concerns most of Versex’s citizens, with commerce, seamanship, and honest agrarian labor taking an elevated position over “immoral” and “questionable” arts. Thus, when such “sensitives”— the regional catchall encompassing all artists, authors, magic-users, and lunatics—behave erratically, as proves somewhat common across the county, none are surprised.
Noteworthy Locations
Although few people in Versex would term any community beyond their own “noteworthy,” several places of lurking strangeness lie scattered across the county.
Carrion Hill: A city where no city should be, a bastion of strangeness at the heart of nowhere, ancient evil mounts upon lurking madness in a place called Carrion Hill. This sacrificial altar is detailed more thoroughly elsewhere.
Illmarsh: No one goes to Illmarsh, an insular community even by Versex’s unfriendly standards. The swampy rot of Soddentimbers, the marshy western reaches of the Forest of Veils, intrudes upon the village’s decomposing wooden frames, just as though the primal molds were welcomed among the sagging porches and thickly curtained windows. An abandoned boardwalk lined by half-sunken fishing boats crumbles along the foam-blasted waterfront, the wooden planks stretching into piers reminiscent of incomplete bridges, each a path directly from the community’s heart to the swirling maw of the murky deep.
Rozenport: Rising and falling upon steep sea cliffs, Rozenport’s archaic architecture possesses an almost organic pattern, its sharp steeples, flat-roofed manors, and bubble-domed town hall making its silhouette appear like some eldritch organism. The campus of the Sincomakti School of Sciences hides amid the town’s labyrinthine avenues, its three castle-like appendages, Bhaltvrest Hall, Gray Tower, and the Hermitage, guarding a diverse collection of obsessive scholars and dangerous tomes.
Thrushmoor: This town has been a holdout of weird religious zealotry, a port for lake pirates, a rallying point of failed revolution, and, today, the county seat of Versex. This mysterious township is investigated later.
Hyannis: Coal taints the lungs and hearts of many in the hilly mining community of Hyannis. The screeching laugh and broken teeth of the witch Black Aggie still haunts the nightmares of the villagers, who fewer than 40 years ago rose against the monster, dismembering and burning her body before casting it down an abandoned mine shaft. In recent years, strange phantoms have haunted the bleak cluster of shacks, not just as sightings of a verdigriscolored specter dragging itself through the mines, but workers possessed by the choking breath of Black Aggie.
Count Haserton Lowls IV
If ever noble blood ran in the veins of the Lowls family, its richness spoiled long before the birth of Haserton IV. The fourth consecutive Count Haserton Lowls to rule Versex, the middle-aged count was long known for a near-crippling social awkwardness that he transformed into arrogant introversion. Having ruled Versex for 14 years, he finds governance tedious, leaving most of his responsibilities in the hands of grasping mayors and magistrates.
From his family’s Thrushmoor estate of Iris Hill, Haserton used to apply himself to a rigorous but erratic curriculum of history, theology, antiquarianism, philology, poetry, and occultism. Refusing to tolerate tutors—considering such instruction beneath his grand intellect—he spent hours daily corresponding with peers and rivals at the University of Lepidstadt, Korvosa’s Academae, the Sincomakti School of Sciences, and Absalom’s Forae Logos. Considering himself an expert on many matters above the minds of lesser scholars, Haserton penned numerous rambling treatises extrapolating upon dubious and under-researched theses. His “Minds of the Azlanti,” “A History of the History of Versex,” and “The Stars Are Not Among Us: An Undeniable Refutation of the Works of the Doomsaying Pseudo-Scholar Dr. Henri Meirtmane” (the latter ending his tempestuous relationship with the Sincomakti School), can be found at many centers of scholarship in Ustalav, but more due to the count’s generous patronage than scholarly merit. Although his combination of sophomoric erudition and social ineptitude painted Count Lowls as a fool to be ignored, indulged, or exploited, in recent months a shocking change has transformed the physically and ostentatiously bloated academic.
Royal guards recently barred Count Lowls’s from entering a meeting of the Ustalavic court, and only a stunned recognition by Bishop Senir eventually saw the lord admitted. Such suggests the thoroughness of the count’s change. In the past year, Haserton has aged radically, his once sanguine complexion fading to an unhealthy pallor and a perpetually haunted countenance. Over the last 8 months the typically withdrawn count completely sequestered himself within his library, testing the abilities of Thrushmoor’s booksellers by demanding load after load of varied and specific tomes. Midway through his retreat, he dismissed his entire house staff, replacing them with a retinue of strange and silent foreign assistants. He also ended the majority of his ongoing patronages, reaching out to a number of varied and little-known scholars across Avistan, offering them sizable grants to continue research regarding ancient history, astronomy, folklore, and metaphysics. Along with his dramatic changes in appearance and scholarly interests, Count Lowls’ personality has also changed. Suspicion, muttering preoccupation, and the occasional furious outburst now overshadow his social awkwardness. What it is that now weighs upon the mind of Count Haserton Lowls, or what he learned or encountered to so radically change every aspect of his life, none can say.
Notable Personages
With Versex’s count disinterested in directing his people, others have taken up the task.
Dr. Henri Meirtmane: Dean of Expeditions at the Sincomakti School of Sciences, the aging but still able scholar boasts an impressive career of travels and discoveries. Well connected among Avistan’s most learned communities, Meirtmane endlessly seeks new sites to inf lame his scholarly curiosity, as well as daring students of promise and talented bodyguards to defend him and his notoriously shortlived research assistants.
Vanton Heggry: The endlessly beset mayor of Carrion Hill, Heggry strives for sanity and order in a city cursed by its own unquiet history. Although his city guardsmen, the Crows, can handle the occasional ghoul, morlock, derro, or dark folk that slinks forth from the tainted and manytiered ruins festering beneath the city, his tormented intuition leads him to expect the worst and imagine greater threats to his people slumbering in the dismal dark.