Blanks

Group

Blanks are people who have given away so many memories that they no longer know their own families. They are common in Hallowmere. They are the human cost of the Tithe.

They are not dangerous by nature, only lost. Most are gentle. A few lash out when frightened.

A person can become a Blank slowly, one heavy memory at a time. It is why Pellmoor sellers are careful about which memories they let a Reckoner draw.

Brassfall

Place

Brassfall is a range of eastern mountains veined with bronze. Old lightning is trapped in the stone, but no storm has reached these mountains since the Quiet Night. The sky sometimes crackles before a storm that never comes.

Miners pick their stones very carefully. Some stones carry a charge and will discharge if mishandled.

The Thrane Road runs to Vael Tor in four days. The Ironhorn foothills lie two days up into the hills, and the way around to Glassreach takes six.

Corvane and Hesk

Place

Corvane is a continent called Hesk, far out in the Trackless Sea, past the edge of every Sword Coast chart. It is part of the Forgotten Realms, but for four hundred years nobody on either side knew the other was there. Sword Coast sailors only told stories of "the Ringing Land" beyond the storm.

Corvanese call the land and its language Hesk. Inland you will hear almost nothing else. At Pellmoor, Common is the second language.

The year is 412 SS (since the Silence), which is 1492 DR. Faerûnians count by Dalereckoning, Corvanese by the Silence. Both are in use on the quays.

Dorra Pell and the Inn of the Shuttered Bell

Person

The Inn of the Shuttered Bell is a low room on the Old Shore, with a fire that is never too hot and an ale that tastes faintly of river. The bell above the bar has been wrapped in cloth for longer than anyone remembers.

Dorra Pell keeps it. She does not like questions. She remembers every face, and now every ship that brought one. The ferry-folk drink here. Stormborn are served politely and not invited back.

If you want to know who came ashore last week, ask her. She may tell you.

Glassreach

Place

Glassreach is a forest in the northwest where winter froze into glass. The trees are glass, and the people caught inside are still waiting for spring. It is bitterly cold. Bring a warm cloak.

Glass branches chime against each other. The frost has not moved in four centuries.

It is five days on foot from Kell's Crossing, through the Ninefold hills. Nobody goes there without a reason.

Hallowmere

Place

Hallowmere is the grey capital, built on terraces on the Ninefold Shore. Its streets are lit by lamps all day, because the sky never fully brightens. The houses are pale stone with shuttered windows.

It is the seat of the Quiet Court and of the Dawn Order. Visitors give a small "courtesy memory" at the gate. The city will not take gold instead.

Church bells ring here, and they ring false. Open spellcasting draws attention like a drawn sword, and Hushmen call loud magic "bell-work." It is six days on foot from Pellmoor, or three by ferry across the Mere and then road.

Hearts

Thing

A bell rings only with its Heart, the heavy bronze clapper that swings inside it. Some bells still hang without theirs. Without its Heart, a bell cannot be rung.

The Hearts are scattered across Corvane. Some are hidden, some are guarded, and some are in the hands of people who want very different things from them. You will be looking for them.

Each Heart is named for its bell: Ossa's Heart, Vaer's Heart, and so on. Ringing a bell with its Heart restores something that was lost, and it costs the Ringer a Toll.

Ila Harrow

Person

Ila Harrow is fourteen. She stands on the oldest ferry-dock on the Old Shore, thin and grey-eyed, in her father's ferry coat, several sizes too big. She greets you with a blunt question: "Are you here for the heart, or for the bell?"

She is direct. She counts things when she is nervous. She trusts people who tell her the truth about hard things, and she has no patience for "don't worry about it."

Her father, Tam Harrow, was a ferry pilot who drowned six weeks ago. Ila hears the Heart humming, and she says she hears the Drowned. Nobody believes her except Mother Sallow.

Kell's Crossing

Place

Kell's Crossing is a fork in the North Road, where the old Pellmoor track comes in. The farmland around it has gone to ash. The fields are black and cracked, and the harvest has failed for four centuries.

The old harvest-songs are forbidden here. Nobody is allowed to sing them, and the wind carries them anyway.

It is three days on foot from Pellmoor, three from Hallowmere, and five from Glassreach by the North Road.

Memory Money and Reckoners

Lore

In Corvane a memory can be drawn out of you, sealed in a small glass vial and spent. The vial is called a keep. A licensed Reckoner draws it with a tuning fork, only with your consent, in about a minute.

Keeps pass from hand to hand still sealed, like banknotes. The sizes are a mote (a passing memory), a keep (a memory with feeling), and a heartkeep (a defining memory). A knowing holds knowledge, and whoever sells it forgets it.

If you open your own keep, the memory returns. If a stranger opens it, they live it as a guest, and it fades. Skills, spells and languages cannot be sold.

Mother Sallow

Person

Mother Sallow is the reed-witch and memory-keeper of the Old Shore. She is small and wiry, in her seventies, with hands stained green from reed-dye and a pipe she never lights. She speaks in short sentences and proverbs she half-invents, and she is sarcastic about authority.

She has kept the ferry ledger for forty years: every name the Mere has taken, every name the Court has Tithed. Her husband, Davin Sallow, a net-maker, drowned in the Wrongweather. His name is carved on the Memory Shore, and she cannot recall his face.

She serves bitter reed tea, offers a three-day bargain to keep the Heart safe, and teaches the response to the Night Song.

Ossa's Heart

Thing

Ossa's Heart is a bronze clapper, wrapped in an oilskin that belonged to Ila's father. It is warm, not like a hot pan but like something alive that has been asleep.

It hums when Ila holds it, and the hum fades when she sets it down. When it hums, the water on the far shore ripples in the shape of a bell.

Mother Sallow says it belongs to Ossa, the memory bell under the Mere. The Court will want it. Ila wants to keep it safe.

Pellmoor Landing

Place

Pellmoor Landing is Corvane's only harbour for foreign ships. It stands on the Mute Mere, which is so still that the ships look painted on it. A drowned town lies just under the water, so every ship needs a local pilot to reach the quays.

About four thousand people live here year-round. In summer nearly twice that many crowd the waterfront. Forty to sixty ships come each season.

There are four districts: the Old Shore, the Quays, the Tally and Strangers' Row. The Quiet Court is present through the Landing House and its Hushmen, but Pellmoor is not a Court city. There are no gulls on the Mere, and ferry-folk children do not play near the water.

Sela Maunt

Person

Sela Maunt is a Court-licensed Reckoner at the Reckoning House on the Tally. She is Corvanese, in her forties, in a grey apron with three tuning forks in the breast pocket. Her reading lenses came from a Lantanese tinker.

She is precise, kind and slightly tired. She taps a fork on the counter when she is thinking. She is the person who explains memory money to newcomers, and she is patient with them.

She buys memories at the posted rate and keeps a tenth as her fee.

Strangers' Row

Place

Strangers' Row is the Faerûnian quarter. The ferry-folk call it the Loud Quarter. It has foreign inns (the Brass Lantern is the best known), merchant houses, a temple mission of Lathander, a smithy, and a clockmaker who sells silent clocks.

Music plays at all hours. Waterdhavian ale is served in exactly one place in Corvane, and it is here.

The quarter is Stormborn ground. Locals come to trade and stay to stare. Some of the deals struck here are not quite legal, and everyone knows it.

The Bellwrights

Group

The Bellwrights are the makers and tuners of bells. Bell-making has been illegal for centuries. They survive as a secret network, outlawed and hunted for three hundred years.

They want the bells rung. Nobody in Pellmoor admits to knowing one, and nobody can say how many there are.

A craftsman who makes, repairs or tunes bells and Hearts is breaking the law. The Court's agents hunt them. If you are looking for the people who can ring a bell, they are who you want.

The Dawn Order

Group

The Dawn Order is Hallowmere's own knighthood, sworn to Vaer by old tradition. They keep watch over the city under a sky that never brightens.

The Court tolerates the Order's oaths. The knights want oaths kept and the dawn back. They are formal, they like paperwork, and they respect a challenge made in public.

In Hallowmere you will find them on watch at the gates and the terraces, in cloaks the colour of a dawn that has not happened for four hundred years.

The Drowned Choir

Group

The Drowned Choir is the restless dead of the Mute Mere, singing their grief. At night they sing names from under the water. They want to be remembered by name.

They do not seem to hurt the grieving. Villagers hum back at night to keep them quiet, and ferry-folk children keep away from the water.

The water of the Mere remembers the dead, and the Choir is how it does so.

The Ferry-folk

Group

The ferry-folk are the old families of Pellmoor. For centuries they worked the ferries of the Mere. Now they pilot every foreign ship across the drowned town, and no ship moves without one of them.

They keep a ledger of every name the water has taken. They want their dead remembered properly and the Pilots' Hall kept free of the Court and the trading houses.

They are guarded with strangers, but loyal once trust is earned. They keep their debts and their promises.

The Ironhorn Compact

Group

The Ironhorn Compact is a confederation of horse-clans on the northern steppe, led by a Thane. They are proud, blunt, and wary of anyone after their bronze.

They want their bronze and their freedom. They resent the Court's Tithe-taxes on the steppe and fear its march north. They deal in raids, trade and alliances, and strangers meet them in that order.

They offer trade first. If trade fails they offer a challenge. Alliance comes last, and only to those who earn it.

The Ironhorn Steppe

Place

The Ironhorn Steppe is the northern grassland, held by the horse-clans of the Ironhorn Compact. The grass runs in waves to the horizon.

Riders greet strangers with a wager. Expect to be asked what you will bet. They are proud, blunt, and wary of anyone after their bronze.

The steppe lies two days up from the Brassfall foothills. Paths across the grass are faint and unmarked, and you will want a guide.

The Landing

Group

"The Landing" is what Pellmoor calls its community of foreign traders and settlers from the Sword Coast. Faerûnians who have stayed for years are Landers.

Their big names include the Vennmark Coster of Athkatla, the Corvane Venture of Waterdeep, Baldurian factors who still toast the Gull's Wager every Wrongweather night, Lantanese gnome tinkers, and dwarves from Mirabar who want Brassfall bronze.

They trade clocks, steel, paper, wine and lenses, and they ship home bottled memories. They want profit, mostly in memories.

The Landing Charter and Writs of Passage

Event

In 384 SS (1464 DR) the Quiet Court made Pellmoor the only harbour where foreign ships may anchor. This is the Landing Charter. Foreigners may trade freely at Pellmoor.

To travel inland, past the Mere road, a foreigner needs a writ of passage. It is a grey paper sealed in grey wax, issued from Hallowmere. Without one you may go no further than the Mere road.

Foreigners also pay a 5 gp landing fee and register at the Landing House. Forging a writ is possible and illegal.

The Mute Mere

Place

The Mute Mere is a vast, perfectly still lake at the middle of Corvane. There are no waves, no wind and no sound. A drowned town, Old Pellmoor, lies under it.

The water remembers the dead. Spend a night on the shore and you may wake with a memory that was never yours. After dark, voices sing from the water. The Drowned Choir lives here.

Ships limp onto the Mere to mend after the Stormwall, because it is the only calm water for miles. Without a ferry-folk pilot, the drowned rooftops just under the surface are a maze.

The Old Shore

Place

The Old Shore is the original ferry village, a huddle of reed-roofed houses at the edge of the port. It holds the ferry-dock, the net-racks, a small chapel with a silent bell, the Inn of the Shuttered Bell, and the Memory Shore, where names are scratched on stones.

The ferry-folk keep it theirs. Foreigners are tolerated here, not welcomed. It is quiet and careful and a little mournful, a different town from the noisy Quays.

The Court's grey-gloved Hushmen walk the Old Shore every week.

The Quays

Place

The Quays are piers driven into the roofs of the drowned town. They hold warehouses, chandlers and a dry-dock. A dozen languages argue here over the price of a memory.

Two buildings matter most. The Pilots' Hall is where ferry-folk pilots are hired to take every ship across the Mere. The Landing House is the Court's customs office. Foreigners pay the 5 gp landing fee and register there. It also issues writs of passage, and it removes the chime from every clock before the clock leaves the quay.

A post of Court Hushmen watches the Quays daily.

The Quiet Court

Group

The Quiet Court is the government of the Ninefold Shore, ruled from Hallowmere. It is orderly, polite and very good at making people forget. It collects the Tithe, runs the Landing House, and issues writs of passage.

Its officers are Hushmen. They wear grey silence-stone gloves that muffle their own blows. They are very quiet. In Pellmoor, a post of Hushmen watches the Quays, and others walk the Old Shore each week.

The Court believes the bells must never ring again. Its church is the Ninefold Church, which worships the Silence and calls the Faerûnian gods "the loud gods."

The Quiet Night

Event

Four hundred and twelve years ago, every bell in Corvane fell silent in a single night. The Corvanese call it the Quiet Night. The years are counted from it: 0 SS.

After it, the dawn went grey. Winter froze into glass. The dead stopped resting. Harvests failed. Nightmares walked the roads. The Quiet Court rules the capital, and the Tithe is its tax.

Nobody in Pellmoor will tell you with confidence why it happened. The Court holds that the bells must never ring again.

The Seven Bells

Lore

Seven great bells once kept Corvane's world in shape. Each kept one part of life. Vaer kept dawn, law and beginnings. Ossa kept memory, ancestors and rest. Hieme kept winter and endurance. Calla kept harvest and generosity. Thrane kept storm and courage. Mirel kept dreams and hope. Ysh kept sleep and peace.

The days of the week are named for them: Vaerday, Ossday, Hiemeday, Calladay, Thranday, Mirelday and Hushday. Nobody alive has heard one ring.

Six of the bells are known to hang at Hallowmere, Old Pellmoor, Glassreach, Kell's Crossing, Brassfall and Vael Tor. Nobody knows where Ysh, the seventh, hangs.

The Stormwall and the Seam

Place

A permanent band of storm, thirty to sixty miles deep, circles all of Corvane at sea. Sailors call it the Stormwall. For four hundred years no ship crossed it, and nobody on either side knows what made it.

Thirty years ago a lane of calm water opened at the mouth of the river Pell. This is the Seam, a mile or two wide. It drifts with the seasons, so every ship takes a pilot through. The voyage is about six weeks at sea from the Sword Coast, about a day through the Seam, then two days up the Pell to Pellmoor.

Ships sail from spring to early autumn. From inside the wall, the storm sounds like thunder a long way off.

The Tally

Place

The Tally is Pellmoor's market square, where both kinds of money change hands: gold and sealed memories. Most stalls take either.

The Reckoning House stands here. By its door hangs a slate with the day's rate. Reckoners in grey aprons carry tuning forks and work inside. The rate floats from day to day. A keep is worth a little over a gold piece at Pellmoor, and noticeably less in the capital.

If you want to buy, sell or learn what a memory is worth, this is where you come.

The Tithe

Lore

The Tithe is the Quiet Court's tax, paid in memories. The Court says it protects people in return. A Tithed memory goes into a jar in the Court's vaults.

Corvanese subjects must pay in memory. Foreigners pay in gold. Paying someone's Tithe in gold for them is called gilding. It is illegal, and it happens every day.

Hushmen collect the Tithe. People who give too much stop recognising their own families. They are called Blanks. The Tithe is the reason gold is both useful and dangerous in Corvane.

The Toll

Lore

Ringing a bell restores something that was lost. It also costs the person who rings it something of their own. This is the Toll.

You find a bell's Heart and bring it to its bell. The DM tells you the price before you ring. You choose to pay it, or to walk away, and nothing is taken if you walk away.

The Tolls are a memory, a year of your life, a sense for a day, a name, a fear for a day, and a gift. A Toll can never be bought back, and Tolls add up.

The Wrongweather

Event

In 382 SS (1462 DR) a storm came up the river Pell and onto the Mute Mere. It was the first weather the Mere had seen in nearly four hundred years. People drowned.

The ferry-folk call it the Wrongweather. At dawn a battered ship from Baldur's Gate, the Gull's Wager, drifted onto the lake. Its crew were the first Faerûnians in Corvane in four centuries.

When the storm passed, a calm channel through the Stormwall remained. That channel is the Seam.

Tobias Quill

Person

Tobias Quill is the Quiet Court's Tithe officer at the Landing House. He is pale, with grey gloves, a sharp smile and a silence-stone pendant. He is polite and always has a form.

He walks over from the Quays to collect the Old Shore's memory quota and to look for "unlicensed bell-work." The quota is short every season, because Pellmoor pays its way in gold and gold cannot pay a Corvanese subject's Tithe.

He keeps a ledger, and he notes down the faces of the people he meets.

Tonework and Silence-stones

Lore

Tonework is what Corvanese call magic. Every spell hums faintly as it is cast. It adds no new costs. Divine magic from the Faerûnian gods works here too.

Silence-stones stop magic. The Quiet Court uses grey ones. Spells fail within about ten feet. You see the edge first: the light dims and your ears feel pressure.

A stone can be smashed, carried off, or avoided. Dispelling does not help. Hushmen wear silence-stone gloves that only muffle their own blows.

In Pellmoor, cast as loudly as you like. Inland, be discreet.

Vael Tor

Place

Vael Tor is a lone high hill in the middle of the land. A hall full of sleepers stands on it, and dreams go there to walk.

From a distance you hear breathing: too many people, breathing slowly, all at once. At night, faint lights move among the stones that ring the crown of the hill.

It is three days from Pellmoor through the Mere's eastern marsh, and four days from Brassfall along the Thrane Road.