History & Lore

What the valley remembers — and what it argues about

One day, for every people now living in the valley, the sky changed. The stars were wrong, the horizon was new, and in every household lay a polite handwritten note:

“Apologies for the inconvenience. You were needed elsewhere. — W.S.”

That is the whole of what anyone knows for certain about William Spurlin, the mad wizard who stole pieces of other worlds to stitch together his pocket dimension. Why he did it — pride, whim, some joke only he understands — no one can say. He has not been seen in living memory. His name is a curse, an oath, and, awkwardly, the name of the village.

The Reckoning of Years

The settlers count time in years After the Taking (AT) — though every people's Taking came at a different hour, and every stolen fragment keeps its old sky, its own clock and its own seasons. The Heartland and the Frontier rarely agree on the date. Nobody finds this strange anymore; dockside almanacs sell conversion tables.

Era	What is remembered
The Long Before	Life on the home planes — every people keeps its own bright, fading stories.
The Taking	The sky changed. Always sudden, always bloodless, always humiliating. And the notes.
The Quarrel Years	Peoples who had never shared a world nearly annihilated each other over farmland and theology.
The Meadow Peace	The founding of the Village of Spurlin, the Moot ledger, and the Common tongue.
The Fraying	Now. The rifts began. Things come through them that belong to no plane anyone remembers.

The Village of Spurlin

Nine peoples, one ledger. The village is governed by the Meadow Moot — one speaker per people — and held together by work, weather-complaints and stubbornness. Every household records its names in the Moot ledger; to be unwritten is the worst thing a villager can be called.

Faces of the Valley

Forgemaster Haldan Vike
Keeper of the plaza forge and of every apprentice in the valley. Gruff, fair, and rumored to keep a drawer of every apprentice's first terrible copper blade.

Quartermaster Senna Odt
Runs the Frontier depot with terrifying efficiency. Lost an ear to a rift horror; believes in iron, inventory, and going home alive.

Joro of the Moor
The Beast Master. Half-ogre; speaks more to animals than to people, and both prefer it. Sells companions only to those his beasts approve of.

Kherep the Embalmer
Priest of Anubis; tends the crypt-yard and teaches the bone-rites. Serene, and funny in a way that sneaks up on you.

Runepriest Ansgar
Leader of the Aesir Devout. Loud, generous, theologically competitive with Kherep — their debates are village entertainment.

Alchemist Vessa Thorn
Elvish-trained; runs the cauldron and an under-the-counter sideline identifying strange salvage. Insatiably curious.

Warden Corin Ash
Captain of the palisade watch, third generation. His grandmother's medals still turn up in the grass.

Miss Peff
The Housing Broker: a goblin with the only ledger of the wizard's doors. Cheerfully evasive about how she got the concession, forever.

Festivals of the Short Year

Festival	Season	Custom
First-Sky	Spring	The day the new sky is forgiven; lanterns released at dusk.
The Long Table	Summer	Every people cooks its rudest ancestral dish and makes the neighbors try it.
Emberwake	Autumn	Forge-fires relit from one shared coal, tended jointly by Aesir and desert-folk — their one uncontested truce.
The Vigil of Names	Winter	Every name in the village ledger read aloud through the longest night.

Manners & Superstitions

Greet with “Fair sky”; on the Frontier, “Mind the seams.” The Khemitim say, formally: “May you be remembered.”
Don't whistle at a rift-scar. Feed the first stray cat of winter. Name a new tool aloud before its first use.
The wizard's roads never quite go where they went yesterday — but they always get you home by dark.
Cursing Spurlin is folk sport. Defending him is the taboo. Children dare each other to say “thank you, wizard” at the meadow's edge. Nothing happens. Probably.