The Village of Pilster

[brian 333]

Pilster is a remote village of around 200 halflings and 20 humans, 2 gnomes, and an elderly half-elf. In addition, there are about the same number of children.

The dominant feature of Pilster is its large three-wheel undershot watermill powered from a huge retaining pond. The dam itself is not more than sixty feet long and it is only twelve feet high at the wheel races. The dam is made of packed clay faced with granite blocks. Each wheel race is controlled by a wooden gate valve on the pond side of the dam, accessed from the road that uses the dam to cross the pond. Each wheel has a coupling device which allows any combination of the three wheels to drive the wooden power axel of the mill, so that one, two, or three wheels can be used, with fine control of power enabled by regulating the water flow through the gate valves.

The spillway of the dam is a series of six small ponds, each no more than two feet below the one above, with the last one spilling into the original streambed which is also used by the wheel races. They are used to farm perch by one of the halfling families, and serve as fish ladders for wild salmon that make annual spawning migrations through the village.

The mill itself is a ninty-foot-long by forty-foot-wide, three-(halfling-)story stone and wood structure which houses a wool-carding mill, a single small yarn-spinning mill, a single power loom, and a grist mill. Beneath a lean-to on the far end of the building is a sawmill and wood lathe.

[brian 333]

Directly across the road from the millhouse, (on the pond side,) is The Squeeky Wheel Inn. Its yard is fenced in with whitewashed pickets and well tended shrubbery. The enclosure contains a dozen plank tables and benches of various sizes.

During the mill's lunch hour the tables will be occupied by the twenty or so mill workers, who will take over the yard again at quitting time and trickle away toward dusk.

The inn itself is well built, but each of its five sections appears to have beem built at different times with little regard for what was already there.
The entry behind the fenced yard is a stone block building, apparently made of the same stone as the mill. The interior is a single twenty by forty foot room with a slanted roof which is eight feet high at the door and twenty feet high at the back wall. A second floor balcony overlooks the room on the back wall with three doors.

On the right as one enters is an oval bar. At the near end of the oval is a small step and platform which is obviously intended to allow small folk to step up to the human-height bar. The floor within the bar is raised as well with a center 'island' where kegs, cups, bottles, and other objects of the trade are stored/displayed and ready to hand for the bartenders. On the far side of the oval the floor of the room is raised to a similar height, with halfling sized steps along the transition. Although the bar has no stools, it has a wooden foot rail running all the way around. Away from the bar are a half-dozen human sized tables and twice as many halfling sized ones sit on the raised part of the floor. Two odd tables, one on each side of the bar, straddle the steps, allowing halfling sized stools on one side and human sized stools on the other. At each of the human-sized tables the human sized stools all have ladders which allow small folk to sit with human companions.

On the left as one enters are lounges and padded chairs arranged around an open hearth. Above the hearth a sheet metal cone hangs, capturing the smoke and venting it through the roof.

On the left wall a wide stair leads up to the balcony. Beneath the stair is the innkeeper's station. The first and last doors on the balcony lead to long corridors lined with twelve doors on the outside wall side of the corridor. Each of these opens to a 10 foot square bedroom.
The center door on the balcony opens onto a long, narrow common room, 15 feet wide by 120 feet long. Straw-filled pallets are placed every 6 feet along the walls.
At the far end of the room is a large glass window.

From the outside the section of the inn containing the rooms is built of wooden beams and plaster walls. The dozen windows on the upper floor are matched on the lower by alternating doors and windows. These doors open into small suites which have no interior access to the inn.
The design of the framing of the two floors is different, making it obvious that the upper floor is a later addition.

Behind the raised floor section of the bar is a double door. This would be on the far right wall as one enters. It opens into a buttery which serves as the prep area for the kitchen. It is a 10 foot square room surrounded by counters and pantries, with another door that leads outside to a covered walk to the 25 foot square building which is the kitchen. A basement beneath the kitchen is used for storage of foods for the inn.

On the left wall of the inn near the foot of the stair is a door which opens onto halfling-sized steps which is the side entrance to the underground dwelling of Rajat Jannex, the owner of the Wheel. From the outside it appears to be a lean-to shed, its true function betrayed only by the several chimny pipes set on the rectangular mound beside the inn and the door and windows which face the pond.

[Whiskeyjack8044]

I love it. I may steal it.

[brian 333]

I love it. I may steal it.

welcome to it, though it is still a work in psogress.

[brian 333]

Yathan Ward is the only half-elf in town. He will confess that he was raised among humans and knows nothing of elves. What he does know is just about everything else.

Yathan began his career as a pickpocket and burgiar until his face began to appear on "Wanted" posters. Afraid his associates would turn him in for the reward, he headed for the hills.

He befriended a druid, who initiated him into the mysteries of nature, and he spent many years wandering the wilderness.

After a while he began to haunt the edges of civilization and then he returned to the cities where he found he had long since been forgotten. He began as a storyteller and minstrel until he was inducted as a bard and gained access to their libraries.

Now retired, he runs a school in the village. He occasionally discovers talent in his students and seeks out mentors to whom he can apprentice them. Across from the one-room school he tends a 'magic-shop' which is little more than an apothacary. Above the shop is his one-room dwelling.

Both school and shop are beam-and-batten style construction with slate roofs.

[brian 333]

Dellin and Kavin Roodvahl are gnomish tinkers who craft and mend the housewares of the villagers. Though they do not shoe horses, they are the best metalworkers in town, working in gold and silver, tin, brass and copper, and iron and steel.

They are usually not very busy because the village is small, so they supplement their business with a pawn shop, buying and selling trinkets or making pawn loans to villagers.

Their two story house is located behind the houses on the main road, and a large adjacent barn serves as workshop and pawn shop.

[brian 333]

Old Nanny Widaker is an elderly halfling woman who is the village midwife and healer. Many in the village believe she uses magic, but her treatments and cures are founded in her knowledge and skill as a healer and herbalist.

A small barn has been converted into a roadhouse where she offers stew and a place to rest, and where she plans to house patients should an epidemic ever strike the village.

[brian 333]

There is a boggy area choked with reeds where the stream which feeds it joins the pond. Just above this is a cottonwood tree of great age upon a low mound which has been trodden clear of undergrowth by many feet over many years.

Often a handful of the village children can be found playing here, concealed from the eyes of their elders by the drooping branches and the tall reeds. Many a youth of the village had her first kiss beneath this tree.

The tree is hollow, and the local children have for many years placed toys and pennies in the knothole as a kind of wishing game. Although rot and corrosion will have claimed most of the loot, an adventurer may be tempted to try to retrieve the 'treasure'.

The hollow is sometimes used by an oppossum to raise her newborn.

[brian 333]

On the West side of the pond two oak trees stand on either side of a ravine forming an arch. Beneath this arch a stone path meanders until the ravine opens into a small, bowl-shaped meadow which is covered with wildflowers at virtually any time of year. At the West end of this natural ampitheater is what appears to be a natural flat rock which is backed by a steeper and higher slope. The shape of the meadow causes whatever is said on the dias to be heard anywhere on the meadow, and anything said in the meadow to be heard on the outcropping stone.

The ampitheater is where the villagers hold their religious ceremonies. It also has, concealed by the climbing ivy which grows behind the dias, a small wooden door mounted almost horizontally which leads to a stair down into a medium-sized hewn and shored chamber which is the emergency granary and shelter for the village.

Lame Myren Loggs is the local Initiate Minister of the village, serving under the supervision of Mother Tazreal, whose parish includes four other villages within a twenty mile circle.

Myren is capable only of casting orisons, but he has been given a Wand of Cure Light Wounds to aid the villagers at need.

While not a very good cleric, Lame Myren is a very good administrator. The village has a strong financial standing, largely thanks to thanks to him, and its granaries are well stocked.

His name was given to him as a child when a fall cracked his leg in three places. It healed badly and he limped afterward.

[brian 333]

Tam The Knacker is a middle aged halfling male who serves as the village vet and leathermaker. He also shoes horses.

He is a rough and coarse person who doesn't seem to care what others think of him, and he is something of a verbal bully. He is also the strongest person in town and is regularly involved in brawls when drunk.

He cares for the village livestock, and treats them better than he treats people. When they die from non-butcher related causes he skins them for leather. He does not actually craft the leather, but he turns hides into quality material for leatherworkers.

His blacksmith shop is a wagon he also uses to haul off dead animals. It is suited for little more than horshoe work, and he doesn't even shape his own shoes. Instead he buys blanks and adjusts them to each horse or pony.

His knacker wagon is drawn by two horses with different coats, one being black and white and the other being red. They are the biggest horses in the village and they are reputed to be as mean as their owner.

The tannery where he lives is a quarter mile downstream from the mill. Among the vats and drying racks a half dozen children work under the supervision of an angry, unsmiling hajling matron. She is his wife Bonnie.

[brian 333]

Sheriff Robin Goodhand is the village law enforcer and captain of the militia. She has four deputies who make regular rounds of the village. There are also another 12 villagers who have been deputized but who only work as police at need, being otherwise occupied in their regular jobs.

Sheriff Goodhand lives in the loft of the Town Hall, the basement of which serves as the jail, though currently it is being used to store old furniture.

Zek Harrow is the senior deputy and the only human on the fnrce. His hair, streaked with grey, is still reddish blond around his bald spot, but all color has leached from his beard. His favored weapon is a twisted vine cane which serves as a club and as a deterrent to juvenile pranks when applied to the backsides of young offenders.

He is a happy and healthy fifty years old, and well liked by the villagers.

Voret Hightree is Sheriff Goodhand's protege. At the age of twenty-five he is the youngest deputy, but villagers already assume he will become sheriff when Robin retires one of these decades.

He takes his job, and himself, a bit too seriously, but the villagers smile and say maturity will water that down.

[brian 333]

'The Squire' Gedol Weaver is the major landowner in the region. He lives in a spiral-shaped mansion which is dug in to a tall, gently sloping hill which overlooks the pond. The cart path which goes up the hill is lined with comfortable cottages and delvings, mostly occupied by employees of The Squire. The end of the path takes three turns around the hill, passing the many doors of the mansion, from the stables and coach shed, past the kitchens, thd dormitories for junior family members to the home and office of The Squire.

The mansion is much larger than the dozen current occupants need. Indeed, most of the town could squeeze in if there was need. But the villagers seem proud of the work of many generations of their forebearers.

The hilltop and mountainside pastures owned by The Squire are grazed by flocks of sheep and goats, among which the property of other villagers is mixed. Youngsters of the village tend the flocks and are paid in shares of the shearing, milk, butter, cheese, and meat.

Of late, a band of ogres have begun to haunt the edges of the pastures to pick off strays.