Winter In Wermspittle

Dark Nights
By Law and long-established custom, the Bells that used to ring-in the Dusk and dawn are muffled, packed with sand bags or dismounted by the first day of Winter. The old clocks are allowed to run down and no one bothers keeping track of time any more, not during the long, dark Winter nights. There's no point. One either makes good use of what little light there is during the too-short days, or else they barricade their doors, ward their windows and try to endure the night like everyone else.

Lean Times
Sleet turns to snow and ice. Dark clouds curdle the ominous iron-gray skies more often than not. Roads grow treacherous and bridges creak and groan under the weight of the heavy ice accumulating upon them. Those that weren't built slip-shod allow for some to travel, but the rest collapse and will need to be rebuilt in the Spring. Again. The only ones who travel fast and well in the deepening snows and bitter winds are the dead and the deadly. Wolves prowl the streets while other things howl forlornly out in the dark woods. Even the bandits withdraw from the major roads and focus their attentions upon the trails and passes where skies, sleds and snowshoes replace carts and wheels. But there are few who travel this way towards Wermspittle. Only a fool or a dead man looking for a hot bath in a stew-pot goes to Wermspittle in the Winter. Only the most desperate and those seeking to start over somewhere else brave the dangers of the mountain passes in Winter. Many are fooled by the smiling 'native guides' and the 'guaranteed accurate maps' that promise to lead those gullible enough to rely upon them along the poorly marked trails they think might lead to a better place. Almost all of them end up in the camps of bandits, hillfolk, or worse. But as they say in certain dark places; meat is meat--shut up and eat.

Cold, Hard Cache
Armor and weapons come cheap in Winter. You can't eat them. Merchants, those few still open for business, demand payment in salt, meat or goods such as candles or blankets. Coins and tokens mean little to the starving. A sack of turnips can make a man rich, if he can manage to survive until the Summer Markets re-open. Promissory notes tend to get used as tinder; there are no promises in Winter and such debts are unlikely to be honored by the dead or the departed. Though there are those who do hold onto these sorts of things in order to sell them by the pound-bale to Debt-Collectors. But few such debts left to linger past the first snows of Winter ever get collected. Those that have been through this all before set aside supplies, they attempt to plan ahead, to store-up what they think they'll need to get by, to survive through the dark times. But not all such hordes or caches of provisions survive or stay hidden. There are those who seek such things out, scavengers who dowse for stockpiles and canned goods so that they can remove them from one supposedly safe place to another. Competing bands criss-cross the Abandoned Sections of Wermspittle all through the Winter months, following any and every lead, hunting down rumors, and laying in wait for their rivals. Sometimes the confrontations and ambushes between looter-crews and scavenger-bands get messy, bloody, deadly. Only the toughest or the luckiest survive to see the first thaws.

Commodities Trading
Pickles, hard tack, dried things, salted things, canned and bottled, jugged and preserved food is the highest form of currency and its value only grows over the course of the Winter. Scavengers and looting-crews pick their way through the old warehouses and trade-houses that used to be serve the airships or might still be used by some of the Summer Caravans. Things tend to get overlooked or lost, especially when the teamsters and freight-handlers know damn well that they had best see to their own survival first. The old Longshoremen whose ancestors claimed to have worked beneath the great zeppelins handling cargoes from exotic locales still carry the notched hooks and curved knives of their forefathers. They tell the timeless tales of better times even as they loot the looters and plunder the secret hiding places of the teamsters. A single can of peaches might switch hands a dozen or more times before it is finally opened and eaten by the person who finally learns if it was properly sealed or tampered with -- it can be hard to tell with all the blood and other stuff caked on the thing.

No Trespassers
Storms and blizzards sweep the lands surrounding Wermspittle. The Low Lander villages and farmsteads barricade themselves in and huddle close to their fireplaces, praying for the return of the sun. Rural Guards monitor the forests and near ranges from freezing perches atop swaying watch towers while make-shift patrols make their way from check-point to check-point, ducking into snow forts to escape the blistering winds, if only for a little while. Most of the woodland beasts are asleep, hibernating in their dens and cavern lairs. There is precious little game to hunt and almost nothing that can be gathered. Even fishing through holes chopped into the lake-ice provides sparse results. Only the mad, the possessed or those driven by starvation and desperation wander across the frozen landscape. Or those who hunt such things either for bounty or sport. That's what the house-holders and farmers tell themselves behind their wickedly spiked walls and ward-etched windows. It isn't true. Not by a long shot. But the farmers and hunters of the Low Land villages and enclaves have learned the hard way not to tolerate trespassers in Winter. One act of kindness, one misplaced gesture of mercy and everything they built and bled for could go up in smoke from a raider's torch, their families devoured by terrible inhuman things, or their community infected with some grievous plague or foul pox that even death would not release them from. Winter is a harsh time. It forces people to make tough decisions. It is a time of attrition and siege as horror and madness surrounds everything and relentlessly tries to wear down all defenses, all protections.

Bleak Passage
Refugees still pour into the region from the Three Empires and every petty principality that has fallen in the wake of plague, war, and the destruction of their homelands. Naked or bundled in all the clothes they own, rich or poor, still they come dragging their meager possessions, carrying their few salvaged treasures, leading their children, pets and what livestock they could save through the wilderness, through the snow and ice and all the dangers of the woods and roads to reach Wermspittle.

Some do not believe the terrible things that are muttered about this place. All that anyone really remembers or admits to knowing is that it is an old, old place outside the boundaries of all the known powers. Whether it truly is accursed or a nest of outcasts doesn't matter any more, not to the refugees who've been driven from their farms, towns and estates. When you've already lost everything you ever held precious or dear in life, there's not much to fear from a place not shown on any maps and only ever heard about in vague whispers. In the depths of darkness and despair, strange seeds begin to germinate.