Out Here in the Fields: Autumn Encounters (Wermspittle)

Vintage Ectograph from the 1129 Farmer's Almanac and Crop Concordance

(Published 1128, Old Brenn, Kalfaz. Under Imperial License from the Court at Avrigonne. Removed from sale by order of the Ministry of Censorship and Collective Hygiene. All copies are required to be burned under provision of Imperial Order 27, as stipulated by the Under-Secretary for Conformity and Comity. This order is, of course, in abeyance within the Contested, Disputed and Withdrawn Provinces, and therefore does not apply within Wermspittle.)

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Autumn is a grim time in the Low Lands. Winter comes along much too fast to leave anything for the last minute and rare it is that any might get much sleep during the onset of Fall. Harvests must be brought in before the Killing Frosts, the hail or anything else can ruin things. Brewing begins in earnest, as does pickling, canning and every other form of putting up food for the long, dark winter. Hunters head out to the woods in heavily armed groups. The Lime Kilns are started. There is always much more work than there are hands to tend to it all. Bandits might be a nuisance, but they are a small matter compared to the horrific things that are coming with the long, cold nights when ice grips the land and the dead are not content to lie quietly in their graves. Any fool knows damned well that this is the time for all good men to lend a helping hand to one another, lest they all be overwhelmed before Spring.

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Twenty Encounters in Low-Land Fields (Autumn)

1. (3d6) Ractur are out on a raid of the local farmstead enclaves. So far they've lost six of their party. They've managed to 'steal' three gut-piles and a bucket of mushrooms someone left behind. They do not realize that a group of farm-kids are tracking them. Their mothers know several recipes for Ractur.
2. A large group of children, still too young to be sent off to Wermspittle but not big enough to help with the more demanding tasks, have been sent out to collect firewood and fungi. Each child moves across the fields and through the small copses of trees quietly, almost furtively. They all carry short bows or slings, and knives. They would welcome the opportunity to bring home some game they were able to take down while gathering their wood and mushrooms. Horses are considered a delicacy in these parts.
3. Twelve hunters, all over the age of thirty, each armed with stout forest bows, sturdy axes, hammers and clubs. They flushed out an Unseen Beast just a mile back and are tracking it. They will warn anyone they pass that the thing is wounded, but they will not waste day-light on strangers.
4. A rag-tag caravan of Refugees from one of the closer Franzikaner outposts is making its way towards Wermspittle. They bear the black and sickly yellow-green banners of pox and plague. No one willingly has any business with these people. Anyone spotted dealing with them will be shunned as a potential carrier.
5. A steaming furrow has been dug out from the fields, the track of some large cylindrical object that crashed here overnight. The cylinder is still incredibly hot. The three crew-members inside may be dead. Perhaps they were killed on impact. Perhaps.
6. A burned-out farm-house. In the cellar is a Weak Point anchored by a strange bit of sorcerous geometry that has been burned into the dirt floor, linking it to some hot, fetid and terribly red place from which a small group of (3d4) Grunters have crossed over. The weird geometry appears to be collapsing in upon itself and the forced anchoring of the Weak Point is only temporary, unless the Grunters can do anything about it. Who would do this sort of thing? Was it some sort of experiment? Where is the spell-caster?
7. (1d6) Bulbous violet and orange fungi sprout evilly from the ground. These are Crudiv spores. The milky liquid they exude is exceptionally toxic (-2 on Save), but they can be quite delicious if one knows how to prepare them. If left alone, they will spawn 1d4 Crudiv in the next hour or so. Note: normally, these spores are found underground. Someone has either maliciously or ignorantly transported the things here to an open field. If the colony takes root, it will begin to produce quite a few more Crudiv, making it a menace.
8. (4d4) Farmers are repairing fences and setting heavy, sharpened stakes into pits and ditches all along the perimeter of their enclave. A group of children wearing goggles and wet cloths over their faces are pouring buckets of freshly-burned lime into the ditches and pits.
9. Eleven children armed with bows, hand-axes and a few spears are following the tracks of a party of Ractur.
10. A well-to-do gentleman in the torn remnants of a classic smoking jacket, grass-stained white shirt, dirty trousers, partly ripped vest and rather beat up slippers stumbles past. He is armed with a crowbar and six matches. He is in something of a hurry and somehow slips away, as though he were never really there at all. A careful examination of the ground near where he was spotted will reveal a brass lever with an ivory handle.
11. (2d4) Sickly and mangy Almas driven down from their mountains by raiders who have burned their yurts and killed their elders. They are lost and wandering along the edges of settled areas looking for shelter. They have three times as many children with them as there are adults. Most of them are orphans. All of them are sick, hungry and growing increasingly desperate as the reality of their situation starts to hit home. The adults are poorly armed, mostly some make-shift clubs, a few tools, and a hunting bow or two. None of them has any armor, several are naked. The raiders took everything.
12. (1d4) Violetics, recently escaped from a slaver they killed in a mutiny. They know nothing about this area, speak only a peculiar dialect of Zurian and are woefully unprepared for the cold weather. But they do still have their chains which they expect to use to defend themselves.
13. Six merchants are trying to get their wagon unstuck from a very muddy rut in the so-called road. They are on their way out from Wermspittle to Old Brenn, if they can avoid the bandits and beat the first frost. One of the merchants is a host for Gore Worms and another is a rogue simulacrum of the Provincial Mayor, traveling incognito. The wagon is profoundly stuck and all the merchants have managed to do is get it stuck worse, fight amongst themselves, and dismiss their guards in a fit of foolishness. They are about to come to blows, if something doesn't happen, or someone intervenes. The wagon is loaded down with burlap-bound rolls of Yellow Wallpaper, three casks of Black Liquor, two hundred pounds of Hard Candy in plain white 3 ounce packets (stacked inside a set of nondescript cardboard boxes), and the larval form of an Ungezeifer packed carefully in another cask.
14. Sixteen desperate men in Rahzik black half-cuirasses and scale-sewn leather long coats, each one wounded and filthy, ride along with heads hung low. The horses are nearly spent. They were cut off from their unit and have been wandering aimlessly for the last four days and nights. They've been trying to live off of the land, but the farm enclaves are too well defended and the hunters far too accurate with their bows and slings. 
15. (3d6) Gleaners and Sharecroppers are making a last check of some of the outlying fields. They have three carts, laden with root vegetables and bundles of other crops that they've been able to collect after the 'real' harvest. These hardworking folk are the ones who do not own houses themselves. They are barely tolerated back in the enclave, but the food they bring back is very welcome.
16. A random swarm: Consult the Swarm Table. Or perhaps it is a migrating group of black-banded head-taker beetles headed south for the winter.
17. Three feral children. Each is armed with 2d4 random knives and assorted cutlery. One wears loose-fitting leather armor stuffed with old newspapers to get it to almost fit. They are carrying a bundled-up looking glass that some sorcerer used to trap a Zahj. They expect to get a rich reward for this thing from the Franzikaners or the Geremondry. Basically, they'll sell it to whomever makes them an offer they feel is good enough. Two of them have minor deformities, so they intend to return to Wermspittle to hire a surgeon to fix them. The third member of their group has no particular interest in going back.
18. Back behind a copse of twisted trees is a Weak Point that opens into a vast field of churned-up gray mud under a ponderously dark and stormy sky. Cold water trickles out from the Weak Point, forming a muddy patch immediately surrounding it. Visibility is very poor on the other side, however there may be mountains quite a ways off in the distant North, assuming that is indeed the correct direction. It may be a Dead World. Or not. Want to find out?
19. A large group of adolescent workers are hauling blocks of limestone back to be burned into lime at the kilns that their grandfathers have just gotten going again. Each of these young men are deformed in some fashion, sterile and marked by their having lingered too long in the Low Lands. Few of them will live past this winter and they know it.
20. A pair of Barrow-Men lie dead along the side of the road. Each one has been shot in the back of the head with Dead Lead Shot. One of the corpses still clutches a small pouch or well-tanned Horla-hide that is invisible, as is whatever it contains. In this case it is a crumpled-up map showing what appears to be a barbershop along a twisty Low Street in Wermspittle. Whatever notes were scrawled on the thing are illegible, the graphite smeared and wiped off from rough handling. A careful examination gives the impression that the location this map is for might be somewhere near the White Sphinx.