The Wychbog Cottage
A tumble-down cottage perched atop creaking wooden supports emerges from a flooded fen in the Silent Forest; the cottage’s occupants, the Wychbog Sisters, are three ancient crones who can miraculously restore the health of those who dare to visit them.
• The Wychbog Sisters are named Yubella Greentongue, Old Kruka, and Mother Malaryn.
• All three sisters are corpulent and wear ragged dresses made of human skin, though they disguise their terrible natures under palatable illusions.
• When their aid is sought, the Sisters make their visitor a poisonous offer—they will cure whatever ailment besieges the sufferer, but in return that person must bring them a living child as payment.
Yrd Dolma
Within an obscure clearing in the Silent Forest stands a circle of weathered gray sarsen stones known as Yrd Dolma.
• In the center of Yrd Dolma, a sacred bonfire is kept burning by blind pagan pyromancers of the Aeld Faith.
• The druids and pyromancers who tend the bonfire believe in a prophecy that states that a great warrior will one day willingly sacrifice themselves to their holy flames; this martyr will die within the bonfire and be born again, emerging from immolation as a sacred undead champion.
• The druidic priests of Yrd Dolma believe that their ordained champion is fated to free Krevborna from the grip of supernatural evil.
To make Yrd Dolma a bit more helpful to characters NOT planning to pull a Ghost Rider, might one suggest making the fire itself associated with certain oracular powers? (Not entirely reliable - always in motion, the future is - but sufficiently potent to make the Druid’s claims of a Human Torch leading the battle against Evil seem more possible).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I’ll bet they pay right well for the proper sort of fuel to keep that Holy Flame a-burning (Presumably windfall timbers and kindling from certain sacred groves).
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As for the ‘Weird Sisters’: (In a hearty Norwegian accent) “Bring along kindling, fetch me a slow match and my most magnificent hat, but most of all BRING ME MY WITCHING MOUSE, for tonight we go a-hunting!”
(As any true student of Witchcraft, Demonology and Roald Dahl can tell you, there’s nothing like a good mouse for ruining a Witch’s day).
Flame-borne prophecy is a pretty good idea, I'll see if there's room to add something like that to the book
DeleteI take no particular credit for the notion: it’s an element inspired in part by Melisandre of Asshai from A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, as well as by the Ancient tradition that the Oracle of Delphi inhaled smoke & fumes to experience her prophetic fits.
DeleteAlso, the vision of a hero who gave themselves to the flames to become a Superhero had to come from somewhere, so why not straight from the flames? (If nothing else this would lend an interesting ambiguity to the nature of the visions and of the flames).
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Now I’m getting the mental image of this stone ring being built as one of those ‘Neolithic supercomputers’ to keep track of the calendar, only to get sidetracked because somebody had an odd vision when they burned the wood used for this Holy Task (As part of the sacrifices that consecrated the ring).