Helena and Ivara Graymalk

Hemlock Hollow’s most powerful villains are Helena and Ivara Graymalk, two Devil-bound witches.

Helena Graymalk

Helena Graymalk is the matriarch of the Graymalk family and the unofficial burgomaster of Hemlock. The townsfolk look to her for guidance, as it is acknowledged openly that her witchery keeps the town and its mines thriving. 

    • Appearance: Helena appears to be a comely woman in her mid-thirties; she is especially proud of her mane of curly auburn hair. 

    • Personality: She finds pleasure in exercising power and bending others to her will.

    • Motive: She hopes to summon the Devil from Hell so that he might bring the world under his sole dominion.

    • Flaw: She knows that if she were to ever displease her master, he would revoke her longevity and let time ravage her body.

Ivara Graymalk

Although she plays the part of a bookish and naive young woman, Ivara Graymalk is an accomplished witch who does the Devil’s bidding. She is unafraid of using others to get what she wants. Ivara is currently Helena Graymalk’s favored child, but they both know it is inevitable that they will strive against each other.

    • Appearance: Ivara poses as innocent and scholarly girl, dressing like a prim and proper schoolteacher, but this guise is calculated to make her appear harmless or perhaps even in need of protection. 

    • Personality: She is a patient schemer.

    • Motive: She desires to replace her mother as matriarch of the Graymalk witches.

    • Flaw: She burns with impatience to to recognized as a powerful witch in her own right.

      

The Theatre Diabolique and Villa Kazmark

Two more locations in Krevborna's witch-haunted town of Hemlock Hollow:

The Theater Diabolique

The Theater Diabolique is a playhouse specializing in gory productions that dramatize crimes, murders, and supernatural terrors as ghastly spectacles for stout-stomached crowds. 

    • The artists of the Theater Diabolique are infamous for their mastery of theatrical artifice; they have pioneered techniques for creating fake blood, steaming entrails, and dismembered corpses that seem all too real. 

    • The gruesome plays performed at the theater are also supported by a few gore-obsessed illusionists who use their magic to enhance the Diabolique’s phantasmagoria of slaughter and carnage. 

    • A deformed masked madman named Erik Bercilan lives in the ancient tunnels beneath the playhouse; he is liable to abduct any starlet performing at the Theater Diabolique that catches his eye.

Villa Kazmark

Villa Kazmark is an abandoned manor house in Hemlock Hollow with a sinister reputation. It was once rented by a circle of Romantic poets as a place of collaboration—and some say for drunken orgies as well—but their tenancy ended in a bloody suicidal pact.

    • Villa Kazmark is secretly used as a place of worship for Hemlock Hollow’s remaining Church of Holy Blood adherents now that their faith has been driven underground.

    • Secret chambers in the basement of Villa Kazmark are used to store outlawed religious tracts and contraband copies of the Holy Blood Bible.

    • Villa Kazmark features a number of “priest holes”—hiding places for clerics and other members of the faith who are being hunted by the witches of the Graymalk clan and their satanic servants.

    • The manor house is also haunted; at night, the poets who met their demise within its walls reenact the violent scenes of their deaths. 

    • In recent years, the ghosts inhabiting Villa Kazmark have become more active and agitated; soon they will seek to possess those who worship clandestinely within the house.

Mordenkult, the Usher House, Streghastra Road

The following three locations might figure into adventures within Hemlock Hollow in Krevborna. Mordenkult brings black metal to the setting, kinda. The Rackrend Estate adds a creepy family standing guard over a horrible evil. Streghastra Road has its own Black Philip-inspired monster to deal with. Good luck, adventurers! 

Mordenkult

Mordenkult is the most infamous tavern in Hemlock Hollow; it is regarded as the birthplace of “black skaldism,” music best described as morbid, dark, and misanthropic. 
    • The bards who perform black skaldism music for the entertainment of rough crowds at Mordenkult paint their faces with stark black and white pigments to give themselves a startling, demonic appearance.
    • Some alarmists claim that black skaldism is corrupting and encourages blasphemy, arson, diabolism, and murder.
    • The tavern has several private rooms that can be rented on an hourly basis; these rooms are enchanted to make them safe against scrying and other forms of divination magic.

The Usher House

The Usher family are decrepit necromancers who own a crumbling ancestral estate on the outskirts of Hemlock Hollow. The house sits at the base of a brackish tarn, its foundations cracked and the land around it is choked with black weeds.

    • The remaining members of the Usher family have inherited a familial duty to maintain the magical wards keeping a “sleeping” woman named Madeline Usher imprisoned within a glass coffin in the tombs that lie under their manor house.

    • Should Madeline awaken, she will destroy the world; as part of the ritual necessary to keep Madeline incarcerated within her glass coffin, the Ushers perform a weekly rite while wearing black garb decorated with the yellowed remnants of ancient bones and gilded, skull-like masks. 

Streghastra Road

Streghastra Road cuts through the Kressig Woods to the south of Hemlock Hollow and ends at the northern gates of Creedhall. 

    • The road is haunted by a fiend known as Black Samael, who takes the form of a massive goat with jet-black fur, fearsome curling horns, and eyes that smolder with infernal flame. 

    • Black Samael has an especial taste for the flesh and blood of priests, clerics, and other devout followers of the Church.

Madame Valerio's House of Spirits and Maximilian's Waxworks

Two locations that could feature in adventures in Hemlock Hollow:

Madame Valerio’s House of Spirits

A painted sign depicting an evil eye hangs above the entry to Madame Valerio’s House of Spirits, a spiritualist parlor run and owned by Ivy Valerio. 

    • Madame Valerio claims to have been a Polnezna fortune teller, though the truth of her origins remains a mystery.

    • Her powers are genuine—she is able to summon the long-quiet shades of the dead for consultation and her milky white “dead eye” is capable of perceiving ghosts beyond the veil of death. 

Maximilian’s Waxworks

Maximilian’s Waxworks is a wax museum attraction run by a doppelganger named Maximilian Drear. 

    • The waxworks features a number of grisly displays, each recreating the circumstances of a murder, massacre, or natural disaster. 

    • Visitors to Maximilian’s Waxworks claim that the wax figures seem to move slightly, or flash a hellish grin, when glimpsed out of the corner of their eyes. 

    • Maximilian has endowed his creations with the power of animation and malign intelligence; anyone trespassing within the museum at night will find themselves stalked by wax figures with evil intent.

    • The wax figures and tableaux are crafted by ghouls who labor in the building’s basement. 

The Black Chapel and Kressig Woods

Two locations that might be explored in Hemlock Hollow:

The Black Chapel

Once a church of the Holy Blood, the Black Chapel has been defiled and is now home to satanic rites performed to honor the Devil.

    • The Black Chapel’s exterior had been painted black, its stained glass windows have been replaced by blood-red panes, and its spires are decorated with grotesque gargoyles. 

    • The chapel’s sacred altar has been replaced by a grand throne of silver and dark wood.

    • During the black masses performed within the Black Chapel, a figure of smoke and ash—a manifestation of the Devil’s will—sits upon this profane throne and presides over the sacrilegious sabbaths. 

    • The Graymalks make ritual blood sacrifices to appease their dark master deep within the crypts beneath the Black Chapel.

Kressig Woods

Partially encircling Hemlock Hollow is a deep, dangerous forest known as Kressig Woods. 

    • Kressig Woods is home to a particularly vicious band of seductive and cruel dryads. 

    • The dryads of Kressig once lived in peace with the people of Hemlock Hollow prior to their turn toward deviltry, but the evil of the Graymalk witches has exerted a corrupting influence over them. 

    • The befouled dryads of Kressig Woods are particularly dangerous for any virile man who wanders into their territory—they attempt the most devious snares to get their hands on any men who enter Kressig Woods. 

    • Any men charmed into submission by the dryads are used for labor and to provide the seed they need to give birth to the next generation of dryads. 

    • Once a man has served his purpose, or the dryads tire of his company, he is released and hunted for sport.

Hemlock Hollow

Art by Becky Munich

Just in time for Halloween, I'm dropping the version of Hemlock Hollow that will appear in the revised Krevborna book. Hemlock Hollow is the area of the setting designed for exploring the Gothic ends of folk horror and cult horror. Hemlock Hollow isn't a town in danger of being taken over by the forces of the Devil--that battle has already been lost. The question is now which Faustian bargains are worth risking your soul over.

Future posts will detail specific locations in Hemlock Hollow, as well as two prominent members of the Graymalk clan.

Hemlock Hollow

A Mining Town in the Grip of Devil Worship

Hemlock Hollow was initially founded as a mining camp after rich veins of silver were discovered in the nearby mountains. The mining operation grew prosperous, and the camp expanded into a fully fledged town. Then, disaster struck. A series of mine collapses brought ruin to Hemlock Hollow. The townsfolk fell into despair and the town’s death seemed all but assured.

The town was granted a new lease on life with the arrival of the women of the Graymalk family. The Graymalks had ready coin to purchase the deeds to the disaster-prone mines. With the mines now under their sole ownership, the Graymalks held a meeting in the town square. Helena Graymalk offered the townspeople a blasphemous proposition: if they would renounce the saints of the Church of Holy Blood and pledge their souls to the Devil, the town would once again know the prosperity of old. The townsfolk initially jeered at this proposal, but within the week the town’s most desperate citizens traded their souls to resume mining under the auspices of the Graymalk family. Most of the town has now converted to the worship of the Devil. As long as the mines remain fruitful and safe, the people see no reason to return to the bosom of their once-adored church. 

Hallmarks

The following elements and aesthetic notes define Hemlock Hollow:

• Occult symbols decorate the facades of Hemlock Hollow’s shops, homes, and inns.
• Hemlock Hollow’s street signs are written in both the common tongue and in the Verbis Diablo, the infernal language of Devils and Demons.
• The townsfolk make casual references to the Devil’s glory in conversation, the way other Krevbornites would speak of their saints.
• It is not uncommon to see sacrificial wicker men or ribald maypole ceremonies on the streets of Hemlock Hollow.