South Wales

Today, Carmarthen is a small, quiet town of some fifteen thousand people in southwest Wales, a bit less blighted than most of the region. It has a proud history, though. It claims to be the oldest town in Wales, and between the 16th and 18th century it was the biggest, until industrialization and coal led others to eclipse it. Carmarthen also has strong links to the Arthurian legend, for it is said that Merlin (or Myrddin, as his name was before the English got to it) was born in a cave outside of the town, and many of the local place names reflecting the legend (such as Bryn Myrddin, Merlin's Hill near the town center). There's a tree called Merlin's Oak, and as the legend goes, when Merlin's Oak comes tumbling down, so too shall Carmarthen Town. Since the mid-19th century, the old oak has been slowly dying, resisting all attempts to keep it alive, to the consternation of some of the superstitious locals.

It is no surprise, then, that the Consilium of Carmarthen is the only group of mages that rivals London in terms of prestige and power. For going on two centuries now, both have claimed to be the First Consilium of the United Kingdom. In truth, London has the edge, but Bendigeidfran and his Councilors would rather tear their own hearts out than ever admit that. Compared to the dictatorial modes of the London mages, the Consilium of Carmarthen is a devolved, democratic institution reflecting a strong Free Council influence, though Bendigeidfran himself is a Mystagogue. Most of the mages that claim allegiance to the Consilium actually live in Cardiff or Swansea, and have a significant degree of self-rule, with many of the most important issues settled by referendums conducted on Bryn Myrddin. A controversial innovation to say the least, but it's worked well for the Consilium so far, albeit at the cost of swiftness of action.

The area around Carmarthen is also home to a great many artifacts of Merlin. The party line is that Merlin was an archmage of world-bestriding power in dark age Britain, who crafted the Arthurian world to bring a touch of the Supernal into human affairs. Certainly, the Carmarthen Consilium has a few of his books and relics (or the books and relics of some wizard rather more puissant than usual). The only catch is that plenty of the Fae claim Merlin or Myrddin as one of their own, for the earliest legends have him as a half-human being of fae aspect, a trickster-mentor to King Arthur and his knights. In any case, Carmarthen sees a great many pilgrims from all over the world, and the Consilium periodically conducts searches for more relics, though these are nothing so mundane as archaeological digs, and Bendigeidfran's mages take a dim view of others engaging in a bit of extracurricular searching.

Tenby

An old tramp, a big bearded man, walks endlessly along Heywood Lane in Tenby, from one end of the seafront to the other and back again, back and forth, never talking to anyone, never acknowledging that anyone else is there, and never, ever, once stopping, day or night. When he dies, someone else takes his place. The owners of the guesthouses that line the esplanade advise their guests never to speak to him. They say it’s dangerous, although they can’t ever tell you why.

The Rhondda Valley, in South Wales, is counted one of the poorest single administrative regions in Western Europe. The picturesque rolling valleys were and are home to a thriving coal mining industry, but as the mines close down, there is nothing to replace them, and the villages of the Rhondda Valley are steadily falling into poverty and decay. The poorest area of all is the Small Rhondda, the Rhondda Fach. It’s so narrow that only one main road winds through the valley. The villages that line its sides all run into each other: Maerdy, Ferndale, Tylorstown and Wattstown, so close to each other that they might as well be one community, the side roads that branch off up the slopes of the valley all eventually curving back onto the one main road.

One night every couple of months, the road between Ferndale and Maerdy extends by about a half a mile, and another village appears, and stays there for about a week, with its own bordering hills, its own mineshaft, its own coal tips and its own sign. The sign says it’s called Pontycythraul: please drive carefully. Fear settles over the people in the other villages in the valley. As far they’re concerned, Pontycythraul has always been there, and it’s always been a place to be scared of. Carriages heading through this stretch of road go very fast — the horses tend not to want to stop even for water — and it’s the unspoken rule that you do not stop for anyone, not for a hitchhiker, not for a policeman or a breakdown, not for an accident, not for anything. People in Ferndale and Maerdy stay in at night, and ignore the screams and the shouts. They don’t get the police involved, and they don’t try to help anyone they know who gets in trouble there.

You go to Pontycythraul and you come out alive, no one talks to you, like you’re tainted. Even when the village is gone, and the world’s gone back to being a place where it never existed, survivors of the place are still shunned. You don’t ever get out unmarked. People from Pontycythraul — they’re a different matter. Mostly, they don’t leave the village. You can see them as they drive through. They all look similar, with their greasy curly hair and their sloping faces and pockmarked, pasty skin and their hunched shoulders under coal miner's caps and workboots and soot stained aprons. They stare at you as you drive past with eyes, dark and dull like empty mirrors, and pinched mouths and beetling brows. About 10 years ago, they’ll tell you, a young teacher, an English fella, he laughed — I’m from Moss Side, he says — and he went to visit some of the parents in Ponty. That’s the end of the story. That was the last of him. When Pontycythraul isn’t there, they say he died in a carriage accident, bad stretch of road that, they say, but when it’s there: then they know.

The local Forsaken packs and the Carmarthen Consilium know that something terribly, terribly wrong is going on here. But of the sole pack that went to Pontycythraul, only one came back and he wasn't what you'd call quite sane, and the mages still can't decide what to do. So nothing is done.