The West Country

Rarely has a single place been shrouded in quite as much myth and legend. First settled in the Iron Age, the Glastonbury is home to the famed Glastonbury Abbey, supposedly built by Joseph of Arimathea. One of the oldest abbeys in England regardless of legend, in the 12th century monks at the abbey claimed to have found the bones of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. Nearby, the hill of Glastonbury Tor is associated with Gwyn ap Nudd, in Celtic myth the King of the Underworld and later King of the Faeries. In recent times, the town is known for the Glastonbury Zodiac, supposedly an enormous zodiac made up of natural landscape features which predicts the Age of Aquarius. Since the 19th century, Glastonbury has been home to all manner of New Age and neopagan seekers, with gentlemen druids competing with ecstatic latter-day bacchanals, with a remnant population of rather bemused Somerset farmers.

Glastonbury is also home to one of the most important and prestigious Awakened Consiliums in the British Isles, the Sodality of the Tor. Practitioners of a form of Awakened witchcraft, the Sodality believe in the suppression of the conscious mind by way of ecstatic dances and moonlit rituals, so as to better embody their own, personal divine soul. Comprised of five 'branches', the oldest of which date back to the 1400s, the Sodality has always been intimately associated with Glastonbury Tor. They are also part of the Guardians of the Veil, enormously respected for the Lammas Night working, when most of the covens of England united to cast a spell during the darkest days of the Eighty Years War in 1588, a powerful working which resulted in several deaths from exhaustion and self-sacrifice, and one which might have saved Britain from Spanish invasion by way of their enormous Armada. Since then, however, the Sodality has turned increasingly inward, growing ever more parochial and ossified as they strive to maintain the Hallow of Glastonbury Tor. Powerful mages still, the witches and druids of the Sodality spend much of their time on political infighting and avoiding change, even as they let Stonehenge's mystical potential be destroyed and let Bale Hounds dominate Devon and Cornwall. Respect for the Sodality's past greatness keeps the London Guardians of the Veil civil to their counterparts, but Civitas's letters are growing increasingly irritable.

Site of the famous mineral springs, according to legend the city was founded by the apocryphal King Bladud of the Britons. Bladud, a wizard and scholar who had studied in Athens, contracted leprosy there, and returned to England to herd pigs. Once, his pigs came upon the hot springs, which healed them of their sores, and healed Bladud of his leprosy as well. Later, King Bladud built his palace there. While there's no truth that Bladud ever existed, it's certain that the Romans built a significant temple complex and Roman baths at the hot springs, dedicated to the goddess Sulis, identified with Minerva. The town survived through the centuries, often the worse for wear, only to be regenerated in the Georgian era when the springs became a popular resort for Britain's well-to-do aristocrats. The architects John Wood the elder and his son used the creamy-gold 'Bath stone' (a form of limestone) to build elegant streets and palatial dwellings, notably the Royal Crescent and the Circus, today some of the priciest property in the British Isles. At the same time, the modern spa complex was built, in particular the Grand Pump Room. Today, Bath is a spa resort, a tourist attraction, and a home for the exceedingly wealthy.

It is also home to the Vampire of Bath. One figure wanders in and around the city of Bath. It is difficult to tell whether this individual is man or woman — it has long hair, long nails and the features and curves representative of both sexes. Those who see this figure find it unnerving, for it wanders aimlessly and stares longingly at those who walk past. When the police come to find the individual,he/she has always disappeared. Some have noticed something about this odd character: they’ve seen it before. Those who have lived in Bath for their whole lives recognize the person as one they’ve seen before— years before, as a matter of fact. Adults remember it from childhood, and recollection suggests that the individual has not changed one iota since then. Some have seen the figure supping waters from the scalding hot springs that bubble up in the Mendip Hills around Bath. Others have seen it licking water from drainpipes, rusty faucets, even puddles in the middle of the street. Some believe that he/she has been here for centuries, if not longer, a vampire feeding on the town’s purportedly mystical waters (the Aquae Sulis, or the “Waters of Minerva”). Others say that the figure is a walking corpse — looking human during the day, but when the moon shines, it appears as a shambling black corpse with skin as dry as burned paper.

What is certainly true is that Bath is accorded neutral ground in the supernatural world of the British Isles -- even vampire princes and faerie monarchs occasionally want to take the waters in peace. Other than the Vampire of Bath, there are a handful of full-time supernatural residents, and a succession of important visitors. Anyone who makes trouble in Bath may well have some of Britain's most powerful supernatural beings out for their blood.

Quaere is a charming, bucolic village of approximately fifteen hundred people out in the County of Wiltshire, some hundred miles due west of London. It's about as charmingly English as one can hope for, the locals surviving on a mixture of dairy farming, people who commute to Swindon or Salisbury for work, and tourism. The latter relies mostly on the picturesque countryside, the gorgeous Quaere House operated by the National Trust, and the village's close proximity to Stonehenge some twelve miles away. Several bed & breakfasts serve the tourist trade, and the Quaere Historical Preservation Society keeps the village looking in tip-top shape... partially by making sure that the Old Churchyard behind Quaere House doesn't cause a spontaneous rising of the living dead, only with more non-euclidean geometry. Since about the mid-19th century, Quaere has been the designated burial ground for the Awakened of England. Wizards rarely sleep easy in their graves, for too much power changes them. Strange things happen where wizards are buried, and the grave is no barrier to knowledge when necromancy is involved. The Old Churchyard, known as the Orchard of Eternal Tranquility in occult circles, allows the honored dead to slumber in peace, lulled to sleep by great spells that prevent necromancy for some miles about, and watched over by a small group of wizards from London, Edinburgh, Glastonbury, and Carmarthen under the cover of the Quaere Historical Preservation Society. Recently, security has been quite drastically increased, though Quaere is still seen as something of a boring detail for wizards used to the excitement of London or Edinburgh.

Another place that needs no introduction, Stonehenge is the largest, most complete, and best-preserved megalithic circle in the British Isles. Believed to be erected between 3000 and 2000 BC, Stonehenge once sat at the heart of one of Britain's largest neolithic settlements. Long-thought to be an astronomical observatory or place of religious worship, recent scholarship suggests that the standing stones may have also been the site of ancient burials. Research is ongoing, and in the meantime Stonehenge is one of the West Country's top tourist attractions.

Stonehenge also used to be an incredibly powerful ritual site, one of the most powerful wellsprings of occult ability in the British Isles. No longer. A combination of the three-way conflict between the heritage management authorities, New Agers, and the police (who often got called in to break up spontaneous parties by the stones) led to the stones losing whatever energy they once had. In the Shadow, the whole area is blasted and lifeless, a cold landscape of rock and bone. Stonehenge is still of some archaeological interest to occultists, but its power is gone.

Megalithic Britain

The British Isles are littered with prehistoric menhirs, chalk figures, and neolithic mounds. Some of these are globally famous, such as the Stonehenge or Avebury Megaliths, or the chalk figures of Cerne Abbas Giant or the Long Man of Wiltshire -- they are most common in the West Country, but you can come across a standing stone or a burial mound quite nearly anywhere in the British Isles. Usually constructed sometime between 3000 and 2000 BC, many of these have supernatural qualities. Any given megalithic relic might have one or more of the following effects:

• It generates Mana, Glamour or Essence, which can be drawn out by meditation, ritual dances, sacrifice, or some other method.
• It marks a portal to another plane of existence, usually the Hedge or the Shadow.
• The site counts as a Ritual Area for one or more forms of magic, with bonuses ranging from +1 to +10.
• The site is the anchor for powerful spirits or ghosts (sacrificial victims usually). Often, though not always, these are guardian entities.
• The site may be used to summon Rank 5 or even Rank 6 entities, whether Incarnae, Deathlords, or True Fae.
• The site can produce some kind of spell effect if properly activated -- powerful healing or luck magics are most common.
• Usually, overuse or altering the site destroys whatever magic is there (this happened to Stonehenge), though there are exceptions. There's a pub in the Scottish Highlands with an old menhir used as a bar table, which can summon an Incarnae if an appropriate libation is performed.