The Skirl

The Skirl

The northern rim of the Heartland, where the meadow rises into chalk downs and hanging vales and the wind never stops. The Aurae live here by ancient Sylph custom, sow nothing, and weave banners instead — the finest fliers of any Faerie race, in the least forgiving corner of the gentlest province.

The Land

Rugged ground, steep cliffs and a wind coming off the Rimeward heights that has not paused in living memory. Nothing is farmed. The vales provide enough to live on and no more, which the Aurae consider a feature.

There are no windmills here and no need of them. Navigation is by banner: long woven streamers flown from every vale-head, in patterns that carry weather, news and mourning to any ridge in sight. A traveller who cannot read them is not lost so much as illiterate.

The Skirl is also the most direct road from the Heartland to the Rimeward, so for a province that exports almost nothing, it sees a surprising amount of traffic — and the Aurae are famously hospitable to anyone who respects the customs, which they will explain once.

The Aurae

Ascetic, devout, and uninterested in the luxuries the rest of the Kingdom spends its energy on. They worship the wind and the sky, and their whole visible culture is an argument that the wind is beautiful and that someone ought to prove it — hence the banners, which are the only thing they make in quantity and the only thing they will not sell.

Their flight is the strongest of any Faerie. In the Skirl this is survival. Elsewhere it makes them the Kingdom's couriers of last resort, for messages that must arrive in weather nobody else will fly in.

Encounters

Roll d100. The wind decides most of it. Half these encounters are only dangerous because of where they happen. CR is scaled to Faerie size — see Challenge by Size.

d100 Encounter CR
01–08 1d4 Aurae at a vale-head hanging banners, who explain the customs exactly once —
09–15 1 Rimeward-bound caravan, 2d6 strong, badly in need of a wind-reader —
16–22 2d6 snow fleas on a wet chalk face — harmless, disgusting, and a sign the ground moves 0
23–28 1d3 Aurae couriers of last resort, flying weather nobody else will —
29–34 1d6 honeybees blown off the plains and furious about the whole situation 1
35–40 a downdraft off the Rimeward: wing failure, 1d4 down on the chalk, a rescue underway —
41–46 1d3 yellowjackets nesting in a chalk crack above the path 2
47–52 2d4 ground beetles working the scree at dusk 2
53–58 1 tiger beetle on bare chalk: runs blind, stops to look, resumes 2
59–64 1d2 bark scorpions under a flake of chalk, fluorescing under fey-light 4
65–70 1 dragonfly riding the ridge lift, hunting whatever the wind delivers 5
71–76 1d3 voles strayed off a Rimeward herd, wool-warm and bad-tempered 6
77–81 1d2 hummingbirds contesting the vale, territorial past all sense 7
82–86 1 shrew quartering the turf, unable to stop and uninterested in trying 7
87–90 1 fence lizard on a sunlit outcrop that was never simply an outcrop 10
91–94 1 stoat, white for the season, entering any hole a Faerie can 15
95–97 1 magpie on the ridge, which will trade with you and will cheat 17
98–99 1 hawk working the same updraft the Aurae fly 20
00 1 great horned owl off the heights at dusk, and every banner goes still 23