Connects to: 29.14, 48.13, 50.14 and 51.12.
Overview
Near where Melnir’s Mount (51.12) now stands, there was once a colony of the City of Shuttered Windows. Its founders hoped that it would be a staging ground for caravans bound for the lands beyond the Keening Sea. Their hopes came crashing down when the town was badly damaged by the earthquake and flooding that followed the death of Tiamat. To make matters worse for the colonists, their homes were destroyed when Melnir called forth rivers of liquid rock from the quivering ground.
However, some of the colonists refused to be evacuated and stayed in these lands, rebuilding the lost colony into a humble village that now owes no allegiance to their ancestral home but rather to their strange god.
Their god is indeed strange. Everyone knows that giant crayfish never stop growing and one that lives in the eastern waters of the Keening Sea has grown to an enormous size. A theologically innovative priest of the old colony viewed it has a manifestation of the God of the City of Shuttered Windows but generations of villagers have forgotten that distinction and now worship the creature as a god and their prayers have made it so.
The nameless crayfish god is now the size of a blue whale but is still a crayfish and knows nothing but cold hunger and unconsciously impels his worshipers to satisfy it. They do so by doing anything they can to lure travelers towards their lonely corner of the Keening Sea so that their god may feast on them. Any travelers that the locals can catch are also tied to posts sunk into the mud offshore while the villages pipe and drum to call forth their god to feed.
The chief of the village, the self-styled Voice of the Claw, dominates the rest with threats about what will happen if they fail to do the will of their mindless god while his wife, the village wise woman, often shrieks out during the strange watery dreams that haunt her nightly…
But for the most part, the villagers are simple fisher folk who spent all of their lives in and around the water of the Keening Sea and often bathe in it to preserve their skins from the dry air.
Connections
- The People of the Claw attempt to trick travelers into jumping off the end of the Long Dock so that their god can feed (48.14).
- The People of the Claw have taken to lighting the sails of passing ships on fire (50.14).
Hooks
- If the giant crayfish is a (very) minor god, what powers does it have? What powers can it grant its followers?
- Are there any interesting ruins of the original colony?
- Dry air? What?
- What techniques do the villagers use to attract travelers?
