Numenera: Campaign Info.

                     The village of Milvane

Milvane is a large village of some 500 people in the kingdom of Thaemor. The kingdom is not known for its wealth and the long-term goal of Milvane is to supply wealth and for the town to grow into a city. The mayoral family take this quite seriously, seeking to attract adventurers to the town in order to make surrounding areas safer as well as use it as a base of operations with resulting tax breaks and so forth. To the end of growing the town, Milvane is famous – infamous in some cases – for a marked tolerance of mutants and mutations.

The mayor’s office is a hereditary position that the -Oscan family take seriously, each mayor in general running things for 20-30 years barring accident or assassination, and having/adopting 3+ children who decide with the rest of the family which of them will succeed as the next mayor and so forth. -Oscans have been the mayors for well over 300 years and in that time only one has been removed from office via assassination for being unfit; they’ve no desire for that to ever happen again and tend to be quite competent diplomats. All members of the family are required to serve in the town guard in some capacity during their lives, if only in administration or record keeping if they are incapable of other work.

Town guard: The town have a ten-member guard who work to keep the mayor’s peace and the roads clear. As the town has grown, a distinction has been made between the town guard proper and the border patrol, the guards who deal with weird monsters, weird buildings found near the village and so forth. The patrol is purely volunteer and quite dangerous. Members of the mayor’s family cannot be in the border patrol unless the family allows it (owing to a surplus of mayoral candidates or the disposition of said heir).

The Table: Named for a red table tinted with blue in the centre of town that is used for meetings, the Table is a town council (of which the mayor is part) who deal with the general running of the town. Local merchants can be members along with other prominent citizens, amounting to between 5-7 citizens at any one time. There is always at least one guard and at least one mutant on it. In general, those whose professions are considered vital to the town don’t have time to be members, so other members of their family speak in their stead; others who wish to be members with too much zeal tend to be politely declined. The Table have no power to overrule the mayor or guard.

        The table proper is an artifact of unknown provenance and material which appears to be a 7’ round table balanced on a .5 mm base that gets smaller as it goes down into the earth. All attempts to harm or scan it have failed and no one is sure how deep into the earth it goes.

The Justice: An appointed position, the Justice can sometimes be a member of the mayors family and is always a citizen in good standing. Their job is to mete out justice in disputes between citizens, with the authority to use the town guard to enforce this. The Table can overrule the Justice if need be, but this is seldom necessary. Justices serve 3-5 year terms and just deal with civil infractions, the guard dealing with murder, theft and the like.

        Thieves are required to pay back what was stolen; if a life was taken, the thief’s life is often forfeit. Repeat offenders for crimes can stand to lose hands, arms and so forth or be banished from the town. Banishment is also the punishment for excessive disturbance of the peace and the like, naturally.

The current justice is a Glaive named Bozek who was promoted from the town guard two years ago. The mayor is one Zia-Oscan who is noted for her deal in expanding the town to that of a city, as her father did before her. Her plans are generally considered more radical and much may rely on the success of the people she has hired to help benefit the town.

NOTABLE PEOPLE/PLACES

Lady Suskind’s Sanctuary: Lady Suskind is long since dead, but her Sanctuary lives on as the local apothecary and place of healing and rest. The Sanctuary accepts the grievously wounded and seeks to replace lost or ruined limbs with numenera and find ways to help people with crippling mutations. It is currently run by Abed and Odelar, conjoined twins who take quiet pride in helping anyone they can.

The Drill: a drill-shaped triangle, the drill extends up three stories from a base in the ground, is pale green and was clearly once part of some other machine. It has been in the middle of of Milvane as long as the town has stood and is used by the local Aeon Priests as their clave. The clave consists of 1 priest and two apprentices, the latter of which can often be found down the road at the Sanctuary helping the twins. The current priest is a dour woman named Jisell who sees this posting as a waste of her vaunted talents and gifts for deciphering numenera.

The Storehouse: the local store, a large single-room pale blue building whose interior is at least six times as large as the exterior. Exactly what causes this is unknown but the Storehouse consists of six rooms all at different temperatures and is used for storing many goods in the town.- The Aeon Priests have been refused permission to examine it in depth.

The Keep: the headquarters of the Guard/Border Patrol, this is a pale stone building that according to legend simply grew up out of the ground when the last Keep was burned down by a raiding party of abhumans over 200 years ago. The Keep is cool and solid, with cells and storage for all the Guard need. The rumours of alien whispers and laughter in it are mostly just stories to frighten new guards with.

The Dome: A single-room vast dome of a building, the dome has one entrance (which is always open), transparent walls in some places that serve as windows, remains at spring temperatures at all times and is the same colour as the Table, leading some to believe the two are connected. The interior is divided by flexible walls that were once called up out of the floor, though no one living now knows how. The Justice has their office in the hall along with the mayor, the mayor’s family living in the back end of the Hall proper.

The Smithy: Milvane is home to a famous shapesmith named Wohl who can shape armour and weapons from almost any substaine; the shapesmiths are famous for blue glowing metallic arms that they can shape into tools in order to cut, slice and shape various numenera into useful items. His daughter is currently in training to take over when he dies; one of his two sons also inherited the ability, but hasn’t the patience to be a shapesmith and is currently serving in the border patrol.

The Wailing Wall: the current primary defense of the town (after the Guard and the Patrol, naturally), the wall is a spell known to some of the town that, when uttered, calls up the spirits of the dead to defend the town against attack. It is known to only work if truly needed and was a recent discovery some 50-odd years ago. How often it can be used – and if the dead are willing to be used – is a closely guarded secret.

The Chamber: somewhere under the Keep lies a chamber full of active cyphers. The Chamber was found a few years ago and believed to be able to store cyphers without adverse affects: this belief turned out to be wrong as the cyphers in the chamber attained an alien consciousness that has forbidden entrance to their home ever since.

        Weird around Milvane

Thaemor is a poor contry and has no resources to keep more than major roads clear, and certainly none to clear out off ruins and explore the things that lie buried under the Ninth World. As such, Milvane has its share of strangeness to it.

Palot: A small ruin of a settlement consisting of 30-40 people a couple of hours south of Milvane, Palot is home to mutants, many of whom end up in Milvane. No one is sure why the rate of mutation is so high in Palot but those born in the area cannot conceive or produce progeny in any other area for the most part, which is one reason for the relatively steady population. Those with non-viable mutants or ones that are flat-out repulsive are generally not welcomed to Milvane, and some choose to remain in Palot believing it to be their destiny.

The Flowing Field: A farmers field south of the town; the farmer was tilling the earth when he struck some device that had been pushed up near the surface in heavy rains recently. The end result was that the field has turned into a flowing golden liquid that is unbearably hot but has done nothing to leave the bounds of the field. Attempts to harvest of communicate with it have proved futile.

The Glass Lord: a humanoid figure standing some 8’ tall, the Glass Lord is made of green translucent glass and claims these lands are his by right of blood and conquest. He is able to produce weapons of glass and even create servants from his own body but, being glass, they are easy to destroy. Every time he is destroyed, a new glass lord shows up some time later to make the same claim all over again. Destroying the glass lord has become a rite of passage in the Guard and the day after is as a local holiday.

Recent local news

There used to be a small moss-encrusted monolith floating in the air a couple of days south of Milvane. As monoliths go it wasn’t much to speak of: two people could barely fit on top and it was only 20’ tall though it did hover in the sky above the area. Someone, somehow, broke it and the pieces fell to the earth. The village of Dalmen that had been below it was simply gone -- replaced by a forest that grew up from the remains of the mossolith, as the locals had disparagingly dubbed it.

     The forest is full of old-growth trees and seems safe enough though not a single native species has moved into it in the three months it has existed. This is believed to have been behind the town council agreeing with the mayor that if anyone is going to explore Milvane in depth, it should be people with an interest in the town surviving the experience.

The armoured: a creature – 5’ tall, clad in a one-piece solid dark suit with no marks on it – has been seen north of Milvane, wandering about. The suit seems to be a weapon of some kind and defends the post, who appears to be searching for something though speaks in no known language and seems lost. Attempts to examine the armour or claim it have all failed thus far.

The Orgundith: No one has explored it yet (save for two guards who did not return); revealed by the recent rainfall, the Orgundith is a tunnel sloping down north of the town ending in a doorway made of alien material. Perhaps the oddest thing is that once it was revealed everyone in the area knew what it was called and roughly where it was; if this is an invitation or a warning remains to be seen.