0912 The Hamlet of Swinescombe

A bucolic idyll of green pastures and verdant orchards, dotted with old windmills and fields of oats and barley.

• Terrain: Meadow (2), High Wold
• Lost/encounters: 1-in-6
• Ley line Lamm (p18): Arcane spell-casters feel observed by a pitiless malevolence.
• ### Nearing Swinescombe
• Nestled by the forest, in the north of the hex, the inviting

hamlet of Swinescombe presents a quaint image from a distance. The sound of a lively lute or fiddle often greets travellers approaching the thatched-roof farmhouses and charming crimson barns.

Outlying farms: Farms surround the hamlet, with large pig-pens in which fat shapes waddle with a faintly uncanny motion. As one gets closer, it becomes apparent that the creatures snuffling for food are not swine but bestial humans (30 in all), naked and mud-spattered, fattened and unshorn. Tending to the herds are pigfolk farmers. See The Secret of Swinescombe.

The Hamlet of Swinescombe

Inhabitants: The hamlet is home to 30 pigfolk and 30 bestial humans. See The Secret of Swinescombe.

Visitors: Adventurers who try to interrupt Swinescombe’s way of life are attacked by 6 pigfolk, who try to beat them unconscious and bind them. Subdued PCs awake in the pens, naked and in hog hobbles.

Slaughterhouse: Human corpses hang from the rafters, dismembered body parts are strewn across work-tables, and cleaver-wielding pigfolk cheerfully disjoint cadavers.

The Pot-Bellied Boar (alehouse): The village drunk, Old Bart, habitually drowns his sorrows at the bar.

Abandoned building: Blockish, windowless. Conspicuously shunned by the pigfolk, who refer to it in quavering whispers as the “haunted tomb of the ancestors.” The dark, cool interior proves to be a curing larder for pork sausages, which dangle from numerous hooks. Anyone fleeing here is safe from the pigfolk.

Services in Swinescombe

Lodgings: Of common quality (DPB). No private rooms are available.

Food: Served at the Pot-Bellied Boar. Of common quality (DPB). All meat served is human.

Bartholomew “Old Bart” Bucksnort

An old, sad-faced male boar with ale-tinted whiskers ringing a gin-blossomed snout.

Demeanour (Neutral): Sour, gripey. Tells outsiders the history of Swinescombe for a drink.

Speech: Slow and deliberate, punctuated with meditative, mournful sighs. Woldish.

Desires: Misses life as a mere pig, and longs to return to the carefree days of old.

The Secret of Swinescombe

Swinescombe was originally a hamlet of pig-farming humans. By chance, a local charcutier discovered the black filth in hex 0911. Believing it magical, he fed it to the pigs, in a bid to outdo the famed bog-swine sausage of Dreg (p140). The filth permeated the hamlet’s food chain, eventually transforming its pigs into sentient, anthropomorphic pigfolk and its humans into dull-witted beasts. The pigfolk appropriated the homes and lives of the former farmers, herding the bestial humans.

Having only recently seized control of Swinescombe, the pigfolk are anxious to prevent word of their situation from reaching the outside world. They bribed Baron Hogwarsh’s tax collectors to let them be, but fear their inevitable return.

Pigfolk

Walking, talking pigs dressed in fine peasant garb and wigs of human hair, chattering in Woldish.

Medium Mortal—Sentient—Any Alignment

Level 1 AC 13 HP 1d8 (4) Saves D12 R13 H14 B15 S16 Att Meat cleaver (+0, 1d4) or tusk (+0, 1d4) Speed 40 Morale 6 XP 10

Terrified of sausages: Pigfolk can be kept at bay (10′) by brandished sausages, though they repeatedly warn this will bring “the wrath of the ancestors” down upon the entire hamlet “any minute now.”