Green Downs Hex Map

Another month of the Year of the Gazetteer is behind us, and you know what that means. This is a smaller map than the last few; I missed being able to key one of these in a single afternoon. But there's still plenty of adventure to be found in the Green Downs - or if you'd rather use this for an unusually Amish-flavored session of Under Hill, By Water, be my guest.

Note that, due to halfling settlement patterns, the population of the Green Downs is sparse and decentralized. Every farmland hex (light green) can thus be assumed to contain multiple homesteads even if not detailed in the key.

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Each hex equals three miles.

Law in the Green Downs

The Green Downs has little in the way of centralized authority or a code of law. It has no real need for it - the halflings mostly keep to themselves and mind their own business, and the fertile soil and the agrarian livelihoods of most Hinnisch folk means that life is generally sustainable, so individual people have little reason to turn to crime. So too, there is no real governing body to make or enforce laws. While some halfling families may be wealthier than others, any real authority this comes from is mostly in name, and halflings consider it gauche to brag of such things. Generally, legal matters in the Green Downs are an ad hoc affair. If there is truly an issue that needs to be addressed, the community will decide on how to handle it in a community meeting.

The closest thing to a legal system among the Hinnisch people is not in the form of official edicts, but cultural practices. The halflings have held onto their own peculiar traditions through the years, some even being practiced in halfling communities far from the Green Downs - traditions that stem from philosophy, practicality, and folk wisdom, in many cases, but sometimes from more spiritual principles.

One of these beliefs is that a halfling may never take up arms against his neighbor, no matter the circumstances. Most halflings interpret this to mean that a halfling should never cause another halfling harm or inflict injury upon them. To this end, only a few villages in the Green Downs have anything resembling a militia, and those that do are strictly tasked with defending the village from outside threats; halflings will never war among themselves. Most of these are on the frontiers of the region, but in the case of the village of Breetschtaab, which sits in a valley that was once menaced by goblins, the threat has long since abated, and the militia is only kept as a matter of formality. The village has never faced an attack in years, and mostly all the militia does is train in weaponry as a hobby - which has won Breetschtaab many victories at harvest festival archery contests.

This rule also means that halflings do not believe in corporal or capital punishment. In the Hinnisch mindset, to sentence a murderer to execution would carry the same moral burden as the murder itself. Instead, the gravest punishment in Hinnisch society is that of exile. This is a serious sentence indeed, and is not one to be taken lightly. When a halfling is exiled from their community, their family holds a funeral for them even though they are alive, and all in the village are to ignore their presence, treating them as though they were dead. They do not speak to them, nor do business with them, and refer to them in the past tense. To deal with an exile invites bad luck, much as being haunted would.

Art by Campaign Command

This almost always leads to the exile leaving their village and striking it out on their own. In some cases, exiled halflings have been able to find a new life in other villages, and sometimes even settle down in new families there, but word travels quickly at markets, and to be exiled carries a great stigma even outside of one's immediate circle. In other cases, exiles leave the Green Downs entirely, sometimes settling among humans or establishing new steadings of their own. The spread of halflings throughout the known world can be attributed just as much to this practice as it can to the tradition of tolerating the youth's tendency to wander.

Halfling Magic

Strictly speaking, the halflings of the Green Downs are not ones for magic. Mastery of the mystic arts involves hours upon hours of careful study, hours that most halflings would rather devote to honest farm work. So too, in such an insular society, halflings are reluctant to entertain the scholarly traditions of magic from outside the Green Downs.

However, it cannot be denied that the Hinnisch folk often encounter situations in which magic is useful. They too suffer ailments and need protection against robbers and the elements. They too lose tools that no one can find, and they too may be bedeviled by spirits. To that extent, the halflings have their own traditions of spellcraft that exist within their own communities.

In the Hinnisch tongue, magic is known as braucherei, and a practitioner is dubbed a braucher (pl. braucheri). There are only a select few families in the Green Downs that practice braucherei; it is a gift passed down through generations, and most halflings do not bother to study the mystic arts unless they are born into them. The braucher families keep meticulous records of their traditions, sharing their knowledge with their children from a young age to carry on their craft. All braucherei consider themselves members of the same extended family, united by craft if not by blood; as such, they do not intermarry, though any child with at least one braucher parent may have the gift. When a child is born to a braucher family, all braucheri in the nearby villages gather to celebrate the occasion. At these meetings, a ritual is performed to confirm whether or not the child has an innate skill for magic - if they do, they are taught the craft, trained from childhood to carry on the family business.

Braucheri deal strictly in white magic - that is, protective and healing spells. They consider offensive magic and curses - black magic - to be dangerous and unholy, and fear it. In game terms, they are best represented by clerics of the Life or Peace domains. Halfling magic, like the traditions of the cunning folk in human lands, is influenced heavily by religion, and incorporates prayers and the invocation of deities and saints, but braucheri are not ordained members of the Pantheonist cults.

The braucheri collect their wisdom in grimoires - which, in halfling tradition, do not consist solely of spells; a typical Hinnisch grimoire will also contain prayers, mundane remedies, and even recipes for food and drink. These tomes can be considered a collection of all information the braucheri consider useful to have at hand, which, for halflings, includes the more victual pleasures of life. The most prized grimoires of all, however, are the missives of heaven - texts held to have been miraculously delivered from the gods themselves. These texts are magic in and of themselves, and protect anyone who carries them from harm, be it from demonic powers or the hands of men. However, in order for such protection to apply, the user must abide by a code of conduct outlined in the text. Failure to live by its tenets means the spells will be undone.

Braucheri enjoy a position of status within halfling communities, revered as healers, teachers, and religious leaders. Many villagers will turn to them for help that only they can work. However, though it is unusual for halflings in general to stray far from their burrows, and braucheri specifically even more so, there are some that may be found plying their craft in other lands, or along the roads.

Art by Caterina Capogrossi

Background: Braucher

Prerequisites: Must be a halfling. Optionally, a DM may allow PCs of other races to take this background if they have, for whatever reason, been raised among halflings, but this is rare.

Suggested Names: Pennsylvania Dutch names, or classically Tolkienian hobbit names.

Skill Proficiencies: Arcana, Religion

Tool Proficiencies: Herbalism kits, one set of artisan's tools or musical instrument of your choice.

Languages: Hinnisch, Celestial.

Equipment: A healer's kit or a herbalism kit, a grimoire, a set of common clothes, and a pouch containing 50 GP.

Feature: Hex Sign. You have been taught several apotropaic sigils, and can imbue them with power; halflings use these to decorate their barns and homes, and they are often of fine craftsmanship, featuring bold colors and artistic designs. You may spend an hour to paint a sign on a building no larger than a barn; all creatures within that building are under the effects of a protection from evil and good spell. This effect ends if the sign is damaged or the wall it is on is destroyed.

Wayward Halfling Youth

Art by Pajazet

As a rule, the halflings of the Green Downs are highly community-minded. They shun overt expressions of individuality as being arrogant and pretentious, preferring to focus on the practical matters of life. However, it is natural for the youth of any society to push back against its norms and values, and halflings are no exception.

In Hinnisch society, it is to be expected that young people will try to act out and rebel against society. The halflings have known this paradigm for generations. As such, they do not push back against it - they know it is natural for their sons and daughters to seek out independence when they reach a certain age, and as long as they are not disturbing the peace, they are allowed to do as they please. The wisdom of the elders holds that the wayward youth will return to the ways of their parents sooner or later; until then, it is best to allow them to live as they please. Fighting against their youthful whims will only encourage them more.

When life in the Green Downs is so heavily focused on the hearth and the fields, and it is considered gauche to be too concerned with matters outside of the home, teenage rebellion, in halflings, tends to take the form of leaving their burrows in search of more adventurous activities than they are used to. They may wish to see more of the world, and to deal with the ways of big folk, integrating into society more than is common in the isolated Green Downs. This period of wanderlust is so common and accepted, it has become something of an unwritten rite of passage in halfling society - in some communities, to leave the home and live among big people is a ritual anticipated by everyone in the village at the cusp of their adulthood.

Most commonly, halflings on this excursion will find work in a given trade in human lands, plying the skills they are familiar with from their time on the farm. They may serve as farmhands or shepherds, or they may ply their trade at woodcraft (the Hinnisch are known as great carpenters). However, it is not unheard of for them to find work in less honest trades. Their quick wits and their ability to fit into tight spaces are valued skills for burglars, and many a halfling has found lucrative work among thieves' guilds and roving bands of treasure hunters.

Typically, a halfling's excursion from their society lasts a few years, and ends with them returning to the Green Downs to marry and establish a burrow of their own (men also grow out their sideburns at this time, as a visual marker of their adulthood). The majority of halflings quickly realize that the farming life is a dependable one, and far less risky than one on the road. However, some of them do choose to stay in human society, which has led to many of them integrating into the settlements of big folk. In this way, they have spread far and wide beyond their homeland in the Green Downs, and can be found just about anywhere in the known world.

Worship in the Green Downs

The halflings of the Green Downs do not construct temples. In the Hinnisch philosophy, to build a specialized edifice for prayer, with all the statuary and ornamentation that entails, is too pretentious. The Hinnisch folk prefer things to be tasteful and practical, and there is no need to pray in gaudy building when one can do so at home.

Nor do the halflings have any priestly or monastic orders. Preferring to live for themselves and to be unbothered, they have little use for rigid hierarchies that arbitrarily allot power to some people over others. Instead, halfling religious traditions emphasize the value of community, and of communal life.

The practices of the Green Downs, though ostensibly part of the same traditions as the formal Pantheonist cults, have little oversight, and they have diverged in numerous ways. A key point is that the halflings believe that anyone can lead worship - if the prayers are written down, the sacrifices to the different divinities are understood, and the people know how to interpret signs that the gods are pleased or not, then there is no need to turn to an external authority for such matters. Holy symbols in the Green Downs are not the purview of clerics, and just about every family keeps a talisman or two to ward away evil spirits, just in case.

In lieu of temples, the halflings observe communal worship in their neighbor's homes. Every other Starday, and on holidays, a given community - usually about 20 to 30 families in the same general vicinity - gathers at the burrow of one of their number (the position rotates such that a different family hosts the service each time, usually hosting once every year), where the head of the household leads them in prayer.

This entails much more than simple worship, however. Much of the Green Downs consists of isolated homesteads, so these meetings present a rare opportunity for the community to come together and for people to catch up on local gossip, considering their only other opportunity to meet up with their neighbors might be on market days. Also, given the halfling propensity for gastronomy, these meetings always include a communal meal, which tends to take up much of the day. A portion of the food is set aside for the gods as a sacrifice, but for many this ritual is merely a formality and the real appeal is getting to share in the company of one's fellows - and to partake in the food, of course. It is no small undertaking to feed an entire clan of halflings, and every host family typically spends several days in advance preparing for the feast, which often includes delicacies seldom enjoyed on ordinary days. To cook a worthy feast and to impress one's guests is an important mark of good burrowkeeping.

Though they are intended to bring the community together, it is not unheard of for halflings to rope any travelers who might be passing through or staying nearby into their services - sometimes among the congregation, and sometimes to help prepare, if they are hosting. They have been known to insist on this, whether the travelers like it or not. Even still, there are plenty of reasons for travelers to look forward to a Starday in the Green Downs. For many, a Hinnisch Starday service is as good a place to hear rumors and local news as any tavern - not to mention to get a good meal and a pint or two of ale, and for free at that. Those unfamiliar with Hinnisch practice, however, should take note that, while ordained priests and monks of most Pantheonist orders study magic and can offer their services to worshipers, most halflings do not - if one is in need of healing, they may need to ask around for an herbalist.

The Halfling Heartland

Halflings can be found in just about any corner of the known world. Of all the humanoid races, they are the most integrated into human society; although they have their own villages, many of them live alongside humans, and vice versa. Halflings - or Hinnisch, in their native tongue - migrated just as humans did, and although they tend to live comparatively sedentary lifestyles, they still found places to settle across the continent, wherever there was pleasing climates and arable land.

However, all halflings claim descent from their native land, the Green Downs - a fertile region in what is now central Vardessy, where the foothills of the rough Schaderbergen Mountains to the southwest give way to rolling highlands and lush valleys. This area boasted good soil, bountiful woodlands, and was a place of relative safety and peace, sheltered from the outside world. In a sense, it was the perfect place for halflings, and the ancestral culture of these people was shaped by the terrain in which they first settled; a culture that still holds strong to this day.

There are halfling villages across Vardessy and beyond, but the Green Downs boasts the highest halfling population in the Empire. A heavily agrarian region, it has no large cities; the vast majority of its populace live in either small villages or solitary homesteads. This is just as the halflings like it - away from the hustle and bustle of urban life, they prefer to focus on the simple things. As the Hinnisch proverb goes, as long as the sun is shining, there is food in the pantry, the livestock are healthy, and the crops are growing, there is no reason to be concerned about anything.

Of course, the halflings of the Green Downs are not without merriment in their lives. Some travelers hold their taverns to be among the finest in the land (if a bit cramped for big folk), and they gather at weekly communal meetings at each others' burrows, where there is much drinking, singing, and dancing to be had. Ostensibly, these meetings are for the reading of prayers and the offering of sacrifices to the gods (Eostre and Solenna being the most prominent in Hinnisch practice), but they also serve as opportunities for local communities and extended families to reunite, and for news and rumors to be shared.

The Green Downs are not a single province of Vardessy - several duchies and counties claim parts of the land under their jurisdiction. However, in practice, the halflings hardly know their feudal lieges' names. Their relationship with the rest of Vardessy is somewhat of a mutual agreement of isolation - the halflings stay out of Imperial business, and the nobility is content to let them govern themselves. Their lives are so mundane that conflicts rarely come up anyway, and when they do, it is usually a matter uncomplicated enough that the patriarchs of the affected families can come to some settlement. But of course, adventure can be found anywhere, for those who know where to look, and the Green Downs holds wonders of its own.