Village: Hembrink
Guild: Trotter & Tollers
In the county of Inklingshire, there is a Village where vagabonds abound. Many merely pass through, some seek companions, the elders and the younger eagerly listen to tales from beyond the fringe. The village is Hembrink, and in it there is an Inn (Trotter & Tollers) where feet come to rest and the gullets come to down Brimstout before setting out again.
Hembrink within Inklingshire is dedicated to exploration, teaching survival, and understanding that which is valuable and that which is for fools. The Count enables visitors, invests in those who pay forward, and protects discretion. The county keeps an infrastructure that supports seeking far roads, ways, and parts unknown. It holds and treasures information about lore, places, flora and fauna. Since it borders the wild, it is not a keeper of families, but the Count and his kin have been in the area investing in seekers they say for more than 100 generations.
Its main pride is the Trotter & Tollers where people from all over come to learn how to survive outside of hospitality, go farther than most, and possibly bring back what few have ever found.
For those that linger rather than setting out or merely pass through, philosophy, beer crafting, cooking, mythopoeia, and lore in general to read and tell have become its jewels.
The guild helps to sustain the County, but beware, it may not be for the weak willed or those without discipline.
Come have a Brimstout, stop by at Trotter & Tollers or if you are so brave, join up and see whether you end to dare long roads, or hang back at Hembrink to merely share those long tales...
--Mythopoeia--
[extract from J.R.R. Tolkein, Mythopoeia]
He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers bencath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-pattemed; and no earth,
unless the mother’s womb whence all have birth.
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker’s art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.
Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organized delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have tuned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.
I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
