The Blighting of Rippling Gorge
Incidence: Singular
Effected Area(s): Rippling Gorge
Early in the 68th year of the Barony of Advarsel, not long after the village of Rippling Gorge was established, a child was born to the Solange family. He was not the first newborn in the newly born village, but his arrival marked a definitive change for the community. The birth of Erris Solange was accompanied by the appearance of a swarm of Voracious Sprites in unprecedented numbers, affliction his first birthday gift.
The result was catastrophic. The Sprite swarm drifted slowly through the entire village and much of the woods as it dispersed, leaving Blight and devastation in its wake. Rippling Gorge’s dreamlike forests of Hawthorn and Silver Birch diseased, and its agriculture ravaged, the community was deprived of both its primary export of dyes and its source of food.
After effects
The damage was so severe that the villagers were forced to import all of their food and supplies from surrounding areas—an undertaking that, without a connection to the West Road, was expensive and nearly impossible. That winter was a bare, hungry one for all. The task of recovering their gardens was one that no villager was up to, all being hobbyists.
The townspeople lamented not having recruited an occupational farmer, who would have known how to handle the situation. Rippling Gorge’s fragile, developing economy suffered a formidable hit from the loss of that year’s yield, as well as that of the next. Many families relocated, leaving only the most stubborn and the most destitute.
It came as a surprise to none when Erris left the village at his earliest opportunity. Blamed from birth for the destruction of his home, he had grown surrounded by resentment and distrust. So when a caravan of miners came to town selling basalt and soil from the volcano, he begged them to bring him along in exchange for an undefined amount of work. The desperate young man received no support other than the wrapped meal from his aggrieved grandmother, and his inhospitable home bid him good riddance.
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