The Fallow Feast
The Valemire is a place where bargains often grow stranger than the mud that births them. Among its reeds stands a village too content, too well-fed, and too warm in its welcome to feel true. Its folk are smiling, their tables full, their homes hung with banners for an endless celebration. Wanderers are coaxed inside with laughter and good bread.
Lanterns glow amber across the water. Fiddles scrape and voices rise in song, louder when outsiders pass, as if to draw them closer. Children run at your heels with ribbons. At the center of the square, long tables sag beneath roasted game, smoked fish, and golden loaves.
Yet all of it is bought on a single truth: once every season, the village delivers an outsider to the Guest Below. Their pact with the giant in the cellar keeps their children safe, their livestock untouched, and their lives eerily prosperous.
The Feast and the Pact
The feast lasts for weeks, swelling until the chosen “guest” has eaten and drunk their fill. Villagers insist on hospitality — pressing plates into hands, filling cups until they spill, and rehearsing stories that all end in the refrain: “Stay until the Feast.”
When the time comes, the truth is revealed. Most outsiders do not go willingly, but the villagers prefer when they do. The sacrifice is then dressed in fine linen, sung over, and led with ceremony to the crypt. If they resist, a dozen strong arms bind and drag them anyway.
The mayor’s voice booms across the hall, heavy with wine and pride: “One life for all lives. One honored guest, and the Guest Below shall keep us safe until spring.” The crowd answers with applause that sounds more desperate than joyous.
The Giant
The devourer in the cellar is a Granghul — one of the pale giants of Loria. These are not dull brutes of mountain caves, but cunning manipulators who have learned the profit of bargains. Why hunt, when they can enthrone themselves as gods? Why starve in the wilds, when the wit of mortals can be harvested like wine?
This Granghul is fifteen feet tall, slouch-shouldered and fat with the weight of centuries. Its beard is filthy, its nails cracked, but its eyes burn with unnerving cleverness. It feeds not only on flesh but on thought — the shimmer of memory, the residue of instinct, the sharpness of wit. Every victim grants it fragments of cunning, stitched into its own.
The cellar yawns wider than it should, the arches cut away and rebuilt to frame a chamber fit for a throne. At its heart sits a slab of stone blackened by fire, where the Granghul reclines as though it were an altar and a bed alike. Shelves of scavenged books and relics line the walls — knowledge stolen not by theft, but by digestion.
NPCs
- Eldress Canna – The village’s matriarch. Gentle-voiced, always with a hand on your shoulder, she insists it is better to give one than lose all. She believes the pact is salvation.
- Tarl the Butcher – A broad man with too-loud laughter. He keeps the feast moving and is quick to bind those who resist. His cheer is a mask for guilt.
- The Guest Below – Speaks in slow, deliberate tones, often echoing the voices of those it has eaten. It is persuasive, offering reasons why the sacrifice is fair, even noble.
If the party confronts the Granghul, it does not roar or rage at once. Instead it leans forward, hands clasped like a priest, and says in a voice that is not entirely its own: “You have lived as guests. Will you not remain as one of us? Do you not see the mercy in what I am?”
The Setting
- The Village: Too perfect, with laughter that cracks when no outsiders are listening.
- The Hall: Long feasting tables, tapestries reused so often they crumble, food piled higher than reason.
- The Church-Cellar: A widened crypt, cool and wet, with steps cut deep enough to bear the giant’s tread. Stale incense lingers; blood has soaked into the stone.
The Twist
The Granghul is not just cunning — it remembers. When it speaks, it mimics voices of the dead: a lost lover, a fallen friend, a parent long buried. The villagers revere it because it carries fragments of their ancestors, fed back to them in scraps of wisdom. They call this proof it is a god.
If the pact is broken, if the Granghul is slain, those voices die too. The villagers would be left with silence — and with the guilt of what they’ve done to feed it.
Oddities
- Its blood is tar-thick, and when spilled, ripples with ghostlike murmurs of the last it consumed.
- The Granghul’s voice sometimes overlaps with another’s, echoing its victims for a heartbeat before snapping back to its own.
- Relics taken from past prey are stacked carefully on its shelves — not trophies, but anchors for memories it wishes to keep sharp.
- Even asleep, it hums fragments of lullabies and hymns in voices no one alive remembers.
Reflection
The Fallow Feast is no tale of cruelty alone. It is the Valemire’s arithmetic: survival bartered, guilt buried beneath song and smoke. Whether the pact is evil or merely necessary is a question without easy answer. But to share the Feast is to see how easily kindness can be twisted into knife and altar.
Creature Profile: Granghul
- Size: Huge (12–15 feet tall)
- Temperament: Manipulative, cunning, indulgent
- Diet: Intelligent flesh; beasts sustain its body, but wit only comes from thinking prey
- Habitat: Ruined temples, abandoned halls, crypts widened to suit its frame
- Threat: High — powerful strength, but greater still is its persuasion
- Use: An encounter of bargain or battle, a villain hidden in plain sight