Damburrow (WOD)

Damburrow Pit. Art by Matthew Mitchell

The village of Damburrow was located in what is now known as Dunfermline, Scotland.

Overview

A century ago, a small church dedicated to St. Columbia vanished from the face of the earth a mile or so outside the village of Damburrow. In its places was a fetid, watery marsh known to the locals as the Damburrow Pit, so named because, like the pit of Hell, nobody who entered it ever returned. Half a century ago, a small group of Cistercian monks set up a chapel 10 miles up from the village in Glen Damburrow but abandoned it after half the brothers involved committed suicide.

The Monastery of St. Andrew is sending Red Brothers to investigate the Pit, but the locals avoid talking to the monks. The cell's first breakthrough was discovering caves and tunnels under the foundations. They found a large amount of human remains, Pictish spiral designs and three tomes bound in human skin.

What's in the Pit?

The exact nature of the threat in Damburrow is left up to individual Storytellers. The most logical assumption is that a hive of Black Spiral Dancer werewolves is tunneling near the monastery, but if you do not wish to make use of Dark Ages: Werewolf in your Inquisitor chronicle, other explanations would work just as well. Some possibilities:

• The first church in the area - the one that sank into the Pit - did so because one of the clergy there accidentally summoned up a creature from Hell. The demon is a being of pure hunger, and the entire Pit (and now much of the surrounding earth) had merged with its limitless gut. As such, any creature that it has consumed may be found in the tunnels, horribly warped by the demon's digestion. The creatures that the knights fought off in Damburrow might well be former monks, twisted beyond recognition.
• At one time, the Tremere were attempting to build a larger, more destructive race of Gargoyles here. They failed miserably, creating creatures that cannot abide even the briefest touch of sunlight, but do not sleep and are endlessly hungry - and completely uncontrollable. The Tremere had to leave many of their tomes and other possessions behind when they fled Damburrow, but the creatures they created are still there.
• The beings below Damburrow have always been there. They predate Christianity, the pagan gods and possibly even humanity itself. They might be considered fae, but they are a much darker stripe than anything in Scottish legendry (which is saying something). They don't really care about the inquisitors so long as the humans don't bother them - which, of course, isn't likely.

References

• WTA: Chronicle of the Black Labyrinth, p. 18-26, 88-89
• DA: Dark Ages: British Isles, p. 50-51, 104-106