info Overview
Name - What is this universe's name?

Pagham-on-Sea/Paghamverse

 
Description - How would you describe Pagham-on-Sea/Paghamverse?

A modern-day fictional town in East Sussex, England, UK. Not to be confused with the real Pagham, a small village in West Sussex.

The fictional Pagham-on-Sea is home to humans, human-passing, and the very Weird.

 
Genre - What genre best describes Pagham-on-Sea/Paghamverse?

Gothic Weird | Paranormal

 
Tags
date_range History
History - What is Pagham-on-Sea/Paghamverse’s history?

The prehistoric long barrow in Barrow Field is a place of power and energy, and the town sits on top of intersecting ley lines, a hub of geomagic. As a result, it has a lot of human-passing and not-at-all human-passing entities and beings, and a whole Underground community beneath the town.

East Sussex is iron-rich, and the Romans had a forge near Pagham-on-Sea. One fateful night a meteor struck the forge, flattening it. You can read more about this in the extract from a surviving copy of the 12thC medieval chronicle composed at Fairwood Monastery: https://cmrosens.com/2019/04/15/folklore-of-pagham-on-sea-the-meteor/

Pagham-on-Sea then became an Anglo-Saxon settlement, its Brythonic-speaking history largely obliterated. To this day, mediums and Wiccans and the darker elements of the town are fluent in Old English, preferring to tap into the energies of the town using incantations in this language.

In more recent times, the Industrial Revolution brought Pagham-on-Sea out of its (preferred) obscurity with the advent of the philanthropist and entrepreneur, Mr Joseph Barker. Barker had been savagely mauled by a large beast on an ill-fated trip to the Scottish Highlands as a young man, spending his early life adjusting to his new lycanthropic condition. Barker set up a mill, a factory and a railway spur around the town, establishing a small 'village' for his workers on the outskirts of the town in a half-moon shaped series of streets, called Barker Crescent. He also established a small cottage hospital there, Barker Infirmary. The majority of his workers were also lycanthropes, some of whom Barker had Turned himself. Five Packs were established over time, coalescing into one community with its own Pack Council.

The vampire community of Pagham-on-Sea grew up around the same time, also drawn to the area by the growing industry and the bustling docks. Cheaper than London rents and taking advantage of the growing trend for seaside holidays among the middle and upper classes, the vampires set up nests in large, airy houses built to mimic London's Berkeley Square. This was originally called Carfax Square, but since Carfax is a bastardisation of the French for Quatre Faces, four faces/sides, the name was changed in the mid-1800s to Quatre Faces to sound more sophisticated and to eliminate the tautology. The vampire community started running hotels and spas to ensure a steady supply of clients, but as the tourism industry died off they experienced a mid-20thC slump in victims and donors. During this period, vampires became a menace to the locals, and things came to a head in 1958-62 following the death of Cathy Ross, found exsanguinated and stuffed up the kitchen chimney in Fairwood House. Although vampires were not to blame, vigilante action spiked during these years, leading to a period of persecution. In 1962, the werewolf community of Barker Crescent exhibited a rare show of solidarity with the vampires of Quatre Faces, standing with them against a plot to blow up the nests in daylight. After a bloody riot in the streets, things began to calm down and an uneasy truce with the townspeople declared.

The vampires diversified with the Golden Age of Hammer Horror, offering tourists the "Real Dracula Experience", including the opportunity to be bitten. They opened a Picture House called The Palace where patrons could watch the latest Hammer films as part of the package ticket price. This became a popular enterprise, and with the advent of the internet and increased home use of the internet from the 1990s onwards, Dark Tourism took off in a big way. Today, the vampires own three nightclubs and several all-night cafés for vampire groupies, and this kind of tourism is all-year-round and benefits the whole town. The Twilight phenomenon provided a big boost to the local economy, and one club runs Twilight nights where vampires paint themselves in glittery body paint to attract younger donors. Theoretically the age of consent is 16, but IDs are not always checked.

Also in the 1960s, the 'new estate' was built along with a new railway station, Pagham Parkway, with high-speed trains to London. The new estate was constructed near the site of the meteor crash, and when some children brought back the 'fairy stones' or 'farisee stones' as they are called in the Sussex dialect, things started to get dark. As more blocks of flats went up through the 1970s and 1980s, something started to lurk in the dark corners of the growing web of alleys and streets. People began to turn up dead from no clear cause if they strayed into the shadows and out of sight of others. It is currently bristling with CCTV poles and lights, with reflective and neon fashion less of a fashion statement and more a survival uniform. The new estate has a protector who keeps the whatever-it-is as dormant as possible, but it's not always that easy.

Fairwood House is the 'new' manor built by the Sauvants after the monastery was dissolved under Henry VIII. The monastery itself was pulled down and the old manor rebuilt on its site. It went through several stages of remodelling: the Tudor manor first developed into an E-shaped construction in Elizabeth's reign, which the Georgians joined up and extended into a block and the Victorians tried to modernise. The old gamekeeper's cottage was pulled down and the stone reused in the extension, the gardens remodelled and the cottage rebuilt further away from the house. Bramble Cottage still exists in the woodland (now public, not private) known as The Chase.

Crippled by death-duties, the Sauvant family went into steep decline in the twentieth century. By the time of the Ross murder in 1958, the house was in a state of disrepair and neglect, and the last lord of Fairwood, Sir John Douglas Sauvant, was very ill and living a meagre existence in three rooms of the house with only his nurse and cook as the remaining members of staff. Completely abandoned by 1979, the house fell into a ruinous state and became a kind of bogeyman in its own right, with local children daring each other to break in and steal things or vandalise it. It was sold at auction in 2017 and bought for renovation by Caroline Rose Rickard, a newcomer to Pagham-on-Sea. The renovations were completed by April 2018.

 
gavel Rules
Laws of Physics - What are the laws of physics like in Pagham-on-Sea/Paghamverse?

Same as real life, but some species and subspecies can subvert them or seem to be immune to certain ones, like gravity.

 
Magic System - What is the magic system like in Pagham-on-Sea/Paghamverse?

Energies in the town are neutral forces which can be harnessed by anyone for any purpose. Ley line intersections, for example, or hotspots of electromagnetic energy, can be particularly powerful and useful.

The long barrow, a prehistoric tomb in Barrow Field, has some strange associations with the Old Gods. The Pendles began to meddle there, channelling both Outside energy and Otherworldly energy (Fae-related) in their spells, conducted in the old Pendle cottage via the hearthstone. The Pendle Stone was, over several generations, imbued with old energies that make any spell more effective. The Pendle Stone is now essentially a kind of "key" that can be used to unlock other dimensions and realms.

There are "thin places" where the veil between our world and the Otherworld (Faerie) is thin, and also places where, usually via occult practices, the veil between our reality and Outside (eldritch monstrosities, Elder Gods) is weak. These are good locations to do rites and rituals but they have a very negative effect on the people involved.

There is a plurality of magic systems within the town as it is home to a diverse population, some of whom have brought their own folk magic and religious/occult practices with them. These systems can interact in catastrophic ways but it's more by luck than judgement when they don't.

 
edit Notes
This universe contains...
26 characters reorder
group Characters close
Name
group Sheila Azeman History Society Secretary, Retired Café Owner
group Richard Edwin Porter Soothsayer
group Eglantine Harris Medium and Morgue Assistant
group Colonel Mark Curtis History Society Vice-Chair
group Rachel Medhurst College Student
group Letitia Porter Child Abductor
group Jasper Williams Pathologist
group Paula Parsons Detective Inspector, Pagham-on-Sea CID
group Harry Bishop Retired Town Historian, Bookseller and Author
group Magda Adebayo Forensic Psychopomp
group Joseph Lin Master Carpenter at Woodlore Restoration
group James "Canis" Baskerfield Hitman
group Charlotte "Charlie" Eversley-Smith Photographer
group Meredith Blake Investigative Journalist, Loner
group Phillip Haskin Narcissist and Compulsive Gambler
group Catherine Ross Vengeful Ghost-Child
group Janet Varney History Society Member, Retired Gymnast
group George Porter Rustic Serial Killer
group Katherine Porter College Student & Family Destroyer
group Beverley Wend Grande Dame
group Miss Charlotte Entrapped Megalomaniac, Receptionist at Mill Street Surgery
group Dr Monday General Practitioner, Partner in Mill Street Surgery, Spectral Surgery Specialist
group Maria Tsadilas Nightclub Owner
group Guy Bishop Bookseller
group Wesley Edward Porter Playboy/petty drug-dealer
group Mercy Hillsworth Supermarket Supervisor

5 locations reorder
4 items reorder
emoji_events Items close
Name
emoji_events Gerald Taxidermy Frankentoy
emoji_events The Wishing Well Located in the back garden of Fairwood House
emoji_events The Wend Shrine Weird cult shrine
emoji_events The Pendle Stone Covered in eldritch symbols and Anglo-Saxon runes

This universe was created by CMRosens on Notebook.ai.

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