Sat 05 Feb 2022, 13:04
p. 84 and forwards: the maps spell the name of the village as "Brancombe" (with an e). The text spells it Brancomb (without an e). Suggesting making it Brancombe throughout, as that would be a more standard spelling for West Country places, and it is probably harder to change the map artwork than the text, too.
p.106 suggested pronunciation for Llantywyll should be th'lan-tuh-whith. In Welsh the final "y" in words is pronounced more like an "i/ee" than an "uh" e.g. "Ysbyty" (hospital) is pronounced Uh-sbuh-tee.
Kudos to Graeme for the evocative name by the way - it translates roughly as the church or the parish of darkness.
p. 106 "along the deep valleys of central Wales". Suggest deleting the word "central" here - the archetypal deep valleys with mining settlements occur in the South Wales coalfield, and the North Welsh slate mining communities are similar enough. But the one place that doesn't have this is central Wales, where the valleys tend to be much broader and more farming-centric.
p 108 and forward.
If you wanted to intensify the conflicts between the newcomer priest and the secondary conflict between the miners and the mine owners, it might be cool to add a passage concerning the Welsh language in the area. At this time the local population would have been entirely Welsh-speaking as their mother tongue. Few of them would have spoken more than a few words of English.
So as with the coblynau in the mines (box out p 123), a GM wishing to add an extra dimension to winning the trust of the villagers might wish to have them only speak Welsh, too. That might allow a Welsh-born player character to shine, or might require them to befriend one of the few people in the village who could translate for them. Doctor Evans would be a primary candidate for translating. Myfanwy Thomas would likely be too grand to speak Welsh (even if she understands it). Dylan Robert and Lewis Morgan would almost certainly be able to speak both Welsh and English fluently, as alternative translators. How well the Reverend speaks Welsh would be a significant GM choice as to how alienated from the villagers he is.
p. 118 : "The hum of conversation ceases abruptly when the players characters enter, and resumes a minute or two later in Welsh rather than English". Please can we delete this rather worn out anti-Welsh trope? The villagers would be speaking Welsh throughout because that's their mother tongue.
p. 118: "My granda used to say" for a bit of flavour, you could change that to "My taid used to say". Taid (pronounced like "tied") is the North Walian word for grandfather.
p. 118 Change "Owen Glendower" to "Owain Glyndŵr". The party would certainly get a better reaction from the locals if they use the Welsh version of the name!
p. 124 "Hew Bach Jones" change to "Huw Bach Jones".
p. 124 To Clues at the mine, suggest adding the "Slate Miners' caban". The slate miners gather for lunch in the mine cantina and host high-minded discussions on poetry, politics and philosophy. Minutes are kept of the discussions. The miners would surely have discussed recent events- if only you can translate the minutes, since both discussions and minutes are in Welsh.
(This is a nice link-in to actual slate mining in North Wales, and provides a good alternative source for players to pick up clues they might otherwise have missed).
Best regards,
Hywel Phillips