Crow Hollow is most known for its Glittering Market, an always-open bazaar that features shopkeepers who hail from alternate recursions. The Glittering Market is spread across the branches of a massive tree. Beyond the tree branches, only clouds are visible in an endless-seeming blue sky. The Beak Mafia of Crow Hollow offers protection to most shops in return for small monthly fees.
Crow Hollow was formed from a distillation of fictional leakage from a variety of sources depicting ravens and crows as sapient creatures. Natives come in several varieties, but all are a partly humanoid variation on a crow or raven, including the human-sized natives, which to the eyes of a human recursor visitor, are crow-human hybrids who wear clothes. The residents live in small homes built of wood and thatch, though the more well-to-do keep mansions on the higher branches.
Kro appear as human-crow hybrid creatures, with wing-tips differentiated into fingers and beaks able to articulate human speech. A nonnative who translates into Crow Hollow gains the ability to fall safely from any height while in kro form and can glide five times as far as the distance fallen (or much farther, if one is skilled in gliding and the use of the rmals).
Native kro can glide too. In addition, those with the spark have a much higher chance of being quickened than do natives of most other recursions around Earth. When a native, quickened kro visits another recursion or Earth, instead of choosing a new focus, she can instead choose to take the form of a regular-sized crow as a special exception. The native kro recursor retains all her knowledge, but none of the abilities she had as a recursor (including type abilities); she is restricted to the actions a crow could take (flight, limited speech, tricky tool use) until she translates to another recursion. A kro in crow form retains her level and health (or, in the rare case of a native PC kro, when in crow form she retains her stat Pool totals).
Kro in crow form can sometimes take items they steal on Earth or other recursions back with them to Crow Hollow.
Crow Hollow hosts a lively market where coins (including crow coin), gems, and other sparkling, shiny valuable bits are traded amid very vocal haggling (which sounds like a squadron of cawing crows flying overhead to non-natives). Though it may not look it, themarket is also a premier location for the buying and selling of cyphers. Recursion miners who know about the Glittering Market and don’t have better offers elsewhere often unload their merchandise here. But to do so, they must brave the Beak Mafia.
Crow Hollow supports a surprisingly large underworld, given its small size. But crows (and kro) tend to steal not only from other creatures in other recursions, but also from each other. The Beak Mafia sees to it that the the ft and larceny common in Crow Hollow is “organized,” all in exchange for a bit of protection money.
The current head of the largest Beak Mafia family is one Wyclef Drood, or as most call him, Don Wyclef. Wyclef employs a flock of muscle kro to collect protection money and patrol against the common thievery, and to prevent inroads by rival kro crime families. If the Beak Mafia identifies a recursion miner who is buying or selling cyphers without prior permission from Don Wyclef, the transgression is taken out of the miner in crow coin.
Wyclef keeps a translation gate to Earth in his mansion, which looks like an elaborately framed mirror when not in use.
Wyclef Drood: level 7 kro with offensive and defensive cyphers as needed
Crow Hollow’s magic mostly manifests itself in objects. One such object is the giving and taking of crow coin. Crow coin is actually a sliver of a creature’s essence, and if one agrees to pay another in crow coin (even if a newcomer doesn’t realize what crow coin is), a verbal agreement and a handshake is enough to seal the deal and transfer the coin. Each crow coin is roughly equivalent to 1 point of health (or in the case of PCs, 1 point from their Might or subsequent Pools). Take enough crow coin out of a creature, and it dies if it doesn’t have a chance to recover (PCs restore points normally).
A sufficient quantity of crow coin (several thousand in a chest) functions as an artifact with a level of 1d6 and a depletion roll of 1 in 1d20 (a depletion roll that increases by 1 with each use). To use a chest of crow coin as an artifact, a handful of coins are consumed out of the chest when the chest’s owner makes a wish. The level of the effect granted is no greater than the level of the artifact, as determined by the GM, who can modify the actual effect of the wish accordingly. (The larger the wish, the more likely the GM will limit its effect.)
Wyclef Drood holds a small group of visitors to Crow Hollow captive in a secure treehouse. An outside group may have requested the capture and imprisonment in return for payment, ransom may be on themafia’s mind, or perhaps the prisoners are enemies of the mafia who’ll face the infamous Beak “justice” unless someone helps them escape.
Wyclef Drood has posted flyers about Crow Hollow promising a chest of crow coin in return for someone bringing him the feathered head of Cassandra Talon, a freelance thief of legend who hasn’t been seen in over a decade. Why Wyclef has a sudden interest in her probably has to do with her stealing something even more valuable than a chest of crow coin.
Cassandra Talon: level 5, level 8 for all tasks related to stealth and thievery
Many fabulous deals can be had in the Glittering Market, but sometimes a stall of special magnificence opens—one where the wonders within are all graced with a bit of magic. Not everyone who looks for the Shop of Wonders finds it, though many who are not looking for it stumble into its interior, which by all accounts is larger on the inside. Care should be taken if purchasing an item from the proprietor, as deals are given only on objects that carry a curse with their magic.
Level: 1d6+3
Origin: Crow Hollow (emergent)
Law: Magic
Form: Wooden chest containing soil and writhing worms
Effect: Anything placed in the chest whose level is less than or equal to the artifact level is consumed within one hour and rendered into more rich compost. (Each time an object is consumed by the chest's residents, an equal mass of particularly rich compost can be removed from the chest.) The chest measures 2 by 3 by 2 feet (60 by 90 by 60 cm).
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6
Origin: Crow Hollow (emergent)
Law: Magic Form: Violet cloak
Effect: Anyone wearing the cloak is reduced to a young child. Removing the cloak returns the wearer to his normal apparent age (unless the cloak became depleted when it was put on). The wearer’s clothing reduces in size to fit the child, though the cloak does not.
Depletion: 1 in 1d20
Level: 1d6
Origin: Crow Hollow (emergent)
Law: Magic
Form: White cloak
Effect: Anyone wearing the cloak is advanced to an arthritic, elderly age. Removing the cloak returns the wearer to her normal apparent age (unless the cloak became depleted when it was put on).
Depletion: 1 in 1d20