GWAEDBUDR
Tucked away in a vale deep in the mountains of Henogledd, one of the three nations which are an integral part of The Empire [1], there is a secluded hamlet with a dark secret. Its official name is Tir Gwaedbudr, but is commonly referred to as Gwaedbudr. And its existence began as a dumping ground for the inbred members of the House of Truaxe.
Determined to maintain the image that the Royal Family was comprised of the idealized pinnacles of Humanity, there were monarchs who had those aberrations murdered soon after birth. Eventually word got out beyond the borders of The Empire, which caused an uproar among other nations in the Flatlands. [2]
It was a grotesquerie which could not stand. Although no one was brave enough to step forward to take the credit, the last Emperor who ordered the series of infanticides was killed in a bizarre and highly suspicious horse carriage "accident" in one of the remote mountain passes in Beornica. [3]
Within days, his entire retinue of courtiers and other officials who carried out his every whim also met with untimely fates.
That emperor had no issue and an heir was chosen from another branch of the Royal Lineage, one who was of considered judgment and sound reasoning. While his investiture as the new monarch heralded a period of calm between nations, there was still the matter of the inbred children due to so many royal families in other lands being closely related.
The government decreed that such royal children who were considered imperfect at birth would not be killed, but instead shunted off to a small village where a hospital was constructed with all the current advancement in the technology of the time to care for them. Its location was not revealed to the world, but legends did spring up about its existence. [4]
In the 1960s, it was finally revealed through investigations by the international branch of the Monitaurs (Pooticuck County's intelligence agency) that the hamlet is known as Gwaedbudr which translates to "Dirty Blood". [5] But even they declined to reveal its exact location; as long as its residents were leading productive lives there in their village, the Monitaurs saw no reason to meddle.
After generations removed from the influx of hereditary "pollution" from arranged marriages with relatives [6], there are no visible signs of physical abnormalities among the descendants of those original outcasts of infants. However, there is one trait which has never been eradicated, despite the influx of strong genetic variations among the Gwaedbudr families.
They have somehow lost the sense of hearing.
As such, the official language in Gwaedbudr is not Henogleddi - that places second in use - but a form of sign language which ironically was developed from the language of the country which banished their baby ancestors - that of Onwish, the mother tongue of Ὰnweald. Apparenty deafness has proven to be the one hereditary genetic trait too strong to be eliminated.
O'Bservations:
1] The three countries which are united into The Empire are Ὰnweald, Henogledd, and Beornica. It is believed that their territories and their peoples were of English, Welsh, and Scottish origins respectively.
2] It was easy enough to spark enmity against The Empire when a century couldn't pass without The Empire invading their neighbors in their desire to conquer the entire flat planet.
3] According to the official report, boulders in a landslide crushed the carriage which killed him instantly, but then sent the carriage tumbling over the edge into chasm below. What truly made it suspicious was that the horses were not attached to the carriage and so they were spared. (Considering the obsession with the superior breeds of their horses, even assassins would have done what they could to spare them.)
4] Many of the legends were horror stories on a par with those tales about the Melonheads here in Connecticut.
5] The translation of the full name of Tir Gwaedbludr is "The Land of Dirty Blood". The language of Henogledd is a slightly corrupted form of Cymraeg from Earth, from which Henogledd was whisked away, as was the case with all the terrain of the Flatlands.
6] In that mountainous region of Henogledd, in the dwindling, curled tail of the Dragonstane mountain range, there are many nearby villages which have replenished the gene pool of Gwaedblur over the last few centuries.
