Athelbarn is an archaeological site in western Shropshire, directly on the border with Wales, and a major stalking ground of the eponymous Athelbarn Hunt.
History[]
For centuries, Athelbarn House was a sister institute to Stonecrop. The grounds spilled over the border between England and Cymru, its rolling hills dotted with mounds and barrows of ancient origin. Local history holds these were at one time the homes of The People, known today as the Athelbarn Hunt, and a small circle of standing stones on the grounds was a portal to the lands of the Fey Folk. The custodians and students of Athelbarn maintained an annual tradition known as Walking The Stones, carried out once a year to reinforce the wards that held the portal closed. Even after the meaning of, and belief in, the medieval tradition was lost, the practice continued, an excuse for a festival and a heartwarming piece of tradition.
Sometime in the early 1900s, the Stonecrop-Athelbarn Board decided Walking the Stones was an archaic ritual, a throwback to a time of superstition and not in line with modern, rational thinking. They discontinued the tradition.
The decision not to Walk was the last choice the Masters of Athelbarn made. The door in the hill opened, and fey creatures from the other side descended on the school and the nearby villages, bringing destruction to entire towns and whole family lines. Local newspaper clippings talk of extensive fires, their cause unknown, that razed human-made structures but left the landscape itself largely untouched. Investigators arriving after the fact found no human remains. More recent local legends tell of muffled cries for help from deep within the earth and of visitors (never named, and always a friend of a friend) hiking out to the hill, never to return.
Now Athelbarn exists only as an archaeological curiosity. Stonecrop stands alone on the precipice between worlds.
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