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Kitts Hummock:
A small, obscure fishing village located in the mudflats and salt marshes of the Delaware coast. Famous mainly for the talking scrod caught here in the 1860s. The scrod spent the next year or so in captivity, arguing with the villagers about whether it was technically a scrod or a cod. It said cod, they said scrod.
Supposedly, the argument ended when the cod (or scrod) got so frustrated he swore at the villagers, and they decided to wash his mouth out with soap. When they took him down to the Bay, soap in hand, he gave a cry of delight, wriggled away into the water, and was never seen again … Although some say that on certain nights when the moon ripples across the waves, he can be heard floating by, whistling.
Gumboro:
Who has not longed to go to fair Gumboro, most sacred of cities in Delaware? Here, temple is balanced on top of temple, and the ground is hollow with catacombs. It is due to the holiness of the city that it has become a by-word in Delawarian conversation: “… as blessed as Gumboro,” “… pure as Gumboro …,” “… lucky as a Gumboro nickel,” etc.
Bayard:
The houses of Bayard may be short and flat and made of mud, but they are brilliantly painted: some in the shades of candy, some like citrus fruits, some like sherbet, others in burnt, autumnal hues. Addresses are given not in numbers, but in colors. (“The O’Malleys live at lime door, saffron windows, umber walls.”)
Last year, Bayard was plagued by a spectral figure who burst into homes late at night, gave a shriek, and then disappeared. The village was in an uproar; people assumed the mysterious visitor was a ghost, seeking revenge for some evil committed in generations past.
After three months, it was discovered the nocturnal visitor was a local bus-driver named Blfft Ontwght. He was colorblind, and kept mistaking other peoples’ homes for his own.
Dagsboro:
A mountain town famous only for being the birthplace of Delaware’s beloved tyrant, the Autarch. He was a warlord in Dagsboro before he rode with his invasion force north to Dover and overthrew the lawfully elected Governor of the state. No one knows where the Governor is now, though I’d put my money on a clammy cell in Fort Delaware.
Dagsboro’s principle industry is lava.
Midnight Thicket
Who knows what evil goes on in the dark warrens and scratchy tree-houses of Midnight Thicket?
No one. We’re all too frightened to find out.
Zoar
A site of pilgrimage for religious bullies who travel from afar to slug the Whining Statue of Tzzak-Bdreth. Many believe that if you whomp the marble Whiner at just the right place on the belly, you can make it yield up luck like lunch-money.
Rehoboth
This peninsula has been occupied by foreign invaders for many years. No one knows where they are from. They are silvery, and speak in a high, fluting language like birds. They build strange structures and will not leave. Locals suspect they are from Maryland.
Seaford:
Often called “the Venice of Delaware.” Seaford is built straddling the mighty Nanticoke River and Williams Pond. It is a city of delicate old palaces and brick mills and factories. Some say that Seaford is sinking into the water. Others say that the waterways of Seaford are drying up.
Legend has it that Seaford was founded by a nervous wizard who believed his enemies could not cross running water. After some years surrounded by Seaford’s rivers, he still did not feel safe. He stopped talking to his friends. He filled his house itself with water from the lowest of its cellars to the tip of its tower, and spent his days pacing nervously through the flooded rooms, doggy-paddling, his beard swaying in the current, scads of bubbles flourishing around him like a magician’s smoke as he sighed sadly for all that life could have been.
The wizard’s tower still stands near the center of town. No one has entered it for decades. It is assumed that the wizard is dead, or if not dead, very pruney.
Broadkill
Chief town of the Viking raiders of the coast. Broadkill is described glowingly in the ancient epic, The Blood-Song of Wapklrt:
“Then wandered Wapklrt over the whale-roads
To bold Broadkill, best of barbarian burbs.
Sheltered and shining is this shoreline,
Fair and full of fields and fine feast-halls.
No city more special, more sun-soaked
Is there than this town, truly,
Amidst the murk and mud of mere manlings.”
I don’t know where anyone got that idea. In fact, Broadkill is a rocky little stink-pit of low, thatched huts, dead seagulls, and shivering goats.
Slaughter Beach
A village inhabited by barbarians. Legend says that the name comes from an episode in World War II, when a Nazi sub tried to land nearby and encountered a longboat full of Vikings. The Vikings saw the sub’s periscope and were convinced they had finally found the Sea-Orm, a mythical serpent of the deep. Then it turned out to be a submarine. They were real, real mad.
They drew their swords and growled.
The rest is history.
Schultie Crossroads:
Heavily guarded by the Autarch’s soldiers, Schultie Crossroads is one of the few checkpoints that leads across the border from Delaware into the State of Maryland.
Lords Corner:
A small caravansary and village in the ruins of one of the great castles of the Mahan Desert. An ancient tale suggests that long ago, these fields were fertile, abounding in wheat and sweet hay, and leaping with herds of felt. Then the lords of this castle performed a great wickedness – no, I’m not telling what – and they were cursed, and the water dried up in the ditches, and the fields and hedgerows withered, and the sand flumped in from the beach and this whole countryside became a desolate desert where the only shade to be found on the copper dunes is cast by the hungry vultures whispering through the glaring sky.
Sandtown:
An oasis town in the Desert of Mahan. Location of the Grand Bazaar of the West, held weekly on the backs of the great sand-turtles of the desert nomads.
Hourglass:
In the center of the town of Hourglass stands a great timepiece, thirty feet tall. Its sands are running out. No one knows why. Most people bet there’s a big disaster coming. There’s a lot of talk about it. The citizens of Hourglass discuss it all the time. It’s a great draw for tourists in the town. People sit in outdoor cafes around the square, watching precious minutes pass, ordering layer cake.
Slaughter:
If you don’t have more sense than to go to a place called “Slaughter,” there’s nothing I can do for you.
Dover:
Dover: city of spires. City of golden domes. City of temples. City of dreams. Some have called Dover “the capitol city of Delaware.” Certainly, it is here that the blue concrete palace of Delaware’s despotic ruler – the Awful and Adorable Autarch of Dagsboro – lies. It is here that the Autarch’s terrifying secret police, the Ministry of Silence, have their grim base. It is from this glittering, vibrant city that government agents scatter over the countryside and infiltrate rebel networks, great medieval universities, shrubs, shops, and dog packs. The city stretches from the docks of Port Mahon to the hanging gardens of Eberton. For those of us who have never been to Delaware, Dover remains a name out of legend, a city we see only when we sleep. Who doesn’t dream of its bustling markets, its shady alleys, its commuter catapults?
Eden Roc:
Town famed for poultry farms that sell nine-foot-long eggs laid by giant birds. If you’re passing through, you should stop at Mama O’Glrrk’s Diner and try her Down-Home Roc Scramble (serves 53).
Spruance City:
Not really a city, despite the large signs hand-painted on plywood that travelers see from afar. (“Spruance City! It is FUN, with FOOD and there is some DANCING!”; “Free POPCORN!”)
Needless to say, it is actually a pit where a clever ogre lives, waiting for prey.
Smyrna:
The last large city before the grasslands give way to hills and jungle. Smyrna is a granitic city built on top of a huge boulder in the midst of the veldt.
Deakyneville:
A nightmarish, obsidian little town of madmen, thugs, and hobgoblins down on their luck, the whole place is low and basalt, half-sunk in the desolate salt-marshes of the coast. It is recommended that visitors wear metal undershirts and keep their money Scotch-taped to their stomachs.
Blackbird Landing:
Clustered around a bridge that spans the Blackbird River. One of the last towns before the jungle.
Odessa Heights:
A city of ancient monuments lost in the jungle, inhabited by a mysterious race of lizard people. They are rarely seen by humans, though their shed skins are sometimes discovered draped over branches, arms folded carefully like a crew-neck sweater’s.
Greylag:
In the mists of the jungle lies the fabled lost city of Greylag that straddles the great, rushing tide of Drawyer Creek. No one knows how old it is or who built it. Some say a race of beings constructed it when mankind was still squatting around in caves, picking lice out of each other’s back-hair.
Armstrong:
Village inhabited by kangaroo-riding cannibals. Children in the towns to the south are kept awake nights by tales of the ingredients in Armstrong’s terrifying side-salads.
The Four Peaks
These four mountains are full of mysteries. It is even rumored that the mythical monastery Vbngoom, Platter of Heaven, is located somewhere in these crags. Others, however, think that Vbngoom is just a story, or that it crumbled hundreds of years ago.
Travel to the Four Peaks is not recommended. They are treacherously steep and their trees are full of squids.
St. Georges:
A collection of crazed half-timbered houses standing on stilts on the banks of the Delaware Canal. A great stone bridge, built by forgotten kings, spans the river here.
Pulaski Forest:
The Pulaski Forest is the haunt of wyrms and ogres. Through its shaded glens run two principle rivers: Red Lion Creek and Dragon Creek. Needless to say, Dragon Creek is dragon-infested. Red Lion Creek is red-lion-infested.
Fort Delaware:
Rising darkly from a barren, rocky island, Fort Delaware is the tomb of a thousand men’s dreams, the sharpest chicken-bone ever to lodge in the craw of hope. Here His Terrible Majesty, the Awful and Adorable Autarch of Dagsboro, imprisons his enemies. Here they are forgotten, shackled in dark cells with only goo to eat and passing toads to stroke as pets. No one has ever escaped Fort Delaware, except through the network of sub-aquatic secret passages accessible through the – click here for more --.
New Castle:
A little half-timbered village gathered about the battlements of an old castle. It is rumored that the mayor is not who he seems to be, but is either a convincing robot or an evil twin. He does not recognize his own family, has issued many odd proclamations, and spends hours alone making a whirring noise.
Bear:
The name doesn’t lie. This charming little town is inhabited entirely by talking bears – brown, black, and grizzly. It is considered rude for guests here to hide their food up a tree.
Newark Mountains:
In the northwest corner of Delaware is the mountainous territory dominated by highland brigands, barbarians, and the six-armed people of Lumbrook. These peaks – and their extensive table-lands – are known as the Mountains of Newark (including, at their heart, the Newark Steppe). Despite the terrible cold and inhospitability of these palisades, these plains of ice and their glacial valleys, one may find, scattered throughout them, desperate little villages, robbers’ caves, isolated barracks for the Autarch’s soldiers, weather stations, and hidden monasteries.
Ogletown:
A mountain depot and research center built by the Autarch’s army in the seventies. The giant government telescope is the only structure of note in the town. The other buildings are dismal cinder-block apartments settled around a few failing shops and commissaries, which are nothing but concrete cubes with wooden troughs of yams lit by bare bulbs. No one knows what the observatory was built to observe. Some people claim that it is not trained on the heavens, but on windows down in the cities of Delaware. On some nights, those looking directly into the huge lens at the end of the telescope can see a giant eye peering out at the clouds.
Lumbrook:
The grim, rude city of the six-armed, tusked barbarians who have always made their home on the Newark Steppe. The old city is surrounded by suburbs of yurts.
Wilmington:
A more modern city than Dover itself, sections of Wilmington’s old town were pulled down to build factories and huge vats. The most visible building in Wilmington is its very steep, turreted castle with its conical roofs and its black, soot-stained battlements. Though it once belonged to the curly-haired Princes of New Castle, it is now the home of the mysterious Resident Committee of Wilmington, who rule the city with an iron fist in the name of Delaware’s despotic ruler, the Awful and Adorable Autarch of Dagsboro.
Elsmere:
Elsmere, located on a high mountain that guards the Montchanin Valley, is the home of the fabled Zeppelin-Lords. Much of the city hovers above the mountain, supported by giant balloons or unwieldy wings. The Zeppelin-Lords themselves lead lives of leisure floating above the old city, while the city’s poor labor in factories, or in terraced rice-fields that lead down the mountain and into the valley, shaded by ungainly heli-burbs.
Mermaid:
High in the mountains, located on the shores of and underneath Lake Grendon. Much of the town is submarine. Mountain mermaids differ from those in Delaware Bay in that they are fresh-water, have white manes, and actually crack good jokes. Current state-wide “Marco Polo” champs.
Montchanin:
Lying in the Montchanin Valley that separates the fierce mountains of the west from the gentle hills of the east, the town of Montchanin itself is a frequent stop for those traveling between Delaware’s heartland and the state of Pennsylvania, to the north.
The buffalo wings are a lot more substantial than the chicken fingers.
Brackenville:
A village wound inside the spiky vines of giant thorn bushes. Not recommended for the clumsy.
Guyencourt:
Heavily guarded, Guyencourt is one of the border towns where merchants and tourists can pass from Delaware into the realm of Pennsylvania. An interesting bit of trivia: Last year, Guyencourt won the Civic Lickspittle Award for Town Most Obedient to Our Awful and Adorable Autarch’s Will. The townspeople are very excited about this honor. “Knowing that we submit happily to our ruler’s demands is truly a dream come true,” said baker Loggst Vrbtki.
Mki Balprt, bank teller, added, “Knowing that we submit happily to our ruler’s demands is truly a dream come true!”
Shepherd Grplmuna Qlqqwether chimed in, “Knowing that we submit happily to our ruler’s demands is truly a dream come true.”
“Yes,” agreed everyone in town all at once. “Knowing that we submit happily to our ruler’s demands is truly a dream come true!” They nodded. All of them. And kept nodding.
The Brandywine Hills:
These beautiful, gentle hills cradle small villages like Penarth, Arden, Edenridsge, Foulk Woods, and Grubbs Corner. The slopes are green, with pleasant fields and forests. Wild horses run free through the valleys, and even the butterflies know how to sing.
Arden
One of the quaintest towns in Delaware, set amongst the Brandywine Hills. Playwrights walk the cobbled streets and young people in love hang out of windows, weaving garlands of flowers.
Winterthur:
A town built high in the western cliffs above the Montchanin Valley. It is frigid most of the year, surrounded by crystalline fir trees.