White Chalk: Crow Moon 2/12 (Almanac 25)

The Crow Moon is the second month of the year, according to the Neolithic farmers of the White Chalk Coast . Each month I attempt to update this pariah almanac, with the end result being a calendar for an entire year, alongside supporting encounter and foraging tables, which in turn reflect the seasonal changes.

The first past in the series is here:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2025/02/white-chalk-almanac-25.html

The firs month is detailed here:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2025/03/white-chalk-cold-moon-almanac-25.html

Further context is provided here:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2023/05/white-chalk.html

I've decided to structure the post with the most specific information up front.

Crow by Leonard Baskin (illustration from Ted Hughes' collection of Crow poems)

The Crow Moon is a month of bitter hope. While there are signs that the Spring Princess is on her way (notably the white snowdrops and purple crocuses), it is still a month of frost and snow and cold, wet winds. So optimism is tempered, and prudence prevails. The month is named for the proliferation of jackdaws, magpies and carrion crows feasting on the worms, emerging from the cold ground with faint hope in their tiny hearts.

The Moon Realm

Since posting about the DAWN REALM a few months back now I've had a rethink about how to approach the spirit realms that sit parallel to the Here & Now. For all the novelty of "switching codes" when dipping toes into other places (and the notion that stripping the character down to its essence could be represented at the table i.e. by taking elements from the character sheet and writing them out afresh) the reality is it's disruptive to play. This isn't necessarily bad, but I'm much less convinced it adds anything to the experience than I was previously.

It also reduces the amount of player-facing chaff and allows them to get down to what the game's really about: exiled stone-age psychonauts exploring the spirit realm, just like Dungeons & Dragons [is/used to mostly be] about dungeons and dragons. 

A map of the Moon

Fly me to the Moon

Travel to the Moon Realm requires:

White Chalk: The Cold Moon 1/12 (Almanac 25)

Each full moon I intend to publish an update to the White Chalk sandbox here on this blog, describing the calendar year of a fantasy proto-Neolithic somewhat parallel to the world in which we live. At the time of writing we have already experienced 2 full moons (14th January 2025 and 12th February 2025), so I have 2 further posts due prior to March's full moon.

To begin I have drawn just one six-mile hex, divided further into 1 mile hexes. You can read an introductory overview in this post:

https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2025/02/white-chalk-almanac-25.html

Draft planisphere for the first month of the year, discussed below

The Cold Moon rise with bitterness: though the shortest day—the solstice—is already passed, the worst of winter is yet to come. The peoples of the Chalk Coast brace themselves for battery by the cruel winds of the north.

City of a Hundred Gods pt 3/10: further along the Ladders

We return to the Ladders, the slum dwellings on the immediate interior of the City of a Hundred Gods. Day and night encounters are rolled on a 1d20 table found in the post linked below and repeated at the foot of this one.
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2024/12/city-of-hundred-gods-part-210-remaining.html

The whole city is divided into wards, each one possessing a local spirit elevated to the status of god by those who worship it, both within and without the city. Each ward possess a handful of unique day and night encounters and additional details concerning the god's followers and priests—as well as others living and working in these streets.

Anselm Kiefer, Die fruchtbare Halbmond (The Fertile Crescent)

The Ladders refers  for both the high incidence of ladders to access the irregularly stacked mudbrick housing, but also for the tiny lanes intersecting the two parallel orbital avenues like the rungs of a ladder. It is a tightly packed slum rife with dirt, disease and regular fires.Though the Lord of the Dead treads the clay-tiled streets without fear this is also a place that expresses the wild, complex beauty of human life in all its glorious diversity. The Ladders provide an explosion of colour, scent and sound to rival the most potent entheogenic experience.

CW: animal slaughter, cannibalism