Frederheim is a small Imperial village situated in the Reikland.
Overview[]
Situated just off the Altdorf to Middenheim road, Frederheim is technically a possession of the Emperor, but he has given oversight of it in all but name to the Cult of Shallya, which maintains a walled hospice and sanatorium for the treatment of the insane there. Frederheim is itself a small village with no resources other than farming, and the villagers make ends meet by working for the Sisters.
Visiting the Great Hospice is difficult, for the Sisters are most concerned for the welfare of their patients: Outside disturbances are not good for unbalanced minds. The Sisters provide for all their own needs, either from their own resources or those of the villagers. They have no need to import anything from the outside, thus limiting potentially upsetting contacts. Rumours say, however, that this care for the insane covers up something darker—people held against their will for unknown reasons, even though they are perfectly sane. No one knows the truth of this, but few who hear the rumour would believe the Shallyans could ever be involved in such a thing.
Example Inmate[]
The following is a statement made by one of the inmates of the Great Hospice of Shallya;
"They call me a traitor, yet I know I am constant.
Heretic, they have cried, yet I have seen the Gods in a way they cannot.
They have branded me a consorter with Daemons, yet in summoning the Neverborn, I have tasted Truth—though my body, mind, and soul now pay the price.
I know that the works of Man are but crumbling buildings atop the dry and shifting sands of time. They will not last. They cannot. The northern Winds are harsh indeed, blowing straight from the bowels of Hell. The weak foundations of civilisation will not outlast them.
I reject the vanity of Men. I weep at their prideful ignorance. I know the greatness of the Elder Races that came before them and the unimaginable divinity of the creatures that came before that. In my waking sleep I have witnessed the dawn, as though the most distant of pasts were playing before my eyes. I have watched the Great Ones, the First Ones, as they traversed the endless night and brought their glory and their horror to this poor, thin world. I have watched as these merciless things, these mortal Gods, the first amongst all the Elder Races, raised up their works of matter and thought, careless of the borders between reality and unreality.
They knew no boundaries, no measure, or limit. They reached into the great void and warped all that is into all that should not be. They cast up mighty portals between all places and times and bent the shapeless potentials of the between-realm to their will. But the end of these First Ones, so great and so terrible, was written upon their every action because the further they reached into the void and the closer they stared at its divine patterns, the more they attracted its attention and all-consuming hunger.
Even as these awesome beings created life as they wished. And where they didn’t, they altered the creatures that existed before their coming, sculpting their bodies, souls, and minds to make the perfect slaves and experiments. So was it that tiny tendrils reached out from Beyond, too weak to threaten or touch the First Ones, but strong enough to caress the minds of their mortal servants. The minds of the Child Races clung blindly to these thin tendrils of Chaos, carrying them back through the imperfections of the First Ones’ Will and granting the void a foothold in the mortal plane.
And so it was that the works of the First Ones were brought low, broken across the knee of Chaos. Their Great Gateways trembled and fell, and the stray thoughts and nightmares, the waking desires and dreams that dwelt within Chaos Realm, were created upon this pale reality. So arrived all magic and all the monstrous Gods and Daemons of our world. Who now or then could stand against them?"
- —Richter Kless, inmate at the Great Hospice for the Insane at Frederheim.[2a]