Up Carlysle Kingston Harrison House Rules WC Characters Bad Things Scenarios

Carlysle County, NC
Still Under Construction
Location: Situated in the upper Piedmont/foothills region of western North Carolina, Carlysle County is bordered by the Catawba River in the south and the Brushy Mountains in the north.   Kingston is the county seat.  Elevation ranges from 850 feet above sea level in the south to 2250 feet in the Brushy Mountains.  Elevation in downtown Kingston is roughly 1250 feet.  Southwest of Kingston rises an imposing ridge, Barrett Mountain (1913 feet).
Climate: The county has four distinct seasons.  Average temperatures in August reach 85 Fahrenheit and in January dip to 42 F.   Average annual precipitation is 46 inches of rain and 8 inches of snow
Population: The 2000 Census lists the county population at  54,500, up 10% from 1990.
Industry and Agriculture:  Over half of  Carlysle County is farm land. Major commodities include poultry, dairy, tobacco, apples, forestry products, grain crops, and beef cattle.  Industrially, furniture manufacturing is the  major industry, employing nearly 3,500.  Textiles, paper products, and lumber are also manufactured here.  Harrison College is also a major employer.
Transportation:   The main artery of the county is U.S. Highway 64, a controlled access  roadway connecting Kingston with Lenoir and Statesville. N.C. Highway 16 runs north-south and Highway 90 runs east-west, crossing in Kingston. N.C. Highway127 connects Amhurst to 90.  Interstates 40 and 77 are just 20 minutes from the majority of county residents. The Charlotte Douglas International Airport is an hour's drive from most parts of the county. The area is also served by the Hickory Regional airport (30 minutes) and the Statesville Airport (20 minutes).  Kingston has a small airfield, and several agricultural airstrips dot the county. Efforts to build a regional airport have been stymied every time the subject comes up.
 The Carlysle Railroad is an active short line rail system operating between  Kingston and  Statesville and connecting with Norfolk Southern.
Recreation and Tourism: On the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Carlysle County was a summer retreat to the wealthy of the east coast around the turn of the century, and even now its relative seclusion and proximity to highlands makes it a popular get away. The Harlow National Forest runs through the Brushy Mountains, almost connecting with the Pisgah NF to the west.  The Forest is largely confined to the mountains, and even there one finds inholdings.  Hiking and bike trails crisscross Harlow.  Hickory Lake is also a favorite summertime destination for swimming, boating and fishing.  
  Carlysle also has several minor tourist draws, such as the gem mine and museum at Hiddenite and buildings of historical and architectural interest.  
County Commissioners: Will Dagerhart, Mike Veltman, Cammie NeSmith, Daniel McCrae, Mary MacIntosh
History
  Kingston was established in 1777 by Henry King, a wealthy businessman whose politics dictated he find some land in the countryside, quickly.  Tragically, his three sons all died in circumstances unrelated to the ongoing war.  In 1786 his only daughter married Thomas Harrison, the war-hero son of a wealthy Virginian.  When King died in 1789, Harrison became one of the largest landowners in the area.  Harrison, along with other families such as the Sterns, MacIntoshes and Bowmans, developed prosperous plantations.  These wealthy landowners soon demanded autonomy, and after heavy politicking, Carlysle County was calved from surrounding counties  in 1816.  The county’s name came from a George Carlysle, a highly influential politician who lent his support to Harrison and his cronies.
  The aristocratic families of Carlysle (Bowman, Harrison, Stern, Pendergrass and MacIntosh) became the proverbial Powers That Be; city and county offices always stayed in these families.
  The War Between the States struck western North Carolina less directly than it did much of the South, yet its impact was deeply felt.  In the latter years of the war, Yankee raiders burned and looted in great swaths across the county. Many Carlyslian soldiers never returned home, and those who did were often less than whole.  With no one to tend them, fallow fields grew into forests; grand houses became ivy-covered piles of stone. Behind the Federal soldiers came the carpet baggers, buying up land for wealthy speculators in the north.
  The Five Families’ hold on the county was broken, at least for a while. The Pendergrass family was completely ruined, but the entrepreneurial Dagerharts (whom many called scalawags and vultures) scooped up most of the fallen family’s holdings.  The McCrae brothers, Scottish immigrants who fought for the Union, parlayed their pensions and poker winnings into cheap farmland.
  Nathaniel Harrison went east to find his fortune, and find it he did.  He returned an industrial tycoon, using his money to renovate Kingston and the college his great grandfather founded.  The fortunes of the county rose steadily, reaching their zenith after the Great War; Harrison College was gaining fame in academic circles, and many important citizens of the Carolinas had summer homes in Amhurst and Kingston.  In the late 20’s, the construction of Lake Hickory stood to draw even more tourists to this pastoral setting.  In light of such high hopes, the Depression years hit the county fairly hard.  Most of the investors in the Lake scheme lost most of their investments. The Harrison’s were forced to sell most of their property (much of it to the Federal Government to establish Harlow National Forest), the Bowmans were bankrupted, and even the Dagerharts’ fortunes fell mightily.
  In the years after the WWII, the county seemed to lag behind the rest of the state, languishing in a time gone by.  Outside events, such as the Vietnam War or Watergate, touched Carlysle more lightly than its neighbors.  When something strange cropped up –like folk music festivals in the ‘60s ­– the county seemed to jerk awake, shift, and then slip back into its daydream.  Hickory, Kingston’s southern rival, took up the industrial slack and quickly surpassed Carlysle in population and political influence. 
  Now, progress is beginning to catch up.  Since the early nineties, Carlysle County has seen steady increases in population as well-off yuppies buy up beautiful countryside with their stock market earnings.  Some locals favor growth, with improved services and increased jobs, while others dread the pollution, crowding, crime, and other attendant changes which urbanization promises. 
Supernatural Elements
  Carlysle County has is a place of interest to occultists because of the convergence of greater and lesser ley lines that make the county a nexus of great mystical power.  Some joke there are more ghosts per square mile in Carlysle County than in New Orleans; certainly the place is rife with “unexplained occurrences;” outsiders feel an eerie strangeness to the place.  Many occult researchers have settled here over the years, not to mention other things. . . a family of Ferals  have claimed one corner of the county as their stomping grounds for nigh-on a century.  
Designer's Notes
  Carlysle County came into being in the early ‘90s, when I needed a locale for a story.  At the time it was a reconstructed Athens, GA, with some elements of Knoxville thrown in.  When locating this mythical place, I simply stuck it between some counties (Wilkes and Alexander).  Since then I’ve made modifications but no serious effort to codify the place until recently.  Now I’ve done a fair bit of research in an effort to nail down the locale, including using CD-ROMs of USGS Topo maps, collecting online demographic and historical info and even visiting the localities for photos, brochures and a general feel of the place.  Carlysle Co. is comprised of Alexander Co. plus parts of the neighboring counties.
  The setting is designed primarily for modern magic and horror, although it can be used in other times and other genres with some tweaking.
  I have tried to make the setting fairly generic, allowing you to adapt it to most any game.  For my stories, the setting’s magic is fairly low-key.  The Witchcraft setting seems especially well-suited for maintaining the feel of the place for gaming.  It could provide fodder for a Call of Cthulhu game with little alteration. The setting has also been used with White Wolf’s system; it changes the feel (as it must with the World of Darkness, where the protagonists are themselves monsters).

Except as otherwise indicated, all original material © 2000-2006 Forrest B. Marchinton.  All rights reserved.  Reproduction of any of the material contained herein without express permission is prohibited.