Bakersfield
Type: Village — the remnant of Crowley's childhood home, now existing as an Abyssal pocket plane Also called: Brookside — Crowley named it "Brookside" in Session 048; the Bakersfield stub cross-references "the Brookside / Caves of Chaos game." Greg: confirm canonical name (Bakersfield = place-name per The Engineer vs. Brookside = Crowley's own name for it?) Region: 273rd Layer of the Abyss — the village and surrounding realm now exist as a pocket plane within the Abyss, tethered there by the binding stone beneath Bedegar Keep. The World Eater roams the landscape outside two protective bubbles. Status (latest): EXPLORED — Session 049–Session 051. The party arrived via the 273rd layer portal. The realm is a pocket plane: trapped, Abyssal, and besieged by the World Eater and the Wraith King's gnoll army. Two protective bubbles persist, powered by Leigha's dormant divinity. The keep is occupied; the binding stone is the key to the plane's fate. First Reference: Session 034 (named by The Engineer in the moment of recognizing AC as Crowley) First Visited: Session 048
What the Party Knows
- Bakersfield / Brookside is the village AC / Crowley grew up in. Per The Engineer's line (Session 034): "You're that well-boy from that little village. Crowley. Bakersfield. You'd know better than me." When the name was said, AC's whole childhood came back to him. In Session 048, Crowley referred to it as "Brookside" — the name he used himself as a child.
- Session 048: Ser Vindictus transported the party here after freeing herself from the Prison of Ser Vindictus. The party arrived in a quiet green field with the smell of bread. It was clearly Crowley's place — he recognized it immediately. Why Vindictus chose this destination over anywhere else is unresolved.
- Session 049–051: The party explored the pocket plane. Key confirmed details:
- The plane exists within the 273rd Layer of the Abyss, tethered by the binding stone beneath Bedegar Keep.
- Two protective bubbles hold: the Brookside Chapel bubble (where Leigha sleeps on the altar) and the forest survivor camp bubble.
- The World Eater roams the landscape outside the bubbles, consuming the terrain. It is titanic in scale.
- The Wraith King's gnoll army ranges the exterior; a gnoll pack occupied Crowley's Bear Cave with Zago's stolen hoard.
- Every hour outside a bubble costs a DC 15 Con save or a level of exhaustion.
- Zago — the last dragon on the plane — cannot enter the bubbles but confirmed the binding stone and the portal at Bedegar Keep.
- The brook, mill, and chapel of Crowley's childhood are visible, structurally intact within the chapel bubble zone.
- There was a well in the village (the "well-boy" epithet implies AC was the village well-boy as a child — possibly a literal water-fetching role, possibly a play on Falkor's well-of-the-Toke-Inn parallel).
- Crowley's baker father — Mortimer the baker (per the in-table OOC banter: Mortimer was the baker who thought he was Crowley's dad, but turned out to be evil and not his actual father). The "Bakersfield" / "Crowley Bakerson" / "Baker's son" naming chain is all the same thread.