Hammond Farm was located in the small western Maryland
town of Wolfsville, a closed community containing a mix of down home agricultural
types and aging yuppie populations looking for a large yard and low taxes.
While economics had forced the population to accept the fact that change
was inevitable, nobody was prepared to accept the changes that came with
goblinization.
The isolated community of Wolfsville had had a hard enough time dealing
with the emergence of elves and dwarves in 2011, but the fact that these
new races emerged at birth allowed enough time for at least a mild amount
of adjustment – or at least the opportunity for the affected families to
move out of town. However, when goblinization hit hard in April of
2021, the abrupt arrival of such a change annihilated any acceptance that
had existed during the initial emergence of new races. The situation
was complicated by a series of riots in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and
other cities that disrupted communications, leaving Wolfsville in an information
blackout.
The demographics of Wolfsville prevented the emergence of riots and
lynch mobs, primarily because of the mixture of differing classes which
rarely communicated across social boundaries and the fact that virtually
everybody in the region was armed in traditional rural fashion. Except
for an isolated scream and the occasional gunshot, Wolfsville was frighteningly
quiet.
One week after goblinization began, the farmhouse at Hammond Farm burnt
to the ground. In a field behind the structure was five recently
created graves. The Hammond family had six members. Members
of the community converged on the scene, but not a single person spoke.
As the days passed, new graves began to appear in Hammond Field and
by week's end it had more than forty. With the restoration of communications
the following week, the grave count stopped increasing. The final
count was fifty six.
Business eventually returned to normal, but with one notable difference:
Only 1% of the population was either Ork or Troll, conflicting with the
national average of 10%. |