Description

The village of Oakhaven is perfect. Too perfect.

The Rusty Tankards — a band of broke, argumentative adventurers with a goat they didn’t ask for — arrive expecting a simple retrieval job. What they find is a community where every person smiles, every meal is warm, and nobody seems particularly interested in leaving. Ever. The flowers are arranged. The paths are swept. The villagers speak in the same soothing cadence, and when asked about the world outside, they tilt their heads and say, “Why would you want to go anywhere else?”

What starts as a mildly unsettling pit stop turns into a darkly comic investigation as the party realizes something fundamental is wrong with Oakhaven — and whatever it is, it’s been working for a very long time.

The Village That Watches is Book 1 in the Commonly Known as the Rusty Tankard series — a fantasy comedy that blends laugh-out-loud banter with genuinely creepy undertones. Think Discworld meets The Stepford Wives, with a side of existential dread served on a very clean plate.

Topics Explored

• Cults and collectivism — what happens when community becomes control
• Utopias hiding dystopias — the horror of a place that seems too good to be true
• Conformity vs. individuality — trading personality for belonging
• Found family dynamics — a dysfunctional party that argues about everything but would die for each other
• Dark comedy in fantasy — the absurdity of heroism when the heroes are barely competent
• Surveillance and social pressure — a village where kindness might be a weapon
• Mind control and compliance — cheerful obedience as the most terrifying kind
• The uncanny valley of human behavior — when politeness becomes a warning sign

Perfect For Readers Who Love

Comedic fantasy with real teeth. If you like your humor sharp and your horror subtle — the kind that creeps in while you’re laughing — this is for you. Readers of Terry Pratchett, T. Kingfisher, Travis Baldree, and Nicholas Eames will feel right at home with a party that can’t stop bickering long enough to notice they’re in danger. Fans of cozy-gone-wrong stories, Midsommar-style village horror, and fantasy mysteries with an ensemble cast will find this hard to put down.

Chapter 1: The Worst Map in Existence

The map was definitely upside down.

Nyx had suspected it for the last three miles, ever since the “river” marked on the parchment turned out to be a particularly aggressive patch of stinging nettles. She had waited until they were knee-deep in a bog to mention it. She found that timing usually improved the dramatic impact.

“It’s not upside down,” Rolan insisted, holding the soggy parchment so tight his knuckles were white inside his gauntlets. He stood on a mossy log, striking a pose that would have been heroic if one of his greaves wasn’t slowly sliding into the muck. “The cartographer clearly marked the Sun Peaks to the north. We are simply taking a tactical detour.”

“That’s a stain, Rolan,” Nyx said, peeling herself off a tree that looked like it had died of boredom several centuries ago and simply forgotten to fall down. “Someone spilled wine on your map. And we’re walking towards the sun. Unless the sun has decided to set in the north today, which, given our luck, isn’t entirely off the table.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Fizzle chirped. The gnome was currently perched on top of Bash’s backpack, looking like a heavily armed hood ornament. She was vibrating slightly, which was her default state ever since she’d accidentally drunk a potion labeled “Mild Tremors” thinking it said “Mild Tumors” and deciding that sounded exciting. “North is a state of mind! A spiritual direction! Also, I smell burning.”

“I am not burning,” Bash rumbled. The half-orc was carrying three backpacks, a large tent, a cooking pot, and a small, nervous-looking goat they had found wandering the road an hour ago. He paused, sniffing the air with a nose that had been broken so many times it looked like a decorative potato someone had tried to reshape with a hammer. “Correction. My pants are burning.”

“Fizzle,” Nyx warned without looking.

“It was a spark! A tiny spark! Barely a ember! More of a suggestion of combustion!”

A small puff of blue smoke erupted from Bash’s left trouser leg. Bash patted it out with the casual indifference of someone swatting a fly. This was the fourth time today. He had stopped counting after the second week of knowing Fizzle.

“Focus, team!” Rolan shouted, drawing his sword and pointing it vaguely at the horizon. The sword was called Brightedge, which was optimistic given that it had been pawned twice, used as a tent pole once, and currently had a small notch in it from the time Rolan had tried to cut cheese and missed. “We are the Order of the Rusty Tankard! We are professionals! We do not get lost!”

“We absolutely get lost,” Nyx said. “We got lost in the capital. The capital has street signs.”

“We were exploring!”

“We were in a bakery for three hours because you couldn’t find the door.”

“The architecture was confusing!”

“It was a room, Rolan. A square room with one door.”

Gerald the goat bleated. It was a judgemental bleat. Goats had perfected the art of judgemental bleating over millennia of evolution, and Gerald was a master of the form.

“Even the goat thinks you’re an idiot,” Nyx observed.

“The goat is not a member of this party,” Rolan said stiffly. “The goat does not get a vote.”

“The goat has better navigation skills than you do.”

“The goat cannot read!”

“Neither can the map, and yet here we are.”

They spent another ten minutes arguing the semantics of cartographic literacy while standing in a bog. This was, Nyx reflected, fairly representative of their usual operational efficiency. The Order of the Rusty Tankard had been together for eight months now, and in that time they had completed exactly three quests, failed seven, and somehow managed to be banned from two taverns that no longer existed for unrelated reasons.

The reasons were fire. The reasons were always fire. The reasons were Fizzle.

“I vote we go the way the road goes,” Nyx finally said, pointing to the faint, paved dirt path they had stepped off of twenty minutes ago because Rolan had seen an “omen” in the clouds.

“It looked like a finger pointing!” Rolan protested.

“It looked like a turnip. A slightly suggestive turnip.”

“It was a divine sign!”

“It was a vegetable, Rolan. A root vegetable. You led us into a swamp because of a sexy turnip in the sky.”

Bash made a sound that might have been a laugh, if half-orc laughs didn’t sound like boulders having an argument. “Turnips are romantic,” he said thoughtfully. “I wrote a poem about a turnip once.”

“Of course you did,” Nyx sighed.

“It was about loneliness. The turnip was a metaphor.”

“For what?”

“Loneliness.”

Fizzle raised her hand. “I want to hear the turnip poem!”

“No one wants to hear the turnip poem,” Nyx said.

“The turnip sits in darkness deep,” Bash began, his voice taking on a sonorous quality that suggested he had been waiting for this moment. “Alone beneath the soil’s dark keep. No sun, no moon, no friend, no foe—”

“We’re walking,” Nyx announced, and began trudging back toward the road.

They retraced their steps, which took longer than it should have because Rolan kept insisting they were “taking the scenic route” and because Fizzle kept stopping to examine mushrooms that she swore were “looking at her funny.” One of the mushrooms burst into flame when she poked it, which Nyx felt rather proved her point about the looking.

Gerald the goat led the way. He seemed to know where the road was, which meant he had more practical intelligence than the rest of the party combined. This was not a high bar to clear.

As they crested the final hill, the bickering died down. Not because they ran out of things to complain about—Nyx had a list, an actual written list, and she was only on item forty-seven—but because the view stopped them cold.

They had been expecting a hamlet. A few muddy shacks, maybe a pig farm, and an inn that smelled like wet dog and broken dreams. That was the standard for “remote village.” That was what “off the main road” meant. Squalor. Desperation. Possibly plague.

What lay below them was none of those things.

The valley was a bowl of emerald green, cradled by mountains that seemed to lean protectively over it like elderly relatives at a christening. And in the center of that valley, gleaming in the afternoon sun, sat Oakhaven.

It glowed.

The cottages were whitewashed, their thatched roofs golden and freshly combed. The streets were cobblestone, laid in patterns of grey and white that seemed almost decorative. Gardens overflowed with flowers—roses, lilies, something blue and improbable—despite the fact that it was well past the season for such things. Smoke curled from chimneys in lazy, perfect ribbons, as if the very air had been given instructions on how to behave properly.

“By the gods,” Rolan whispered, lowering his sword. His voice had gone soft, almost reverent. “It’s… it’s clean.”

“It’s suspicious,” Nyx narrowed her eyes. She had very good eyes for suspicion. They had been trained by years of people trying to kill her for reasons ranging from “she stole my wallet” to “she stole my wallet and also my horse” to “she looked at me funny.” “Nothing is that clean. Not even the Elf districts in the capital, and they have people whose entire job is polishing cobblestones.”

“It looks like a painting,” Fizzle breathed. “Like someone painted a picture of a village and then made it real. Do you think someone did that? Is that a spell? I want to learn that spell.”

“You are not allowed to learn that spell,” Nyx said automatically.

“But I would make such good paintings!”

“You would make paintings that explode.”

“Interesting paintings.”

Bash stared at the town in silence. Gerald bleated nervously from somewhere near his knee.

“I am too large for that place,” Bash said finally, his voice heavy with certainty. “I will break something. Something clean. Something pretty.”

“Nonsense!” Rolan clapped him on the arm, which was like clapping a boulder. “You are a gentle giant, Bash! Mostly! When there are no enemies! And when you have eaten recently!” He adjusted his cape, which had mud on it, and his armor, which had more mud on it, and his dignity, which was also mostly mud at this point. “Come! Let us descend! I smell roast chicken! And opportunity! And also victory, which smells similar to chicken but with more glory!”

“Victory doesn’t have a smell,” Nyx said.

“It smells like chicken, Nyx. Victorious chicken.”

They walked down the hill. The transition was jarring—one moment, they were in the wild, unruly forest, fighting briars and mud and the occasional mushroom that was absolutely looking at them funny. The next, they stepped onto the main road of Oakhaven, and the world softened.

The air was warmer here. The wind wasn’t a gust; it was a breeze. The smell of pine and bog was replaced by the scent of fresh bread and blooming jasmine and something else, something underneath, something that smelled like…

“Water,” Nyx murmured. “Boiled water. Very clean.”

“That is the smell of civilization!” Rolan declared. “Hygiene! Progress!”

“It’s weird,” Nyx said.

“You think everything is weird.”

“Everything usually is.”

They approached the town gates—open, carved from polished oak, entwined with ivy that seemed to have been trained to grow in perfect spirals. There were no guards. No toll collectors. No grumpy old men with pikes asking for papers or payment or explanations for why the gnome was visibly on fire again.

Instead, there was a bench. And on the bench sat an old man, whittling a piece of wood into what appeared to be a small bird.

He looked up as the party approached—a clanking, mud-spattered, slightly smoking mess of adventurers who smelled like bog water and regret.

Nyx tensed. Her hand drifted to her dagger. This was usually the part where they were told to turn around, or pay a “hero tax,” or explain why the half-orc was carrying a goat.

The old man smiled.

It wasn’t a creepy smile. It wasn’t a knowing smile. It was the smile of a grandfather seeing his grandchildren come home for the holidays, if that grandfather had never met his grandchildren but was absolutely delighted by the concept of them.

“Well now,” the man said, his voice rough and warm like sanded wood. “You lot look like you’ve walked halfway across the world.”

Rolan puffed out his chest. “We have journeyed from—”

“You look thirsty,” the man interrupted gently. He reached down and picked up a wooden pitcher from beside the bench. He poured water into four clay cups that seemed to have been waiting there for exactly this purpose. “Sit. Rest. The hill is steep.”

Nyx watched the water. It sparkled in the afternoon light.

“What do you want for it?” she asked sharply.

The old man blinked. He looked genuinely confused, as if the question was in a language he’d never learned.

“Want?” he repeated. “It’s water, lass. It falls from the sky. Why would I charge you for the sky?”

He held out a cup.

Rolan took it before Nyx could object. “See? Hospitality! Civilization! Basic human kindness that you have apparently forgotten exists!” He drank deep. “Ah! Glorious! Crisp! Cold!”

Bash took a cup. He sniffed it suspiciously—he sniffed everything suspiciously, including his own breakfast most mornings—then took a tiny sip. His eyes widened.

“It tastes like rocks,” he said, and this was clearly a compliment. “Good rocks. Mountain rocks.”

“I don’t drink water,” Fizzle announced, crossing her arms. “Fish do things in it. Personal things. Biological things.”

The old man laughed. It was a warm, rich sound, like honey poured over gravel.

“Suit yourself, little one. The inn has apple cider too. Fresh pressed this morning.”

“Apple cider?” Fizzle’s ears perked up. Apple cider did not have fish doing things in it. Apple cider was, as far as she knew, biologically uncompromised.

“The Silent Spring,” the man pointed down the pristine street with his whittling knife. “Best beds in the valley. Best food too. Tell Thomas I sent you. He’ll give you the Traveler’s Special.”

“You are a gentleman and a scholar!” Rolan bowed so deeply his helmet nearly fell off. “We thank you, good sir! Your kindness shall not be forgotten! Songs shall be sung!”

“No need for songs,” the old man said, returning to his whittling. “Just rest. You’ve earned it.”

They walked into Oakhaven.

Nyx glanced back once. The old man wasn’t watching them. He wasn’t tracking their movements or signaling to anyone. He was just whittling, focused on his bird, a small smile on his weathered face.

“See?” Rolan nudged her. “No monsters. No traps. Just a nice old man with nice water in a nice town.”

“I don’t like it,” Nyx muttered, though she couldn’t quite explain why. “He was too nice.”

“You, my dear Nyx, have trust issues.”

“My trust issues have kept us alive, Rolan.”

“They have kept you paranoid.”

“Same thing.”

Gerald the goat bleated. It was, Nyx noted, a nervous bleat.

Even the goat knew something was wrong. But Rolan was already marching ahead, cape flapping, toward the inn, and Bash was following, and Fizzle was skipping, and the street was so clean and the air smelled so sweet and the sun was so warm and…

And Nyx followed, because that was what she did. She followed, and she watched, and she waited for the trap to spring.

Because there was always a trap.

Always.