Featherstone
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“Featherstone, come for the history, stay because your cars on bricks”
Featherstone, a medium sized town in the Republic of Yorkshire, West Quadrant, was founded in the 13th century but expanded rapidly in 1848 to take advantage of a Dilithium seam found beneath the town. Unfortunately, the first warp capable starship was not due to be constructed for another three centuries, so the town had to fall back on coal mining, drug dealing and Pitbull herding as a means to support itself.
The town came to national attention in 1893 after a riot over the rising price of tripe. The army was called in to quell the uprising and a number of people were killed. Although only three shots were fired, over a thousand people claimed to have been hit and injured. They are still claiming incapacity benefits to this day, almost 120 years later.
The Town[edit]
The local council graciously provided a new Library to the townsfolk in the late 1980’s, however since most of the town cannot read, they mostly use the facilities for looking at pictures of the outside world and for teaching their kids good morals with the use of 30 year old copies of Meg and Mog, as well as abusing the photocopier. Featherstone library has the only known copy of the Necronomicon outside the Miskatonic University. It is also notable for having the largest collection of erotic fiction in the western hemisphere. There is only one active member of the library at present, and he only ever rents DVD’s, or, to be exact, the same DVD over and over, Porkies 2, which he has rented continuously since 2008. Ian Clayton once beat a man to death in the non fiction section for saying that his poetry was “derivative”, and the murdered man’s blood still stains several books. Beyond DVD’s, erotica and forbidden tomes of unspeakable evil and dread, the library holds a healthy collection of the works of Tom Clancy as well as a large selection of colouring books, some of which have yet to be filled in. The library is also the location of Featherstone’s monthly disco, an event at which nearly half of Featherstone’s population has been conceived at some point. It is said that on some particularly amorous evenings, the disco floor comes to resemble a bacchanalian spawning pit.
Public amenities in the town are wide and varied. There is a fascinating pile of rubble located at the end of Wilson Street that was once, legend states, a Kwik Save. Teenagers were said to be able to buy bottles of hooch there without the staff giving a single damn. Also of note were the colloquially known “Stacks”, a long lost remnant of the towns Dilithium crystal mining past. Teenagers would gather atop the stacks, pretending to be drunker than they actually were on local delicacies such as White Lightning and Hooch. Legend has it that the sport of Jack Ass, or Jack Arse in its native UK, was invented on the Stacks. This early version was only considered worthwhile in the event of a fatality.
Nearby is the old location of the historic Lister Baths, named after Dave Lister from the space docu-drama Red Dwarf. The locals love their working class heroes, and they believed that, despite being a Scouser, Dave Lister personified what was best about the townsfolk. The swimming baths were built not for good health or sport, but so the filthy miners could all be washed in an economical fashion before they were sent home to be beaten by their wives. The baths have long since been demolished due to infestation by gibbering Shoggoths from the outer dark. A new swimming complex was constructed on the site of the high school, which means the school children can now be all washed together, along with members of the general public.
The town is well catered for by drinking establishments and many pubs and working men’s clubs that have been in place for hundreds of years. The most popular are the unholy trinity of the Junction, the Travellers Rest and the White House. The Junction is considered the most dangerous pub in the world due to its location in the middle of a busy junction. No one has left the pub since 1974. The Travellers Rest is in a constant state of flux, disappearing and reappearing at random intervals due to some space time anomaly. The part time barman has been working a continuous shift there since 1984. There is a local theory regarding the Travellers Rest is in fact a giant TARDIS. The white house is an exact replica of the White House in Washington DC, and is famous for its home brewed ale, Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar.
There is a fascinating local tradition that occurs annually in the town on Boxing Day where the local women undertake a pub crawl around the entire town. This event has been in place since the island of Great Britain was first inhabited after the last ice age, with the main aim or the event being to hunt down a husband. Many men die each year during this event, sucked up into the lady parts of libidinous harridans where they slowly suffocate.
Transportation around and from the town is varied. There is a train station, but due to a government warning no trains ever stop at it. Also, due to a series of educational films in the 1970s and 80s the townsfolk are terrified of the railway and refuse to go near it. This is problematic considering the town is split in two by the train tracks. As a result, locals can often be seen lining up at the level crossing looking flustered trying to figure out how to cross the line.
Buses travel through the town but rarely stop unless shot at and forced to repel borders. There are regular coach tours though town demonstrating how prosperous the towns Pitbull breeding has become.
Private car ownership is on the up in Featherstone with most people choosing to drive something suitably loud, badly modified and poorly maintained. The most typically owned car in the town is a Ford Focus, which has been lowered to such an extent that the top layers of tarmac in the road are always being freshly scraped away. Some parts of the road network are in need of urgent repair. Green Lane is famous for being the only strip of Yorkshire bombed by the Luftwaffe in World War 2 and has not been repaired since. One unfortunate visitor to the town described driving in the place as akin to a Mad Max movie.
There is a higher than normal amount of takeaways available on the high street, with rival pizza establishments, Amigos and Peppinos, being amongst the oldest. They are said to have been in place for over a thousand years, setting up shop in an empty field and simply waiting for the town to grow up around them. Senior Amigo and Mr Peppino, the proprietors of their respective establishments, have been rivals since the dawn of time, and have killed each other on several occasions. Peppinos are well respected for their folded pizzas, considered a delicacy by many in the town. It is considered bad luck to eat one and not suffer from food poisoning. Senior Amigo is considered the fastest person in the world at answering the phone, with the time between the first ring and him answering with the greeting “Helloamigoscanitakeyourorderplease” said to take only one tenth of a second. Some customers have even reported pizzas being delivered to their home hours, sometimes days or even weeks before they had decided to place an order.
Notable Residents[edit]
Famous residents include; Ian Clayton, the only man in Featherstone, according to him, to have learned to read and write, Radio Breadknife, the infamous terrorists of the airwaves and Ming the Merciless, who spent the first seven years of his life in the town before moving on to rule the Moons of Mongo. The infamous ruler cites his time in the town as one of the major factors in his decision to try and destroy the earth. Other notable residents include Count Duckula, Robbie the Robot and Chris Moyles, who lives in the toilets of the Featherstone Rovers rugby grounds.
Sport[edit]
Sport is very important to the townsfolk of Featherstone. Despite having their own Rugby team, they despise the sport, instead preferring to play Extreme Squash, a game that involves a number of people lining up at the end of a squash court who then have to avoid being hit by the balls that are sent down range. Other sports include Queensberry rules football, robbing the homes of the elderly, dealing pot and taking E’s and slashing peoples face with Stanley knives. There is a cricket ground in the town, but no one is allowed to walk on the grass so it goes unused.
The rugby ground is situated on Post office Road. Curiously, there is no post office on the road. This confusion means that no post has been delivered to Featherstone for over a century and the town missing from most maps. People who enter it because their Sat-Nav systems sent them through rarely emerge the same. Some have described the place as “where demons go for inspiration.”
Education[edit]
Featherstone High school was once renowned for its focus on IT, producing a crop of students who were very well equipped for the world of computers. Unfortunately, the school forgot to teach its pupils anything else, leaving it open to accusations of merely teaching pupils to become battery hens, incapable of doing anything else but enter data and commit online credit card fraud.
Featherstone high school has a number of notable exceptions to the standard curriculum, including ur dressin’, knifework, robbin’, doin’ strangles and feeding people lengths. There was some concern that there would be no one available to practice on when teaching the feeding of lengths, but it turned out that most women in the town were happy to oblige, often practicing it in fields, pub toilets and on the back seats of buses.
Crime[edit]
Knife crime is a major cause of concern in the town, with many claiming it is no where near high enough. Throughout the whole of 2011, only one person was injured in a knife related incident, and she was the wife of a knife thrower suffering from glaucoma. The mayor of Featherstone has described the situation as “disappointing”, and blames the rising popularity of video games for the lack of violence on Featherstone’s streets.
It is said that in Featherstone, you are only ever 6 feet from a stolen bicycle at any time. The instances of bike theft are so high now that no one bothers buying a bike, or indeed tries to hold onto the one they have. They simply go out into the street and take the first one they come across. This practice means that a bike may change hands several times a week, and that no one is ever left short when in need of transport to go commit burglaries.
Featherstone has a higher than normal amount of Dickheads in resident, something that has been remarked upon by several prominent scientists and scholars. Dr Doom, when visiting the town, was heard to say that he “had been considering for some time the possibility of amending his megalomaniacal ways, but upon visiting the town he has decided that was of vital importance that the town be destroyed so that none of the townsfolk may breed”. Many townsfolk have been waiting with baited breath for the arrival of the Doctors cleansing fire, but have so far been disappointed. The Dickheads in question continue to breed, and have multiplied year on year to almost epidemic proportions.
Featherstone has a burgeoning industry of identity theft and online fraud, second only to Russia and Nigeria. Many attribute this to the IT focussed education they received at Featherstone High School.