There are a couple of things about the
setting I don't think I have adequately conveyed during gaming, so I
want to clear this up, for the purposes of Blue Booking, if nothing
else.
First, Dun Gwyn is small. It's the end
of line line (currently) economically and militarily. The dun itself
is a quickly constructed motte-and-bailey. Lord Gwyn1,
the first and current lord, has no more than a thirty riders at his
disposal, although he commands a larger military garrison too. The
small temple of Bel2
is located within the fortified area, and has a handful of temple
guards. The detachment of soldiers (about 100, it varies because of
their patrols along the coast road, and expeditions to the interior)
are garrisoned in tents at the western edge of town. The town is a
ramshackle of rapidly constructed buildings, half constructed
buildings and tents. One of the few buildings in the town is the poor
quality inn, “The Lion's Den” that your party stays at while they
are in town. It is lousy with fleas and bed bugs, and doesn't offer a
lot of choice in it's sleeping arrangements, either barracks style
shared multi-bunk room, the common room (where you just sleep on the
floor (or on a table or bench) providing your own bedding, or,
lastly, the one private room the inn-keeper lives in, but is willing
to rent out to paying customers. The food is mediocre, but filling.
Most of the merchants are just visiting, this is the last stop on
their trade route, after buying and (mostly) selling here, they turn
around and head back to the coast. Most of the stuff they bring is
for the soldiers.
Recently an influx of a couple of
hundred settlers of various backgrounds arrived, and more are likely
on their way. The dun, the soldiers and the settlers are causing
tension with the local human (barbarian3)
population.
Second, Tirnakaur (the colony that you
are in) is hot. Think Georgia through Florida hot. It also rains a
lot there, pretty much every day. So it's also muddy and wet. The
area is not especially well explored, although that will probably
become a campaign goal as you guys level up. Levels 1-3 are
traditionally focused on dungeons (and despite being largely outside,
the Hill plays like one because of the magic in the forest
restricting you to various paths), levels 4+ traditionally focus on
wilderness exploration type adventures, or at least overland travels
to more advanced level dungeons.
Third, the amazing abundance of animals
everywhere. Us modern folk don't think about this much, but there are
more animals than humans in any place there are humans. I went down a
rabbit hole researching horses this morning and wow, are there a lot
of different, specialized horses, not just the differences between
riding and draft horses, but various types of riding horses for
different purposes, and all of the working horses have
specializations to their jobs, with very few horses being
multi-purpose. That got me thinking about the other animals, almost
every household has at least one dog, for instance, or cats, a
necessity for keeping vermin down (although not particularly liked
especially well, as a rule), any settlement or homestead is going to
have flocks of various fowl, mostly chickens, ducks and geese, and
cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs; with pigs being the only ones that
are raised solely for their meat (although their hides are useful
too).
So I guess Dun Gwyn is mostly a smelly
barnyard of an unhygienic tent city. Crossing the Shrill to the Hill
might actually be safer than the impending cholera and/or typhus
outbreak that is sure to occur in Dun Gwyn. Probably the only clean
places there are inside the dun itself, like Lord Gwyn's hall or the
temple of Bel.
1Lord
Gwyn is clearly an old style lord, he keeps his own band of
oath-sworn riders, most lords of Avalon have abandoned this
practice.
2Bel
is also known as “The Great God”, he is the most widely
worshiped deity in the Avalonish pantheon.
3These
“barbarians” are mostly of a similar ethnic stock to the people
of Avalon, speaking a different dialect of the same root language,
kind of like the difference between the English of Shakespeare and
the King James Bible vs. the modern American English of today.
Isolated groups are of different ethnicities, there are also groups
of “wild” elves here, they constitute an entirely different
“barbarian” group.
