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Vhott

Vhott is a town of 3600 humans on the Jorakk river, just inside the northern edge of the Rokk woods. The terrain is ravine-riddled. Homes and administrative buildings are often built with stone towers for observation.

The town grew from a camp of Fhokki who drove out "The Bear People", who are hunters that now live in the Vrykarr mountains. Since the Wars of Discord, the Fhokki share the town with Raitho-Dejy, and dwarven traders live here semi-permanently. The Bear People have not returned.

Vhott is ruled by the chieftain Tharra. She leads with the approval of The Forest Lords, an uneasy allegiance of nobles held together by a system of debts, bargains, wagers, and duels. Legal disputes are held at the Law Rock. This is also the site of a seasonal meeting that draws in local petty lords and their retinues.

The town's exports include lumber, maple syrup, honey, and surgical kits. The owners in charge of these commodities keep a firm grip on controlling their own production process. The rich merchants are also locally powerful lawyers, and they often ask their clients to forfeit their right to export a certain good as payment for advocacy. Duels occasionally arise when people cannot be controlled with scheming or intimidation.

Tharra is the commander-in-chief of the Vhottgard. Half of the invasions of Vhott are the result of Warg schemes. Splinter factions of the Relic Burner orc clan will sometimes assail the settlement, especially loggers on the outskirts.

Gold panning is a notable pasttime.

The Forest Lords

Tharra

Vhott's chief Tharra was trained as a warrior from a young age. She is overly strict and keeps a jail filled with minor offenders, usually powerless oafs. They are most often jailed for three days. She has several skin parasites and often carries a mild sickness. Her manor is in the center of the east forest-town neighborhood.

Korbuk

A rich fhokki who owns local grist mills. His estate maintains and defends them. He gives families free access to a mill if they allow a family member to be drafted. He tells unfunny jokes. He is addicted to spending excessive amounts of money. Korbuk's manor is close to the river.

Hemski

A rich geologist. Hemski maintains a written registry of who is allowed to pan for gold at which stake. He is the one who sells off stakes. He will refine gold (with nitric acid) for a fee, and offers other geological services. Hemski sleeps a lot and has a weak short-term memory. He entrusts a great deal of his business to his scribes. His manor is close to the mine entrance, north of the outdoor furnaces and foundries.

Soryk

Soryk is a masterful hunter from a once-reclusive mountain clan. Many rangers become her students. She holds an immense wealth of knowledge about monsters and magic that she carries in songs. Every fall her family leads a parade beating huge drums in the middle of town to frighten off spirits. Soryk manages corvee when necessary. Her manor is far up the mountainy part of Vhott. She does not keep anybody's secrets. She's blind in her left eye.

Neighborhoods and architecture

A hilly, nearly-barren zone in the west

Long ago a meeting-site of prayerful hunters, the old shrine is now Soryk's home.

There are other homes around the hill, isolated in groups of one to four cabins.

A small inner mining community close to the river

The area just outside the mine is a dangerous worksite crowded with outdoor workshops, pulley machines, and nervous mules.

The locals live in small cabins made of spare lumber. Each house has a cellar with a drainage system that empties into the river.

Hemski has published encyclopedias of geology. He additonally pays his scribes to teach night classes at his mansion. The topics include literacy in Fhokki, Dwarven, and Gnomish.

Docks and mills built on the river

Fishing patterns are always disturbed in some way by orcs far upriver exterminating the fish populations. Giants allow orcs to do this when they want to recruit or eat the orcs. Wild beasts with a taste for orc flesh complicate these schemes.

The mills mostly make spelt flour for farina and bland beer. A few are dedicated to pulverizing minerals and running bellows or hammers. There are eighteen mills currently. At least four are always in some state of disrepair. Korbuk plans to build new mills.

A tree-heavy foresty town in the east

Small trees of various species are grown in rows between the homes and the street. Most areas are green and shaded.

The old houses are a single large room, attached to some kind of small tower. Later generations built wooden cabins on top of their rock room. The newer houses are made of wide planks and have thin wooden shingles.

Local Personalities

Magic users

Ethi

Ethi the Moon Knight keeps a moonpool on the bald hill. She is a disciplined student of horsemanship and falconry, and is the only person known in the region to have experience fighting lycanthropes.

Jorsyth

Jorsyth is a Merry Muse who lives in a stone tower on the former outskirts of the forest town. He holds forest-chanting parties inspired by animal imitations. He is a jolly soul.

Glen witches

Scholars who meet at a glen, or at someone's house. They maintain a low-pressure learning environment, and take turns teaching each week in a show and tell manner. Sometimes they just meet to socialize. Some of the witches have day jobs, some of them don't.

Yevory

A reclusive wizard who is both completely misunderstood and genuinely evil. He does not possess the capability for compassion, guilt, or respect. He was run out of town after killing a few miners with a phosgene gas cloud. He has been sighted in caves and in ruined towns and castles. Occasionally he charms a logger or hapless hermit to steal for him, and he has other stupid minions. He is equipped with a personal arsenal of magical trinkets.

Most intelligent

The local genius is Groadge the master forester. His forestry lessons have kept some of the loggers from being crushed to death by falling trees. He is also great at knowing different species. Groadge is bald despite being under 30, and he pats people on the back slightly too hard.

Innkeeper

A popular local inn is The Golden Winery. The innkeep is a Fhokki man named Uutvokk. He is famous for his noncommittal demeanor. Uutvokk is pretty forgetful for a business owner and also is tone deaf.

Medic

A local bone doctor named Rinni has developed an eye for quality traction benches, and she has dozens of apprentices. Rinni has restored laborers back to working shape in as little as seven months.

Artist

A cabinet maker named Igg builds quality wardrobes luxurized with historic engravings and patterns inspired by newts and turtles. Igg is disorganized and claustrophobic, and prefers to work outside on his cluttered lawn.

Suppliers

Food

A greengrocer named Makkti is popular with local farmers because of the simple reason that she does not try to cheat them. Some of the farmers do scam her with falsely-weighted crates of beets and so forth. She believes the number 3 is lucky.

Weapons

A smith named Mukknat makes hundreds of spears and battleaxes every year. She sells weapons for double their cost in the PHB, and wails if someone haggles. She's also embarrasingly and pointlessly nosy.

Armor

An old fhokki tailor named Rorda makes high-quality gambesons to order. She dismissively talks down to foreigners for being foreign. She has a glass jaw.

Thief tools

Silk rope and lockpicks are sold only to associates of a spider-themed thieves' guild called "The Orb Weavers".

Horse stuff

Tack and harness are sold at the home of a Raitho-dejy guy named Jajik. Most of his customers deal through his teenaged son Takul. Takul tries to turn every interaction into a long conversation. Takul is physically astoundingly uncoordinated. Jajik cannot lie even for the sake of basic safety, and he has a slight limp. They are sometimes willing to sell up to 2 light horses. They do not train horses for combat.

Lanterns

A fhokki man named Garkk sells lanterns and candles made of tallow he renders himself. He usually thinks unrelated conversations are about him. He has one baby kid.

Musical instruments

An old woman named Stokthew makes lutes and ocarinas. She is crotchety and hates having conversations. She tells a lot of lies so she can feel like she is smarter than others.

Stationary

Paper is sold wholesale to foreign cities by a few mills, but there is little local market for it. The nobles sometimes have some on hand, but on rare occasions where paper is needed, most people tear off some birch bark or use a thin piece of leather or wood. Quills also, are simply pulled off of birds when needed.

Jewelery/moneychanging

Foreign coins are exchanged by a jeweler named Skenn. Hemski basically sets the exchange fees (10%). Despite being young and sedentary, Skenn is never fully rested. She overcompensates drastically when she feels guilty.

Randos

Neighbors

The mills and the mine were built by Fhokki who sought to turn the forest and the river into wealth. They drove the Bear People to the mountains, then clashed for decades with orcs and dark elves. The hostilities continued until the construction of Barrow Soot Keep. The barbarians of Skrivaker Dirak now face most of the conflict.

Vhott continues to be attacked by the pawns of wargs, and by the occasional orc warband.

Sites

Local Manors

Glazedfate

Tharra's stone house, equipped with a granary and a pig farm. An estate just for defending a heap of grain and a small armory. Contains wells connected to the river and wells that are not.

Wrathyard

Korbuk's stout tower is mainly the training grounds of the town's conscripts. Korbuk oversees new recruits whose oaths have yet to be tested. His support staff of medics, fletchers, and porters are quite good by now, and train their own students in support disciplines. Korbuk insists on instructing the use of scimitars, because they can often be taken from fallen orcs.

Korbuk's mills are built by the best machinists that can come to Vhott. The man himself is no slouch as an engineer. He is also the town executioner, and is believed to have power over witches.

Gladgold

Hemski's walled mansion, uphill a bit from the complicated mine worksite. Features a small public school, a large library, an extensive rock collection, a private jeweler, and the local mining claim registry. Hemski's head butler and chamberlain handle most of the administration.

Gemwhisker

Soryk's sacred hunting-house. A hill-base that is barricaded with spiky traps when expecting attack. A training ground for tricky miner mountain hunters.

Horse Ranches

Villages

Dwellings near Vhott are lone cabins and inconspicuous shelters. There are two known ruined villages.

Drumtruss

The warg Goregrinder organized an alliance of wolves and orcs to wipe it out.

Many buildings are reduced to their foundation. The cellars remain temporary shelter for creatures and outlaws. A few querns and old mattocks are left.

The old tavern is flattened into a rough midden of clay shards, disintegrated kitchenware, and laborer skeletons.

Drumtruss used to have a lithic weaponsmith. It's possible to find stone knives and axes there. Piles of chert and flint are amongst the rubble.

Riverveil

Gnolls drove the people north to Vhott, 60 years ago. The village was abandoned.

A few houses still have their walls up, and functioning looms can be found within. Some have unfinished work with historic patterns. There is a vibrant honey bee population in the area.

The Prancing Wench Pub is still standing, although it is now a massive nest of snakes and bugs. There are a few bottles left of crowberry wine and pine needle liqueur. Their exact recipes are lost. The brewer was never heard from again and the tavernkeeper was chewed apart by the hyena-women.

Riverveil holds the workshop of an old-time saddler. The leather has been eaten away by muskrats and the tools have been looted. The designs and workbenches are still present.

Adventure rumor

[Heard from a slacker adult student of Hemski's night classes]

Night classes at Hemski's school-museum are cancelled. A foul creature came out of the ceiling and horrendously wounded one of the chicks [a mother of two named Tharra]. The teacher was like aaaaaauugh!! I about shit myself.

Only the crybaby Vark cares that we're not learning. Can you believe he enjoys math. Later we should harm him for being stupid. I hope the creature gets him.

I do hate that I'm losing school because it's a great place to sell weed. Well what the fuck ever. I have to get to the river jig dance floor and score some babes.

Monster place

The Dead Woods Temple

Generations ago, the Dead Woods was a benign temple of the Old Oak. The hermit-monks were motivated by compassion and things like ethics. They are now known only for building weapons and eating people.

Once the Bear People were driven out, the indulgent priests slipped into wickedness. They renounced their god oaths and burned their guardian tree to forge saws and axes.

The oak-heretics now hunt people, torture them, eat them, and cause them ruin. Their insane deeds have attracted vile sadists from human, demi-human, and humanoid stock to join their violent fun.