Moon Hill (population 5000) is the most prominent town, to which the local farmers bring their crops; a half dozen villages fill the valley, each about one day's walk from Moon Hill. A road runs from Moon Hill to Horizon and another one a much shorter road to Santa Cora, which is about forty miles away. An old druidic ring stands on the south side of town atop a hill, dating back to the Fourth Age, they say. Now it just sits there and druids visit each year, eight times a year, giving gifts to the town government. They cause no one trouble and usually buy some things while they are there, then head to the Moon Wood to the South. A river runs through the vale, which Moon Hill sits on the east bank of. Moon Hill has walls in theory but they're all run down and wouldn't stop anything more determined than a small yappy dog.
An old Fort, Moon Fort, 'guards' the entrance to another valley, full of trees, the Moon Wood. Home to druids and stranger, more dangerous things. The wise don't go there but adventurers are rarely wise. There was a battle with the Orc Lord long ago, and Moon Valley / Moon Hill / The villages all have more half-orcs than is usual for a given part of the Empire; it's just part of life here. No one has seen an orc here for Ages.
Goblins and Kobolds are another question; they come up from the Underworld into the ancient, abandoned mines in the hills and various caves and sometimes form a threat. Dwarves show up every so often, poke around, sometimes die, then give up and leave. An actual caravan comes through twice a year to sell goods in Moon Hill, which then spread to the smaller communities.
Every village has a shrine to the gods; most priests serve the entire pantheon of good gods, especially in small villages and thus are constantly doing ceremonies to many gods. Moon Hill, however, is sacred to Sehanine, goddess of the Moon and of Night and Lovers. Mother Abigail is her chief priestess, but she has two junior priests and two junior priestesses, plus some acolytes, and the full panoply of Sehanine Worship happens, along with the major festivals of the other gods. Moon Hill also has a Temple of the Emperor, devoted to Heinrich I and the other Emperors, which is on the grounds of Baron Alberich's estate west of town. It has a priest, Reinhard, and several acolytes; you've never been there, as it's mainly used by the Baron's family.
Moon Hill has at least ten taverns, and the one you generally frequent is The Lucky Grape.
The Lucky Grape sits near the east gate of Moon Hill, near the wide lazy river. If the sun is up, various cooking smells waft from the Lucky Grape’s kitchen. Outside the tavern are the archery butts—straw men lined up against the tavern’s side wall, most of them peppered with arrows. The building itself is an old rambling stone structure, the remains of a fortified mill. The water wheel no longer turns, and the massive grindstone sits in the middle of the tavern floor as its central table. The locals say the mill exploded and caught fire long ago (grain dust is explosively flammable under the right conditions) and the owner, Old Mother Appleford, took to selling scrumpy (a type of very hard cider) to make ends meet. When Appleford earned enough to rebuild the mill, she chose instead to open a new mill downstream and turned the old mill into the Lucky Grape.
Worrt's Infinite Power Shop will not give anyone infinite power, but Beman Wortt is a wizard of some skill who mostly does small magical services for people, but also sells runes and potions to adventurers. The shop's name comes from the 'Wand of Infinite Power', which allegedly allows him to cast the same spell over and over and over forever, without needing to rememorize. You've never actually seen him pull off more than three in a row, though. Beman is middle aged with short black hair and bright purple clothing with yellow lightning bolts.
Kandt's Sidar Orchard and the House of Blue Lights are located on the eastern side of town. Wald Kandt is a local farmer and landholder whose family used to run a curious cider mill, which was built in the early 13th age incorporating a cog and axel assembly jutting from the foundations, a relic of some ancient mechanism of the Age of Cogs. It was never very successful and they stopped using it as a mill when the Applefords established theirs. Now the shambolic mill stands at one edge of the thriving apple orchard, its weathered signboard bearing the single misspelled word 'SIDAR', and is used to store apples by Wald. Much of the produce of the orchard winds up in the Lucky Grape.
Buried under the roots of the trees and accessed by a small storefront on the road is the House of Blue Lights, a restaurant and festhall serving dark elven cuisine. The main dining room is underground in a vault formed by the orchard roots, lit by the strange blue flames that give the establishment its name. It is run by the dark elf Madame Zavra and her 'daughters', some of whom are also drow, some other races, and almost certainly none of whom are actually her daughters. The food is famously good, claimed to be the best dark elven fare in the entire Santa Cora region. More quietly celebrated are the daughters, who keep rooms in the tunnels under the dining chambers and are available for private entertainment. Some folk say that deeper still are tunnels to the underdark, a notion Madame Zavra laughs off.
Rikiki's General Store is a bit of a mishmash - magic charms too piddling for Worrt to handle, handmade decorations that no one local would bother buying, travel food that's mostly snacks, cheap rain ponchos that look like they'd last through about one good storm, faded "Welcome to Moon Valley" guidebooks, and more. In among all the junk is the occasional really good value - its stock of work boots is second to none, for example, and once in a while you'll see a very nice weapon lurking back in a corner. No one is quite sure how they manage to stay open; the storefront's on the main through street and there's a fairly steady stream of travellers, but not enough to sustain a business, and the bits of good stuff doesn't drive a lot of local business. There's apparently a large basement devoted to inventory... maybe the proprietor got a really good deal on a recovered lot of items from Glitterhagen? When asked, Rikiki just shakes her head, smiles, and says "That's for later."
Villages near Moon Hill in the valley include:
Nuthanger: This village used to be far larger than it is; abandoned houses and shells of houses dot it. The reason can be found in the abandoned and overgrown vineyard on the sides of Beacon Hill, which used to provide the majority of jobs in the hamlet. The vineyard was abandoned nearly 70 years ago along with the ancient manor house of the Tilney family, Shadewine Hall, atop Beacon Hill overlooking the village, which has been empty ever since the mysterious disappearance of Lady Elane Tilney on her 18th birthday and full inheritance, and the horrible deaths of all the servants. Lights can still sometimes be seen in the windows, and strange music heard in the town below, but the villagers have learned that if they leave the manor on 'Haunted Hill' alone it leaves them alone. None of them will set foot on the hill.
Just outside of town stood Nuthanger Abbey, a partial ruin that in recent years had been rebuilt to serve as a scriptorium for a sage from out of town. Word is that SOMETHING seems to have happened to it, though, a building collapse or some other sort of disaster. Probably the reclusive villagers know more.
These days the chief industry of the villagers is raising and selling rabbits and their fur.
Thomasville is Moon Valley's livestock hub, such as it is. They have more cows and chickens per capita than anyplace else in the valley; rumors that the villagers are closer to them than to their neighbors are surely unfounded. (It doesn't really help that neighboring villagers don't tend to visit very much; thankfully Thomasville is in a mini-valley of its own, so the smell doesn't travel far, but that means it's all concentrated right there in the village...) They have their own slaughterhouse, and are known for their amazing efficiency in making use of every possible part of the animal. Parts is parts!
This version of the page was edited by Dan at 2020-06-02 00:12:29. View the most recent version.