Emberbrook
Emberbrook presents itself as an ordinary settlement, but observant visitors will notice oddities: how locals fall silent when certain topics arise, the way fog clings unnaturally to wardstone fragments, or how shadows seem to linger where they shouldn't.
This small village is within Duskbane territory. Its most notable features are the inn called Hollow Ember and a circle of stones at the village center referred to by the locals as wardstones. Legend has it they once protected the village but now they are shattered and in fragments. A sealed Nytherian ruin looms over the town on a nearby hill.
The village itself consists of roughly thirty structures—mostly timber and stone cottages with thatched roofs that have darkened with age and constant exposure to the region's persistent mist. The streets are unpaved dirt paths that turn to mud during the frequent rains or ancient cobblestones, forcing locals to traverse wooden planks laid across the more frequently traveled routes. Oil lanterns hang from posts throughout the settlement, casting pools of amber light that do little to dispel the pervasive gloom.
Emberbrooks's economy depends primarily on logging, hunting, and trade with occasional merchant caravans brave enough to venture this far from the kingdom's central roads. The villagers are a hardened lot, suspicious of outsiders yet bound together by generations of shared isolation and the unspoken understanding that life on the borderlands demands mutual protection.
Beyond The Hollow Ember inn and the remnants of the wardstone circle, other notable locations include the modest town hall where Sheriff Marla Tenfell maintains order, a small shrine dedicated to forgotten gods that predates even the oldest families' arrival, and the blacksmith's forge operated by the taciturn Halden Ironhand, whose family has provided the settlement with tools and weapons for five generations.
The Nytherian ruin that overlooks the village is strictly forbidden to enter by local custom and lord's decree alike. Strange lights sometimes emanate from within its sealed entrance on moonless nights, and children are taught from an early age that to approach the ancient structure invites misfortune. What few scholars have managed to translate of its weathered inscriptions suggests it was once a temple or observatory dedicated to studying the stars and their influence on arcane energies.
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