Glen

Situated south of the Moonsea Ride at Mistledale’s eastern end where the Dale is narrow enough that one can clearly see the boundary forest to both north and south, Glen is a hamlet of stone-and- thatch cottages that is much grander than appears. It fills a small gorge or depression in the ground, so that what look like single-story cottages from afar prove to descend three floors or more to the cobbled, steeply sunken streets. An elaborate system of drainage gutters collect rainwater safely into cisterns to prevent flooding, but ice must make the streets deadly for much of winter!
Glen is home to many dwarves who are masters of farming on platforms held up on poles, in tubs, and in cellars (where mushrooms are grown). They also specialize in growing crops under glass frames in depths of winter, and they seem to be doing quite well at it. I have never seen such a contented community of red-cheeked, jolly have dwarves in all my life! (Humans and a few halflings dwell here, too.)
Glen is more than just a market town for the area. It has the expected smiths and masons, and one can see gears and wheels and metal machinery all around, but Glen is also home to the only mine in the Dale: The Deep Mine. For hundreds of years the smug folk of Glen have kept secret something that would make their fellow Mistrans rise up to smite them and do it, and you will need to have the mine closed with spells and rocks, a secret I believe I am the first to reveal to any outsider. This is the dark truth-the Deep Mine is not a mine at all, but an elevator into the Underdark!
It seems the dwarves of Glen trade their extra produce not with the folk of Faerûn at all but with the distant realm of Dwarves’ Deep and other dwarven communities along the way. They move their produce and goods by means of the Long Road, a route that stretches for thousands of miles through the Underdark and is under constant attack from drow and other fell races. Knowing that an army from the depths could well boil up into the heart of their verdant farms would make the Mistrans sleep a little uneasily of nights, I am sure!
This Underdark connection explains why certain dwarven merchants come here so often to “buy mushrooms” when they must be able to get lots of them nearer home. Not only are they getting the large, luxurious ‘shrooms of the Underdark, they are bringing in goods to trade for something far more precious: dragon eggs. Yes, they trade for the unhatched but fertilized dragon eggs that are kept cool in cellars in Glen to inhibit their growth until buyers take them away, I seen these treasures, and like all true dragon eggs, they are white and leathery skinned and about as long as a small human child is tall. (In other words, they look like turtle eggs of gigantic size.) If, as I did, you fancy acquiring your own, investment-or if you are crazy enough to think you can rear, feed, and tame a pet dragon-you too can buy dragon eggs from certain farmers in Glen. You may have to line up behind Dragon Cultists, though, to collect coins for a while to make your purchase: These days, the things go for 17,000 gp or more-usually much more.
Here is how to tell what type of wyrm might hatch from an egg: Hold the egg up to a strong white light of either a burning strip of magnesium or a spell’s glow. (Under normal daylight or yellowish torchlight dragon eggs simply look white, and any tinges of color you see cannot be trusted.) With white light behind the egg, the tinge of color seen in the dragon egg tells the species within, as follows:7
. Very faint reddish spots: red dragon.
. Purple: shadow, deep, or amethyst dragon.
. Yellow: brown dragon (only!).
. Webwork of thin blue lines: blue dragon.
. Greenish-white: a type of dragon whose breath weapon is a gas or vapor-probably green or white.
. Gold flecks: copper or bronze dragon. (Bronze eggs have fewer and larger spots; copper eggs have many tiny spots.)
Experts know far more about egg hues and their meanings than the few indicators I have set down here, and a person should get expert advice if contemplating the outlay in gold such a purchase would entail.

(Village, 701): This dwarven village of stone-and-thatch cottages has a secret. The “Deep Mine” on the outskirts of town isn’t a mine at all, but a tunnel into the Underdark. It allows the dwarves of Glen to trade with their fellows as far away as the Great Rift, via an amazing Underdark tunnel called the Long Road that runs south under the entire length of the Sea of Fallen Stars.
The secret of Deep Mine has started to leak into the general Mistledale community. Mistrans might be more concerned about the Underdark connection if they weren’t already fighting off the Auzkovyn and House Jaelre drow. At least Glen’s dwarves do a good job of policing their Underdark passageways, unlike some worshipers of Tempus in Battledale that the Mistrans could name.

Type

Hamlet