Caerhollow

Caerhollow is a mining and farming village tucked into the hills at the edge of the Lower Slovask Swamps. The ground is uneven—half stone, half peat—and mist clings to the low places even at midday. Timber homes huddle close to the hillside, their roofs heavy with moss and patched thatch. Small iron chimneys send up crooked plumes of smoke that vanish into the gray sky.

The mines cut into the rock at odd angles, some abandoned, others still worked by lantern-light and pick. Locals dig for bog iron, stone, and whatever else the earth turns loose. Fields stretch in narrow strips between rocks and reeds, where they grow root vegetables and hardy grains.

The town itself sits in a depression in the ground, bisected by the Dunwater, a man-made river, that flows through the city north to south. The area is riddled with mines, cut into the hills, and cut into plateaus surrounding the town, in search of gems, gold, diamonds, and coal deposits.

Government

Authority: Caerhollow is governed by a Bailiff appointed by Tadric Brannoc, master of Bayernfort and enforcer of royal will in the Severance Grass. Though the town’s fortunes rise and fall with the mines, true authority lies not with the miners or townsfolk—but with Brannoc’s writ, enforced through his chosen man.

Bailiff Name: Bailiff Ewald Kessler
Background: Former clerk in Bayernfort, promoted after a decade of loyal, if bloodless, service to the crown. Kessler is known for his rigid formality, meticulous record-keeping, and complete lack of empathy.
Base of Operations: The Ledger Hall – a stone-faced administration hall beside Guild Rock, with a holding room, tax vault, and two guards permanently assigned from Brannoc’s retinue.

Defences

Minor militia holdings, mostly to put down riots from workforce.

Assets

Kessler & Sons Mining Concern – Assets

Well-funded and tightly managed, Kessler & Sons is one of the most disciplined mining outfits in Caerhollow. While it shares a family name with the town’s Bailiff, it operates as a separate commercial concern—though some claim the line between the two is thinner than it appears.
Stonehall Ledger House serves as the operational headquarters for the company. It handles crew assignments, ore tracking, and contractual records. Its ledgers are famously precise—and famously closed to outsiders.

The Black Sash Watch is the company’s private guard force, easily identifiable by their black sashes trimmed in purple. They patrol Kessler shafts and escort shipments, and are known to act with quiet authority.

South Terrace Barracks house Kessler-affiliated workers and guards, offering better rations and coin than most outfits. The barracks also serve as an informal stronghold during times of tension.

Royal Carriage Depot connects Kessler shipments to the Bayernwald transport chain. While not exclusive to the company, Kessler teams are seen here more than any other.
Inspection Office is maintained under the Bailiff’s authority but shares records and corridors with Stonehall. Some in Caerhollow mutter that audits of Kessler shafts are always scheduled in advance—and never turn up anything.

Dunnhall Company – Assets

Old blood in Caerhollow, the Dunnhalls built much of the town’s early infrastructure. Their holdings reflect deep familial ties, control over the commons, and quiet alliances across households and minor businesses.
Rockblood Hall is both company headquarters and informal town hall. It hosts meetings of the Five Picks, marriage pacts, and dispute resolutions.
The Miners’ Resthouse offers food, fire, and shelter to Dunnhall loyalists, travelers, and kin. It is considered neutral ground by most townsfolk.
Dunnhall Apothecary, run by Brennagh Dunnhall, offers remedies, tinctures, and traditional cures. Many locals trust her over temple healers or outland clerics.
Bread & Tallow Market is supplied through Dunnhall-controlled trade lines with nearby farmsteads. It sells meat, root vegetables, lard, and stone-ground bread.
The Widow’s Board posts messages from households in need—requests for aid, boarding, or oaths of mutual defense. Gavra funds it quietly.

Grauswald Deepworks – Assets

Restless and profit-hungry, Grauswald’s reach stretches east and south beyond Caerhollow. Their assets lean toward mobility, resource control, and quiet ventures into the forgotten corners of the Lower Slovask.
Grauswald Caravan House is the largest wagonyard in the town, with routes reaching Feldport, Cragmere, and beyond. It is well-guarded and always in motion.
The Outsider’s Camp sits east of the main terraces. Made of tents and timber bunkhouses, it houses Teutonian laborers and traveling engineers.
The Gemcutter’s Shed is where raw finds are weighed, appraised, and sealed before transport.
Low Hollow Landing is a makeshift dock at the marsh’s edge, used to test swamp navigation and explore alternate trade routes. Most locals avoid it.

Guilds and Factions

Mining Factions of Caerhollow

Three dominant mining companies shape the politics, economy, and daily life of Caerhollow. Their rivalries—both overt and covert—define much of the town's tension. Beyond those concerns, the town also hosts a bank of Valen-Blink and many small independent prospectors.

Kessler & Sons Mining Concern

Allegiance: Directly backed by Tadric Brannoc
Leader: Bailiff Ewald Kessler (nominal head), though his cousin Gerth Kessler oversees day-to-day operations.
Specialty: Deep-shaft coal extraction and control over several central terraces.
Reputation: Efficient, brutal, and well-supplied—this outfit benefits from royal contracts and tarrif exemptions.
Color Markings: Black sashes with purple-thread trim, worn around the belt or scarves.

Dunnhall Company

Allegiance: Independent, locally rooted, called Rockbloods by the locals supporters, and detractors.
Leader: Gavra Dunnhall – Patriarch of the Dunnhall family. Graying and retired mostly. Faelan Dunnhall runs the day to day opperations. Specialty: Coal and older iron veins, in nearby terraces.
Reputation: One of the first movers to build a mine and sustained services for Caerhollow.
Color Markings: Gray wraps, scarves and sashes.

Grauswald Deepworks

Allegiance: Mixed—claim neutrality but often shift loyalties depending on profit
Leader: Otmar Grauswald, a heavyset man with copper teeth and a handshake that smells of whiskey and coal.
Specialty: Gold mining, and some rare gems.
Reputation: Suspect, as they mostly employ Teutonian immigrants. Rumors persist that they stumbled upon deeply buried ruins recently.
Color Markings: Yellow and brown kerchiefs tied at the neck or wrist.

Valen & Blink Banking Consortium

A polished stone office near Guild Rock bears the silver-and-blue seal of Valen & Blink, an international banking house with operations across Eldonia and Ithca’s major cities.
Offering loans, coin exchange, contract arbitration, and discreet vault storage, Valen & Blink is technically neutral—but always well-informed.
Their representatives, including Financier Emilio Berenato, are immaculately dressed, polite, and utterly without loyalty to Caerhollow itself. Some whisper that they keep ledgers on everyone, and that debt owed to them can be called in at the worst possible time.

Independent Prospectors & Wild Shafts

Dotting the outer terraces and foothills, a scattered patchwork of individual miners and small family crews dig in search of fortune. Most fail. A few strike rich veins and vanish—or are quietly bought out.
Often working without formal charters or legal claim, these outfits are tolerated so long as they don’t interfere with major operations. They trade in local taverns, hire untrained labor, and are often blamed for cave-ins, flooded tunnels, and superstition-fueled unrest.
Some align loosely with Dunnhall, while others play off larger companies for supplies or protection.

History

History of Caerhollow

The hills were not always carved into terraces. Before the mines, before the smelters, Caerhollow was Eifer land—steep, wooded highlands where the old tribes hunted stag, told stories to the stone, and buried their dead beneath earth barrows. They called the valley Caer'ah'Lugh, or “The Hollow of the Watcher.”

For centuries, Eifer clans used the surrounding high country for seasonal grazing and rites of passage. Though never numerous, they were fiercely territorial. When the Severance Grass began to fall under Bayernwald patrols, the Eifer resisted with raids, ambushes, and whispered curses left hanging in trees.
No one is quite sure who found the gold first. Some claim it was a trapper from the lowlands, a cousin of the Dunnhall family, who stumbled on a seam near a fox-den and brought back a pouch of dust. Others argue it was scouts of the Bayernwald crown—surveying land seized during a campaign to put down Eifer raiders—who discovered the first glint of wealth in the stone.
Whichever tale is true, the result was the same. Within five years, the hollow swarmed with diggers, haulers, smiths, and opportunists. Gold first, then coal, iron, and even gem veins soon followed. Tents became timber. Paths became roads. Stone bridges and groaning pulley cranes followed. The hills were carved into stacked terraces. The valley rang with pickaxes and shouted orders.
That was sixty years ago.
The Dunnhall Company became a pillar of the early settlement, its matriarch and her sons helping to organize labor, protect claims, and barter with nearby communities. In time, other interests came—first from Bayernwald, and then from further afield. The Kesslers arrived with wealth and cousins in court. Grauswald Deepworks appeared with their wagons, foreign laborers, and a nose for profit. Now, Valen & Blink Banking has planted a flagstone office in the town, signaling that the wealth of Caerhollow has caught the attention of forces well beyond the Severance.
Today, the mines still produce, but the seams are older, the shafts deeper, and the rivalries sharper. The Eifer are mostly gone—driven into the forests or absorbed into labor gangs—but some say their old ways still linger in the stones, and that not everything unearthed should be touched.

Points of interest

Inns & Taverns

The Brae Mug – Caerhollow’s most active tavern, noisy and smoke-filled, with thick stew and bitter ale.
Proprietor: Maeve Ní Torcaill – A flinty widow with three sons in the mines and a memory for every fight ever had inside her tavern. Keeps a cudgel behind the bar named “Hush.”

The Wyrding Post – Independent, secluded inn on the town’s edge, favored by hunters, travelers, and the unwanted.
The Stag's Antler - Indepenedent, downtown, low rent, but solid.

Faith

Chapel of the First Flame – Modest stone-and-wood chapel for followers of the First Faith, offering rites of burial, blessing, and fire-born cleansing.
Cleric: Brother Malrik – Stern-faced, straight-backed, and slow to speak. Rumored to have served in Bayernwald's wars before taking the cloth. Performs rites with quiet gravity.

The Hollow Grove – Sacred site of the Vaneer and Mara worshippers, nestled just outside town in a mist-wreathed copse where the stream splits.
Caretaker: Sister Liora – Soft-spoken and always barefoot, adorned in woven bark and stone beads. Says little, but her presence calms animals and children alike. Some suspect she’s not entirely mortal.

Stoneburn Shrine – A blackened wood altar to Wodyn and Vjolda, with iron tools and bones burned in the fire as offerings.
Keeper: Brenn Skeldr – Grizzled former raider turned shrine-watcher. Believes in strength through sacrifice. Will challenge blasphemers to trial by fire or blade.

Shops & Services

Tairneanach Forge – The thunderous heart of Caerhollow’s ironwork, cut into a stone overhang.
Smith: Ruairí Mac Drostan – Gruff and grim, his blades bear hand-carved runes. Part Eifer by blood and prone to long silences. Offers cold-iron charms when the mood strikes.

Heggr’s Iron & Tackle – General store with every practical item a miner or traveler might need, from rope and nails to oil and salted lard.
Shopkeep: Ulrik Heggr – Old, one-legged, sharp-eyed. Hates nonsense and barters only with those who don't waste his time.

Lichtwurz House – Herbalist’s hut for common ailments, coughs, and bruises, tucked behind a bramble-covered fence.
Healer: Sister Elandra Faelgund – First Faith healer, gray-haired and calm. Will trade potions for favors or relics. Quietly despises the Bailiff’s presence in town.

Cartwright & Timbermill – Maker of wagons, wheelwork, and crates. Also known for unofficial dice games in the back.
Craftsman: Gavrick Durn – Round, red-nosed, and always smoking. Jokes often, trusts rarely, and bets hard.

The Stonehall

Faction: Kessler & Sons Mining Concern
NPC: Gerth Kessler – Bailiff Kessler’s cousin and the true operational head of the company.
Gerth is younger, cleaner, and better spoken than most expect—his blonde beard always oiled, his boots polished, and his tone measured. Educated in Bayernfort, he keeps detailed records, never raises his voice, and always gives others just enough rope to hang themselves. Not officially tied to the Bailiff, but clearly acts with protected authority.

Rockblood House

Faction: Dunnhall Company
NPC: Faelan Dunnhall – Eldest son of Gavra Dunnhall, and steward of Rockblood House.
A man of few words, Faelan serves in his fathers twilight years. His left eye is clouded from a mining accident in his youth, and he walks with a cane. His voice carries the weight of gravel. Fiercely loyal to his father, and known for speaking plainly even to rivals.

Grauswald Deepworks

Faction: Grauswald Company
NPC: Franzel “Grub” Ehrlich – Grauswald’s head clerk and site boss in Caerhollow.
Squat, balding, and always sweating, Grub is more cunning than he looks. He handles shipping logs, contract payments, and worker assignments.

Valen & Blink Banking

Faction: Valen & Blink Banking
NPC: Laren Voss – Lead agent for Valen & Blink’s Caerhollow branch.
Elegant, pale-skinned, and always dressed in muted blue and gray, Voss speaks with the precision of a coin-counting knife. Her presence is calm but cold, and her gaze makes most laborers uncomfortable. She rarely leaves the Silverhold and relies on messengers and proxies. It's said she never forgets a debt and has memorized the lineage of every land claim within ten miles.

The Claimhouse

Faction: Independent Miners & Prospectors
NPC: Merrig “Nails” Calhorn – Self-appointed coordinator of the Claimhouse crowd.
Sun-leathered, wiry, and missing two fingers, Nails is a former prospector who stuck around after striking just enough gold to get drunk for a decade. He now trades favors, Rumors, and tools between the wild-shafts and will broker disputes if coin or whiskey is involved. Talks to the barrow sometimes when he’s alone. Keeps a busted pickaxe head in his belt as a totem.

Population

600

Caerhollow

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