Holmford

Holmford is an old market-and-crossing village at the ford on the Blackwater — a small river, dark with tannins, whose rushing can be heard in the town all day long. Houses of wood and stone crouch close together along a single road that goes down to the ford and frays out there into mud and logs; past the last buildings the wildwood begins at once — a wall, not a view. The village grew because folk needed somewhere to cross the water and somewhere to spend the night before going into the forest, and from that it still lives: from the crossing and the toll, from wood and tar, mushrooms, beasts and furs, from smithing and trade with the seekers who venture into the wildwood. People here are practical — the forest teaches humility.

There's no lord and no office; disputes are settled on the square by the elders, and unofficially the one who holds the ford counts for much. The heart of the town is the ford, the forge, the mill driven by the current, and the inn by the crossing where the gossip gathers. Holmford doesn't remember its beginning — "there was always a ford here." They say the marshes to the north sometimes give up strange things of the old world, and that such things are better left alone. A fresher piece of gossip now going round the village: a mage has died nearby — and yet the Eternal do not die.