Communal Setting: Cambria

[The Cardinal]

It seems that dragons - long extinct in the old nations west of the great ocean - may have never existed in Cambria in the first place.
However, Cambria has several large lakes, many of which seem to be the home of a species of huge sea serpents. These creatures were sometimes revered as god-like embodiments of nature spirits by the native hobgoblins, who gave each of them individual names. Not much is known about their level of intelligence, but the natives claim that they live for centuries, maybe millenia, and are descendants of even larger serpents that live deep beneath the waves of the western ocean, with their lair being a system of caves under Croaker Reef, 10 leagues southwest of Kelnmouth.

 

[NealTS]

The worst-kept secret in Kelnmouth is that the mayor, Jenthan Wiles, is a hopeless sin berry addict. He frequently spends days wallowing half-dressed about the mayoral estate, often accompanied by one or more local prostitutes, his face smeared with sticky red syrup.

What is less obvious is that Wiles made the fortune that elevated him to the mayorship through the Sin Berry trade. The mayor of Kelnmouth receives a cut of at least 80% of all sin berry exports. Since the mayor's decline, he has become largely a mouthpiece for the true ruler of Kelnmouth. This shadowy figure is thought to be an old business acquaintance of Wiles'. Some far-fetched rumors even identify him as Malthius Scarineye, the well-known landowner and shipper.

 

[The Cardinal]

Today, confronted with muddy streets in spring or fall and the stench of thousands in summer, few visitors or inhabitants of Kelnmouth realize that the main element, which allowed the quick rise of a large settlement at this spot near the river, was the pre-existence of an ancient system of more or less stable subterranean tunnels, some of them leading directly into the river, at this exact location.
Except for some rather large rats the first settlers found those tunnels to be completely empty, so before long some settlers dug a few access shafts and started dumping their sewage into this pre-made canalization, thus giving the town its very own sewer system. Though the "sewers" were never planned as such and tend to clog up or overflow under certain conditions, they nonetheless gave Kelnmouth the potential to harbor many thousands of citizens without an overwhelming risk of plagues and diseases.
Nowadays, however, the sewer tunnels themselves are a dangerous place to be - even for the hardy men who work as "Tunnel Guards" for the city. Besides the risks of disease, rats, a large population of carrion crawlers and crumbling tunnels, there are also the "regulars" of the Splinterpalace who like to take shortcuts through the sewers - and then there's the Stalker of Kelnmouth, who may have his lair down here...

 

[Tonguez]

In refuge lives the Dreaming Oracle, who appears to be a young girl in her late teens. The Dreaming Oracle is attended to by a women of about 47 who claims to be the Oracles twin sister. She says that near 30 years ago her sister fell into a deep sleep and has not woken nor aged since then. Nor does she eat, but her sister gives her broth of special herbs through a sponge just as their mother did before she died.

The Oracle never wakens but occasionally will call out in her sleep with warnings for persons both named and vague, predictions about the local area and strange reports of things that have been or are yet to occur. So far all her warnings and predictions have come to pass...

 

[mhacdebhandia]

The incomprehensible markings on these stones are actually prayers to malevolent, ancient gods. Any structure built using these stones is subject to planar cankers (interdimensional "weak points" described in Dragon #336). They are usually weak enough to be more curiosity than danger, and their effects are not readily attributable to the stones, so their use as building material persists. A few farmsteads, though, have had their inhabitants disappear during the night. The sites of such disappearances are rarely reinhabited.

The third child conceived in any structure built using even one of these stones will invariably possess a predilection for madness and a talent for dark magic. This is rare enough - and the effects removed enough in time from the cause - that the relationship is difficult to perceive.

 

[The Cardinal]

The strange effects of the rune-marked stones from the lowlands may be responsible for the some of the mistrust and outright hate against churches in Kelnmouth. The greatest church of the Faith in all of Cambria was build in Kelnmouth more than 120 years ago - with more than 1/3 of the stones coming from the lowlands. The church and its immediate vicinity were then plagued by a streak of accidents, diseases, ghost sightings and general bad luck - until the church burned down in a freakish thunderstorm 30 years ago.
Today the largest structure of these so-called "Omen Stones" is the newly-build clocktower of the church in Refuge, though this fact is not common knowledge in town. Otherwise some people might come to certain unsettling conclusions regarding the recent chain of events in the local hospital - which happens to lie directly in the shadow of the clocktower. Just like the graveyard and the orphanage...

 

[The Cardinal]

One of the few good - or a least profitable - things about Cambria are the large deposits of a strange kind of coal in the northern parts of Cambria. This so-called gemcoal is a semi-opaque black material, which looks a bit like half-molten smoked glass. Depending on hardness and purity gemcoal has a market value between 5 cp and 5 sp per pound. A single 1 lb. piece of hard gemcoal will shed a bright light when lit that will last for 24-36 hours. Soft gemcoal produces enormous amounts of heat when it burns, with almost no smoke to speak of, making it the perfect fuel to keep out the freezing winters of Cambria. And alchemists from the old nations will pay obscene amounts of money for a few pounds of high-quality gemcoal.
So, all is well...
...or it would be, if gemcoal mines weren't such deep dangerous hellholes, that devour the man and children, who work their depths, like some ravenous beast - a beast that delivers gold and riches to its masters...