Chapter 3, Quickstone is the primary hub settlement of the Western Frontier. While not the largest settlement in the region (that honor goes to Ardev), its position places it geographically within reasonable distance of other population centers and interesting locations. The city began as a mining town, named after a unique substance of the same name which can be shaped and molded into various forms with magic, allowing for a diverse array of architectural uses. Nobody knows how it’s formed, although there are theories. A group of miners known as stone chanters are magewrights that use a form of the Mold Earth cantrip to work with the quickstone, and some claim that the stone itself speaks to them. There’s also a secondary industry of byeshk mining, although many mines have been tapped out.
Quickstone numbers nearly two thousand strong, but a minority of inhabitants are transient, often using the town as a stopping point before going somewhere else. The town’s five major districts are Oldtown (miners, smugglers, merchants independent of the Dragonmarked Houses who leave cheaply but not in squalor), the Square (the town square, lightly populated but holds many decorative buildings and businesses), Main Street (new money, made of traditional Brelish architecture rather than Quickstone and is mostly home to Dragonmarked dignitaries running their local businesses in town), the Tents (shantytowns made up of Brelish veterans, Cyran refugees, and Khaar’paal kobold laborers), and the Haunt (mostly abandoned, a former Brelish fortress destroyed in the war with Droaam, is ruins and believed haunted by undead and monsters).
An interesting thing to note is that while the Dragonmarked Houses are a known commodity on the Frontier as virtually anywhere else in Khorvaire, the new nature of Quickstone’s settlement and relatively lawless nature of the region means that they don’t have the same reach, smaller local businesses can afford to be more independent,* and the Dragonmarked members who are in town are often still in the process of building up the goods and services omnipresent elsewhere. For example, Quickstone sits at the end of an Orien lightning rail that just connected the town to Ardev last year. The Dragonmarked House is negotiating with the Daughters of Sora Kell to link it to Graywall, and a clan of kobolds known as the Khaar’paal serve as railroad workers due to having a knack for lightning magic. Amenities are fewer in number than in larger and more settled places back east: for example, the local schoolhouse is the biggest library with but a single bookshelf, and the House Sivis speaking stone is currently malfunctioning for unknown reasons and may need the PCs to look into repairing it. There are some general and specialized goods for adventurers such as a blacksmith and potions seller, although the local doctor for that last one often tries to convince customers to subject themselves to hairbrained experimental cures. The Kundarak enclave relocated to Quickstone from Graywal due to a bank robbery, proving that the town is far from safe, but it’s still in the process of being built.
*This serves as a source of tension for a few NPCs, who worry about being squeezed out by the larger Houses.
Every major establishment or social gathering spot has a list of Possible Ties for PCs, with recommended options based on race, class, and background, all the better to make it so that the party aren’t
complete strangers to everyone in town. Unless of course, they want to be. There’s quite a bit of little ideas and suggestions for the DM to build off of for adventures: for example, the wealthy Aurum investor Honoria Soldorak may hold a ball in the honor of a PC who made a name for themself in town, but her true reasons for the ball are currently unknown. The goblin tailor Deven knows an awful lot about the Empire of Dhakaan for someone of his station and profession, and there might be more to his story. He can also help craft magical clothes if PCs get him rare and exotic materials.
The Quickstone chapter wraps up with four other places of interest outside of town for adventures, such as abandoned mines filled with cockatrices and other dangerous monsters, or outlying farms struggling to grow crops and thus end up drawing additional income from helping maintain cells of smuggler networks. We also get writeups on four major criminal groups that may cross paths with PCs: the Black Crown Company who’s been mentioned before, the Pennyroyals (the Three Faces of Coin cult, think secret society), Daask (Droaam special operations units who are a more violent kind of organized crime), the Tago (Cyran spies and assassins who bear a grudge from their country’s destruction; book says they may not even exist and are a conspiracy theory to dredge up prejudice against refugees), and a d8 table of Lone Wolves who operate in smaller groups or are solo travelers at best.
Quickstone really exemplifies the feel of a small fantasy town, the kind where everyone knows your name. Just about every NPC has some quirk, hope, or fear beyond their immediate job or goal, and the book creates easy opportunities and suggestions for PCs to either know or even outright replace a character, making it more malleable for a DM to personally customize the town for their campaign. Quickstone is poorer and more hard-scrap than Sharn, but it is flavored in a way that its people don’t feel hopelessly impoverished, the PCs can help build things up in a substantial way, and you don’t get the feeling that you need to go to Graywall or Ardev all the time whenever you want something more expensive than a crossbow or light armor.
