Ravenhold

Situated on the vast and lightly charted Plains of Erenhead, the needs of the village bow to the nature of the windswept plains. The village is located within a narrow but deep valley in the rolling hills that blend the plains into the foothills of the Kaladruns. Two deep wells have been driven long ago into the bedrock deep beneath the rich soil of the grasslands. The settlement is located many days journey from any major settlement across leagues of Fell haunted farmland, and it is this isolated status that has served to preserve the integrity and the lives of the outcasts who have come to name this village home.

As a completely isolated outpost of humanity in the vast grassland sea that are the Plains of Erenhead, the diverse people that have come to call Ravenhold home have had to learn the innate self sufficiency of creatures of the plains. The undulating waves of grass and feral crops that compose the Plains of Erenhead conceal a massive ecosystem, from the blood hawks that soar the skies to the prairie dogs that burrow beneath the soil.

Unlike so many other communities across war-torn Eredane, the supply of food is not a great concern to the inhabitants of the plains of central Erenland. Vast crops of wheat, corn, and barley have gone "feral", sweeping across the traditional boundaries and rotting fencing of the untended fields. The herds of boro (bison), once in danger of being wiped out completely, have made a remarkable comeback, gathering together in great herds that sweep across the plains. The largest natural predator, the grass cat, has also made a rapid recovery, endangering any hoping to harvest this farming landscape gone wild.

The most fearsome predator of the plains is not in any way natural, however. As the Shadow poured across the heartland of Eredane, His minions took great pleasure in burning, looting, and killing in nearly every settlement they could find. The army would often deliberately leave the victims of their violence to rot behind them, and they eventually rose again, as Fell. Now, the head-height grass sea and abandoned villages of the Plains of Erenhead play host to the greatest concentration of these hideous creatures as can be found outside of dark Cambrial.

The village of Ravenhold is laid out like many before and after it, reclaimed as it is from one of the hundreds of villages abandoned in central Erenland after the coming of the Shadow. Evolved from the joining of the farms of several families, Ravenhold is a winding collection of about a dozen and a half buildings surrounding the deep wells and in turn surrounded by a humped earthen pallisade.

The buildings are almost entirely constructed of the wooden frameworks insulated by the ubiquitous clay of the surrounding plains tributaries and thatched by the even more ubiquitous grass and straw.

Most buildings in the town are fairly unremarkable, replaced or salvaged as they were only decades ago. There are, however, two exceptions. On the north side of the village stands the reclaimed windmill. It spins day and and night in the ever present winds, grinding the wheat and barley into meal to be stored in the communal clay walled warehouse. Then, there is the Wizardhome.

Wizardhome

Wizardhome is the name given to what must at one time have been the home of a prosperous family of landowners. Its first floor is constructed of river rock, most likely carted at great cost to the village in some bygone age. The second floor is the plaster and wood construction of the rest of the village, surmounted by multiple gables in its thatched roof. Either end of the home is capped by two large fieldstone chimneys.

The interior of the manse is laid out in a mostly rectangular formation, with a clean fieldstone floors strewn with rushes and heavy supporting beam timbers. The furniture, much of which shows some restored fire damage, tends to be heavy limbed and thick.

Though called Wizardhome by the native villagers, there is little to indicate that this is the home of a wizard. There are no books, strange implements, or magical effects. In all ways, it appears the residence of a wealthy farmer.

The grounds around Wizardhome are well tended herb gardens supplemented by small vegetable patches and berry sheds.

Like many hundreds of other human villages that dot the heartland of the Kingdom of Erenland, the village of Gavin's Cross arose as a cooperative alliance between several farming families. Founded sometime in the Third Age, it first appeared as a registered settlement in the Erenland census records from 742 T.A. as Gavin's Cross.

History records little of the comings and goings of the villagers of this sleepy farming town, and so, its fate would not change significantly until great events moved most of a continent away to decide its doom.

In the spring of the year 897 T.A., the Shadow moved south. The prime target of the wrath of Izrador was the great Dornish city of Highwall, wherein resided the Scholar's Academy, the greatest collection of channelers, scholars, monks, and spiritual seekers on the continent of Eredane. Though His wrath was great, and His judgment swift, and most of the collected knowledge of the Second Age was lost in the burning of the towers of Highwall, not all was lost. A great number of sages and channelers managed to flee the oncoming host with whatever preserved wisdom and lore they could carry. One of these was believed to have been the wizard known now as Olorin the Seeker, or Olorin Ravenfriend.

As the armies of Izrador poured across the Kingdom of Erenland mostly unchecked, Gavin's Cross became yet another casualty of the mounting chaos that was the Last War. Most of the town was left a burnt out husk, and its villagers rose within days as Fell. Thus, the coming of the wizard to the town of Gavin's Cross was charted by none and is remembered only by the dead.

The first families arrived in the recovered Ravenhold in the autumn of 1 L.A. They encountered a village cleared wholly of the Fell, and were coldly greeted by Olorin, who informed them they were not welcome, but if they wished to use one of the abandoned homes, they could fend for themselves. The refugee families did stay, and in time they prospered. The strange old man who had claimed the largest home in the village was known to venture into the wilderness for days at a time, it was believed to control the population of the Fell. More villagers arrived as the years passed, and soon, the majority of the buildings of Gavin's Cross were either rebuilt or replaced, including the manse of Olorin, which was rebuilt for him by the grateful villagers during one of his extended sojourns.

Not only humans, but halflings too took refuge in Olorin's settlement, most recovered from the increasingly prevalent slave trains and convoys on the Eren River.

• Olorin Ravenfriend: An ancient human scholar believed to be from the distant Dornish lands. He reluctantly acts as the anchor of a this disparate community of refugees.