Dunedea

Dunedea exists solely on the Shadow Elves map. It is a Dendromel-sized village, so 3000-4000 souls, on the southern shore of Dragon Lake. By the map it basically is the southern shore.

I trust the map for the northern Dragon Lake, but not for the south. I do allow that on detail, Dunedea's environs are tractable. Also we could do that bit more with the Crown Of Corruption cycle.

I used HexTML's map editor, then MS Paint. According to the legend in the City Of The Stars map, the shore is mud to the west. The mud yields to fungal "trees" east of that, to mosses on the rise southeast along the cavern wall. The trees east of town dwindle back to mosses.

Thorfinn's map had the western shore encroaching more toward the town. I've split the difference: I agree that the northern promontory is ragged; I disagree on the western shore. Also the east is plain safer. So I have the town's main port to the east. Although the town also has piers to the west down a less-traveled path. My map is just a rough guide anyway.

This cavern's walls, marked with those black triangle "mountain" hexes, were prospected when the town was founded. They were not ore-bearing - which is just as well, because the Desert of Lost Souls is nigh. What mineshafts haven't collapsed, are abandoned. Dunedea serves the Alfmyr / Losetrel trade, feeding the traders mostly with fish, although basic farming is done here too. The northern tip has a lighthouse: mostly in the red, so more visible to elves than to surface folk.

I've proposed that Dunedea was founded when Renathys was the Felestyr capital (and Felestyr hadn't specialised in mining yet). The town has never been a large one. More, over the decades the Felestyr clan found its niche in mining, those Felestyr here held to the old agrarian ways. After Alfmyr was founded, Felestyr reoriented east, and arranged with Gelbalf that Dunedea - by now the odd duck in the Felestyr flock - be a free port between them. Gelbalf meanwhile does spider-wrangling, another pursuit never of interest to Dunedea. For almost two millennia the town hasn't identified with either clan.

Dunedea's people are mixed across clans, especially those two. The townsfolk are loyal to the City, but not exceptionally so. If the City bureau needs a clan-based census, the lackey posted here will pad the numbers either way, depending on what he thinks his superiors want to hear.

Undead come from the west, and monsters from the sea. Those threats have plagued Dunedea for all its many centuries of existence; the town has arranged its defences accordingly. The mud does bog down the less-intelligent living dead, but does less well against the spectral type. So an Ethereal barrier spans that mud. (N.B. I'd yesterday imposed a castle on the Sojourner outflow. The way the map is structured, this castle throttles the Desert too. If we accept that castle, some of Dunedea's westerly defences might be lax. Still, the castle focuses on the Lake-Losetrel waterway. It can't stop everything creeping along the shoreline.)

Basic-level adventurers do bounties, tracking down the odd ghoul or escaped (intrusive, from a Gelbalf trader) spider in the forest; or they could help defend the town against a coastal threat. Expert-level go out to the mudflats, or underwater.

At Companion, the party should be stopping the problem at its source which is, of course, the Lost Souls' Waste. Before that point, Expert-level characters can meet Shallatariel of Losetrel: still neutral-aligned and among the living, making a study of the undead here. He is a 15th-level wizard. Add to his spellbook, animate dead; which he won't need anymore where he's headed. Subtract the power words.