Compendium

Splinter's Bend is a medieval trading town in Cormyr's King's Forest ruled effectively by Elder Vance, whose family network extends to Waymoot and the Old Redwater Mill. The party fled the town after publicly humiliating Constable Barnaby Plum and left green flames burning on a cobblestone side street. It has since emerged as the home base of the corruption now under Kingsguard investigation, and the party has discussed returning to confront Vance directly.

The King's Forest is the ancient woodland surrounding Splinter's Bend and Waymoot through which the logging road runs. It has been the backdrop to several key encounters — the Ettin barricade, the tracking hound pursuit, Silas's escape into the treeline — and was revealed by royal clerk Maurice to host the king's unannounced annual autumn hunting circuit, the king never using the same lodge twice.

Waymoot is a timber-built logging town whose sawmills had been shut down for weeks by an ankheg infestation before the crew cleared the threat. The party received the Writ of Provisioning and were declared 'Waymoot blood' upon their triumphant return, though Silas Vance publicly heckled them and was observed passing a wooden box to a rider slipping out a side gate. Harold and the Kingsguard have since returned to town to begin investigating Silas and his associates, and the crew has departed east.

The Greasy Spoon is a large, multi-windowed food wagon pulled by Ledger, serving as both the crew's home base and their primary commercial operation. It sustained wheel damage during the ankheg encounter — temporarily patched using a dead ankheg as a counterweight — and earned a Gilded Ladle seal of compliance from auditor Julian Pendergast before being threatened at spear-point by Silas's disguised men on the logging road. It later took further wheel damage during the Session 05 ambush.

This overnight camp off the King's Forest logging road was the site of the pre-dawn tracking hound encounter in Session 02. The Greasy Spoon was parked here, a low campfire lit the immediate area, and it was at this location that the magical tracking amulet was destroyed.

The Cupped Axe is the sole tavern in Waymoot, operated by Silas and catering to guards and merchants at extortionate prices. It served as the site of the party's first confrontation with Silas, and later as the target of a covert break-in that yielded a payment ledger tying Silas to Constable Barnaby Plum, the missing aged tuna, and bottles of Splinter's Bend Reserve before Skrit and Sanji slipped away with the evidence.

The Logging Trench is the main wagon path between Waymoot and the cut forest, roughly twenty feet wide with five-foot earthen walls on either side. It was the site of the party's ankheg combat and subsequent investigation, where Skrit discovered turnip mash mixed into the tunnel mud — evidence suggesting someone had deliberately baited the ankhegs into the area.

The logging road east of Waymoot was first the site of an impromptu Gilded Ladle field audit, where Julian Pendergast blocked the Greasy Spoon's path and the crew narrowly passed inspection. It later became the site of open combat when Silas's disguised men dropped their aprons and leveled spears, a fight that concluded only when Harold and a dozen loggers arrived and the wagon wheel was repaired on-site.

Thornwall Fords is a legitimate river town and Starwater River crossing commanded by Captain Stout's Kingsguard post. The party arrived to find thirty merchant wagons blockaded by the plesiosaur threat and negotiated a contract to clear it; with the creature coaxed downstream, the crossing reopened and the party took up their promised prime market stall. The town has since become a hub of mounting pressure — the Vance operation's threatening note was delivered here.

Suzail is the capital city of Cormyr, situated on the Lake of Dragons and the seat of King Azoun IV. Harold noted the king travels frequently and is rarely in residence; Sanji has expressed a personal interest in finding the king and his castle.

The crew's roadside campsite west of Thornwall Fords was where Vaela was introduced and where Desmond 'The Gourmand' Cray emerged from the treeline to challenge the crew. After the crew passed his culinary trivia challenge, Cray burned the bounty poster and departed; the party completed a full long rest without further incident.

The Starwater River at Thornwall Fords — including its shallow gravel beds — was the site of the plesiosaur encounter and the recovery of the sabotaged control whistle. The creature has since been coaxed to a deep pool downstream, but the closing narration of Session 09 noted the river had gone quiet again in language that echoed the warnings before the plesiosaur first appeared.

The central market square of Thornwall Fords served as the commercial and social hub where the party first established their Greasy Spoon stall, encountered bounty hunters, and received cryptic messages. A pre-dawn arson attack destroyed roughly five stalls, but Gorlog's bucket brigade saved the rest, and the Greasy Spoon emerged as a community institution in the aftermath.

The Old Redwater Mill is a large mill on the Starwater River, roughly half a day upriver from Thornwall Fords, that serves as the operational hub of the Vance network's river operation — a waypoint through which everything the Vances move on the river passes. Its workforce of approximately twenty men loads and unloads crates and barrels they are never permitted to inspect, Tally Mark and Antlers branding dominates all riverside structures, and an upper tower uses a searchlight to scan the water. Pickles identified it as 'the place where the ropes are' and reported that animals are held there in conditions like her own.

Directions to this kobold warren were delivered to Skrit by an anonymous kobold messenger at Thornwall Fords market square, written in Draconic. The note indicated it is a place tall folk do not go and that the kobolds there remember their own.

The East and West Gates of Thornwall Fords marked the boundaries of Sanji and Skrit's supply run for crown clerk Maurice, with the West Gate serving as the delivery point where Maurice waited, nearly out of time, as the pair arrived by handcart at sundown.

The Thornwall Inn provided the party lodging and a quiet space for downtime between sessions, with its shared washroom becoming the site of a rare personal scene in which Skrit began cataloguing things he wants to learn. On departure, desk clerk Benjamin presented an itemized damage invoice, and bartender Thaddeus revealed that two cloaked watchers had been observing from the window table the previous evening.

Eveningstar is the stated delivery point for the crown provisioning items Maurice assembled, but Maurice himself doubted the king would camp there — the king camped at Eveningstar roughly three seasons ago and never repeats a location. It stands as an official waypoint on the provisioning circuit whose actual significance to the king's whereabouts remains unclear.

The River Toll House was Captain Stout's guard shack at the river crossing and the storage point for all evidence the party had gathered — the control whistle, the threat note, and related items. During the pre-dawn raid it was broken into: the strongbox was emptied and the posted guard was abducted via drag marks leading back to the shoreline. It sits approximately 300 feet from Pickles's deep pool.

The deep pool on the Starwater River, roughly 300 feet from the River Toll House, is Pickles's established territory and the site of the raft combat in Session 10. It later served as the location for the Speak with Animals conversation in which Pickles agreed to join the upriver mission.

The town-side bank of the Starwater River at Thornwall Fords was where the post-combat prisoner interrogation took place and where Stout arranged the raft exchange. It served as the party's departure point upriver, with Pickles grabbing the tow ropes of her own accord.

The upriver stretch of the Starwater River between Thornwall Fords and the Old Redwater Mill showed an increasingly dense concentration of Tally Mark and Antlers branding on riverside structures to the exclusion of all other marks. River banks appeared unusually deserted of normal shoreline activity, suggesting the Vance network controls or intimidates traffic through this corridor.

A heavy iron chain stretched across the Starwater River with a release-and-catch mechanism on the bank, unmanned when the party arrived. Vaela attempted to melt it with a fire cantrip before Sanji simply pulled the lever and dropped the still-sizzling chain into the water; Vaela then burned the lever and wheel mechanism to prevent it from being raised again.

A dock bearing the Tally Mark and Antlers logo located roughly half a mile south of the toll chain crossing, where Pickles stopped pulling and the party tied both rafts. Gorlog briefly considered staying behind with the wagon before being talked out of it and pole-vaulting onto Ledger's back to rejoin the group.

The water-side dock of the Old Redwater Mill is a guarded river landing where Corporal Tam Brannick was found bound and lashed to cargo crates during the party's infiltration. Sanji reached it by slipping along the back wall in darkness and cut Tam free without alerting the sentries. Later in the operation, the dock's river breeze kept it clear of the brine fog, making it a safe recovery point for paralyzed party members.

The Old Redwater Mill's large paddock held a collection of animals belonging to Elder Vance: rope-collared otters, cord-bound cormorants, a chained brown bear, and a nailed-shut crate containing a warm, leathery, faintly shifting egg stamped 'HANDLE WARM.' Vaela freed every animal and, with Ledger hauling the egg crate out, set the paddock ablaze with a Sorcerous Burst. The fire was subsequently contained to the paddock by the bunkhouse fire brigade.

The Old Redwater Mill's warehouse is a tall single-story dockside space used to receive, stamp, and ship outgoing barrels bearing the antlers-and-tally mark — barrels the party confirmed hold the same shimmery liquid encountered after their first plesiosaur encounter. It was the site of the mass crew surrender and Kreel's interrogation, and later became the focal point of the brine-fog disaster when Skrit's water hit a burning barrel, filling the building and grounds with paralyzing mist. The party departed leaving Kreel, Sela, and the tied crew inside.

The open ground between the warehouse side door and the paddock served as the site of the party's bluffed-surrounded standoff in Session 13, where Skrit's pot-lid-and-tenderizer ruse and a natural-20 persuasion roll brought the entire mill crew to surrender. In Session 14 the brine fog spread across these grounds and the two bunkhouses up the path disgorged their fire brigade before most workers fled the area.

The cheap corrugated metal roof of the Old Redwater Mill warehouse, notable only for its pinholes and the entry point Wickett created. He crossed it silently on his climbing speed, tossed ball bearings to the far side to mask noise, and crowbarred an observation and entry hole under cover of the clatter.