Home Hearth District

Read to Players

“The gate opens onto cobblestone — the same cut and size as Beacon Street, but these stones have not been ground down the same way. The mortar between them is still holding. The road is swept.

The homes that line both sides of the street are timber-frame with plaster and cob — practical and well-kept, not grand. Window boxes with herbs, front stoops with a chair or two, oil lamps mounted beside doors already lit for the evening. These are not the homes of the wealthy. They are the homes of people who keep their homes.

Street peddlers move through on foot — small carts pushed like wheelbarrows, piled with vegetables and wrapped goods, one man calling out prices without much conviction. Stationary booths dot the widened entrance circle, canvas roofs pinned back on one side, sellers watching the foot traffic without urgency.

At the center of the entrance, the street splits. Two roads angle away from each other — one left, one right — branching through the district like a hand opening. Between them, side by side in the wedge they form, stand two businesses.

To your left: a timber-frame building marked by a large carved sign mounted above the door — two wooden hands, palms facing outward, as if patting the air. The words Mercy's Hands Healing are carved deeply and intricately into the palms. Beneath it, on a smaller plank: Cure for Body, Mind and Soul. A green banner hangs below a window — two open hands on dark fabric.

To your right: an arched stone building, older than everything around it. A large copper sign hangs from an iron bracket — shaped like a broad cauldron kettle, with orange and red paint beneath it suggesting fire. The words Copper Pot Steam are raised in the copper itself. Below, on a board beside the door: Public Bathhouse — Cleanse, Refresh, Renew.

In the wedge between the two branching roads, the two center buildings sit shoulder to shoulder.

The left one has a flat, carved wooden pipe mounted above the door. The smoke rising from the bowl of the pipe has been shaped — the curls of it form letters. Aromatic Embers. A smaller sign hangs below the window: Fine Pipes, Tobaccos & Accessories.

The right one is almost entirely overtaken by vines — green and living, growing directly out of the mortar between the stones. But they are not wild. They have been grown, coaxed, and trained into shape. The letters they form on the face of the building read: Raysha's Recipe Works. Near the door, a painted board: Magical Components, Herbs, Oils, Essences & More.”

At the Entrance

Four businesses at the district gate.