A large town built from the ruins of a larger city. Fallcrest is the crossroads of Nentir Vale. Here travelers and traders using the old King’s Road that runs north and south, the dwarven Trade Road from the east, and the river all meet. The surrounding ridges shelter several small valleys where farmers and woodsfolk live. In general the people outside Fallcrest’s walls earn their living by farming or keeping livestock, and the people inside the walls are traders, salesmen, artisans, laborers, or merchants. People with no other prospects can make a hard living as porters, carrying cargo from the Lower Quays to the Upper Quays (or vice versa).
Fallcrest imports finished goods from the larger cities downriver and ironwork from the dwarf town of Hammerfast to the east, and exports timber, leather, fruit, and grain. It also trades with the nearby town of Winterhaven. Fallcrest is currently ruled by Count Aldrin Morgraine.
Population: 1,350; another 900 or so live in the countryside within of the town. The people of Fallcrest are mostly humans, halflings, and dwarves, but travelers of all races pass through on occasion.
Fallcrest’s Story
Up until five centuries or so ago, the Moon Hills and the surrounding Nentir Vale were thinly settled borderlands, home to quarrelsome human hill-chieftains and remote realms of nonhumans such as dwarves and elves. Giants, minotaurs, orcs, ogres, and goblins plagued the area. Ruins such as those on the Gray Downs or the ring-forts atop the Old Hills date back to these days, as do stories of the hero Vendar and the dragon of the Nentir. With the fall of the empire Lorath and the return of the Nerathian Kingdom to the south, human settlers began to move up the Nentir, establishing towns such as Fastormel, Harkenwold, and Winterhaven.
A Nerathian hero named Aranda Morgraine obtained a charter to build a keep at the portage of the Nentir Falls. She raised a simple tower at the site of Moonstone Keep three hundred ten years ago, and under its protection the town of Fallcrest began to grow. Over the next two centuries, Fallcrest grew into a small and prosperous city. It was a natural crossroads for trade, and the Morgraines ruled it well. When the Kingdom of Nerath began to crumble about a century ago, by the Orcish Horde Invasion, Fallcrest continued to flourish for a time. Ninety years ago, a fierce horde of orcs known as the Bloodsfury Clan descended from the Stonemarch and swept over the vale. Fallcrest’s army was defeated in a rash attempt to halt the Bloodfury Clan out on Gardbury Downs. The Bloodfury Clan burned and pillaged Fallcrest and went on to wreak havoc all across the Nentir Vale.
In the decades since the Orcish Horde invasion, Fallcrest has struggled to reestablish itself. The town is a shadow of the former city; little trade passes up and down the river these days. The countryside for scores of miles around is dotted with abandoned homesteads and manors from the good days of Nerath. Once again the Nentir Vale is a thinly settled borderland where few folk live. This is a place in need of a few heroes.
