--The Icatian Pathfinder Chronicles
Winter has arrived nearly two months early here in the Darkmoon Vale. The wind is cold, the air filled with flurries, and the ground is covered in frost that persists even into the noonday hours. To the west, both south and north the Darkmoon Plain stretches toward the Burning Pit. That plain is a hotbed of geothermal activity ever since Bhall's fall. Mudpots, geysers and shifting hot springs makes that region dangerous. Here, closer to the river, the activity is gone, and the hard earth is covered in frost. The sky is partially cloudy, a new batch of clouds are slowly moving in fat and heavy with snow in them.
The River Foam is a wide river that moves from north to south across the entire continent, eventually joining with many smaller streams, and passing through great lakes before eventually reaching the sea to the far south. Here the waters are still moving, barely, for ice is starting to freeze along the sides. Further north, where the river is wider and slower moving the ice has already started to touch. An ancient road, the flag stones broken and covered with mosses and pierced by brown dead weeds walks up slowly to the south bank of the river. To the west the road simply vanishes into the Darkmoon Plain eaten up by the geothermal activity. However the last hundred feet of it makes its way to the bank of the River Foam where it stop before a ancient leaning carved dark wood totem pole before the river. The pole is as wide as three men, and in the heyday of the lumber mills in the region, it was carved with a masters hand, preserved and placed here to mark the ferry landing that leads across the river to the town of Falcon's Hollow. Now only vague faces, like ghosts of Braduk, peer out toward the road.
Few travels make this trip these days, and the ferry only runs as needed. Because of this sitting on the wooden dock that leads out to welcome the ferry to this side is a large copper bell, cracked, and green with weathering. Sitting on the dock are two short bald tattooed dwarves! They are watching across the water, waiting for the ferry to arrive.
Just arriving from the north come four figures, three strangely colored elves, one Red, one White, and one Blue. With them skulks a large wolf like creature.
At nearly the same time, from the south, a gaggle of children can be seen skipping up the road, throwing pebbles at the river.
Across the river, the town of Falcon's Hollow sits sleepily, the ferryman in no hurry to cross for the two dwarves sitting on the dock, but perhaps now that will change.