Five Oaks

This is the largest community within the eastern fringe of the Gnarley Forest, and is representative of the other villages and towns throughout the rest of the vast wood.

Home to perhaps 100 people, Five Oaks covers barely as much cleared ground as Lord Lockswell’s Manor. Nor is the village surrounded by any kind of wall, the sheer number of its populace being its best hope of defense.

The brook that washes through the town is crossed by a small stone bridge leading onto the village square. Around this small meadow are poised the mayor’s house, the sawmill, and the trading post. The other houses are generally two or three room cabins. Such artisans as dwell here keep shops, of an additional room or two, with their houses.

Five Oaks boasts, beside the sawmill, a carpenter, blacksmith, tanner, leatherworker, innkeeper, livery/dairyman, and woodcarver among its industrious craftsmen and women.

The sawmill is powered by a waterwheel, and turns a blade nearly 12 feet in diameter. Boards are sawed for fee or barter, with barter preferred. Prices throughout the town are reasonable.

The trading post is the most exotic part of Five Oaks. It exists not so much to serve the local population, though it does so on a daily basis, but to offer goods from beyond the fringes of the forest to the elven traders who occasionally emerge from the heart of the Gnarley Forest to trade their valuable products.

The proprietor, Malco Frump, is an entrepreneur working for the Free City Merchants and Traders Union.

Consequently, in addition to the usual collection of flour, bacon, nails, tools, clothing, and the like, Malco keeps a variety of unusual and valuable goods on hand. His stock includes small amounts of things otherwise impossible to find in these lands: brilliant feathers from southern jungles, turquoise and platinum from mines in the east, sea shells, and salt, as well as ivory and Jade carvings.

Malco employs a pair of bodyguards, to guard his treasures. The trading post is a stout building, with two doors that can be locked and barred.

Gnarley Forest