Mordentshire

Though it is the heart of commerce, Mordentshire’s economy is local and humble. Goods move through its quiet harbor, but its residents are mostly laborers, dockhands, fishers, scribes, and modest tradesfolk.

• Barrels of dried fish, lumber, peat, and coarse wool are the common stock of the docks.
• Whale oil and bone relics from the gray sea are rare and prized.
• Visitors are few, and locals keep their heads down—suspicious of strangers, and more so of aristocrats.

Despite this, a few unusual businesses thrive, their reputations steeped in rumor:

• Weathermay Books & Folios: A gloomy but respected publisher of esoteric tomes, diaries, and haunted memoirs.
• Pevensey’s Curios: A cluttered shop of secondhand oddities, where one might find a locket that whispers or a mirror that remembers your past.
• Thistlethrop’s Undertakers: More chapel than business, it’s said to serve both the dead and those who cannot stay dead.

The countryside is ruled by antiquated noble families who peer down from moss-choked manors with disdain. Their disdain for Mordentshire is mutual—the town resents the landed gentry, viewing them as cursed, ghost-ridden, and quietly monstrous.

• The nobility rarely enter Mordentshire unless absolutely necessary—to settle legal affairs, bury kin, or escape apparitions.
• Rumors abound that the dead sometimes follow the nobles into town, or that some aristocrats are never seen during daylight.

Mordentshire is not haunted—it is haunting. The town is steeped in quiet spiritual dread, where the veil between the living and the dead wears dangerously thin.

• The townsfolk speak of “the Gray Hours,” just before dawn, when the dead walk the harbor to remember the living.
• Local legends claim the bells in St. Cleareye’s Chapel ring by themselves when someone is about to die—especially if that someone has secrets.
• A nearby sinkhole known as Widow’s Mouth belches cold air and draws whispers up from below, especially when someone disappears.

The air in Mordentshire always tastes faintly of salt, smoke, and damp parchment. The cobbled streets are narrow and worn, flanked by slate-roofed buildings that lean together like gossiping old men. The ever-present sea fog creeps inland each morning, trailing ghost stories in its wake.

• Muted tones dominate the townscape—weather-beaten woods, mossy stone, and window glass like smoky quartz.
• The town is lit by iron gaslamps that flicker oddly in the mist, their glow swallowed by the dusk even at noon.
• The cemetery on the southern bluffs, the size of a small village itself, is more meticulously maintained than the market square.