Aldeata
Follow the paths of the travelling caravans long enough and you’ll come to Aldeata, a small trading town tucked in a fertile river valley.
The residents are expert farmers and canny traders. A close-knit community, they welcome the disruption and opportunity that visitors bring as well as send out their own wanderers to bring back news and goods and ideas. Although not large enough to support official lodging for visitors, they provide a campground for strangers. For friends and relations who come to visit, they welcome them into their homes.
Government
Aldeata doesn't have a formal government. Instead, people lean on tradition and obligation to get most things done. When unusual situations happen, everybody talks things out, making sure to consult the respected elders. It’s not a quick system, but it works well enough.
History
Soon after the founding of Xarlaca, a corn-blessed healer in the city fell in love with a wandering trader with a charming grin. She didn’t try to change the trader she loved, but she couldn’t bear to be parted from her, so the healer left her city home. They traveled together, helping those in need of aid and tricking those in need of humility. Along the way, they accrued a group of friends and followers, forming a powerful caravan, trading, adventuring, learning, and healing.
One time, the healer helped free a powerful land elemental from a blight it had suffered for its whole existence. The work to heal the elemental took years. Over time, the elemental learned to love the people of the caravan who had settled down to help it, and the people of the caravan learned to love the elemental in return. They stayed in the valley it ruled even after the healer’s work was done. They’d work and gossip and play in the Living Field each day, and then return each night to rest in their sturdy, cheery homes.
The trader never stopped traveling altogether, but she would return to the blossoming town regularly and stay long. And the children that the trader and the healer had raised would choose, some to stay and farm and build, and others to roam and heal and trade. Generation after generation, building a network of love and tricks and trade that lasts until this very day.
Type
Village
Population
400
Inhabitant Demonym
Aldeatanos
Location under
Characters in Location
Story Hooks
- A small, rich caravan of merchants and entertainers arrived recently. You’ve never heard of them before. They have a wonderful selection of trade goods, but change the subject when asked where they came from.
- The exhausted remnants of the annual Aldeata trade caravan just came into town. Two days ago, raiders attacked them on the road, stealing almost all of the goods, money, and wagons. The town is beginning to outgrow the food grown by the Living Field. Ideas are being tossed around that will affect Aldeata permanently. Send some people off to start a new town? Awaken or lure in a new elemental to create a new source of agriculture or aquaculture? Strengthen the spirit of the Living Field somehow to stretch its boundaries?
- Visitors bring second-hand tales of a powerful city on the other side of the mountains. The town elders want you to make the long trip to search it out in hopes that they have rare items and new knowledge for those willing to make the long trip
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