Blue Rose: Freedom Never Dies: The town of Farekull

Farekull is a mining town in the province of Soderlage. The party traveled there to start their search for the unicorn, and to safely escort Hobson - a man they had saved from an ice hag along the way - to a place where he claimed to have friends.

General information

Farekull is a mining town, sitting on a large shas crystal vein that still yields good returns after several centuries. In the summer, caravans go between here and Sarn fairly often, though at this time of year the village will have been cut off from the rest of the world for a few months already. The land surrounding it is harsh and not easy to farm, though people still manage to wring some sustenance from it. Food is likely to be scarce and expensive here, tools and other semi-permanent goods much less so - speaking relatively, of course, since this is Kern and only the Litch King and his Servitors are anything but quite poor by the rest of the world's standards.

The village is located fairly centrally in Soderlage, by the Old Kingdom road. While rumour travels slowly in the winter, it is probably worth checking if anyone here has heard anything about the unicorn. If the Rhydan does happen to have gone to ground in this particular area, it will have had a thousand thousand hiding places to choose from among the hills - making it safer from the Litch King, but also harder to find for the Resistance.

The people of Soderlage are downtrodden as everywhere in Kern, but the distance to Sarn gives them a bit more freedom - at least to speak their minds, and to negotiate some freedom from the local Servitors. This is not a Resistance stronghold, but nor is it carefully monitored; there is little reason for Taryn to fear that anyone here knows her name and that there is a reward on her head, for instance.

View from the outside

The stockade-surrounded village spreads out on top of a low, flat hill, overlooking the uneven, snow-covered wilderness that is here quickly growing rockier and more mountainous, starting to blend into the foothills of the Ice-Binder Mountains to the south. Smoke rises from scattered farms nested between hills around the village proper, and from the road leading up to the stockade gate a collection of sheds around a shored-up cavern opening by the foot of the hill is visible - most likely a mine of some sort.

View from the inside

Another of the enforcers start turning a wheel, and with a long, painful creek of unoiled hinges and rusty mechanisms, the broad wooden gates gradually swing open, revealing a street of gravel and icy mud beyond. The houses are simple log cabins with thatched roofs, and the people moving between them - hurrying to get out of the cold as quickly as possible - are simply dressed and cowering, either from the cold or from constant fear or both. Many give the party uneasy or curious looks as they walk down the street, but they all quickly look away again.

At the end of the street is a small square, dominated by a well-worn wooden platform with gallows at the top, three empty nooses turning gentle in the wind from its top. Among the houses to the left is a two-story building with a once-colourful sign over the door, showing a golden goblet brimming with red wine and the words Cup Running Over written beneath it. Straight ahead, beyond the gallows, is an especially large wooden hall where the clear light of shas crystal lanterns is shining from the windows.