Editing Welcome to Neverwinter (section)

== Helm's Hold ==
Once a bastion of safety on the edge of Neverwinter Wood, the fortified monastery and community called Helm’s Hold has endured through the last decades, diminished but unyielding. It has lived through the death of the god who gave the place its name, the
ravages of the Spellplague, and the ruination of Neverwinter. Through all this, Helm’s Hold has taken a serious beating but stubbornly clings to its original purpose: to provide sanctuary for those who none. Helm’s Hold has always been a place of healing
and protection for the people of Faerûn. Even when Helm perished a year before the Spellplague, the monastery remained open, seeking to aid those with nowhere else to turn. During the decades after the Spellplague hit, the Hold became one of the few safe
destinations—if not the only one—along the Sword Coast. The cataclysm once again made clear the need for Helm’s Hold and its services. Its doors have remained open over the years, admitting all who suffer, regardless of race, background, or faith. Today, the monastery proper serves as an asylum for those cursed with the Spellplague. People from all over Faerûn make the pilgrimage here for treatment, as do people from Neverwinter, which is less than a day’s journey to the northwest. In fact, Lord Neverember issued a standing order a year ago that anyone in the city showing symptoms of Spellplague infection should be sent to Helm’s Hold as soon as possible. The influx of the needy since that time has swelled the town’s numbers, but tolerance is in the air here, so the spellscarred feel more at home in the Hold than anywhere else in the Realms. Originally a small monastery and its surrounding village, Helm’s Hold has grown over the decades. The cathedral’s foundation had hardly been laid when Helm died, but the people finished it as a monument in his honor. Helm has become a cultural icon here—a patron saint of the community—and all followers of all gods are welcome under his watchful gaze.

* '''Locations'''

** '''The Hungry Flame''': A decrepit tavern which has a reputation for being unfriendly to patrons who are not spellscarred. The place is a rogue’s gallery of the strange and twisted.

** '''The Dragon’s Gauntlet''': The battered town hall of Helm’s Hold, formerly an inn, is a popular gathering place for the people of the city, as well as a forum for its tempestuous governmental process. The people of the town are rugged individualists at heart, a characteristic that does not always mesh well with governmental edicts. Loud shouts, challenges, and shows of intimidation are acceptable methods of discussing legislation.

** '''Heartward''': Life and death are both on stage in the plaza called Heartward at the center of Helm’s Hold, where a marketplace is arrayed around a hangman’s scaffold. Food and gold are both scarce in the marketplace, and brawls break out between customers who feel cheated. Soldiers keep watch from the perimeter of the plaza. Town criers declaim the words of the Prophet, particularly when she has foretold something seen as especially wonderful or dire. The pronouncements are entertainment as well as news, since people love debating exactly what her portents mean. The Heartward’s chief notoriety is a haunting that fills the plaza on certain nights, when clouds obscure the waning moon. Luminous shapes appear—a gathering of ghosts that go about the business of the living. Phantom vendors sell ephemeral apples at empty stands, ghost children run happily through the streets, and spirits hang one another at the scaffold. Some of the scenes appear to be reenactments of past events, whereas others have not occurred—at least, not yet. The ghosts speak mostly nonsense, but some of what they say might offer clues to past or future happenings. The plaza’s name comes from a small shrine on the edge of the marketplace devoted to Sune, goddess of beauty and romance, which is a favored meeting place for lovers in the city. On haunted nights, couples gather at the shrine, hoping for a thrill.

** '''The Old Dirty Dwarf''': The region’s hard years have closed many businesses, but the Old Dirty Dwarf has stood the test of time. The best inn and tavern in Helm’s Hold, the Old Dirty Dwarf caters mostly to newcomers to the city. In the wake of the Lord Protector’s occupation of Neverwinter and his increasing presence in the Hold, Mintarn mercenaries have come to dominate the inn’s patronage, often with new exiles from Neverwinter in tow.

** '''Scar Alley''': Numerous setbacks have taken their toll on the structures and the people of Helm’s Hold. Nowhere in town is this fact more evident than in the oldest district—Scar Alley, a small collection of weathered streets where the least fortunate residents live. The district is home to the worst spellscarred in town, those shunned because of their extreme physical deformities. During the Spellplague, the ground upon which the Hold is built softened, causing some buildings to bow or lean precariously out over the streets. Much of the original stone construction of Scar Alley is approaching ruin, and the residents do what they can to bolster the failing structures with planks, mortar, and fresh stone. The district is poorly patrolled, full of hovels that are frequented by shady characters or infested by monsters.

** '''Helm's Cathedral''': The cathedral to the dead god Helm lost its original religious purpose long ago and became a sanatorium for the ailing, tended by the aging faithful who still honor the traditions of their deity. The spellscarred find treatment here, and many of the servants in the cathedral are also patients. They work as part of their treatment. The Prophet Rohini is the undisputed master of Helm’s cathedral, even if she disdains political status. She exists, she says, only to pass on the mysterious prophecies of her equally mysterious faith. The cathedral can hold about a thousand souls. Most of them are patients of the sanatorium, though a few enjoy relatively good health and handle the day-to-day maintenance of the temple. A dozen or so acolytes who have skill in non-magical healing or an aptitude for service keep order in the cathedral. Several followers of Oghma labor alongside the former Helmites, continuing the work of the late Brother Anthus.

*** '''Halls of the Guardian''': The daylight floors of the temple look much as they did a hundred years ago: hung with banners of Helm’s sigil and warded at all corners by suits of armor that feature stylized eyes on their gauntlets and prominent, blankfaced helms. Cavernous chambers soar high through flying buttresses, and great statues of Helm and heroes of legend gaze down upon supplicants. The walls block most sound, but sometimes a cry or an incoherent rant reverberates up from the deeper levels of the complex. The effect is a sharp contrast in what otherwise appears to be a glorious temple. The great hall of the cathedral could accommodate a hundred men-at-arms comfortably, though today it has a far different purpose. It is here that the Prophet sits in audience, dispensing her predictions of future events. If asked to do so, she may lay her hands on those in attendance and tell their fortunes.

*** '''Sanatorium''': Beneath the stately, well-lit halls on the surface, the lower levels of the cathedral grow darker and more frightening. A sanatorium hides in the vaults: a maze of cramped corridors that houses a growing number of spellscarred victims, who struggle with insanity or physical deformities. Once a day, the patients are allowed out onto the cathedral grounds, under close observation by priests. Although the madness of these unfortunates unnerves most visitors, the Prophet spends a great deal of time in the sanatorium without being affected. To the folk of Helm’s Hold, this is a sign of her compassionate nature.

** '''Beneath Helm's Hold''': Through the many years that Helm’s Hold has stood, its occupants delved underground. Their crypts and ossuaries utilized natural caverns as well as chambers left in the earth by old empires, creating a vast network of tunnels and levels. Once the domain only of the peaceful departed, these places have now been invaded by the living, making the dead grow restless.

* '''Notable NPCs'''

** '''Halas''': A charismatic half-elf, he is a former landowner in Neverwinter who came to Helm's Hold after being afflicted with a spellscar.  He is an informal leader of the spellscarred, and pushes back against those who wish them gone.

** '''Meryth''': A female elf, she is another informal leader of Helm's Hold's spellscarred population.  She advocates peaceful resistance in the face of prejudice.  

** '''Rohini, the Prophet of Helm’s Hold''': Rohini is the main healer and head researcher of Helm's Hold monastery, taking over in that last role for the now deceased Brother Anthus, who passed away shortly after her arrival at the House of Knowledge. Rohini earned her sobriquet through the foretellings she speaks of pivotal events to come, both good and ill. The Prophet claims knowledge of extraordinary mysteries beyond mortal understanding. She says this awareness gives her the power to purify the worthy. She bestows healing on individuals that have been visited by the Spellplague. Although Rohini does not sit in overt leadership in the cathedral, the acolytes, servants, and patients bow to her, calling her simply “Prophet.”

** '''Dunfield''': An old associate of Lord Neverember, he leads a band of mercenaries the Lord Protector has lent Helm's Hold to serve as a town watch.  Hard-bitten and cynical, Dunfield remains an honorable man who tries to keep his soldiers in line and serve the community as best as he can.

** '''Alisara Callum''':  Everyone in Helm’s Hold pays deference to her, the town’s elected Chief Speaker. Her ability to inspire loyalty helps to keep the haphazard government functioning. A former soldier now past her prime, Alisara brings a note of legitimacy to the council. She wears a frayed purple tabard with a white dragon sigil—the symbol of her former service with the Purple Dragon Knights of Cormyr—which some locals consider to be her personal coat of arms. Alisara is well liked, though her policies of accepting the spellscarred irk some in the city.

** '''Doloran Bard''': An aging farmer and councilman whose family long ago helped build the original monastery, he is wary of trusting the direction of Helm’s Hold to an outsider. An unrepentant purist when it comes to the spellscarred, Bard would prefer that the town push out the “unclean” hordes and return the Hold to its original purpose.

** '''Juetta''': A human female of about thirty years, she is the proprietor of the Old Dirty Dwarf, an establishment that is mostly safe, if none too clean. The Old Dirty Dwarf welcomes all, but some of the staff makes an exclusion for spellscarred, actively discouraging their business. Juetta frowns on this sort of behavior, but she can’t be everywhere in the place at the same time, so she can’t stop the growing tensions that bubble over in the tavern from time to time.

** '''Brother Satarin''':  An acolyte before Helm’s death, the young dwarf took his vows shortly before the god fell. Satarin stayed at the cathedral, teaching the ways of his fallen master and attending to the needy after the rest of Helm’s clergy left the place for other gods or retired from the cloth. Now, at the age of 160, Satarin is as close to a high priest as the cathedral is likely to see again, though he firmly eschews any title but Brother. He opened the cathedral’s doors to the Prophet at the request of Brother Vartan, a priest of Oghma whose research on resurrecting dead gods was of interest to the still-devout Satarin.

** '''Torlgar''': The warden of the sanatorium is Torlgar, a hulking goliath. An early convert to Rohini’s ways, Torlgar is fiercely loyal to his beloved mistress, to the point of death or beyond.