Featherdale

This Dale is not physically a dale at all, but rather the fertile banks of the River Ashaba from Blackfeather Bridge to Feather Falls. Its rolling farmlands produce much of the staple food of the Dales, and its fami- lies many of the staple workers and farmers.

They don’t have much time for that nonsense of slaying dragons and casting spells and hunting treasure, not when there are herds to drive and crops to tend. The women and men of Featherdale are the most stolid and sensible of the Dales breed.

Featherdale has no ruler and no army, and has recovered from its brief sojourn under the thumb of Scardale. Its farmers are at heart independent of outsiders and self-sufficient, and go to Tasseldale for .city. goods. The Dale sends a freely elected representative to the Council, and that representative has a seven-year term. The current representative is the second in the Kirshoff line to serve in that capacity in the past generation and is on her second term. The general feeling is that the job is hers as long as she wants to put up with it.

Featherdale’s very dispersed nature has in many ways served to keep it safe from the advancing power of Sembia. There is no central keep to seize, market to dominate, or government to buy off, and to date the farmers of Featherdale are as willing to sell to the Sembians as to anyone else. While the Dalesmen are very willing to deal with their southern neighbors, they consider themselves very much Dalesmen, some tracing their families back to old Moondale itself. The most striking feature of Featherdale is located at its eastward end, where this Dale borders with Scardale. Feather Falls is a beautiful set of plumes where the River Ashaba plunges 50 feet into the depression known as the Scar in a torrent of thundering water.

Feather Falls has a number of small buildings around its top and at a safe distance downstream from it. The most prominent of these are an abandoned temple to Leira, the Lady of the Mists, and a still-active temple to Lathander under the control of Morninglord Jallian Horgontivar (NG hm P13) and 16 of his clerical followers.

Also nearby are the remains of a tower run by the wizard Cholandrothipe the Quiet. Cholandrothipe provided a portage service in which large craft were magically diminished, walked up to the top of the falls, and enlarged. He was slain by assassins working for the Red Wizards, and no one has picked up his task. Now, any craft has to be unloaded and reloaded above the falls into smaller river barges.