Tasseldale

Tasseldale is the most civilized of the Dales and is dotted with a wide variety of small communities that, as a group, are considered Tasseldale. These communities are set in a dry river valley stretching from the end of Arch Wood to Featherdale on the River Ashaba. The river itself has longsince found another course (perhaps underground), leaving a wide, verdant, but relatively dry plain.

Tasseldale is the crossroads of the Dales, a pleasant defile marked with light copses of woods and scrub. Its many small communities and villages are lined with the shops and houses of artisans: toymakers, lacemakers, tinsmiths and potters, woodworkers and cabinetmakers, tailors and builders, weavers and vintners and scribes. A dozen of these communities lie scattered from Blackfeather Bridge to the Arch Wood, all of them no more than one street long.

Tasseldale has a force of mounted police officers, known as mairshars, composed of four patrols of 12 people each, plus 11 trainees who fill in to replace the sick or wounded. This force is charged with patrolling the Dale, protecting all the small village communities, and maintaining the peace. To that end the mairshars are allowed to function as judges as well as arresting officers. The mairshars are fighters of 2nd-5th level, armored in regulation chain mail (though some may have additional magical items).

The ruler of Tasseldale is the leader of these forces, the Grand Mairshar Elizzaria. Elizzaria is a 9th-level fighter who has had previous training as a priest of Helm, rising to 8th level before leaving the church in a dispute over her faith.

The mairshars are Tasseldale’s only visible fighting force, but every man and woman between the ages of 14 and 64 is considered part of the Tasseldale militia, and these chubby, contented villagers can lash out and destroy invading armies, as the forces of Lashan of Scardale learned several years ago.

Tasseldale is seeing an influx of merchants and trade from Sembia, including Sembian families moving into the Dale to get away from the hustle and bustle of the more metropolitan areas. Whether these new arrivals take to Daleland ways or the Dale suffers the same fate as Moondale remains to be seen. Shrines are more common in Tasseldale than temples, and each small community has a few, usually dedicated to Chauntea, Silvanus, Eldath, Lathander, Tymora, or Lliira. There are are few dedicated to Helm or Tempus, and reports of one or two to Auril or Mask.