Caer-Konig (kair-KOH-nig)

The white, snow-covered slopes of Kelvin’s Cairn loom large behind this quiet lakeside town. Caer-Konig started as a camp for a group of mountaineers from the northern Moonsea region. As the camp grew, a wooden palisade was added to discourage raiders. Later came the stone castle of Caer-Konig. Alas, neither the palisade nor the castle fared well; both fell to orcs before falling into ruin. Caer-Konig, as it is known today, consists of terraced rows of houses that recede from the shore of Lac Dinneshere like the tiers of an amphitheatre. The harbour is frozen, its docks skewed and broken by the shifting ice. Buried under the snow on the slopes above the last row of houses are the ruins of the Caer that gave the town its name—a reminder to the people of Caer-Konig that nothing lasts in this corner of the world. Travel to and from this remote town was expedited by the ferry that ran out of Easthaven, but with the ferry shut down, Caer-Konig is completely cut off by mountains, lake, and snow. Forced to live on what they can haul out of the iced-over lake, the people of Caer-Konig are bitter and angry. They believe that the rest of Ten-Towns has abandoned them. The only thing that keeps the townsfolk from leaving is the beer at the local tavern, which never seems to run out. As if things weren’t bad enough, the town has suffered several mysterious break-ins recently, with no evidence of the intruders except dwarven boot tracks in the snow leading north. Since there are no known settlements in that direction, the townsfolk assume that the everlasting winter has taken its toll on the dwarves of Kelvin’s Cairn, forcing them to come down from the mountain in search of food or beer. The town speaker, a heavy-drinking dragonborn named Trovus, patrols at night to keep an eye out for trouble. In his inebriated state, however, Trovus is prone to wandering out onto the icy lake or passing out on the ramshackle docks, and he almost never remembers his nightly patrols once his head clears.