Loutharn

Loutharn is a major stopover point for river traffic headed along the Flanmi, with its great Harvester Fair still a major attraction during the first week of that month. The village proper, usually referred to as "Old Loutharn" by locals, comprises 1,200 people. But Loutharn has spread out along the western Flanmi banks rather like a strip town built along a major highway. Ruled by Strychan's eldest son Rivandren, the town is a den of wily thieves.

Loutharn is the best place in all the Flanaess to come if one wishes to be the victim of a scam of some kind. It appears that the entire old village is filled with historical sights; a taverner may explain his exorbitant charges by telling the traveler that he is sleeping in the very bed which Ivid himself (or Grenell, or Strychan, etc.) slept in a year before to the very day. Firewood bundles are sold at ridiculous prices to the innocent visitor, because one faggot in the bundle was taken, somehow unburned, from the pyre of a heretical fiend-worshiping mage burned for his crimes just the week before. Loutharners have an infinite number of ways of separating fools from their gold.

However, there is a nastier edge to Loutharn since Rivandren took up residence. The son is too like the father, too wantonly cruel. But he lacks his father's charisma and his household troops, who act as the town watch now. They are drunken, boorish and vicious. Nearly half are orcs and half-orcs, making them deeply hated by the human population. Taxes and rents here are very high, and evictions of village folk from their homes are becoming commonplace. Public floggings and burnings are almost regular events, and the place has a tense, fearful air to it.