Dougan's Hole

Overview

Dougan’s Hole is the smallest and most insular of the ten towns. Its residents aren’t fond of visitors, and inbreeding has caused the population to dwindle in recent years. It also has given rise to often-seen physical deformities, including but not limited to small, misshapen ears and slightly pointed teeth.
The town is a small cluster of dwellings perched on the edge of Redwaters that is too small to support any industry—not even scrimshaw. Ice has buckled the shorter of its two piers, rendering the dock unsafe. The longer pier has two icebound keelboats tethered to it, though they’re immobile because Auril’s winter has frozen the surface of the lake for hundreds of yards around them. Local fishers have hauled their smaller boats onto the shore and resorted to cutting holes in the ice to catch knucklehead trout, which they depend on for survival. Visitors to Dougan’s Hole are often struck by the eeriness of dark, humanoid shapes out on the ice, remaining silent and still as the wind howls around them.

Overland Travel

A six-mile-long, snow-covered path connects Dougan’s Hole to the neighboring town of Good Mead. Characters on foot can walk this path in 4 hours; mounts and dogsleds can shorten this time by as much as 50 percent.

Places of Interest

Twenty Stones of Thruun

Triangle of Megaliths
The only truly interesting feature in Dougan’s Hole is the ring of megaliths known as the Twenty Stones of Thruun. Standing at the southern edge of town, nineteen of these crudely fashioned granite menhirs are arranged in a rough triangle, with a single stone at the formation’s center. No one knows who built this structure or why; the townsfolk maintain that the stones were there when the town’s founder, a Chondathan named Dougan Dubrace, first happened upon this fishing spot. Scholars have tried to research the origin of the structure’s name, but all they have found are allusions to a creature named Thruun in the oldest legends of the northern folk. Some speculate that Thruun was a god, while others believe it’s a destructive elemental spirit bound to this location by ancient druidic magic.

Friendliness ❄ Services ❄ Comfort ❄
Population. 50.
Leader. Speaker Edgra Durmoot, a plainspoken trapper getting on in years, speaks for the townsfolk. She seldom attends meetings of the Council of Speakers.
Militia. Dougan’s Hole can muster up to 8 soldiers.
Heraldry. A gray, pillar-like monolith set against a sky-blue field above two crossed silver fish, their scaly bodies forming an X, with their heads at upper left and upper right. The monolith signifies local mystery, while the fish represent the bounty of Redwaters.
Rival. Good Mead.

Type

Village