Good Mead

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"Cut south off the Eastway after the trees thin out, an' keep walking 'til ye hear the buzzin' o' bees. That'll be Good Mead. If ye fall in the lake, you've gone too far."
— Beorne Steelstrike

Visitors to Good Mead rarely have a difficult time deciding where in town to go first. The short row of squat dwellings that line the trail along the lake's western edge is overshadowed by the two-story structure of the mead hall, its eaves carved and painted to resemble the wyverns that are said to roost in Kelvin's Cairn. Like most of Ten-Towns, Good Mead originally depended on knucklehead trout for its livelihood, selling smoked fish, raw ivory, and scrimshaw in the market at Bryn Shander. In fact, the southern lake got its name when the competition for fishing waters between Good Mead and Dougan's Hole led to a battle between several ships that resulted in the deaths of fishers from both towns, staining the waters with blood. In the decades following, Good Mead's trade in its justly famous brew began to outstrip the proceeds from its fishing hauls to the point where most of the town's fishers took up mead brewing instead. A building adjoining the mead hall, recently erected to provide storage for the increasing volume of casks, is roofed with the town's retired fishing vessels, and now only a handful of boats sail out each day from Good Mead to catch fresh fish for the stewpots. The only other building of note is the town's shrine to Tempus. Unlike the mead hall, which is well cared for, the shrine's painted icons of the god of war are chipped and faded, and its hall - cramped by the standards of most southerners, though twice the size of any of the town's dwellings - stands empty most days. The shrine was built over a century ago, when the town's rivalry with Dougan's Hole still raged, and for a time thereafter nearly all the inhabitants of Good Mead paid homage to the battle lord. Since their retreat from the waters, the shrine's relevance has dwindled to the point where only a few pious residents visit it regularly, and then only to observe the war god's holy days.

Speaker of Good Mead

Kendrick Rielsbarrow is a bluff, good-natured giant of a man and a tireless ambassador for the town of Good Mead. The only thing he loves more than selling his home town's famous brew is sharing it with good company, so he spends his time traveling about Ten-Towns with a wagon full of mead casks, delivering his stock to the local inns and taverns. Kendrick means well, but he is not the most effective of speakers - he is easily manipulated by his peers in the council - and as a result, Good Mead has not prospered in recent years as much as some of the other towns have. Standing seven feet tall, with a physique that mirrors the rocky slopes of Kelvin's Cairn, Kendrick looks like a more civilized version of the barbarians that roam the tundra, causing some Ten-Towners to wonder about his heritage. He speaks in a booming voice and is quick to laugh.