Phandalin

The rutted track emerges from a wooded hillside, and you catch your first glimpse of Phandalin. The town consists of forty or fifty simple log buildings, some built on old fieldstone foundations. More old ruins—crumbling stone walls covered in ivy and briars—surround the newer houses and shops, showing how this must have been a much larger town in centuries past. Most of the newer buildings are set on the sides of the cart track, which widens into a muddy main street of sorts as it climbs toward a ruined manor house on a hillside at the east side of town. As you approach, you see children playing on the town green and townsfolk tending to chores or running errands at shops. Many people look up as you approach, but all return to their business as you go by.

The frontier town of Phandalin is built on the ruins of a much older settlement. Hundreds of years ago, the old Phandalin was a thriving human town whose people were firmly allied with the dwarves and gnomes of the Phandelver's Pact. However, the same orc horde that sacked the mines at Wave Echo Cave laid waste to the settlement, and Phandalin was abandoned for centuries. In the last three or four years, hardy settlers from the cities of Neverwinter and Waterdeep have begun the hard work of reclaiming the ruins of Phandalin. A bustling frontier settlement has grown up on the site of the old town, and is home now to farmers, woodcutters, fur traders, and prospectors drawn by stories of gold and platinum in the foothills of the Sword Mountains. Source: LMoP page 14.