Briarwood. The village is located in the foothills of the Spine of the World, beneath the ruins of once great and proud castle. Village is populated almost exclusively by exiles and expatriates. A small town in fact, Briarwood is large enough for at least 2000 inhabitants, but there are no more than 400 people living in there at any given time. There are a lot of empty buildings, in various states of disrepair. There is no law and structure in Briarwood beyond what you can make for yourself, but there is surprisingly small level of crime, except the petty theft and that's mostly in the case of newcomers to the village.
Area around Briarwood is - by some quirk of nature or perhaps unnatural phenomenon - immune to scrying and teleportation magics, as well as Gate spells and various summoning spells, so the village attracts a lot of travelers who wish to use it to conclude some covert business or simply to hide for some time.
The largest building in the village is former town hall, now repaired and made into an inn. The proprietor is a typically gruff dwarf, named Kaigan, and the inn is called The Golden Pig. The inn has a ground floor, three stories above it and an attick. The ground floor is divided into common room and kitchen. The common room is dominated by a huge fireplace built into a wall that separates it from the kitchen and polished oak bar on the other side of the kitchen doors. Proprietor is rarely to be seen, but the barkeep, a huge albino Quaggoth is never away from his bar as long as the inn is open.
There are 13 large tables in the common room, bigh enough for ten persons to sit comfortably, as well as at least a dozen smaller tables, but their number is subject to change and Kaigan's whims.
One of the big tables is constantly occupied by trio on unlikely patrons: Goblin brothers, called Kvarezh, Smrdezh and Palezh. Old witchdoctors are constantly playing an ever-evolving card game with an ever-changing set of cards like no others ever seen. Sometimes strange visitors to the village come to play with goblins and they always loose huge amounts of money, but somehow there are never hard feelings, almost as if they came expecting to loose.
There are other curious patrons of the Golden Pig. One is a man simply called "Zent". This tall and thin man with a pointy black beard and bald head always dresses in black, so most people think he is a former or current member of Zentharim, but he never talks about his past and no one is fool enought to ask him, just in case that the rumors are true.
