Dunwich
Dunwich is a somewhat backwater fishing village situated on southern side of the Dunwater River and sandwiched between the Dunwater Marsh and the Monmurg Bay. This makes it tucked away on the southern coast of the Kingdom of Keoland. Just north of Dunwich is a small monastery dedicated to Heironeous and Bale Keep which guards the road between the town of Saltmarsh and Burle. While further south are other small fishing villages. Many folk from Dunwich serve as staff and support for the keep and the village tends to travelers between Saltmarsh and Burle.
As for Keoland, for several generations it was a formidable military power. Its superior cavalry and bold knights pushed the kingdom's borders outward to the north, west, and east. Each successful campaign increased both the crown's wealth and power, and each one in turn drew the kingdom's attention even farther north. The southern coastal regions of Keoland as a result remained a backwater area.
The crown's benign neglect allowed piracy and banditry to flourish. Dunwich and similar villages kept to fishing, content to maintain a low profile and avoid governmental entanglements. Decades ago, the pirates who prowled the waters of the Monmurg Bay and further a sea grew strong enough to create their own realm, a loose confederacy known as the Hold of Sea Princess. With the rise of that nation came increased raids on Dunwich and the other coastal villages. The Sea Princes' raiding shops pillaged the coast for more slaves to support their growing realm, and Dunwich suffered heavily. The memories of those times loom heavily over the area, the locals' hatred of the Sea Princes runs deep.
In time, Keoland's victories in the north gave way to a string of defeats in which its neighbors pushed the kingdom back to its original boundaries. With the world closing in, King Kimbertos Skotti looked to the south and saw unchecked banditry and a rising pirate nation. The crown struck peace treaties with its former foes to the north, raised a navy, and dealt a sharp check to the ambitions of the Sea Princes – but the conflicts are by no means over.
King Skotti has decreed that the pirates must be put down, the sea lanes secured, and trade cultivated. If Keoland cannot prosper as a military force, it must grow mightier as a center of trade.
Southern Keoland, remote though it might be from the center of power in Keoland, is entering a new phase of its life as it reacts to the king's plans. The crowns agents want to expand the coastal village ports and make them a prime location for trade with the regions beyond. Perhaps capturing and securing the lands the Sea Princes currently hold. In another recent development, a few bands of Dwarves – bearing a decrees from the king himself – have arrived in southern Keoland and set up mining camps in various places to excavate the hills and seaside cliffs the permeate the area. If their work bears fruit as expected, the mines stand to become a major factor to the entire region's prosperity.
Naturally, not all of Southern Keoland’s residents feel the same way about the recent developments in and around their communities, which is the key issue that affects their lives and livelihoods. Although these recent changes stand to bring new prosperity to the area, many locals do not want to see their homeland changed. At the same time, as an undercurrent through all the goings-on, agents of several secretive and mysterious organizations both small and large work to thwart Keoland's ambitions while advancing their own. Thus the politics in the entire region have become rife and have even reached as far south as Dunwich which is experience its own local issues that only causes even more strife for its citizens.
The most recent development within Dunwich is the return of the Wheezing Cough an ailment that afflicted the village many years ago and took many lives before it mysteriously ceased to be. What has caused it to return and more importantly what stopped it so many years ago. The adventurers are either members of the village or have relatives or associates in the village that have called upon them to hep a local herbalist who believes she may have discovered a cure for the malady.