Alfield

Alfield is a small, rural farming town in the Marrow Valley in the Western Wynandir region of Wildemount, and it primarily shuts down post-sunset. It serves as a trade stop on the Amber Road between Trostenwald and Zadash. The town falls under the rule of the Dwendalian Empire and is overseen by Starosta Kosh.

On the night of 20 Sydenstar 835 PD, Alfield suffered significant loss of life and arson of several buildings during a gnoll attack.

Description
Slightly smaller than Trostenwald, Alfield is an open farm village with occasional waist- to shoulder-height partitions. With open fields to the south, the town is flanked by clusters of trees on the eastern and northeastern sides. Alfield is shaped like a small diamond, only a couple of miles across on all sides. Two main streets, the Dustway and Harvest Path, bisect the village in its central square, one spanning from the northwest to the southeast, and the other from west to east.

The old mines winding beneath the nearby hills yield a fair amount of tin, copper, and quartz that supplement the town's economy.

Points of Interest
The Candleglow Inn is located in the central square. It was once built by Reedus Candleglow, who left the inn to his grandson, Thadeus Candleglow. Thadeus was proud, that his inn once had, though perhaps not the greatest quantity, the highest quality of salted, dried, fresh, and butchered meats in town.

Ruddy Top Butchers: is located near the Candleglow Inn.

The Broad Barn located on the western edge of town, selling farming and basic supplies. The name comes from the barn that it once was. The proprietor was an extremely old gentleman with a giant, gnarled tuft of a chin beard that merged with a lion's mane–like halo of white hair with a thin, long, crooked nose.

Broad Barn Inventory
 * Cleaning supplies
 * Thick, heavy pieces of cloth
 * Buckets
 * Burn balm kits
 * Healer's kits
 * Hundred-foot coils of rope
 * Bags of ground herb incense
 * Farming supplies
 * Metal keg taps
 * Insecticide (diluted acute poison; 1 sp/vial)
 * Mishmash of materials for creating acid (12 gp/vial)
 * Incense

Trivia
 * Jester, inquiring about if the store had pickles, purchased a mason jar containing two pickles from the owner, who had pulled it out of his paper bag lunch. Wanting 3 cp for the jar, Mollymauk gave jester 2 cp so that he could share one of the pickles.
 * Caleb Widogast, wanting to buy about 20 gp worth of incense, had the owner bag anything that could have some semblance of being considered incense into two burlap sacks. Filled with various ground-up herbs, Caleb was willing to pay 17 gp for them and proceeded to count out the sum slowly on the counter. Distracted by other customers and with Nott's help, Caleb swindled the shop owner by having counted out and paid the owner only 16 gp for the bags, then saying that he was giving the amount agreed upon.

On the Wind Stables: is located in the northern part of town. Durmas was the main stablehand.

The Salt Trench Jail is the only prison in the city and the furthest building towards the forest. It is small weathered shack made out of stone and covered in dark grey colors.

The Feed and Mead Tavern is managed by Crute. The tavern has two or three rooms for rent upstairs, one of them had four twin-sized beds tightly jammed in the room. It is not the most comfortable establishment.

Menu: For the cost of three silver pieces, Feed and Mead offered a top-shelf drink in a deep green, corked, glass bottle. Poured into a shot glass, the liquid was a deep sea-teal green. When drunk, it had a smoky, oak barrel flavor on the tongue, though this was quickly followed by an herbal and charcoal medicinal burning taste.

Demographics
Alfield is a small rural town with a population of 3,410 as of 835 PD, most of which are humans (61%), halflings (22%), and gnomes (11%).

Factions
The Crownsguards attention in the city is mostly split between policing the borders and watching for safety of a public order. The lack of support from the empire and the relatively small Crownsguard presence, opened up opportunities for charlatans and thieves who often sweep through town in an attempt to relieve the townsfolk of any loose coin. It also revealed an possibility for the Myriad's rise to power in Alfield.

History
The Broad Barn was once a barn, though poor crops led to the farmers giving up farming and selling the tools they didn't need. As it happened, the farmers saw that they made more money that year from their tool sale than from the crops, so they started importing more tools and converted the barn into a general store, which has been serving this part of town since 805 P.D. Due to the store's success, the town eventually grew in to fill the gap between it and the town proper.

Gnoll Attack and Response
When a Crownsguard patrol reported seeing a small hunting party of gnolls to the south, Watchmaster Bryce Feelid sent out a troupe of more than half of the town's guards to find and slay them. This decision left the town vulnerable when a large force of gnolls struck two hours later.

When the party that would soon be called the Mighty Nein approached Alfield at night about half a mile from the south, they noticed several flashes of orange light and the curl of flames spreading from rooftop to rooftop. They saw a handful of buildings on the eastern side of the village that had already been consumed by flame. Quickly making their way closer to within a few hundred feet of the western side of the village, they saw a few hundred people running out of town into the fields. Among them were a family of five halflings.

Reaching the Alfield's central square, the party engaged the gnolls in battle. A brief battle ensued but ended when two of the party members were knocked unconscious, leading to the gnolls escaping in an east-northeasterly direction three carts full of various loot, corpses of villagers they had slain, captives, and almost all of the village's meat supply. As villagers begin to emerge from their homes, the party helped put out fires and collected ears from the dead gnolls.

In appreciation for their help in fighting the gnolls, the Crownsguard lodged the Mighty Nein in the Feed and Mead Tavern—and they would have continued paying for their stay as long as they continued helping deal with the aftermath of the gnoll attack. The Party was lodged in one of the rooms that had four twin-sized beds tightly jammed in the room. Watchmaster Bryce Feelid paid the party for the gnoll ears they collected and pointed them toward the Feed and Mead Tavern for the night, and the party eventually all went to sleep.

The party woke up after a somewhat less than comfortable night's sleep in their single room at the Feed and Mead Tavern in, before going out into the town and helping sift through the rubble.

At the Broad Barn, the party found Watchmaster Bryce involved in an argument with one Starosta Kosh (whom Jester happened to recognize as a former client of her mother's). As they approached, Kosh stormed out, and Bryce greeted them with an offer of further work: 30 gold per gnoll ear, 25 for a returned living villager, and 10 gold for a dead citizen's body. The party purchased some supplies at the Broad Barn, then convinced a crownsguard to loan them a horse, under the effects of Mollymauk Tealeaf's Charm Person spell, to use during their mercenary mission.

After coming back from the Rill's Mouth Mines the party ended up renting additional rooms for the night. The next day, before leaving town, the party collected payment for their gnoll ears from Bryce. When asked again for their party name, they settle on The Mighty Nein.

Consequences
Casualties
 * Ruben: The town's former lawmaster.
 * A village straggler: A hundred feet outside the village, while people were running out of town, this young human man with scrappy, tattered, brown hair and a bit of blood dripping down his face took an arrow in the back from a gnoll archer. Another gnoll then proceeded to leap onto his back and bite and tear out a chunk of flesh from his shoulder before dragging the corpse back two hundred feet into the depths of the burning village.
 * Leiman: A regular patron of the Candleglow Inn, all that remained of him within the ruins of the inn was a charred and crushed skeleton.
 * Crownsguard Soldiers:
 * A guard had been hunkered down behind a wall with Watchmaster Bryce Feelid. They wielded a crossbow and had been exchanging volleys with the gnolls during the attack. They were killed when they took an arrow to the back of the head.
 * A guard taken by the gnoll, bound, and fed as a sacrifice to the manticore by the Yeenoghu priest.

Captives
 * Herma and Jules: This human mother-and-child pair were taken to the Rill's Mouth Mines and kept in cells within the Y-intersection. Jules sustained a mortal injury from a hyena's bite to the clavicle and chest. At the cusp of bleeding out, Jester stabilized him and reunited with his mother, with whom he traveled back to Alfield.
 * Petrov: He only intended to pass through town, bringing some of his armor wares up to Zadash. His group was waylaid on the road to Alfield, as the gnolls made their way to the town. Looking disheveled, he had suffered a large claw gash around his midsection that was possibly infected.
 * Two civilians who were tied up in the manticore's lair.
 * Seven civilians who were rescued by Shakäste.

Property Damage The Candleglow Inn was ransacked and burned down. Due to the cost, estimated in thousands of gold pieces, to rebuild it, Thadeus expected to leave Alfield to start his life over someplace else.

The Ruddy Top Butcher building was still standing after the gnoll raid, but it had taken quite a bit of fire damage, resulting in its roof collapsing down into the floor below. The gnolls seemed to specifically target this building and took its entire stock of meat during the attack.

The On the Wind Stables sustained fire damage.

Preparation for demon incursion This raid was just a way to test the town's defenses for the full-scale offensive actions. The gnolls sacrificed the townsfolk captured during their raid to open a portal to the Abyss, letting demons loyal to Yeenoghu invade the Material Plane.

About two-and-a-half months after the gnoll attack, the party returned to Alfield on its way south to the Wuyun Gates. They discovered, much to their surprise and joy, that Thadeus was well on his way to rebuilding with the help of his neighbors. They drank and ate with Bryce in the Feed and Mead Tavern. While in the tavern they were recognized by the other patrons as the saviors of Alfield, and were given free drinks. After they discussed the war and their journey to the Menagerie Coast, they decided to stay the night in the tavern.