Alfield

Alfield is a small, rural town in the Marrow Valley in the Western Wynandir region of Wildemount. 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.

In 835 P.D., Alfield suffered significant loss of life and arson of several buildings during a gnoll attack.

Layout
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. Two main streets bisect the village in its central square, one spanning from the northwest to the southeast, and the other from west to east.

Broad Barn
Located on the western edge of town, the Broad Barn store sells farming and basic supplies.

Candleglow Inn
Located in the central square, the Candleglow Inn was ransacked and burned down during the gnoll attack. Thadius Candleglow owned the inn, and due to the cost—estimated in thousands of gold pieces—to rebuild it, he expected to leave Alfield to start his life over someplace else.

Feed and Mead Tavern
Not the most comfortable establishment, the Feed and Mad Tavern was where the Crown's Guard lodged the party in appreciation for their help in fighting the gnolls—and they would have continued paying the party's stay as long as they continued helping deal with the aftermath of the gnoll attack. With two rooms for rent upstairs, the party was lodged in one of them that had four twin-sized beds tightly jammed in the room.

The owner of the tavern, Passedon "Croot" Tecroot, is an ornery, salty-looking, old dwarf with tousled, white-grey hair and a single tuft of a beard that dangles down towards the bellybutton before ending in a ring of gold. Poor of sight, he tended to look above or at a person's shoulder when talking to them.

Menu
For the cost of three silver pieces, Feed and Mead offered the party 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.

On the Wind Stables
Located in the northern part of town, On the Wind Stables sustained fire damage as a result of the gnoll attack. The next day, Reggie of the Crown's Guard procured a horse from the stables—under the effects of Mollymauk Tealeaf's Charm Person spell—for the party to use during their mercenary mission to slay gnolls and recover the abducted townsfolk.

Gnoll Attack
When a Crown's Guard patrol reported seeing a small hunting party of gnolls to the south, Watchmaster Bryce Felid 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—not as a coincidence—a large force of gnolls struck two hours later while they were unguarded and unprepared for such an assault.

At this point, approaching Alfield at night about half a mile from the south, the party 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, the party saw a few hundred people running out of town into the fields.

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. With smoke and fires of the eastern quarter shielding their escape, the gnolls took three carts full of various loot, corpses of villagers they had slain, captives, and almost all of the village's meat supply.

Casualties

 * Rubin Cole:  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 was shot by a gnoll in the back by an arrow.  A 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.
 * A Crown's Guard soldier:  This guard had been hunkered down behind a wall with Watchmaster Bryce Felid.  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.

Villagers

 * A family of five halflings ran out of the town during the gnoll attack.  The family included a mother dragging two younger children and a father running beside his eldest daughter, who was in her teens.  The father wore simple farm clothing, a leather cap, and had a handlebar mustache.