Termalaine

Overview

Termalaine is the most picturesque of the Ten Towns, lying on the banks of the Maer Dualdon, the Lonely Wood at their backs, with wide cobbled streets lined with pine trees, well built houses made of stone foundations and wooden walls. The people of Termalaine are rough and hardworking like elsewhere in the dale, but they are also friendly and happy in their little corner of paradise, and they have made it so with the riches they find nearby.

Economy

Termalaine has the benefit of many natural resources, far more than most of the other Ten Towns which must rely on fishing and scrimshaw alone.

The Lonely Wood lies north of Termalaine, the largest collection of fir and pine trees in Icewind Dale, careful logging and management of this wood has allowed Termalaine to provide timber and lumber to the rest of the Ten Towns (although supply is strictly controlled to ensure the wood is not over logged), and allow Termailine to have carefully constructed wooden houses rather than the shacks and huts elsewhere.

To the east, in the foothills of Kelvin’s Cairn, is an old abandoned dwarf mine that the folk of Termalaine have sporadically explored to find small veins of ore and precious stones (usually tourmaline, for which the town is named). The wealth from these stones has allowed Termalaine to buy large reserves of food in case of bad winters.

Lastly the fishing and scrimshaw industry is also an important resource for Termalaine, but they do not depend upon it for survival like Targos. This makes Termalaine smell far more pleasant than the rest of the Ten Towns, and has also allowed the populace the luxury of other pursuits like crafting and artistry (Termalaine boasts intricate carvings on the wooden walls and doors of houses which are reminiscent of scrimshaw techniques).

Important Sites

Blue Clam: This tavern is situated on the docks and is so named for a rare blue clam found on the sandbank where Termalaine was founded. Every so often visitors come to town in search of more blue clams and their rare blue pearls.

Eastside: This inn lies on the eastern edge of town and boasts some of the coasiest rooms in the Ten Towns, mostly because its rooms to rent are delved below ground. Some suggest the rooms are old dwarf tunnels found during the excavation of the building’s foundations, others claim they have heard voices coming through the walls.

The Mine: Shortly after the settlement of the site of Termalaine, explorers found a cave in the foothills to the east that turned out to be an exhausted mine abandoned by the dwarves. It was cleared of monsters and other vermin only to find a vein of tourmaline, providing new riches to the town and causing it to be renamed in reference to the find and the new gemstones that studded many doors and scrimshaw carvings.

The vein was soon worked dry and the mine was abandoned soon after. Monsters moved in and a decade or so later adventurers were used to clear them out, in the process finding a vein of iron quartz. Again the lodes were exhausted and the mines abandoned only to be cleared later with new minerals found deeper in the mine. This pattern has been repeated many times in the past hundred years, each time after it is abandoned new monsters from Underdark connections claim the tunnels for themselves and prompt the town to hire adventurers to remove them.

Currently the mine is being worked to gather peridot, but there are already reports of monsters in the lower reaches that prey upon lone miners.