While the local businesses are the heart of the town, there’s more to Quickstone than Oldtown and Main Street. The following areas may be important to any adventure in Quickstone.
When the Dhakaani built the fortress town whose ruins can still be seen today, they dug deep into the Graywall Mountains. An entrance to these mines can be found in Quickstone itself, close to Soldorak Manor. Other shafts have been discovered along the foothills, and there may yet be some that the settlers have yet to find. This network of mines has been abandoned for thousands of years; some passages have collapsed or are dangerously unstable. Other tunnels are infested with dangerous creatures; cockatrices seem especially drawn to them. For now, no one knows just how far the mines extend, if all the discovered passages are connected, or even what ores can be found in their depths. Based on other findings in the region, it’s quite possible that they hold veins of byeshk, an unusual metal that the Five Nations have yet to fully master. It’s even possible that these aren’t just mines—but that some of these tunnels may connect to deep Dhakaani vaults, or to demiplanes of Khyber.
Honoria Soldorak bought the rights to the mines in the foothills. She has dreams of bringing in Tharashk prospectors to discover what minerals lie in the depths, and hopes to get all the mines operational within a year. But this will require a great deal of dangerous work, beginning with scouting expeditions. If only there was a capable party of adventurers she could call on...
Following the Last War, Count Thavius ir’Blis granted tenancy rights for tracts of land around Quickstone to his finest soldiers. He also set aside some land for the use of the Cyran refugees, and has promised to expand this in the future after further evaluation. As such, there is a network of farms and ranches springing up around Quickstone. A few of these belong to settlers who have worked the land for decades—people who established their farmsteads back when Quickstone was known as Graystone. However, most are less than two years old. Many stand vacant, with their future tenants still living in the Tents of Quickstone as they wait for homesteads to be constructed. Others are half-built, or have fields that are only partially established. All in all, it presents a host of places for smugglers or brigands to hide out and an assortment of targets for raiders to strike.
Quickstone isn’t the finest farmland. The primary crops are beans, winter wheat, and the succulents known as sand fruit. A few farmers are trying to introduce new crops, while others are focusing on livestock; the Triple Thunder Ranch has both plains tribex and traditional cattle. A halfling named Lucky Haskal is trying to convince one of the Grizzly farmers to start a raptor ranch, but so far no one’s bitten.
Quickstone is the foundation of Quickstone. There are three quickstone quarries in the foothills, currently named Rusty, Treacherous, and Crimson. All three were established long before Brelish settlers came to the region, but all three have rich deposits; some believe that the quickstone somehow regenerates over time. Crimson is the closest to town, just above Quickstone along the southern path. Initially, it was the only quarry that was in use. When the next wave of settlers arrived—the Grizzlies and the Mourners—they began working in Rusty. Treacherous has largely been left alone. An early group of workers suffered a series of accidents, and it’s said to be cursed or haunted, hence its name.
At a glance, there’s little to draw adventurers to the quarries. But their presence is still an important part of Quickstone, and you never know when miners might uncover something interesting—whether breaking into a subterranean chamber or finding something or someone embedded in the quick. The adventure presented in chapter 7 explores one such possibility.
Little remains of the ancient fortress that once dominated this region. The only semi-intact structures are the ruins of the Haunt and the fragments of the wall that surrounded it. The largest segment is the western wall, which separates Oldtown and the Square from the Tents. There are a few other segments; Soldorak Manor is built up against a major fragment to the east of town.
The tallest segments of the wall are approximately forty-five feet in height, and about ten feet thick. They’re made of fixed quickstone and are extremely durable. Thanks to centuries of wear and weathering, there are a host of pockmarks and cracks that make decent handholds for climbers, and children often climb up to the top of the western wall to look out over the Tents. In Oldtown and the Square, quickstone buildings are merged directly into the wall, often rising to about thirty feet.