Steadwall

Sitting atop Halloway Hill along the Arden River, Steadwall is a ghost town in Mordent formerly presided over by the Halloway Family. Now it lies in ruins, its only known living inhabitant the ferryman known as Smythe. Smythe's Shadow, Steadwall's ferry crossing, is named after said ferryman.

History

The fate Steadwall is tied to that of the Halloway family. Steadwall was once a busy hub for trade along the Arden River. But over a series of decades, the Halloways disappeared to a combination of drownings, murders, and disappearances. Despite the family's best efforts, no attempts to find any perpetrators- or even a single line of causality- linking the deaths were ever found. It was as if the Arden River, formerly under dominion by the Halloways- had betrayed its former masters. As it became observed that the deaths often happened under the cover of fog, rumor began to spread that the Mists had turned against the Halloways too. Fearful of the Mists' baleful influence, Steadfast became abandoned by the general public as the last of the Halloways locked themselves away in their ancestral home of Halloway House. Smythe was the last official ferryman until the post becoming defunct well over twenty-five years before the penning of the third Doomsday Gazetteer.

Despite Steadfast's lack of inhabitants, Smythe still delivers adventurers seeking the Halloways' lost treasures to the town. If the Smythe's Secret dread possibility is true, Smythe directly contributed to the town's decline through the murder of at least two Halloways and causing the doom of many travelers along the nearby Arden.

Now, beyond Smythe, only the undead are said to reside in Steadwall.