Appledale

Appledale is a small town of orchards and ovens in northeastern Gaiadra, where the seasons are measured in blossom and harvest, and most people live their whole lives within sight of where they were born. The name undersells the place: the orchards roll on for miles in every direction and grow far more than apples, and the wines and spirits pressed from that fruit are counted among the finest in Terrindral. A lone road leads in and out of town, and the carts that creak along it — laden with fruit, wine, and spirits — merge nearby with the Basket Road, carrying a taste of Appledale out into the world.

Everything in Appledale has more room than it strictly needs, and nothing moves as fast as it would in a city. The roads are packed earth, where a person on an urgent errand will still stop to chat; only the town square is laid with limestone against the mud. The houses wear thatch instead of city clay, their timbers cut from the forest that climbs the slopes of the nearby hills. Mornings smell of woodsmoke and baking bread, and harvest season smells of fruit at the presses — and beneath it all runs the unhurried music of the place: chickens and cattle, birds of every sort, and now and then a pig wandering somewhere it shouldn’t.