@TheEdVerse The town of Freedale, a few miles southeast from Shadowdale down the river Ashaba, doesn't seem to come up outside of the dubiously canon "Introduction to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons". If it does exist, do you have any supplemental notes on its history, role, etc.?
— Belial Lyka (@TimeBust) January 25, 2020
1)
Freedale was a short-lived, temporary town that sprang up at a former woodcutters’ clearance (they were after a stand of very good trees, and moved on when they’d harvested them all) as a base for a sustained effort to found 2)
…a new dale (or expand Shadowdale but have this southern arm of the cleared area have its own lord and government). It gained its name, wharves, and peak population circa 1359 DR, but dwindled and faded swiftly beginning in…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 25, 2020
3)
…1374 DR when Myth Drannor rose again (and the local strength of the elves with it, said elves frowning on a large, wholesale clearance of forest by mainly Sembian humans wanting to found more farms).
So the name and site still exist…# 4)
…in the late 1400s DR, but the forest is fast reclaiming the cleared areas, and only a few steadings (log cabins) are still in use, occupied by human families “farming” the forest lightly (harvesting mushrooms, edible mosses, …#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 25, 2020
5)
…and herbs for sale to peddlers and to caravans stopping at the Old Skull Inn in Shadowdale, etc.) rather than growing cash crops. It’s more of a named site in the forest now than a settlement, and lacks a lord, a watch, and 6)
…anyone at all left alive in the Realms today who’d still consider it a town. At least one dock is still usable.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 25, 2020