| abstract | - To the travelers eye Asbravn looks like lush farms with wood lots, well-kept barns, drainage ditches and ponds and tranquility Asbravn is the market center of the southern Vale farmers. Rather here they do their trading with each other and traveling merchants then in the cities where others will make a profit from their food. Buyers from Berdusk and Iriaebor come to the market each day. Its common rumor that the market of Asbravn fills bellies all along the Chionthar. Asbravn lies in a shallow valley inbetween the Dusk Road and the Uldoon Trail. A dilapidated temple to Ilmater faces the market, which is ringed by swap shops, a cooper and cratemaker, a wagonworks, shrines to Lliira, Lathander and Waukeen (nowadays a burnt-out shell abandoned by priest where local children play), the Tankard and Sheaf tavern and Board Laid Bare inn. The Riders in Red Cloaks, police and defenders, are well-known. A few experience warriors, occasionally bolstered mages and priest and local volunteers are sponsored by Iriaebor to safekeep the market and surrounding roads. They patrol in mounted dozens and often have to battle bandits, trolls, orcs, bugbears and predatory monsters in the southern Sunset Mountains. The Zhentarims are giving the Cloaks a hard time with poisonings and well-paid mercenary ambushes. In almost every family there is one who is chosen to be a Rider. Once they offered a post to any warrior, witch archers being particulary sought after. They got a pay rate of ten gold pieces per week. However after Abject Supplicant Asgar Tellendar started insisting on questioning applicants with the aid of the Harpers. Another not-quite-so troubling event is that a farmer is planning to breed long-horned horses. The only relic of a long past past is a old stout, cracked stone pillars, surmounted by crumbling horse heads. This pillar come from when the town was a city, Urdrath of the Horsemen. The Horsemen moved from Tunland long ago when they were nomads. Urdrath buried their dead in catacombs beneath the streets where now-aday unweary people pass.
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