Cinderholm
Quote
“The Flame Does Not Retreat.” , City motto, spoken at every changing of the guard
Population: ~120,000 Role: Western border fortress of The Ashen Dominion
Overview
Cinderholm is a fortress that grew into a city, or perhaps a city that was never allowed to stop being a fortress. Situated on the western border, facing the Scarwall and The Verdant Marches beyond, it is the staging ground for the Dominion’s military strength and the home of the Order of the Ashen Flame’s militant arm.
Built in concentric rings of fortification, walls within walls within walls, each ring higher than the last, the city resembles a stepped pyramid of grey stone and iron. The outermost ring is farmland and barracks. The innermost ring is the command citadel. Everything between is organized for defense: streets angled to channel attackers into kill zones, buildings with arrow slits and reinforced foundations, every citizen over fourteen with basic military training.
Notable Locations
The Command Citadel
The innermost ring, where Ashara Voss directs the Dominion’s western defense. A blocky, unlovely structure of grey stone and Ashite-reinforced iron, built for function over beauty. War rooms, intelligence offices, and the Commander’s quarters, which are as spartan as any soldier’s bunk. Voss leads from the front and lives like it.
The Ashguard Barracks
Home to three thousand elite heavy infantry equipped with Ashite-forged weapons and armor carrying a faint resonance of Solvaen’s order. An Ashguard soldier in full kit moves with mechanical precision, every strike and block executed with mathematical exactness. An advancing line of them, grey-armored, moving in perfect synchronization, silent except for the crunch of boots, is one of the most terrifying sights on a battlefield.
The Watch Towers
A chain of fortified towers stretching along the Scarwall, each within signaling distance of the next. Manned by rotating garrisons who spend their tours watching the thorns grow and listening to the sounds that come from within the Scarwall at night, sounds like breathing, like digestion, like something vast and vegetable dreaming.
The Ironmarket
Smaller and grimmer than Ostivaar’s Ashmarket, but essential. Military supplies, Ashite munitions, preserved food, and the hard liquor that keeps garrison morale from collapsing entirely. Off-duty soldiers, camp followers, and the merchants tough enough to trade on a border that might erupt at any time.
The Outer Farms
The outermost ring’s agricultural land, feeding the garrison. Grey-tinged crops under a muted sky. Farmers here work with one eye on the fields and one on the Scarwall. Every farmstead has a cellar reinforced enough to serve as a bunker.
Key NPCs
- Ashara Voss , Commander of the Order’s western forces. Tall, broad-shouldered, fifties, close-cropped grey hair, scar from left temple to jaw. Blunt, competent, impatient with politics. Devoted to the Dominion’s defense, not its theology. She has watched the Scarwall grow for fifteen years and is running out of patience.
GM Only
Voss is one of the few people in the Dominion’s leadership who is exactly what she appears to be, a loyal, competent commander genuinely trying to protect her nation. She is deeply suspicious of the Cinders and has begun her own quiet intelligence operation using trusted veterans rather than Delric Mourne’s agents. If the players need an ally in the power structure, Voss is the strongest candidate. She is also the most likely to start a war if left to her own devices.
- Captain Maren Dulwick , Voss’s adjutant and spymaster-in-training. Younger, sharp-eyed, responsible for Voss’s off-books intelligence network. Loyal to Voss personally, not the Church.
- Quartermaster Borin Thell , Manages Cinderholm’s supplies. Increasingly alarmed by Ashite shipment irregularities he can’t explain. Keeps meticulous records.
Adventure Hooks
- Lost Intelligence. Voss’s reports on Scarwall growth rates keep being “lost” by the Cinders before reaching the Hierarch. She wants someone outside the chain of command to carry her findings to Ostivaar directly, someone the Cinders won’t expect.
- The Diverted Shipment. A full caravan of Ashite, enough to supply the Ashguard for a season, has vanished on the road from the Spine. Voss suspects Marcher raiders. The Cinders suggest internal theft. Quartermaster Thell’s records show the shipment left the mines on schedule and simply never arrived.
GM Only
The shipment was diverted by Delric Mourne’s agents to a hidden location where the Ashite is fuel for an entropic ritual, an experiment in weaponizing Solvaen’s crystallized blood against his own legacy. Following the trail leads to a hidden Cinder compound and potentially the first hard evidence of Mourne’s true allegiance.
- The Afraid Forest. A Marcher scout was captured near the Scarwall gates. Under interrogation, she doesn’t offer military intelligence. She offers a warning: the forest on the Marches side is afraid. Trees are pulling their roots out of the ground and moving away from something. She doesn’t know what. She just knows that if the Marches are running from it, the Dominion should be worried too.
- Voss’s Gambit. The Commander is considering acting without the Hierarch’s authorization, a limited strike to burn back the Scarwall’s nearest growth. She needs intelligence from the Scar before she commits. She’s asking the party because she can’t trust anyone in uniform anymore.
Running Cinderholm
Cinderholm should feel like a place where competent people are being strangled by bureaucracy and sabotage. Voss is right about every threat she identifies, and wrong about none of them, but she cannot get anyone to listen. The frustration should be palpable. Every session here should leave players wanting to punch a Cinder agent.