Almost all diversions that do occur in Icewind Dale involve wagering on contests of otherwise unapplicable skills, under ever-changing rules. And every such wager is fueled by a great deal of intoxicants and boredom. In Lonelywood, the populace is obsessed with the sport of knife throwing. Their tests of accuracy have countless variations: Through the legs or over the shoulder, at greater and greater distances, standing on one leg atop a wobbly stool, and so on. But the measure of accuracy is almost always in sticking the point nearest the other competitor's left ear. 

In Easthaven, there are wagers on increasingly difficult feats of pickpocketing. In the mead hall of Goodmead, a fashionable wager is on the number of bees one can lure to their face and neck using dabs of honey and sitting very still, without letting loose the reflex to yelp and bat them all away. In Dougan's Hole, they have adapted the Ulutian traditional contest of ear pulling into something far less savory (and mentionable).  

In Caer-Konig, there is a man who wagers newcomers that they cannot guess the color he has in mind. After each guess, he simply exclaims, “Wrong!”, snatches the coin from the naif, and walks away. 

And if there is any small joy in completing this bothersome project, it is that it provides the first opportunity to write of the author’s personal ardor. One which is accessible to any dolt with functioning sets of legs and eyes:  Birdwatching!  The north is the nesting grounds of several species of birds witnessed by few of even the most well-traveled and knowledgeable bird enthusiasts. Many are endemic only to Icewind Dale. Well-sought after examples include the Lesser Obstreperous Sea Eagle, Xyronna's Knob-Finned Owl, Falu-Toed Eyestab, the Sturdy Cassowary, Displacer Vireo, Contemptuous Orcbait, Golemfowl, and the Kraken-Wattled Unnecessary Hook Heron. You will find extensive information on this subject in Chapter 14.

There are also the physical pursuits to improve and maintain one’s good health, such as climbing up a mountain, looking, turning around, then climbing back down. There are countless warm and hot springs to be discovered. The great expanses of unpeopled wilderness in the Dale are simply breathtaking.  The author can state with no uncertainty, that the absolute best thing to do in the Ten Towns, is to leave them. 

Ahh, midsummer in the Ten Towns! The market of Bryn Shander, high on its hill, comes alive with frenetic activity! The cattle drivers of Auckney arrive to sell fresh beef for exorbitant rates to the game-and-fish-weary. Flowers, both native and exotic, are bundled and sold for a copper. Knitted together, they're worn in a crown or necklace by the young and beautiful and carefree. The children laugh and run and hawk spruce tips and fiddleheads, gathered from outside the gate. The southern itinerant troupes stage plays in the open air, or nudge the crowds into singing along on a ribald ballad. Arrows, knives, and axes fly through the air in contests of skill. There are jugglers and artists.  Scrimshanders sell their magnificent art: Knucklehead jawbones, expertly carved in minute detail to reveal dragons, axebeaks, dog teams racing over a hillock, or perhaps the very fish from which the bone derived.

Strings of colorful flags flap in the gentle breezes blowing in from the south, bringing the scent of the blooming heather. With every breeze, a new caravan of pilgrims seems to arrive. They come every few days in the summer, and inject the city with their enthusiasm, their goods, their coins. Everyone wears a genuine smile and greets their fellow citizens with warmth and laughter and cheer. Bryn Shander is alive!  

And here you are, experiencing it all! Despite those naysayers back home who tried to convince you that you were a fool and would soon return -- tail between legs (provided you weren't murdered first) -- you've never felt that you belonged in a place more. Even your own mother doubted you!  But the hoi polloi back home have no idea nor interest in what is outside their own city walls and monotonous lives. They have no courage, no zest for life! And yet, their ignrorance gave them no pause in dispensing advice. Those knaves spoke of the loneliness and desperation you would find here yet, within moments of arriving a tenday ago, you met your now-closest friends: Brother and sister, Rogert and Annabez Lyttleburye.  Now, you can't remember ever being happier!

…

As the days proceed, you accumulate layers of clothing, slowly at first, then en masse. They weigh you down until they seem to drown you in your increasingly vain attempt to retain your own heat. You laugh out loud at the thought of how you must look. It's clothing you did not have, and had to purchase for ever-rising prices. Rogert had assured you he had plenty of warm clothes for you.

How much gold do I have left? I'm down to only silver?

The gentle breezes have turned to whisking winds. They are relentless.

"It is my heat!" you scream one day at the market, "You cannot have it, Wind!" 

The vendors don’t look up at you, only shake their heads and go about their business.

What was that? I've never screamed to the wind before.

The smiles in the marketplace have slowly been replaced by scowls. This is not a market for flowers now, only thorns. The constant woodsmoke in the wind makes your lungs cough and your head ache.  You cannot escape its acrid scent.

The market frosts over and seems to dessicate until the only tradesmen left are scrimshander after scrimshander. Scrimshaw! That stupid-most “craft” of carving stinking fishbone into smaller pieces of stinking fishbone!

Why was she always touching him so? Twirling his hair, kissing his cheeks? It is a strange sisterly love she demonstrates. But they are from Triboar, afterall.

...

The Grease Stain was right, you do come back. "Just delivering packages" does not last long.

The first time, you only hold a man's elbows behind him, as a half-orc (the very one who stole your gruel!) delivers blow after blow to the furrier who borrowed what he could not pay back. It's easy work, the furrier knows better than to squirm or try to run. 

A ten-day later, the half-orc is nowhere to be found, but you have a new partner, and she will be holding back elbows now. The cold assures you feel no pain as you pulverize your middle knuckle on the bridge of the nose of a rugmaker who refused to pay for "insurance".  

"You need to learn to hit better," your partner informs you.

The Grease Stain saw to it that you had enough gold to let a room for the rest of the winter. You'll pay it back in time, he tells you. You know what happens to those who don't repay their debts. 

You lie in a actual bed for the first time since you arrived here almost six months ago, though it brings you no satisfaction. You can't remember when you started to sob. You no longer curse the Lyttleburyes as you futilely attempt to sleep. It was not their fault, you realize. They did only what they needed to do to survive, just as you do now.  

No, you curse Icewind Dale herself, that cruelest of mistresses. She lured you in with the sight of her, her smell, the excitement of an exotic and enchanting summer. She pulled you to her, until you could not imagine any other lover. It was only when you traded away every other option, idea, and dream for her, that she showed her true, wicked self. 

“Cold” does not begin to describe her.

Father's Seat, a City Among Giants. Huckmuck Wiss and Daughters. Neverwinter. 1447

A Mythistory of the Frozenfar. Huckmuck Wiss and Daughters. Neverwinter. 1450

They Did Not Think That Through: The Talossan Crusade for the Far North. Falaxity House. Waterdeep. 1453

A Thousand Nights and One Night and Morning and Most of One Afternoon: Nearly Three Years of Archeological Expeditions in the Icewind Dale. Trollclaw Publishers. Waterdeep. 1458

Bremen: A Rageous Sewer!

Positioned at the elbow Maer Dualdon and the Shaengarne River, Bremen is the westernmost settlement of Ten Towns. Sporting, what at first glance appears to be, one tavern per capita, residents thrive not only on drinking to the point of obstupescence, but also fishing while drunk, prospecting while hungover, and treasure-hunting when cumulative bar tabs inevitably result in destitution. 

In springtime, the river regularly floods and leaves behind "treasure" and, almost as commonly, the driftwood-entangled, bloated corpses of previous tavern patrons. Days or weeks after being tipsily tossed from boats in an effort to rid the evidence of potatory homicide, these bodies predictably find their eternal resting place to be of a somewhat more temporary nature.

There are a number of ruins of interest near Bremen, including a temple built to Talos and the crenelations of the sunken tower of Morenius (c. 1270). 

The Cheaping Town of Bryn Shander

The largest and most populous of the Ten Towns, Bryn Shander is considered something of a trading hub by those who have never left Bryn Shander. Set behind a circular palisade, it is a post and cross town, linking to the populated (read: civilized) cities of the Sword Coast, and to the other nine towns of the Dale. It is the only settlement in the Ten Towns to not be located on a navigable waterway. Built there perhaps to demonstrate its founders’ rigid obstinacy against the fundamental principle of building a town on a navigable waterway.

Set on a hilltop, the walls do little to shelter the town from the constant, brutal winds. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the hill's highest point and the center of town: the marketplace. Tradition has it that merchants must tie or weigh down everything they hope to sell, lest it be lost to a wayward gale.  Though the actual reasons for this probably have more to do with thwarting ubiquitous theft.

The Castle Town of Caer-Dineval

Almost every named feature in or near this town, geographical or constructed, pays homage to the Dinev Family: Aristocratic dissidents of Comyr who first settled in the area in 1050. The surname is found not only in the name of the caer and its town, but also its lakeside cliffs, its largest inn, two of three piers, one of two streets, and the tannery. At the Uphill Climb, the name is used for both a cocktail and a surprisingly complex petit fours salés made with knucklehead roe.

 It seems every-other child born to this town is given Dinev as their middle, if not first, name. The author counted no fewer than seven fishing boats named "Svoboda D", "The Countess", or some other variant.

This is all to say, that this town exists as a strange and forgetful tribute to a cruel and inbred family that ended their lineage, emaciated and insane, mostly likely eating the remains of their consanguineal lovers, as they starved to death one-by-one, barricaded away from rapacious orcs outside their castle-cum-coffin. All this, after less than a decade of a brutal and incompetent rule, during which the family failed to establish any real economic foothold or political success. 

But strange and forgetful is the nature of history for those who fail to study it, and it is fair to say that few in these lands study much of anything.  

Caer-Konig

Despite the name, Caer-Konig no longer has a castle, as it was destroyed by orcs long ago. Now it is merely a small semicircular town surrounding a small harbor on the shore of Lac Dinneshere. It is most notable for its squabbles with the nearby Caer-Dineval, and the fact that it was briefly headed by a leader of the barbarian Elk Tribe 

Dougan’s Hole: An Idiot’s Delight!

This town (a term used here for the sake of consistency, and with a great deal of exaggeration and patronizing kindness) is the smallest of the ten. Dougan’s Hole is no more than a handful of rat-trap shacks and shabby piers, jutting into the Redwaters. Its residents, while not gazing at their own elbows, fish and fight one another to win the hand in marriage of their most attractive relations (often indicated by the greatest number of remaining, un-blackened teeth).

Though the name certainly originated with the town founder, Dougan Dubrace, there are two schools of toponymic thought on the use of the word "Hole". The more widely accepted theory is that it refers to a fishing hole favored by Dubrace. The second theory is most easily explained in a tavern setting after several rounds of ale.

Dougan’s Hole is notable only for its proximity to a group of standing stones known as The Twenty Stones of Thruum (or Thruun), an archaic ruin of unknown origin.

Easthaven

Easthaven is one of the largest settlements in Icewind Dale, having grown out of a small shanty town on the shores of Lac Dinneshere. Eventually, the paving of the Eastway trade road connected it to Bryn Shander, and allowed it to prosper as a trade city as well as a typical Dale fishing village.

It has also had a long and colorful history.

Good Mead 

Located on the shores of the Redwaters, Good Mead was founded by the few remainders of a massive exodus from Chult who simply kept traveling north as the rest of their diaspora settled along the southern and maritime climes of Sword Coast. 

The original Chultans of Good Mead brought with them the proud tradition of mead-making. Through what must have been great effort and care over thousands of miles and many years, a number of Chultan flowering vines that give their mead its characteristic taste also survived the journey. The mead hall, built atop a hot spring, traps the heat and humidity neccesary for these vines and bees to flourish in their subarctic home.

For most of the town's history, the mead was enjoyed almost solely by those immigrants and their offspring. Intermingling with the local Reghed populations, the town grew, and like the other wearisome towns of the Dale, based its economy on fishing.  

The nature of the Redwaters however, made that economic endeavour more difficult. The lake freezes over more thoroughly, earlier, and for a longer duration than the other lakes, shortening the fishing season. In the last half century, even the brief summer seasons have had an inexplicable decrease in catch. In the last decade, unlike the dullards of Dougan's Hole, Good Mead has adapted their economy through the introduction of two new industries: The export of both mead and lumber.

The town also features a rather impressive shrine to Tempos (Tempus), the foundations of which predate the town founding and is of mysterious origin, as they were certainly not built by Reghed hands.  

Lonelywood - Does a More Idyllic Den of Iniquity Exist?

Settled into the Lonelywood Forest on the edge of lake Maer Dualdon, Lonelywood is inhabited primarily by those looking to get as far away as possible from the law, outlaws, or in-laws of places to the distant south, and they cannot get much farther away than this. This little town is the northernmost permanent settlement in all of the Realms, as far as this author is aware. 

Despite being inhabited mostly by criminals, the town enjoys a rather organzied and peaceful existence. Although there is a (mostly free and fairly) elected speaker, difficult individuals are dealt with through a system of self-regulation having little to do with official goverment. Criminality and criminal enterprise are well tolerated, if not celebrated, provided their presence does not upset the harmony of the town. "Crime" and "trouble" are seperate concepts. There is no jail or constable here. The chief deterrent against trouble is the avoidance of being lynched and buried in the Lonelywoods. Town elders determine when a troublemaker has overstayed Lonelywood’s welcome, and see to it that they are removed permanently in one way or another. A troublemaker’s demise is often referered to with the euphemism of [having] "gone for a walk in the woods.” The murder of obstinate troublemakers is an open secret.

Although the town has a historic record of being regularly raided by outsiders, for the time being, it is thriving. To the north where the Shaengarne tributary meets Maer Dualdon, the Ralph Bremen logging camp provides a thriving timber industry for the “Western Five” towns and beyond.

Targos: A Hermit Amongst Hermits

Once the main hub of Icewind Dale, the role of Targos among the Ten Towns has seen a gradual decline in fortunes.

In the spring of 1312, an airship crashed into Targos setting it aflame and killing dozens. The fact that, in this tremendous expanse of vast unpeopled wilderness, something as unheard of as an airship would crash here, despite infinitesimal odds, serves as the perfect metaphor of the general luck and prosperity of this town.  

Later that year even, the town barely survived a goblin siege. Like most of the Ten Towns, Targos has a history of attempted sieges by orcs and Reghedmen, but few if any others hold the distinction of being bombarded with magical rays of sunlight, as they were in 1356.

It is a small wonder the town is distrustful of outsiders. The log palisades surrounding the town, extend even into the waters to surround the harbor.  Although they

Termalaine: A Brief Reprieve

If one must be in Icewind Dale, perservere to be in Termalaine. To say it is the most beautiful would only be to dally with the nature of superaltives to avoid saying it is the least ugly, but the town is not entirely bereft of charm. Named for its mining of tourmaline gems, which can be found in nearby caves.