In the year 1340 DR, known as the Year of the Bow, the world of Toril is a place of ancient, suffocating beauty and ever-present dread. Beyond the flickering torchlight of civilization, the Forgotten Realms are a graveyard of fallen empires, where the bones of forgotten gods and the ruins of once-great kingdoms like Netheril lie buried beneath the shifting sands and tangled forests.
In this era, the high-magic wonders of the past have curdled into dangerous relics, and the shadow of the Underdark feels closer than ever as the drow Drizzt Do’Urden first ventures into the blinding light of the surface world.
At the heart of this valley sits Westbridge, a small, wind-battered village that clings to the intersection of the Long Road and the Stone Trail. In 1340 DR, it is a town of mud-slicked streets and low-slung stone buildings, dominated by the ambitious shadow of the halfling merchant Ghaliver Longstocking. The air here smells of damp wool and woodsmoke, and the locals are a hard, quiet folk who know better than to look too long toward the nearby Kryptgarden Forest, where things that should be dead are often seen moving amongst the trees.
Westbridge's isolation is its only true defense, but even that is failing as rumors of a cult worshipping Tharizdun stir in the south and the Cult of the Dragon clashes with Sembian forces on distant rivers. The town's few comforts—the cozy hearth of the Happy Halfling inn or the strong, bitter ales of the Westbridge Brewers—feel like thin shields against the encroaching gloom. Travellers arrive with pale faces, telling of "strange graves" found by shepherds in the Sumber Hills and caravan guards who vanished between one campfire and the next.
To the south, the village of Red Larch serves as a bustling, nervous crossroads where secrets are traded as often as grain. In 1340 DR, it is a town of hidden agendas, where the wealthy and the desperate alike gather at the Swinging Sword to whisper of the "Believers" and the ancient, stone-buried mysteries that pulse beneath the valley's soil. The town’s stone quarries offer a brutal livelihood, but the deeper they dig, the more they risk unearthing the long-buried architectural nightmares of the dwarven kingdom of Besilmer.
Further east, the Stone Bridge—a massive, two-mile-long dwarven engineering marvel—arcs over the Dessarin River like a fossilized spine. This ancient landmark, built by the dwarves of Besilmer, is a site of both awe and terror; it is said that to cross it at night is to invite the gaze of the Elder Eye or worse. Nearby, the Bargewright Inn sits like a vulture on the river’s edge, its walls thick with the grime of a thousand desperate travellers and the schemes of the Zhentarim.
This is the Dessarin Valley of 1340 DR: a land of "old bones" where the past refuses to stay buried. From the fortified gardens of Goldenfields to the giant-harassed ranches of Beliard, every settlement is an island in a sea of encroaching shadow. As the year of the bow begins, the people of the notable settlements lock their doors and pray to gods who may be too busy elsewhere, for they know that in the Realms, the "forgotten" things have a way of remembering who once walked their halls.
