Sandpoint

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About twelve hundred people on the Lost Coast of Varisia, between the Nettlewood and the sea, on the road between Magnimar and Riddleport. It calls itself the Light of the Lost Coast, mostly on the strength of a lighthouse it did not build and cannot read.

The ground rises from the low southern end up to the cathedral, which stands on the highest point in the town. There are bluffs on the north side and overlooking the river to the south and east. A wall runs across the neck of land at the north, with a gate in it. Two bridges cross the Turandarok.

The buildings that matter

Place	What it is
Sandpoint Cathedral	Father Zantus's house, rebuilt over the chapel that burned five years ago. The bell that raised the militia is here. It is stone, and it is a fallback position
The Sandpoint Garrison	Area 10, on Tower Street. Stone. Militia barracks above ground and the jail below. Tsuto Kaijitsu is in the cells
The town hall	Stone. The other fallback position, and Mayor Deverin's ground
The Rusty Dragon	Ameiko Kaijitsu's inn. Where the party is welcome and where Bethana runs the floor
The Glassworks	The Kaijitsu family works. There is a staircase in the basement that does not go to a cellar — see below
The Hagfish	Waterfront tavern, famous for a bet involving the water in its fish tank. Jargy Quinn's place
The general store	Ven Vinder's
The Sandpoint Boneyard	Area 2, the walled graveyard immediately east of the cathedral. This is where the town's dead go. Father Tobyn was buried here, and so, supposedly, was his daughter
The Old Light	The ruined lighthouse the town is named for. It is not a Sandpoint building. It was here first, by about ten thousand years
The lumber mill and the sawmill	Scarnetti-owned. The sawmill cut the timber for the scorpion
Junker's Edge	The cliff the town throws its rubbish off. Goblins were herded towards it in the last stage of the battle
The theatre	Sirdack's. Flightless plays there

What is underneath it

There is a staircase in the glassworks basement that leads down into worked stone thousands of years older than the town — a Thassilonian complex, laid out under Sandpoint by people who were dust before it had a name.

The party has been down there. They cleared it, or cleared what they found. Two things in it matter:

A well, of a kind nobody had seen before, with something thin that came out of it. The party killed the thing. They have since seen the same kind of well again, four miles up the coast — see Thistletop
A smugglers' tunnel running from the glassworks out to the cliff a couple of hundred yards beyond the wall, reachable from the water or by climbing down. The party blocked their own end very thoroughly and never controlled the far end

Not everything down there was opened. Some tunnels were collapsed and remain so.

The runes down there are the same builders' work as the ruins under Thistletop, and the ruin under Sandpoint is dedicated to wrath. See Thassilon.

The civilians of Sandpoint spent the North Gate battle in those tunnels. With one militiaman in a boat watching the far mouth, and a borrowed horn.

The Late Unpleasantness

Five years ago Sandpoint had a very bad stretch, and the town has agreed by unspoken consensus not to talk about it.

A serial killer the town called the Chopper
A series of arsons, one of which took the old chapel and killed Father Tobyn
A scandal attached to Tobyn's adopted daughter, Nualia, who was believed to have died in the same fire

It is not over. It is the reason the current enemy existed at all.

What the party did to the town

All of this happened in a single afternoon and evening, with the sheriff gone.

Measure	Detail
Militia raised	Cathedral bell rung; Lucian spoke from the steps with Father Zantus backing him. About forty names on the ledger, forty to fifty who can fight once assembled
Farms warned	Two boys of fifteen or sixteen volunteered, and sensibly asked for a writ first. The mayor stamped one
Treeline cut back	Loggers and foresters pushed the Tickwood away from the north wall
Tanner's Bridge part-dismantled	A twenty-foot section of planking pulled up, so it can be rebuilt cheaply. Junk piled in the middle of what remains
The southern crossing left standing	Deliberately. It is the bridge the relief column would come up, and it is the bridge they did come up
A scorpion built	A torsion bolt-thrower, off Brodert Quink's engineering drawings. Metal parts by Das Korvut; timber from the sawmill; wheeled mount. One to two days, where a catapult would have been three
A ballista sited	Covering the southern bridge, with some of the sheriff's trained men on it
Fallback positions	The stone buildings: town hall, garrison, cathedral. They do not burn
Scouts sent east	Sarah the nature acolyte, Joran with a longbow, and a couple of loggers who know the trees
Logistics	Ameiko on food, shelter and the sick, working with the mayor. Daverick on status reports
Wicker and hides	The tannery's baskets draped with tanned hides to fake up cover on the approach

And, during the battle itself, one thing the town will remember for a long time: the party set the treeline on fire and burned a small forest down. It worked. It also filled the sky with smoke for the rest of the siege, which cost the defenders their own scouting.

The cost

Two bridges and a stretch of woodland to put right
Jargy Quinn of the Hagfish is dead
At least one townsman burned to death on the north wall
Several guards down in the market square
A militia that has not stood down, because nobody gave the order

Who runs it

Mayor Kendra Deverin — elected, competent, and the reason the town has institutions to hand over in a crisis
Sheriff Belor Hemlock — the law and the garrison. Back, and back in post
Father Zantus — the cathedral, and the town's moral authority
The four families — Kaijitsu, Deverin, Valdemar and Scarnetti. The Kaijitsu are down to Ameiko. The Scarnetti are the ones with a reputation, and voted against Stone's militia commission

See The People of Sandpoint.

Getting anywhere else

Varisia. Click for full size. Sandpoint is on the Lost Coast, north-east of Magnimar.

The DM has ruled the following. Use them.

From Sandpoint	Distance	Time
Thistletop	4 miles north-east, on the coast	About an hour's ride; roughly three hours to row
The Tickwood, Ravenroost, the near hinterland	1–2 miles	There and back in a day on foot
Magnimar	50 miles south-west by the Lost Coast Road	Two days on foot, one long day at a hard ride
Riddleport	~200 miles north	About a week overland, two or three days by ship

There is nothing on the Lost Coast Road between Sandpoint and Magnimar. No towns, no villages, no waypoints. Anyone on that road is at one end, at the other, or out in the open. That is the whole reason Roland's errand worked: a column marches it in two days, a man on a fast horse does it in one, and there is nowhere for them to miss each other.

It is also why the entire Battle of Sandpoint had to be fought inside a five- or six-day window. Hemlock went two days down, spent a day or two finding men, and came two days back. He was not late. The war started early.