Sheltered Meadows
Like many villages in the western forest Sheltered Meadows is largely self-sufficient, they produce their own food, clothing, tools, and has a blacksmith, midwife, and shaman. Trade with neighboring villages and the occasional itinerant trader supply whatever else they can't produce themselves.
Contact with the outside world is rare for Sheltered Meadows and the other villages, the mountains to the east are difficult to travel through so what news that comes through is treasured. The isolation has been more total in the past dozen years since the plague swept over the continent killing indiscriminately about a quarter of the population and nearly crippling the small villages of the western forest.
Currently there are about 20 families living in the village, most have lived there for generations except for 3 families from a nearby village that was all but wiped out by the plague and the young apprentice shaman who's parents came from over the mountains.
The Western Forest
The western forest covers about 30,000 square miles of the western side of the continent. To the west is the sea where there are a handful of fishing villages but the lack of good harbors limits the number and to the east are the mountains with their few passes, most travelers come from the south where there is a small marshy plain and several large fishing communities and sea access to the rest of the continent.
The western forest itself is a temperate forest consisting of a large number of conifers and hardy deciduous trees. Villages are widely spaced and largely self-sufficient, living in cleared meadows raising a few crops and livestock, and supplimenting what they raise with wild game and plants harvested from the forest.
