LostVale guide

Towns, trade and the watch

Lordships, cities, towns and hamlets; the townsfolk's days; talking, rumours and directions; merchants and their prices; inns and priests; crime, bounties and the watch; and commissions from the guild board, the lords and the merchants.

Lordships and settlements

The land is held in lordships of about 20 km. Each has:

• a seat: a walled city where rich land meets a great river or the sea, else a town;
• towns and hamlets on good ground;
• a lord, named in the manner of the region’s people (a Thane or Mormaer, a Laird or Earl, an Arglwydd or Tywysog, a Thegn or Ealdorman, a Rí or Banríon) with a house banner.

A guild town stands within easy reach of the world’s first landing, and every city, and every town within 25 km of the landing, keeps an adventurers’ guild.

How a town is built

Each grows from a square or green along streets to where its roads arrive, with lanes, a ring street in a city, a castle in its bailey, city walls with gatehouses or a town palisade, and fields with hedges or drystone dykes outside. Lots take the hall or keep, the chapel, the inn, the guild, the watch-house with its gaol, the shops of the trades, then houses, farms and barns.

Every settlement is raised in the vernacular of its people (the table below lists the ten peoples): timber frame over wattle or render, cob, flint, slate, granite, limestone, sandstone and brick, under thatch of straw, reed or heather, slate, clay tile, oak shingle, stone slates or turf; gables, hips, crow-stepped gables, jetties, roundhouses and longhouses; glazed or shuttered windows, chimneys and hearths, stairs and lofts. Every room is furnished.

Townsfolk and their days

Every resident has a home, a bed, a trade or a duty and a face. They wake, eat, open shop, keep market stalls on market day, work the fields, stand the day or night watch at the gates or walk patrols, drill in the guild yard, hold court from the high seat, gather on the square and in the inn, pray on the rest day, play, sit out on benches and go to bed. Rain drives them indoors and raiders send them running home.

Folk age with the world’s years: children grow up, couples marry, the old leave the heavy work, everyone dies in time, and newcomers take the empty places. Settlements mend what is broken (by raiders’ fires, siege shot, hail or your pick) a little each working day.

Talking

Walk up to someone and press E, then choose replies with 1 to 9. People greet you by their role, the hour and the weather (and your faith, and theirs). Ask for rumours of real places near by, or directions. Replies lead to trade, rooms, fines and the cells, pardons, blessings and commissions.

Trade

Merchants of each trade sell what their trade’s stations make, within the settlement’s level, and buy what their trade uses: clothiers the loom’s clothing, armourers armour, smiths tools and weapons, loremasters tomes and wands, and so on (the table below lists every trade).

• Stock and purses restock every three days. A merchant can only buy as far as their purse goes.
• Prices follow an item’s worth, its quality and its wear, and your standing with the lordship. Charisma and the Envoy’s trading steps get you better prices.
• Innkeepers let rooms (and with the tale-telling ability, a tale buys your bed and board).
• Priests bless and heal. Folk of the other faith charge you more.
• Ostlers sell and keep horses at livery; farmers sell and buy livestock.
• Shops have their stations set up, and you may craft at them.

Crime and the watch

Theft (of a settlement’s furnishings, or from a house’s cupboards and barrels), trespass in a private house by night, assault and murder are crimes, but only if someone sees them. A crime seen sets a bounty with the lordship and costs standing. Killing a townsperson’s horse, breaking walls with a siege engine and harming folk are crimes too.

The watch knows a wanted face. Guards come in tiers, each stronger: watchmen in hamlets, the town watch, the city watch, and the lords’ household guard. When they close in to arrest you, you can:

• pay the fine;
• serve time in the cells;
• try a bribe;
• or resist.

With the Envoy’s abilities you can talk the watch into lessening a fine, plead a lord’s mercy for half the price of a pardon, and once your name is known bid the watch stand aside. Lords pardon for gold. Guards fall on the violent, give up a chase that runs too far, and turn out against raiders. Townsfolk cry out and run for home.

Commissions

Work comes from three places:

• the adventurers’ guild board, renewed every two days (offers lapse after three);
• the lords, who grant audiences, take gifts, pardon for gold, and give charges against the strongholds of their realm with arms from their armouries;
• the small asks of merchants and innkeepers.

Commissions send you to clear a site, recover an heirloom from a hoard, thin the beasts of the land, hunt a named quarry, carry a letter to another town, or bring materials. They pay in coin, experience, standing and sometimes gear (more with the Envoy’s gold from commissions).

The journal (J) tracks your commissions with a bearing to follow, your standing and any bounties by lordship.

The tables below list the trades and the peoples of the Isles, read from the game’s own content.

Written from the game's source and content as of commit 02e81b2 (2026-11-01).