- See also: Crestwood
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Crestwood is a small village of no real consequence to the lords and ladies who ride through on their way to Val Royeaux or Denerim. The people are glad for visitors, however. Residents tend livestock and grow what crops they can, but their chief income comes from trade.
I was dining alone at the local inn, which is quaintly perched on the top of a dam, when I overheard the barman mention tunnels beneath the village. I was surprised to learn that a vast cave system riddles the land surrounding Crestwood. The locals told me tales of strange noises and eerie lights, of entire expeditions swallowed by underground fissures, of screams in the dark that come from nowhere and return, just as swiftly, to nothing.
I scoffed, then went for a stroll around the area. The night was clear, and I was wending down a pleasant glade in the hills when I heard a rasping hiss. Dropping my walking staff, I spied an overgrown opening to a small cavern. Were those footsteps padding away into the dark I heard then, or a startled animal?
That night, I let the candle in my room burn longer than usual.
—From the diary of a traveler from Val Chevin, dated three months before the start of the Fifth Blight
Three Trout Pond hides a sinkhole hundreds of yards deep. Darkspawn emerged from this and other caves to attack Crestwood during the Blight. The flood that wiped out Old Crestwood drowned the blighted ones, and the excess water created the pond we see today.
If the dam was not damaged, we would have never survived the darkspawn. Was the Maker's hand in this? I cannot believe He would be so purposefully cruel to His children, flawed though we are.
—From the memoirs of Sister Vaughn of Crestwood
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