Elohim DeWitt

Cairn Cove is a cove of unusual size. The bay itself is nearly two kilometres across and almost perfectly round. Tall and sturdy cliffs shield the cove and the town from choppy waters and the worst of the ocean storms. The entrance to the cove, however, is relatively narrow, a mere twenty-three metres across. This is more than wide enough for the village’s small fleet of fishing boats, but too small for all but the smallest trading vessels.

After the cliffs, the land slopes downward until it reaches its low point at the small road that runs parallel to the sea. That is the only land route in and out of Cairn Cove. Afterwards, there’s one exceptionally large hill near the town, Tarry's Rest, and then the terrain becomes hilly and then later forested. No roads are leading in that direction, and any towns beyond the forest are unknown to the Cairn Cove, whose maps and geographic knowledge mostly concern the ocean and the coastline.

The primary feature of the area of the many cairns from which the town and cove both derive their name. Many are smaller, and built in more recent times for the residents of the town, but many are far older and larger, predating the town and whose origins are lost to time. Generally speaking in the cove, there’s a correlation between the size of the cairn and the importance of the person buried under (a local folk hero or village leader might get a cairn the size of a house, most people get a stack of stones about the same size as a human, and there are a handful of ancient cairns that about half the size of the nearby hills) though, being a fishing village, there are a fair few burial sites.

Then, there's the island in the middle of the cove.

When Witt was a child, he learnt about the island. It’s small and rocky and has a small stone building atop it. He was told that once upon a time it was a temple (though no one could agree to what god) but the worshippers had long since left. Now, it sits abandoned, protected from the worst of the elements by the walls of the cove, the salt spray very slowly eroding away its walls.

When he was first taught to sail, he was also taught that just because it was abandoned doesn’t mean it’s no longer sacred ground. And, since it’s the sacred ground of a deity which is not theirs, stepping on it would be trespassing. The sailing boats give it a respectful breath as they go from the town harbour to the mouth of the cove.

The population of the town is majority human… adjacent, humans, half-elves, half-orcs, tieflings that come from mostly human ancestry, etc etc. Still there’s being a town on a road, and a prosperous fishing village, there are a few of all the major (and several minor) of the races of the world represented in the population. Probably helps that it’s the land waypoint between two large cosmopolitan cities.

The population is also mostly static, people don’t need to move to or from Cairn Cove. Sometimes people get tired of fishing or the peaceful life and leave to seek new prospects, sometimes sailors will come, hearing of the safe harbour and consistent fish, and sometimes travellers will occasionally decide that Cairn Cove is the place to set down roots, but by and large, the people of Cairn Cove are the people born and raised there.

The sea and the fishing dictate the culture of the town. Its local calendar is based on when the fish can be caught, the same way farming villages base their calendars around the planting and the harvest.

The people of Cairn Cove are also deeply superstitious.

A lot of it is sailor superstitions. The entire town will simply refuse to go out to sea if the morning sky is red. No one ever harms an albatross. Almost every sailor bears some kind of symbol or trinket related to one sea or storm deity or another. Some of them are related to the grave (never disturbed unless you want the buried dead to haunt you, leave offerings of food at the grave of loved ones to appease their spirits, if you speak ill of the dead they will come for you).

Then, there are some more 'out there' superstitions.

It’s considered intensely bad luck (and a bad decision) to go out on the night of the full moon. To the point where, if for whatever reason a boat is stuck out on the night of the full moon, it’s considered safer to be out at sea for the night than to sail into the cove and return home. In fact “took a walk under the full moon” is the go-to excuse if anyone goes missing, regardless of when they went missing. Mostly used about pets disappearing though every few years a person (usually a child but occasion a full adult) vanishes having “taken a walk under the full moon”.

They have a Samhain-like celebration that is called the Soul-Tide which is held on the last full moon of the year before the weather goes bad for the winter. After this, for three months the town mostly lives off its food preserves rather than risk the open seas for fresh fish. According to tradition, it’s the day that the dead rise from their cairns and the fishermen of ages past return on the tide to visit the living. The stories say they seek to hook the souls of bad sailors and drag them to join them in the endless sea of souls.

Witt's aware he has a reputation among the town for being... a few fish short of catch. So he's aware that... people don't tell him everything. The way they might hush if he approaches, or use euphemisms around him. In the same way adults don't tell the children everything, he gets the impression that he's kept in the dark about a few aspects of town life.