Caer Westphal, and the city for which it is named, is the seat of power on Snowdown.

The city’s harbour never lacks for docked Amnian ships, and the streets near the docks are teeming with dirty festhalls and dirtier taverns, all catering to the Amnian sailors and merchants who make the trip between Snowdown and Amn.

The Ffolk whose families have lived in Snowdown since before the Amnian occupation maintain homes in areas of the city far from the docks. The influx of finished goods and other luxuries from Amn, at mostly reasonable prices, keeps them satisfied to remain under Amn rule. The Ffolk have good jobs assisting Amn’s labourers and mercenaries in obtaining resources from the countryside and sending them back to the mainland. Only a few Ffolk who travel outside the cities and towns have noticed that the surrounding territory looks different from what they remember: Forests are being felled rapidly, rivers are being polluted, and much of the natural beauty they once beheld is being ruined to uncover resources and raw materials more quickly.

Lady Erliza rules Snowdown with an iron fist covered in a velvet glove. Those who have civil dealings with her swear on the Earthmother’s ample bosom that Lady Erliza is the nicest noble they have ever met. Those who anger her often think, just before they are secretly executed or fed to her vampire minions, that she ordered their deaths in the softest and most polite tones. Lady Erliza has a wide network of spies, assassins, and informants who feed her knowledge of happenings in her realm and beyond.

In a high tower of Caer Westphal, which is a smaller version of Caer Callidyrr, Lady Erliza holds her leverage against High King Derid. She sent a well-trained team of shadow creatures to infiltrate Derid’s home and kidnap his youngest child, the eight-year-old boy Owaren. Until the child can be rescued, Derid cannot afford to risk an open attack on Erliza’s forces.