A WALKING TOUR OF IMMERSEA (Patreon)

(In preparation for our upcoming #RealmsLore episode on Cormyr)

Introduction to Immersea
A tiny farming and fishing village at the westernmost tip of the Wyvernwater in Cormyr, Immersea is best known as the seat of the Wyvernspur noble family, and a place where the folk of Suzail in need of a vacation can rent a boat for a day of swimming or fishing. Immer is a town, not a city, though some of its merchants like to speak of it as a city when they’re elsewhere trading, to make it seem larger and more important than it is.

There’s a map of Immersea circa 1358 DR in Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb’s 1990 Realms novel The Wyvern’s Spur that is pretty faithful to my original, and the wayfarer unfamiliar with the town can refer to it as they take our walking tour. (My original map is reproduced in colour in the Cormyr 2nd Edition Realms accessory.)

Streets of Immersea

• Calantar’s Way: the main overland highway passing through Immersea. It winds down the eastern side of the map from near the NE corner to about a third of the way west from the SE corner of the map, along the map’s bottom edge.
• Starwater Road: begins in a T-junction with Calantar’s Way in “The Hard” (hardpacked open dirt-and-gravel loading and unloading and boat and net storage area) just west of the docks, and runs west across the map and off it, heading into the King’s Forest.
• Immer Lane: begins in a T-junction with Calantar’s Way (the second such junction N of the moot of Starwater Road and Calantar’s Way) and parallels the Starwater Road, forming the high street (main street) of Immersea as it does so, before it curves SW and crosses over the Starwater Road to climb Spring Hill in a spiral, and end at the source (rising, but long ago protected by the townsfolk by building a well-roof and stone cladding around it) of the Immer Stream.
• Redstone Lane: begins in a T-junction with Calantar’s Way at the S edge of “built-up” Immersea, and runs between the twin lion-statue-roofed gatehouses NW to the gates of Redstone Castle, branching SW to access its yard; N to the pumphouse (nigh the Immer Stream); and W off that N branch to run past the granary, stables, and carriage shed.
• Dathur’s Lane: begins in a T-junction with Calantar’s Way between Redstone Lane and the Immer Stream, and hooks NW to access a stables (former barn, W side on the banks of the stream) and three homes.
  Dathur Mahalrym was a long-ago Purple Dragon officer who retired to Immersea and became a local builder; he lived in the largest of those three homes, and owned the barn, but died back in 1326 DR. There are still Mahalryms in Immersea, Yeoman Bridge, and along the Immer Shore (S shore of the Wyvernwater E of Immersea, along the Blister Trail) today.
• Halahanthra’s Ride: begins in a T-junction with Calantar’s Way between the Starwater Road and Immer Lane, runs W and then curves N and then NW, crossing Immer Lane and running to a dead end at the Hethcanter farm (Imra Danae, who owned it in the 1300s DR and was the last Danae daughter, married Baerim Hethcanter; the current matriarch is Ildra Hethcanter, her great-granddaughter).
  Halahanthra Dree was a local heroine of the late 1200s DR, a Purple Dragon officer who left the army with the blessing of the Crown after she refused the advances of several nobles in succession, who were angered and made life in service alongside them difficult. Always good with a sword and in the saddle, Halahanthra became a noted boar-hunter and an adventurer for hire, and often settled disputes in Immersea when folk didn’t want to involve the local lord or Purple Dragon garrison.
• The Moonride: begins in a T-junction with Halahanthra’s Ride and runs west to a fork, the N leg becoming a dead-end at Lluth’s farm, and the W leg ending at what was the “mansion” of Embrar Narnuth (a local trader in the 1300s, who built a grand house that was oversized so he could store wares he’d imported but not yet sold; he called it a mansion but some locals called it “Embrar’s Barn”); after his death, it passed through several owners and got rebuilt into its current incarnation: the smithy and home of Ambaerand Tansreth (blacksmith who’s good enough to make sturdy but not decorative armor and swords).
  It got its name for two Lluth sisters (who died of old age in the early 1300s) who were werehorses; on bright moonlit nights, to “get out the kinks and aches” of farming, they would take turns riding each other, at full gallop, along this street, which until then had been known merely as “the Back Lane.”
• Bowshot Lane: easternmost of the two short cross-streets linking the Moonride with Immer Lane. Named for the activities of Ansurl Felthorn, an archer in the Purple Dragons back in the reign of King Duar dwelt in a now-vanished steading (cottage) at the N end of this lane, and often loosed shafts down it at a target on the side of his brother’s coach, parked at the S end outside Beldred Felthorn’s steading (also gone now; the area is much more built-up today). There are no Felthorns left in Immersea now, but there are plenty in Gladehap.
• Lhantaravur’s Lane: westernmost of the two short cross-streets linking the Moonride with Immer Lane. Named for Inskeld Lhantaravur, a handsome and popular-with-the-ladies local alchemist who came from Turmish and lived in Immersea in the mid 1300s. At one point he had six lovers on the go at once, four local, a merchant’s wife in Arabel and a young noblewoman of Suzail; they all knew of each other and didn’t seem to mind. Lhantaravur was very good at painkilling quaffs and at perfumes, grew very wealthy and was kept busy supplying passing merchants who’d buy all of both he could make, and ended up hiring five adventuring bands full time to be his ingredient-gatherers all over Cormyr, the Dales, and upcountry Sembia. Local lore is that Lhantaravur died of overwork in the end, and that he was a friend of the Crown, visited by the Princess Alusair whenever she passed through Immersea
• Woodwove Lane: runs S off the Starwater Road at the W edge of built-up Immersea, right into a stand of trees. It’s where the locals cut wood and square and dress it into timbers (and “the leavings” into firewood), and is an ever-longer dead-end as woodcutting extends it deeper and deeper into the Launth Woods, formerly an arm of the King’s Forest.
  The Woodwoves are the family of local woodcutters who own the N end of the Launth Woods, and live therein. Baerit and Chuntan are the unmarried brothers who currently head the family (surrounded by plenty of younger married nieces and nephews).
• Ambrel Lane: runs E off Calantar’s Way between Dathur’s Lane and the Immer Stream, to end in a gravel coach-circle in front of the Immersea Stables (Korvon Dzulas died in the chaos of the Spellplague, and today the Stables is run by the Taskaunt family, who dwell in the grand home immediately S of the Lane. Ambrel Taskaunt was a self-made merchant from Suzail who retired to Immersea when rivals from Westgate hired toughs to take his life one too many times, and he decided that horsebreeding and wagon-fleet owning were better ways to spend his time. It was the best decision he made; in Immersea, he made even more coin, and the Taskaunts became what they are today: a respected, wealthy leading local family who own property and small local businesses all over Cormyr, transport farm produce from eastern Cormyr to city buyers in Suzail, Marsember, and Daerlun, and are heavily involved in settling and developing westernmost Cormyr (along the High Road west of the Stormhorns).
• Harbittur Lane: begins at the moot of Calantar’s Way and the Starwater Road, and runs SE across Immer Stream into the Cormaeril lands.
  Harbittur was an early Cormaeril, an affable, strong, large man of legendary appetites and energy, who expanded his family martial and farming skills into becoming expert stonemasons and builders who owned several small local quarries. He cut and laid down the huge flagstones that underpave most of Immersea’s gravel or cobble streets, and most of these still survive more than a century after his death (of heartstop, while laughing over his sixteenth goblet of wine, at a family feast in his eighty-ninth year). Harbittur Lane is the best-surfaced road in Immersea, and is lined with tall lamp-posts; when the Cormaerils are in the mood (or when fogs off the Wyvernwater are particularly bad and they’re expecting guests), they use pulleys to raise oil-lamp cages to the tops of these, to light the entire length of Harbittur Lane from its stone arch bridge over the Immer up the hill to the gates of High Towers.
• Chulsanth’s Lane: sometimes locally called “Fishstink Street,” thanks to fishermen tossing rotting fishheads and fins along it as they leave the docks, this runs NE off Calantar’s Way, paralleling the banks of the Wyvernwater, to a dead-end at what used to be the town smithy, but is now Carra Chulsanth’s Carriageworks (still a smithy, but that’s only part of a larger wagonmaking shop). Carra Chulsanth hails from Marsember by way of Suzail, and is a lively-tongued, energetic, darkly beautiful middle-aged woman who makes closed coaches, open carriages, and goods and farm wagons for all, employing over forty local folk to do so. She pays well and has become well-liked, though she had a rough beginning in local society because of her “I want my own way, and I’ll have it!” ambitions and fearless dominance of situations and disputes. Her conveyances are considered study and dependable and first-rate, and many are grateful to her for providing loaner vehicles and doing all-hours repairs when needs arise—and personally heading the crews that travel to do so. She’s a hands-on, “help me” boss, not a “sit and count coin with hands never dirtied by work” owner.

Map Notes
The Immer Trail and Blister Trail don’t appear on the Immersea map; they’re JUST off its edge, to the N and S respectively. The lanes running off Calantar’s Way in the NE corner of the map are nameless, as they’re the entrances to local farms and run nowhere else.