Rivernayve

This small Eriadoran village originally supported four riverside estate houses owned by wealthy merchants from Fornost. Selected by the mercantile families as a idyllic woodland paradise, featuring spring fishing and autumn hunting and hiking, the place seemed veritably plagued by frogs in hot weather. The villagers had developed the habit of moving their sick and elderly away from the river if they anticipated death ,both because of "bad air " and because the frogs seemed to crowd aroud a sick house so their voices frightened all inside.Understandably, the locals seldom ate frogs. The old owners of Rivernayve had resent the Fallohide Bolger and Cudding clans who had been land-clearing around their retreat, so the Hobbits had designated a grassy hill just south of town and overlooking the East Road as their official meeting and market place. These Hobbits viewed frogs as a culinary delicacy, even to the extent of naming their gathering place "Frogmoot " and the village, unofficially, "Frogmorton" However, Hobbit "gigging " parties along the river sometimes were frightened by frog choruses that sounded like mannish chanting, dying frogs that screamed mannish screams, and swarming frogs that clustered around hunters, just out of reach and making menacingly intense uproars.

Rivernayve in TA 1640
Cleff Bolger, elected leader of the Frogmorton Hobbits , visits Rivemayve frequently to negotiate disputes and deal with the village's small collection of artisans. He has found the folk of Frogmorton oddly close and apathetic in the past, but over this past winter, the aura of oppression and fatalism among the villagers, the sense of some common doom, has been growing more and more intense. Half the dogs and cats in town have vanished, and three fishermen have drowned in the river; no one in Rivemayve seems to care. Furthermore, a tinker Bolger deals with at the Frogmoot has been carrying an unusual number of letters intended for delivery to Fornost. The tinker thinks that the village elders are trying to bring all four of the Rivemayve masters and their families into town for a spring "festival of conclusion " whatever that might be. Curiously, none of the elders seems interested in contracting fo r work or supplies beyond the date of the summer solstice. Bolger has sent out messages in various directions, trying to locate Gandalf the Grey, but noone can say whether the wizard will get to Frogmorton in time to be of any use.