Briary

The Briary was a crossroads village with a good side road leading to Rendwalk and through the White Downs on to the Whitescarp Trail. In better days, disreputable folk got no closer to Rendwalk , a haven of the wealthy , than the Briary , only two miles up the road. Since the gentry did not mind associating with disreputable people when taking their rest, the Briary became , in its small , woodland way , a center for vice. Now a shadow of its former self, it boasted a curious maze of hedgerows , buried in the woods , grown from the same Elvish hawthorn that bound the frontier of Cardolan north of the Barrow Downs. The hedgerows were intended to "contain " and shield the Briary's nastier business. N w most just seemed to wander through the woods, the establishments they once protected long forgotten. Mixed in with them, and gone equally wild , were cunning herbs and other plants , once grown in gardens and used to create noxious drugs and dubious potions of love. A few Elves, carried the only remaining clear memories of the most interesting of these herbs and could occasionally be found wandering the mazes , indulging themselves.