Gilden Reach is the first threshold of House of Craft — a town shaped by learning, edged in metal filings and wooddust. It sits just beyond the low hills east of Glimmerhold, close enough to feel its pull, far enough not to be seen from its towers.
The streets are clean but not polished. Stone-set and slightly uneven, as if laid by a dozen different hands across decades. Workshops lean into one another here — smithies beside bookbinders, potters across from leatherworkers — their signs hand-painted or carved, not gilded. Smoke curls from chimneys laced with copper gutters, and apprentices scrub their hands in bowls left outside the doors.
The air smells of flux and bread, oil and dye. Most of the residents are fae, but not all. Humans live here too — especially those who keep the town turning: grocers, cloth-menders, wagon drivers, messengers. Some are retired craftspeople who never quite left the rhythm of it.
There’s no great square, but several small ones, where market stalls rise twice a week. There are a handful of quiet and respectable pubs. Though for those there to learn, there are no gathering halls or idle hours. Apprentices retire to their quarters when work ends — rest is earned, not filled. Even silence here is shaped with purpose.
It is not a place for brilliance, not yet — but it’s where it begins. Here, in the pause between who you were and who you might become, the work starts. Not toward beauty, not even toward mastery, but toward the act of making with care. That’s what Gilden Reach holds. A place to stretch, stumble, and begin again.