Yeah, in the homebrew worlds I've played in and built, people don't live outside the walls often. Those that do tend to die to things like raiding kobold parties.

~SE++

Aye but you gotta farm somewhere!

If Winterhaven were presented as an agrarian village, rather than a village in the wilderness, the manor map itself would be fairly accurate. Most of that 977 population would be able to be rural agrarian farmers outside of the estate walls. The Area Map paints a dissonant picture, of a Winterhaven that sits in the still forested wilderness, where the people would need to be living inside the city walls. Ignoring that conflict, we can certainly analyze the village a bit.

So, let's keep going with the agrarian village idea of Winterhaven. With almost 1,000 people, Winterhaven as a whole (beyond the estate proper) occupies something a little less than a 2 mile radius. On average, each of these rural families has many acres to work (something like 20 acres per family of both tilled fields and pastures, which is the primary responsibility of the serfs and peasants; the majority of that land is actually owned by the Lord). You might think this would make the nearest neighbor outside the walls of Winterhaven quite a-ways away, but that's not necessarily true. Really, outside of the estate, there are two primary setups.

1) The rural farmers live in houses along either side of a few roads. Something like this. Or this. Those are both maps of actual villages (here's what the latter looked like some time later). For Winterhaven, with its 1,000 people, there may be upwards of 3-4 of these mostly linear roads stretching outward from the estate.

2) The farmers' houses are primarily clustered, with farms extending radially outward. Something more like this. Or this. 1,000 is actually rather large for a single radially-constructed village. There are possibly even a few separate entities that might be considered villages of their own right entirely within Winterhaven's circle of influence of about 2 miles. Each of those may consider upwards of 100 people as it's population. Lord Padraig may be the rightful landowner of most of those villages, too, even if they have their own free mayors.

Since I sorely lack any sort of photoshop/gimp skills, and I don't want to deal with a scanner right now, here's an image of something that might be more "to scale." The 6 tiny houses and single tenement within the estate walls is rather accurate. It's actually a bit shocking Lord Padraig even has such robust walls around his Manor Estate. While the palisades are expected, the stone walls almost as thick as his manor is deep are remarkable. The reason for that might be because of the dangers outside his walls. That makes sense, given the depiction of the Area Map.

If Winterhaven were agrarian (either of the two setups), about 50% of that entire Area Map would be farmland, not forest. Farms would stretch completely to the Keep itself. But Winterhaven isn't agrarian; according to that map, it's in the wilds. It's going to be set up in a manner that's more similar to something older than the "English village." Here's an alright example. Things would be much more centralized; the townsfolk would hunt and trap for most of their protein; and they would have to rely on the King's Road to provide an acceptable trade route for bartering skins and probably precious ore and such for most of their grain.

In the "wilderness" case, the central map for the village should really be a bit larger with about triple the number of houses and another tenement, even though a decently-sized portion of the population would still live in cabins outside the walls proper. There's probably a mining camp or some such, given the terrain, within the Lord's land. In this setup, really at least 1/2-2/3 of the people need to live within the walls, just for protection's sake.

It's not terribly surprising that Winterhaven is designed statistically as an agrarian village, while the region is presented as wilderness. Games all too often fail to account for just how much farming was really done during the middle ages, and how vastly farms spread. Even games that distill villages down to a reasonable size for players to actually navigate (it's common for games to have communities that are vastly too small for the populations they have, just for the sake of ease of playing the game), even those size-compressed communities usually don't have enough farms and pastures to account for their needs.

Anyways, here's a plethora of good resources:
Statistical Distribution and Breakdowns
Daily Life and Habits of Medieval Culture (Parent Course)
Academic and Scholarly Works

(Edit: To finish up this analysis, the numbers I just noticed on the scale bar for Winterhaven all need to be moved in one step (instead of {10,25,50,100} it really should be {20,50,100,200}), because 10ft x 10ft "homes" are really on the very smallish side.)

BH, I think we just got schooled on populations and layouts....

~SE++

I suddenly feel like I need a socially-awkward penguin smiley...

Anyways, to keep prodding some questions and provide some ideas to generate thought:
Q1) How large are you thinking for a "mid-size" town: 2,000 residents; 4,000 residents? What's the range of influence/ownership this township has on the villages, camps, compounds, and settlements pockmarking the surrounding area: 4 miles, 5 miles, more?

Q2) How did the town get into the slave trade (import, export, or facilitate)? This might help set the overall environment for the rest of the town.

a) Several years ago a group of mercenaries hired by the liege of the greater country for some recent war were let go, forming a band that overtook this town, and then declared their leader as Lord. Now they export legit residents to bolster their funds.
b) A famine or plague killed off several miners and/or residents at least a generation ago, and the Lord filled gaps with black-market purchased slaves. Now the Lord hasn't been able to get out of the slave trade. (Do the slaves appear exotic?)
c) A very dense vein was found that the town's population couldn't work fast enough. Rather than publicizing this, to bring in additional legit peasants/serf, the Lord kept it a from the surrounding country and brought in slaves to bolster his workforce.
d) On the flip side, a quarry and/or mine for at least a decade now has yielded poor results due to the vein becoming dry, so the town supplemented their income by selling their children.
e) "Mines" are actually a cover for an underground network of natural caves and tunnels that are used for trafficking. This town is just a waypoint of the larger slave trade, and these natural tunnels aren't well-explored.

Q3) How did the onset of winter and the passage of a blizzard, stereotypically known for burying secrets, uncover one in this case?

Hey dont lump me in with you! I knew that most of the population was outside the walls. My main gripe is that only six houses were actually in the walls, in addition to the fact they have some of the thickest walls for the smallest village evar.

Not sure yet, trying to flesh this out. Feel free to chime in, I wouldnt mind more input instead of just the two of us.

All interesting points. Should we so desire the "dungeon" could always be down in the slave caves from E. I'm fond of both B and C though if we have the dungeon be some sort of ruins outside of town.

The first idea flung at the drawing board was an avalance tore open the hillside exposing a chamber beneath. We've not tossed around anything else yet, as we were mostly focusing on the town. But any / all input regarding whatever the 'final dungeon' may be is welcome.

Random story-line idea for the module:

During the time when Draconic was the most common language of the world, there was a city of great wealth with a Fire Mage Tower at it's center. The city had a massive problem with a group of Mages who worshiped a deity of Chaos. To solve the problem, the city had a giant tomb constructed with great amounts of traps, and at the end a trap of a giant crystal. The city's Nobles had the tomb constructed in as much secret as possible, with the workers believing that they were building a location for a tournament to be held. As the deity of Chaos got curious about what fun he could have in the tomb screwing with the contestants, he entered to check it out and the trap was sprung. The crystal sprung to life and trapped the deity of Chaos inside of it. The workers flooded the tomb with monsters, so that in addition to the traps it would keep random adventurers away from the sleeping deity. Lastly, a magical ward is placed over the tomb that forces it to teleport away every year on the anniversary. It must teleport into another mountain, with no access to the outside. As it teleports, it displaces the material from one mountain to the other (if inspected, all over the world mountains contain giant sections of minerals not found in that region due to this).

In the town / village of the module, miners are blasting a new way into the nearest mountain where the adventurers are staying. As they do, they discover they blasted into giant doors and they open into the tomb the deity of Chaos is trapped within. As they travel through and face all the traps, monsters and other dangers, they will uncover parts of the story. In the final room with the giant crystal, a fail-safe goes off as they approach it, shattering the crystal in an attempt to destroy the deity for good so that it can't resurface. Unfortunately, the deity has been saving his power for thousands of years in the crystal, and survives the explosion, though the players themselves are knocked unconscious due to the concussive blow. The deity escapes and the tomb is finally teleported back to its original location. As the adventurers exit the tomb, they will exit into a giant city where the guards will be waiting to take them away for questioning.

(and then end the module and set it up for either a sandbox world or leading into another module)

Anywho, just another random idea, feel free to ignore me. ^_^

~SE++

Been busy the last few days, but have not forgotten about this.

NPC

Balthos Bronzeweaver

A stocky dwarven craftsman who works as the smith in town with a couple of human apprentices. He has thick auburn hair and a chest length beard which is forked into two large braids which are frayed and frizzled at the end. He worry much about his appearance and is frequently caked in grime and soot from head to toe. He'd be happier forging weaponry, but is content crafting picks and shovels and other such equipment needed for the townsfolk and spending his time laughing over a mug of ale with a pipe of tobacco. Despite his often filthy appearance he keeps his shop and work benches pristine and can sometimes be heard scolding his apprentices for leaving a tool in the wrong place or something similar. He wakes each day with the dawn and soon begins preparing his shop for the days work.

Naming characters and places are the toughest thing for me to come up with...

~SE++

I frequently spend 20 minutes not being able to start work on a character cause I dont know what to name the sheet on mythweavers

Oooh, random names to work with? Fun fun fun.

~SE++

Aye, if you dont use them I'll eventually cook up something. I'll add more to that list as I come up with them. Activity down in PBP is going super fast at the moment though!