Road's End: Road’s End is, properly speaking, the name of the keep at the heart of this community, but it is also applied to the town that has grown up around it. Road’s End is the largest town in the Swale, and a trading hub for merchants. Most visitors don’t see any need to go further into the Swale than Road’s End, as most of what it has to offer outsiders is brought to its markets to sell.

Twofalls: Against the backdrop of two towering waterfalls cascading into Twofalls Tarn, this community has a reputation for the beauty of its stone houses, and the magnificence of its temples. Both of these are due to the Whitestone Quarry, the source of the white stone valued throughout the Swale and used in abundance here. Twofalls is also well-known for its stonemasons and sculptors.

Taen's Ride: The flat, long-cultivated lands around Road’s End are called Taen’s Ride, after one of the first Knights of the Tor. This land comprises rolling pastoral and agricultural fields. It is sprinkled with small hamlets made up of up to a dozen homes, plus a large communal barn and manor house where a knight sworn to Lady Khera maintains a household of guards to see to the defense and lawful administration of those communities.

Adranham: A village on the Adranlake, Adranham is a fairly wealthy community, thanks to the silver mines in the mountains totheir north. A fair portion of its folk—including a larger-than average dwarven population—either work in the SilverdelveMines or at the attached smelter, processing ore into ingots of fine silver prized for its purity and lustre. Adranham also has anumber of fine smiths and jewellers—gnomes among them— who work the occasional semiprecious and precious stones pulled from the mine, most notably, rare blue sapphires.

Cliffside Downs: The breadbasket of the Swale, Cliffside Downs is the highest and flattest portion of the valley, with a steep slope downwards to Twofalls, and cliffs separating it along the waterways to its north and east. This sunny expanse of fertile land has been put to good use, with more robust agriculture here than anywhere else in the vale. Cliffside Downs also provides a great deal of the timber used in the Swale, with a logging operation in the woodlands along the northern edge of the Downs, and an impressive cliff-side pulley system that lowers timber down its northern cliff-face to barges in the stream below, for sale at the other communities throughout the Swale.