Odrun Fell

Named for the bone-colored pincers of the creatures it captures, the Palehook Stave is a fortified underwater trapyard used to lure, capture, and process Veinspring crawdads. Managed by a Barley subsect known as the Snapline Keepers, the Stave lies beneath the surface near a dammed eddy of the Veinspring where the water grows unnaturally still. Enchanted scent-lures and eel-bristle drums are sunk nightly, baiting territorial crawdads from deeper lairs. When the traps spring, teams of handlers descend in tethered pods to shackle the beasts and haul them to shore. Crawdad meat is boiled for protein pastes, while their chitin is hardened into riveted trade-shells sent to the Handle. Once a year, the largest captured specimen is paraded through the Barrows during the Deepboil Rite.

The Palehook Stave is barely visible from the surface, save for the ring of barnacle-crusted pylons that jut from the water like the ribs of a drowned colossus. Beneath, its true structure yawns open like an abyssal mouth—trap gates of layered fangbone and brass that snap inward like teeth. A floating barge above serves as the coordination hub: a greasy, rope-draped raft with tether drums and pulleys stained in rust and ichor. When a crawdad is caught, gouts of water erupt upward as the creature thrashes against its confines, glowing faintly from the luminescent lures still clinging to its carapace. Fisher-workers shout from the platform, dragging the beast into boiling vats via crank-hooks and pivot arms, while the river darkens momentarily with chitin oil and claw fragments.