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Locations
Many city fairs and festivals are held here, so there's always something to do.
The city center is mostly townhomes, apartments above retail spaces, and the occasional detached single-family home where downtown gives way to the suburbs.
Most of the buildings are historical or simply old. Maybe that's why such odd noises sometimes come from the pipes.
The Ontkean River runs along the western edge of downtown Ashbrook. In some places it's wide enough for boating; in others, it's narrow enough to swim across. Many small bridges span the river, plus Sandhill Bridge, a grand suspension bridge in downtown Ashbrook.
The water is fairly clean, cool, and popular for fishing. Unfortunately, there have been several drownings in recent years.
Once a decaying maintenance building for the nearby park, this community center has been haphazardly renovated. Out back is a grassy field, cracked tennis courts, and a single basketball hoop.
Inside the building is a reasonably comfy lounge and a set of meeting rooms. Several nights a week, small community mingling events and parties are run here.
In the heart of downtown is an old building, last renovated in the late '70s, but well-stocked and carefully maintained. It remains a peaceful, welcoming place to spend time, so long as you're quiet and clean.
The head librarian, Janet, runs a tight ship. She's curated an interesting collection, particularly in regards to geology and history. There's also a lovely children's section!
On Main Street is a small bookshop and UFO-themed café. The vibes are upbeat but chill, the coffee and sandwiches are reasonably priced, and the cafe radio plays the best of the '70s, the '80s, and today. The walls are covered in murals, photographs, and tabloids related to UFOs, ghosts, cryptids, and everything else spooky.
The café owner is a retired, bespectacled hippie named Marshall. He's always happy to make conversation with his customers, and even happier to regale them with all sorts of UFO lore.Whether you're looking for board games or new VHS tapes, this is the place. It sells both new and used media, including an impressive retro section offering vinyl records, laserdiscs, 8-tracks, Betamax, and even some of the more obscure formats.
The counter is run by teenagers and college students ranging from peppy to disaffected. At the back, locals gather for card tournaments... and, sometimes, gossip.
Xander watches over it all: a cardboard cutout of a man that's been completely blacked out by sharpie. He's something of a mascot in the store and can be found in all sorts of places - working the second register, standing behind shelves, and peering down from within the drop ceiling.
An old stage theatre has been converted into a small and relatively new 4-screen movie theater. The owner is a big fan of both classic and foreign films, and rotates them out every week.
Rumor has it the theater is haunted by prima donna whose death shut down the theatre - but her existence is dubious, and it's just as likely a rumor made up by teenagers to ensure mostly-empty late night showings.
Why is it called the Five Star Cinema when it only has 4 screens? That's the real mystery.The Dogwood is the world's most typical dive bar. It's old, it's dimly lit, it's cheap. There are pool tables, dart boards, and a selection of domestic beers.
Around here, the clientele are the sort to show up night after night for years on end. Service is reasonable, the people are consistent, and the jukebox seems to play exclusively hard rock.
Single-family homes rule the streets. These are modest houses on modest lots, and apartment buildings are never more than two stories high.
Granted, sometimes it's easy to get lost among the identical streets.
The only mall for miles, the Pineview is enormous. You can shop at all the classic staples here: FYE, the Limited, Waldenbooks, Sports Authority, EB Games, and more! Local teens pile into cars to spend weekends at the Arctic Alleys Bowling Alley and Arcade, which is really just the mall's very loud and garish basement.
At the outer edge of town, it can feel fairly isolated, with a vast parking lot bordered by forest.
The hospital is an aging building, but one well-equipped to handle folks coming down off the ski slopes with sports injuries. They don't ask a lot of questions.
The hospital is quite eerie at night - but really, what hospital isn't?
This small local school seems to crumble a little more every year. The interior is bland, underfunded, and largely propped up by painfully earnest teachers.
The local university is small and quiet but reasonably well-supplied. You won't find many people that cite Innsmouth as their dream university, but its excellent forestry department and ice hockey team draw their fair share of students.
This odd specialty shop goes all-in on folklore around turnips, which are meant to scare off malevolent spirits on All Hallows Eve. The stock is a mix of cute turnip trinkets, smudging herbs, and the "best seller": a string of dried turnips purported to break any curse.
Behind a beaded curtain is a back room reported to hold more controversial supplies, from love potions to books on magical rituals.
Up against the forest's edge is the local graveyard. The paths are well-worn, some graves sporting fresh flowers.
Come sunset, the grumpy groundskeeper will shoo you out with his shovel and tales of ghosts and ghouls. Of course, any teenage miscreant can tell you exactly how to sneak over the gate. At night, this is where the "cool kids" can be found.
This grand hotel never opened; locals assume its developer ran out of money during construction. Now it sits abandoned and crumbling to ruin, the parking lot overtaken by brambles and weeds. It's a popular destination for Ashbrook's handful of urban explorers.
There generally isn't much to see in the hotel but it's fun to explore. The numerous still-locked guest rooms, some of which have proven surprisingly difficult to pick open or break down, are a tantalizing mystery.
The dense, dark forests that surround Ashbrook are comprised largely of pine, cedar, and fir trees. There are a number of marked hiking trails and campsites to explore, but even more to discover if you're willing to do a little off-trail hiking.
There are, of course, countless tales of ghosts, monsters, and other strange supernatural forces in the forest. For the most part, though, it's quite safe.
The mountain plays host to both the ski slopes and a crisscrossed network of hiking trails, which range in difficulty from beginner to expert. With a bit of effort you can find your way to some fairly remote locations that are great for both camping and stargazing.
Just be careful not to get lost out here. All sorts of things are said to lurk out in the wilderness.
To the east lies the tranquil Lake Cinder. Formed in the caldera of a collapsed volcano, Lake Cinder is noteworthy for its impressive depth and the incredible purity of its water. It's a popular spot for boating, hiking, and camping along the shoreline.
The lake features a single, lightly forested island, creatively named Cinder Island. There's not much to do there, but the views sure are nice.
Cartersville is technically a part of Ashbrook, but its 1000-or-so residents consider it a completely separate town. Sure, they don't have their own police or fire services, utilities, government, etc. But the culture!
Cartersville is a little more upscale than Ashbrook, if only in the name of wringing every last cent out of tourists. Luxury shopping and restaurants dominate the streets. During the ski season (November to April) the neighborhood and mountain are crawling with tourists.
In the off-season, it becomes a popular spot for Ashbrook locals to hike and camp in the remote mountain air.
SUB LOCATION: Cinder Lake
Cinder Lake plays host to a sprawling and truly unique cave system. An ancient lava tube, several miles long, intersects with a sprawling network of limestone caves. The lava tube is straightforward and easy to navigate while the limestone caves provide a much steeper challenge, so there's something for spelunkers of all skill levels.
The cave system is known to be extremely safe, mostly because access to the most dangerous areas of the caves are highly restricted. Even so, there are countless rumors of ghosts roaming the rocky tunnels.
SUB LOCATION: Miskatonic Elementary and Middle School
Accessible from an old, rarely used maintenance building on the edge of the Miskatonic campus, the steam tunnels are one of Ashbrook's stranger features. They're at least partially operational—some corridors are unbearably hot and humid year round, while others cold and silent—but the source and destination of the steam running through the pipes is unknown. The tunnels are far too complex and sprawling to serve only the elementary school but no other entrances have even been found. What's more, no matter how long or thoroughly one wanders, they'll always end up right back at the maintenance shed entrance.
Though someone clearly keeps the steam tunnels in working order, the townsfolk are rarely seen down here and all of them will deny the tunnels' existence—even when shown hard evidence to the contrary.