Hearthstone

Hearthstone is a rural town in Alethkar, the childhood home of Kaladin in The Way of Kings. It is a farming community of a hundred or so stone buildings, each built wedge-shaped with its low side toward the storms, sheltered by a hillside and a breakwall against the highstorms, with a commonwater cut into the rock to catch rain. Its people grow lavis polyps to feed themselves and the armies of their highprince, and a minor lighteyed citylord governs from a manor above the town. Hearthstone is the home of Lirin, the town's surgeon, and his family; his son Kaladin grows up there learning medicine in his father's surgery room while dreaming, like many Alethi boys, of spears, honor, and the king's army.