Aron's Bowl

Located atop Deadfall, overlooking the valley stretching out below, stands the frontier town of Aron's Bowl. Originally founded more by accumulation than design, Aron's Bowl is a sprawling collection of bars and brothels, mills and forges, workshops and general stores. The river brought supplies to the cliff's edge, and the miners brought all their collected wealth to the river above the cliff. Even now, it is a hodge-podge of shops and suppliers, with an equal mix of human, dwarf, gnome, half-orc and orc making up the inhabitants.
It is a literal melting pot of miners and races and metals, all blended together. There is little overt law even now, with everyone pretty much operating on their own in the same circle of civilization. The closest it comes to any organized government is an unwritten consensus that trouble stays off the streets. If anyone has an issue with anyone else, they take it out into the great wilderness surrounding the town. Generally, this is enough. On the rare occasions where it isn't, the town guard will deputize everyone handy to corral the troublemakers, take them out into the wilderness, and deal with them there.
There is a guard in the town, mostly consisting of ward bosses and three to five underlings. Since most people stick to the unwritten code, they seldom need more, recruiting any available sword when necessary to swell their ranks. There are no town leaders, although the ward bosses carry a certain authority within their wards, and the various guild halls all have their own internal structure. Again, even these are self-policing except in rare circumstances.
Aron's Bowl is nearly the last organized settlement along the river. There are another two small towns further upriver 15 and 20 miles that serve the farms that have sprung up in the last 20 years, taking advantage of the lush soil spreading back from the river and warmed by the thermal springs throughout the valley. These also serve the more remote mines in the southern mountains.
Towering over the valley to the southwest is an enormous ridge of rock rising upon itself upwards to the forboding, smoking sides of Scarred Peak. The lush bowl stretches south about 70 miles, before climbing up into festering, reeking pits of thermal mud and tar.