New Vinheim

History
New Vinheim was "founded" by the survivors of the fall of Old Vinheim an academic hub that was lost so long ago nobody remembers the details of it's fall save for the understanding that the city was cursed.

Except it wasn't really founded because New Vinheim had been a Dwarven town before the scholars of Vinheim decided to establish their new academy there. The city itself is in a hilly arid area that would otherwise be a terrible place for a settlement but the Dwarves and scholars alike preferred the region for its rich deposits of rare minerals used in both brewing and alchemy.

At first the relationship between humans and Dwarves was fruitful as the academy brought in trade and the scholars were making vast improvements to the city while the Dwarven lower class were responsible for most of the upkeep.

This was not to last, as the scholars of Vinheim were teetotalers due to their almost religious zealotry for knowledge and relations soon became contentious as "The Dwarven scum corrupted young scholars with their poison".

And so a strict and violent  prohibition was executed during what became known as "The Night of the Drought". Employing their vast arsenal of spells as well as hired mercenary muscle, the scholars dumped the casks, smashed the still, and publicly assaulted prominent brewers.

This prohibition lasted almost a generation and New Vinheim was a dry city excepting a handful of holdouts, mostly Dwarves secretly preserving their peoples culture.

And then came the curse.

While it is a widely accepted urban legend that the curse was brought about by the Dwarves, angry with the prohibition, nobody knows for sure exactly what caused it (it was likely some form of magical runoff from strange experimentation that tainted the ground water).

The waters of New Vinheim became toxic and the city slowly went bankrupt importing water from far and wide. Money that would have otherwise gone to town upkeep and new research at the academy was hemorrhaged importing water to this remote city.

The Dwarves, being somewhat more pragmatic, discovered that fermenting the water into beer removed the poison, and so the curse became known as the Curse of Cayden Cailean.

Soon the entire city was drinking nothing but low proof beer in lieu of water. The stubborn scholars didn't dare abandon this hub of knowledge, and had little choice but to drink or dehydrate.

While this was a boon to the Dwarves, it drastically impaired the research and studies of the scholars and the academy fell into disrepair. This caused a paradigm shift in the status quo of New Vinheim that remains contentious to this day. The scholars themselves have split into factions as the lower ranks are struggling to solve this complex mystery while being somewhat too inebriated to do so. Meanwhile the more respected and wealthy masters of the Vinheim academy seem somewhat disinterested in the curse and have redoubled their obsession with the arcane arts.

The god Cayden Cailean is a very touchy subject in Vinheim as the populace sees him both as a savior and a tormentor, it would be unwise to publicly pledge fealty to or disrespect him. Because of this there are a handful of subtle gestures and symbols (GM's discretion) that the faithful and blasphemers use to identify each other.