The Situation —

The player characters all arrived in Northshore Landing about a year ago. Each arrived for their own reasons and by their own means (individual background stories). However, all of them have decided to take up residence within the Landing for one reason or another.

The way that housing is handled in the ever crowding city is that individuals are assigned to small groups called families. While actual blood-relation families are allowed to stay together in most circumstances when they arrive, many arrive to Alvison’s Haven alone or in unrelated traveling companies.

Each of these family units can be made up of a variety of individuals, of various races and backgrounds, and can vary in size from four to eight individuals (depending on the size of the home they are assigned to live in). They are expected to function as a stand alone unit, and in the case of danger, each individuals responsibility is to attend to their particular family unit.

Having arrived about the same time, all the player characters are assigned to just such a family unit, and have been living together for several months at the time the campaign starts.

Each family is identified by a combination of two pictorial symbols that brand the particular unit they are living in within the city. The player characters are identified as the “Flame Stag” family. This identification is used in rationing supplies, food, and services to the household as a whole, as well as assigning work details and civic responsibilities fairly to each.

Introducing the Campaign —

Having been in Northshore Landing for a year, your family, “Flame Stag,” has now earned official citizenship and the right to partake in higher-paying civic duties. For the past year, you all have been relegated to medial tasks including waste disposal, and basic city upkeep (trimming hedges, cleaning buildings, painting fences, managing waste disposal, etc.). You have been earning the equivalent of 1 Pennant a week, and have accumulated 52 pennants each, and have spent (1d4 +2) pennants each on supplies, food, and clothing.

Upon the anniversary of your arrival in Alvison’s Haven, you are paid a visit by captain of the Northshore Guard, Kresh Alvison, and offered the opportunity to become goods transporters, traveling north to the Watcher’s Den to pick up supplies recovered in the Northlands by the seekers. If the duty is accepted, your family is expected to safely transport these goods from the Watch to the Landing, and check them with Demetria Vanyss at the Trading Post.

If you accept you will be provided with two horses, and a wagon to transport the goods. It will be your responsibility to maintain and upkeep the wagon and horses while in transit, but when not in use, they can be stored and maintained free of cost at the community stables.

The pay for this position will be 50 pennants each for each successful transport.

Kresh warns, up front, that the reason for the hiked pay for the duty is that in recent weeks there has been an increase in attacks by the Black Flame on transports. Simultaneously attacks have become more frequent in Zjarn Village. Most of the Guard is being utilize to protect the village as well as run frequent patrols into the Blavewoode in an attempt to push the Black Flame back towards their usual territory of the Stonepeak Mountains.