Arriving by various means, and finding themselves on the docks of the teeming city, our unlikely group of adventurers answers a shady ‘help wanted’ sign. Shady because the patron seems most interested in their recent arrival and complete anonymity within the city proper.
It turns out that a certain person of interest needs to be escorted back to their benefactor. Currently, this person is being escorted by soldiers, and thus the party’s first paying job is landed.
They are hustled back on board another ship and sail on the evening tide. Two days later, they are dropped ashore near the mouth of a large river. They wait around until their guides appear. Their guides are elves, who outfit them with horses and lead them close to the designated ambush site.
The guides depart, leaving instructions on how to proceed once the package is acquired.
Several days of waiting are boring…but it is a nice time to get to know each of the varied members. There is the towering cleric of a technology obsessed demon lord, the waifish hermaphrodite cleric of the two-faced god of luck, an elvish wizard who likes to shoot longbows, a dwarven fighter and a dwarven bard – from two different clans – and to round out the group, a gnomish rogue.
As the days pass, there are a few sightings, but none seem to match the person they want to find. Finally, on the fourth day a carriage and wagon heave into view. There are multiple guards…this is probably the one!
The group executes the plan they’ve concocted, and while the gnome distracts soldiers with ghost sounds from the bushes, the elf puts the horses pulling the wagon to sleep. A volley of slings stones and arrows is launched and the group charges out of the bushes to engage. Within seconds, three of the guards are dead, one is dying, one has surrendered and the last is fleeing back up the road as fast as their feet will carry them.
The group makes sure to announce that this is a kidnapping and that a ransom will be delivered soon. They strip gear and armor from the fallen soldiers, hijack the wagon full of food and hightail it out of sight and over the nearest ridgeline. They lay some false trails and head towards the rendezvous point.
If there is pursuit, it never comes near enough to be problematic and within three days time, the group of newcomers is being paid for a job well done. Now they are free to investigate the wild city and all the alluring tales of adventure that they might find.
Indeed, it is only a few days later – as they are trying to scrape together enough coins to buy some magical potions – when they receive another job prospect. It seems that there are many folks that could use the services of relatively unknown and untested individuals.
The cynical might suggest it is because they can be hired for less and there will be fewer questions asked should they go missing. The cynics are probably correct, but nevertheless they are on another adventure – headed back into the same region where they just were.
They hope no one sees them, because their composition is somewhat remarkable. It’ll be tough to maintain anonymity, so their best bet is to avoid contact altogether.
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