As the fire begins to burn low, merchants and caravan guards alike begin to retire to their tents and blankets. Eventually, only four guards are left by the smouldering fire, their gaze fixed on the embers rather than each other. There is a companionable silence for several minutes before one of them speaks.

“So…” It’s the paladin. He seems uneasy somehow.

“…here we are,” finishes the cleric of Eurus.

“Why do you think the four of us are always the last ones left here around the fire?” asks the sorcerer.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” replies the paladin. “I wouldn’t read too much into it.”

The paladin, the cleric and the sorcerer all turn to look at the fourth man, sitting cross-legged on the packed earth of the mountain pass. He is garbed strangely, in flowing robes of black with white cuffs at wrist and ankle and a high collar around his neck. His tanned skin reveals him as a resident of far warmer climes, but he deals with the chill of the early spring air without coat, gloves or furs. His only concession to the cold are his fur-lined lambskin boots, tied with hide thongs up his calves. Here in the highlands, his shaved head has attracted plenty of comment from the other caravan guards, with some suggesting that he’d had to shave everything off after being infested with lice from the horses. Several of the merchants travelling with the caravan have been trying to offer him mercury treatments for the last week.

“You’re always quiet,” the paladin says to the fourth man. “In fact, I don’t even know your name.”

The fourth man smiles—a rare sight. “I am not convinced you would be able to pronounce it correctly,” he says in accented Common. “Where I come from, they call me Tupananchiskama.”

The paladin, cleric and sorcerer all share a sideways glance.

“I thought so,” says Tupananchiskama.

“So…where are you from?” asks the paladin.

“A small island, maybe six hundred miles from the southern border of your country.”

“And what is this place called?” asks the cleric.

“Ixtli.”

“Never heard of it,” says the sorcerer.

“You wouldn’t. The last time our peoples met was just over four hundred years ago. There has been no contact between our nations in a long time.”

The cleric raises an eyebrow and leans forward. “So…how is it you came to be here then?”

Tupananchiskama turns his gaze to the fire pit and begins to tell his story.

“My mother was a sculptor. My father worked in the government, overseeing the distribution of grain shipments to the hinterland.”

“Hang on,” says the sorcerer. “I thought you said there hadn’t been any contact? Where did the shipments come from?”

“A few trader captains were permitted to land and offload goods during the separation,” Tupananchiskama says. “Even then, they only met with officials and did not really travel anywhere within the island. May I continue?”

The three others nod their assent.

“When I was born, the oracles were consulted and it was decided that I should follow in my father’s footsteps and join the government. As I grew, however, I quickly came to realise that I did not have my father’s head for numbers. Education on Ixtli is the responsibility of a child’s parents until they reach the age of fourteen, when they are apprenticed to a master in their profession. With my father so often away, my mother was the one to teach me, and so I spent much time in her workshop, watching her create life from blocks of stone. It always seemed that her job created something so much more worthwhile than my father’s.

“I had few friends—the pairing of my mother and father, from two such different parts of society, was not widely approved of. However, there was one girl who ignored convention and spent time with me. Her name was Huch’uyissa, which in your language means ‘Little Flower’. Her name alone was a constant source of irritation to her, as she had no desire to be either little or a flower.

“Huch’uyissa’s parents were like mine—frowned upon for their union. However, in Huch’uyissa’s case, the contempt was even more pronounced, as while her mother was a wealthy merchant, her father had fled his apprenticeship in the military and was regarded as a traitor to society—one of the casteless. If we have the time on the rest of this journey, perhaps I shall explain Ixtlian castes to you, but for now, it is enough to know that as far as Ixtlian society was concerned, Huch’uyissa’s father simply did not exist.

“Given the antipathy displayed by society to the casteless, when Huch’uyissa’s father—his name is Yachay—fled the military he took up a place in the Priesthood of the Eightfold Path in order to survive. ‘Priesthood’ is not the right word, but I have not yet found one in your language that is better. The function of our ‘priests’ is not to worship the gods—although on Ixtli we share the same beliefs as you. Instead, the priests follow and teach the Eightfold Path; a means to enlightenment that they believe will one day free us from our mortal bondage and allow us to ascend to a higher plane of existence. This ascendancy is the goal of almost every Ixtlian, although some of us are better at it or more diligent than others. In any case, the Priesthood is the only part of Ixtlian society to acknowledge the existence of the casteless, and so they took Yachay in.

“Within the priesthood, Yachay sought enlightenment through physical perfection, training his body as a weapon much as you see me doing each morning. Some years later, he met Huch’uyissa’s mother—her name is Amaru—as she was visiting his town, a chance meeting that I am told involved a collision and a great deal of screaming. It was love at first sight.

“Of course, there were two problems with the love they shared. Firstly, Yachay had fled his apprenticeship and, being without a caste, could not legally be joined with Amaru. Secondly, as a member of the Priesthood, Yachay was—by convention—supposed to give up all aspirations to worldly goods and desires, including love for a woman.

“He was not able to do so. He left the Priesthood, and he and Amaru left the town and moved as far away as they could—to my own home town. Once there, they convinced the local magistrate to bless their union—an undertaking which Yachay once confided in me took a great deal of alcohol—and were therefore legally married.  Of course, when he was sober the magistrate took exception, but one of the key teachings of Mahasamatman is personal responsibility, so while the magistrate was not happy with Yachay and Amaru, he could not rescind his decision without losing face—he was responsible for his actions and so he had to bear the consequences.

“And so Yachay and Amaru settled down, and had Huch’uyissa. Amaru’s business crumbled as word spread about what she had done, but she didn’t care. They survived, if only barely. And eventually Huch’uyissa and I met.

“No oracles were consulted at her birth, because none of them would see her. As a consequence, Huch’uyissa makes most Ixtlians nervous—without a destiny, her very existence threatens the fabric of society. As a child, though, I had no understanding of such worries, and so I spent many hours with Huch’uyissa’s family. From Yachay I learned the basics of striking with the fist, the foot, the elbow and the knee—and the art of defending myself from those armed with weapons while I had only my empty hands.  From Amaru I gained some proficiency with numbers, and an understanding of how business worked. With my mother teaching me some of the basics of art, and trying to teach me about the bureaucracy, it was like having three parents teaching me different things.

“Around a year before I was meant to leave on my apprenticeship, Emperor Ayato declared the Ixtlian borders open for the first time in more than four hundred years. We began trading openly with Leyira again. For months, all Huch’uyissa would talk about was Leyira. She snatched up every bit of gossip about this country she could. I think she was trying to imagine herself here through sheer force of will. She said that she could imagine nothing more exciting than exploring new lands; the concept of unexplored land is somewhat alien to an Ixtlian, as we know every square inch of our island.

“Eventually, the time came for my apprenticeship. I was sent from my home town to Blackwater, the trading port at the north of the island, where I was to be trained in determining the levels of duty payable on imports from Leyira. I said goodbye to my parents and to Huch’uyissa and her family, and left for my new life.

“The work was difficult and boring. However, on Ixtli, we are taught that not following through on your obligations shows a lack of conviction, a weakness that is frowned upon. And so I persevered, believing that I needed to show the strength of my character and that someday, I would find the work interesting and rewarding.

“After eighteen months, there was little sign that I would ever find the work interesting or rewarding. With only six months remaining in my apprenticeship, I was beginning to despair of ever finding my place.

“That was when Huch’uyissa came to visit. She said she was travelling around Ixtli as part of her apprenticeship with a cartographer, and that one day she would go to map Leyira’s untamed lands.  I spent three days with Huch’uyissa in Blackwater, happy for the first time since I had moved there.

“It was several days after she left before the truth was discovered. Her apprenticeship was a sham; the ‘cartographer’ was actually a con artist who used Huch’uyissa to gain access to the Leyiran ships’ manifests in my office. He and his men snuck aboard one of them and incapacitated the crew, then stole much of the valuable cargo. I was questioned by the authorities and in the end, I received no punishment but it was made clear that the whole affair was my fault.

“I finished my apprenticeship under a cloud, and full of resentment and anger at Huch’uyissa’s treatment of me. I had thought us friends. She proved otherwise. When I finished my apprenticeship, the position I was offered was the lowest-ranking they could find without being an open insult. I went from having my own office to working in the chancery, copying official documents.

“Another year passed. I was no closer to finding meaning in my work, but my resentment at my treatment, at the way Huch’uyissa had betrayed my friendship, still sat just beneath the surface, and kept me going. I began to search for mention of her, or for word of the charlatan who had been with her. Then I heard the news.

“The town I was born in is at the bottom of a mountain range, on the southern coast of Ixtli. The weather there is not like it is here—it is either wet, or it is dry, but the seasons and changing temperatures you have here mean little there. In the wet season two years ago, there was a mudslide that went through my town. Many lost their lives. My mother wrote to tell me that Amaru was one of them.

“I travelled back home, uncaring about the demands of my role or the opinions of my supervisor. When I got home, I heard the whole story from my mother. Yachay had been out tending his farming plot when the mudslide came through. He raced back, and when he returned he found dozens of people from all castes frantically digging to free those trapped in the soil. Around his own home, however, there was no one.

“Amaru died alone. She died because nobody was willing to help her, because she had betrayed the Ixtlian way of life by marrying outside her caste and—worse—marrying one of the casteless. Yachay was overcome with grief. It was from him that I heard that after I left, Huch’uyissa had been denied an apprenticeship, essentially damning her to a life of misery and loneliness as one of the casteless when she had done nothing to deserve it. She had run away only a few months later, and my encounter with her in Blackwater was the first news he’d had of her since.

“I left my caste that day; I too am now one of the casteless. My parents, to their credit, did not disown me, but they did explain that they could no longer support me. As I saw it, I had another role now—I had to look after Yachay, a man whose world had been shattered by the strictures of a society he now wished to have no part of. As a child he had looked after me, shown me compassion. Now it was time for me to return the favour.

“Yachay and I travelled back to the temple where he had first joined the Priesthood, and asked to be taken in again. The priests made him welcome, as they do all who seek their guidance and protection. They took me in too, as I had nowhere else to turn.

“For the next six months I trained in martial arts under the tutelage of Yachay’s former master, a man who was by now nearly eighty years old, but still nimble enough to thrash all his students. He taught me about The Eightfold Path, about the means to enlightenment. He seemed sad when he looked at Yachay, as if he had hoped Yachay would be able to break free of the fetters of desire in order to reach enlightenment, but even if Yachay had been willing to give up his family before Amaru’s death, he was never going to be able to give up his grief.

“After six months I was formally inducted into the temple as a novice. I travelled from temple to temple around Ixtli, seeking word of Huch’uyissa. Although each temple seeks its own path to enlightenment, there are enough similarities that a student of one temple is always welcome at any other. Every few weeks I would pick up word of Huch’uyissa, or someone matching her description, usually in the company of an older man. Sometimes the towns she had been through were unaware that they had been robbed until I started asking more questions.

“Slowly, because I was asking questions and drawing attention to their activities, Huch’uyissa’s profile rose, as did that of the man who accompanied her. Occasionally I would travel through a town or village that had heard the stories of her and had driven her off when they recognised her.

“After some five months on the road searching for word of her, I eventually found myself only a few days behind her and her mentor. I hurried on to the next settlement—Mango Bay, the trading port on the western shore of Ixtli.

“When I arrived, I quickly discovered that I was too late. The authorities in Mango Bay had, like some of the other places I visited, heard of Huch’uyissa and her master. Upon their arrival in Mango Bay four days ago, the authorities had sprung an ambush. Huch’uyissa’s master had been captured and was to be executed that very day. Of Huch’uyissa herself there was no sign.

“I rushed to the sacrificial pits outside the town, knowing that only the wily old man would have any idea about where Huch’uyissa was. I made it to the ziggurat just as the guards were hauling him up the steps to his doom. Quickly, I asked him to tell me where Huch’uyissa had gone. He told me she had left him the day they arrived in Mango Bay, and that she had planned to take ship to Leyira.

“I ran all the way back to the docks. When I got there, I saw Huch’uyissa for the first time in almost two years, but she was standing on the deck of a ship that was already a hundred yards out from the docks, and was heading out into the open water. I called out to her, and I know she heard me. She raised a hand and waved. It was a sad wave.

“I spent the next two months preparing to leave myself. I have been here in Leyira for six months, searching for her. The trail has gone cold more than once. But she always mentioned the wild places, the untamed places. I heard tell of a woman with a strange accent similar to mine coming this way, only two weeks ago. I think she is headed to Otraxis, and so here I am, still chasing after her.”

Tupananchiskama sits quietly for a few moments, his finger unconsciously tracing designs in the dirt in front of him.

“You’ve certainly come a long way in search of this woman,” says the cleric.

“I know,” replies Tupananchiskama. “I am a long way from anyone or anything I know. I have no idea if Huch’uyissa is even still alive. But I must keep searching until I find the truth.”

“Truth?” asks the paladin. “Which truth? What are you looking for? Redemption? Love? Or vengeance?”

“I don’t know,” Tupananchiskama says sadly. “I don’t know. All I know is that I have to keep looking.”

Tindlebin

Male gnome Rogue (Rake) 3/Alchemist 2

Description

Tindlebin is a gnome with a future—or at least, he thinks so. Having been thrown out of his homeland (where that is or why he was exiled he refuses to say) from a very young age, Tindlebin has had to make his own way in the world. Some fifteen years ago, he came to Otraxis where he was able to finally settle down and indulge his favourite pastime—growing flowers.

Unusually for a gnome, Tindlebin has adapted well to life on the surface, and he now owns a successful florist shop where the Market District meets the People’s District. He also has a fairly sizeable market garden where he grows his flowers, outside the city.

To supplement his income, Tindlebin works as an alchemist from his home in the River District. He brews various concoctions—most of which work—and sells alchemical items, although most of his work is by commission to adventurers and the like.

Rumours abound as to Tindlebin’s contact network—he has some strange visitors at all hours of the night—but since he doesn’t usually cause much trouble for his neighbours they tend to ignore his otherwise strange habits.

Motivations & Goals

Tindlebin is entirely self-centred and whilst he’s always happy to help out someone in need when it won’t put himself in danger (after all, a favour owed is a useful commodity), he is generally only in things for himself. Having said that, he is completely upfront about these motivations to anyone he deems to be a ‘decent’ person.

Find yourself on Tindlebin’s bad side, however, and you’re quite likely to find yourself set up somehow. Depending on how badly you’ve offended him, you might find yourself anything from the victim of a practical joke to being arrested for a murder you didn’t commit.

Statblock, skills, feats, equipment etc. built & available whenever required. : )

The Order of the Dragon – The oldest knightly order on the continent, formed by the grandson of King Hugh the Pious, Hugh III, in memoriam of the remarkable circumstances that led to Hugh the Pious’ ascention to the throne. Inspired by the dragon Salizarr’s commitment to its keeping its word following its defeat, knights of the Order of Dragon are charged with loyalty before all else: loyalty to their allies, their word and their society. In Salizarr and Hugh’s home region of Otraxis, this Order has remained strong; stronger than its waning fortunes elsewhere would suggest.

The Order of the Lion – Also formed by King Hugh III, shortly following the foundation of the Order of the Dragon. Hugh’s personal order took its livery from his mother’s family’s coat of arms, and again was founded on the principal of loyalty. This time, however, instead of swearing loyalty generally upon vague principals of honour, the knights swore loyalty to the king personally. Sworn to protect the king and expand and protect his realm, the Order rapidly came to be one of the richest and most powerful Orders (largely due to the support of generations of kings and nobles currying favour with the monarch). In the traditionally independent city of Otraxis, however, it has struggled for influence.

The Order of the Star – Formed a century later, the Order of the Star was founded under a petition from the Grand Templar Palatine to support and protect the church of the gods. King Edward I, a weak king, was forced to grant the petition to win the support of the church to his rule. The fortunes of the Order have waxed and waned over the years as monarchs have tried to support or suppress the Order based on their attitudes to the church and its independence. The Paladins take their name from the title of their founder, the Grand Templar Palatine.

The Twin Orders (the Order of the Sword and the Order of the Shield) – Founded during the upheavals of King Edward VIII’s reign, the Twin Orders claim repsonsibility for restoring order to the realm. The Order of the Sword was founded to uphold the noble virtues of chivalry, living lives of honour, virtue and valor. The Order of the Shield was founded to represent the smallfolk and protect those without the power to protect themselves. Remarkably, the Orders were founded in a calculated attempt to appeal to both nobles and smallfolk, and so bring the realm back to stability from the brink of civil war. The Order of the Sword has always been the stronger or more influential of the two, again due mostly to its appeal to the rich and powerful. However, Knights of the Shield are still welcome in villages and crofts throughout the land.

The Order of the Cockatrice – The newest Order, founded in Otraxis little more than a century ago by a blackguard named Sir Petyr Lucard. The cockatrice was chosen as their symbol in part as a sly insult to the city and its ancient dragon benefactor: a cocktrice being a combination of dragon and cockerel. The Order was founded as a crusading order, driving knight errants into the goblin lands north of Otraxis, and also into the dwarven and elven lands (although the Order has always denied this occurred). Almost parodying the other knightly orders, Knights of the Cockatrice are fierce warriors from their crusading origins, but utterly mercenary. They have a not underserved reputation as braggarts, drunkards, brawlers and mercenaries.

 

Knights of any order generally start as squires to annointed knights. Squires are promoted to knights aspirant upon earning the support of a priest or fellow knight. After questing for some time, the knight aspirant who has proven himself is annointed as a full knight. Annointed knights are divided between knights errant (who quest for their Order) and knights ecouter (who are sworn to a particular houshold).