A gathering in Haven

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Kix

Artisan
((On this day (5/08) runners are sent out to the areas of town to let folks know that the leaders of the various guilds are going to be gathering together in the main gathering hub just outside of the tavern. Any characters that are around town and interested in joining in to listen to these announcements are welcome, a copy is also scribed down and shared with the denizens of the town of Haven. ))

As the gathering starts, a small stage made up of a few somewhat intact benches has been put together. There are a handful of familiar/friendly faces sitting around on the benches themselves including the leads of each of the various guilds:
  • Avon Belisarius representing the Celestialists Guild​
  • Grand Inquisitor Godfrey representing the Rumerian Inquisitors
  • Goffry “Jeffery” Winterwind representing the newly reformed Healer’s Guild
  • Nathaniel Knight representing the Hunter’s Guild
  • Vincent Burke researcher of the Void Exploration Expedition is present but not speaking.
  • Inquisitor Holt of the Rumerian Inquisition is present but not speaking.

As the town concludes mustering, Godfrey greets everyone by standing up on the most sturdy looking of the benches and looking over the smaller crowd of people gathered, only about 50 or so folks had come together for the meeting, mostly consisting of the adventurers remaining in town, as well as a handful of town watch members and the precious few remaining townsfolk who beared the invasion of the blight. He takes a long breath and begins his speech.

Greetings to all of you who have remained in town despite all the troubles we have gone through. I wish that we were meeting under happier pretenses, however here we are anyway ready to lift the burdens of responsibility that have been left to us. After consulting with the various remaining leaders in the town we have begun to work out a bit of a plan, however we hope to continue to engage with you lot and work on the growth and rebirth of Haven.

At this point Godfrey takes a moment to look around at the gathered folks once more slower and more intimately.

Each and every one of you still standing here is as strong as they come. We have all stood and weathered the many storms that have come through our precious Haven up to now. Through some collaborative reports and intel that we have gained, we know that what will be our hardest storm yet is beginning to encroach upon our dear town and there are plans for a massive incursion from the Crimson Concordant. While I know that most of you gathered here are aware of who they are and why we have resisted them, allow me to give a brief recap for some of the other townsfolk who are not as up to date on the actions that they have taken against us.


Years ago when many of us first arrived in Haven, it was still a prosperous and lively trading town. We had an extremely active merchant guild, a mayor, active fishermen guild, and countless travelers coming through on a daily basis. Our local population was in the thousands. The Mayor of our town at the time, Gnoblin Middleman the goblin, was under a lot of pressure from the governing faction in the Capital City, to allow an private military group known as The Crimson Alliance to take over the contract for the city guard. This organization had managed to sign contracts with the Capital City to be the standing military force for the Capital, as well as all cities underneath them. The events that lead to this grave mistake are impossible to know as much of this seems to have occurred behind closed doors in the Capital.

The Crimson Alliance themselves contained a handful of specialty organizations such as the Crimson Inquisition, a group specifically designated to hunt down undead and abominations from Voidsmarch, or the Iron Legion, their elite forces used to reimpose order on any regions that have fallen out of line. Their troop count was unprecedented, leaving them the only mercenary group able to take on such lofty contracts within Voidsmarch. With this though, being as large as they were, it was easy for bad eggs to slip into their ranks and spread their influence of abusing their power to other members. The Crimson Alliance was so widespread throughout Voidsmarch that it would be nigh impossible to have punishment dolled out for offences as it was likely any miscreant's active officer was more likely to side with their member, than the townsfolk who felt slighted. Over years of rapid growth to fulfil their needs to uphold their contract, these issues became more and more prevalent reaching the highest ranks of their organization. The batch that we had locally here in Haven were nearly as rotten as they came for town guards. There were countless accusations of stolen goods, bribery, even murder that went overlooked by Captain Mathias, their previous leader in town. While the majority of the Crimson Alliance we had as town guards were generally a detriment to the safety and well being of the townsfolk, with them came a small chapter of the Inquisition that was led by a senior member named Holt, he cared deeply about the cause of the Inquisition and focused solely on their actions in cleansing the nearby area of necromancers and undead abominations. Unfortunately some of the more bustling population at these times would confuse the two much to their regret as the Inquisitors were more than happy to help set them straight at their assumptions.

As time went on, the town Mayor Gnoblin left due to being unable to contain the situation of trouble brewing between the adventurers and the Crimson Alliance. With this sudden vacuum of power in the town, the Magistrate Verec stepped in and tried his best to continue to keep a lid on the ever boiling conflict. As time went on issues came more to a boil and the Crimson, it got to a point where the Crimson had grown so bold as to rob market stalls in broad daylight, and the population decreased due to the lack of consistent trade and travelers. During an impromptu trial held within the tavern during one of the gatherings, Mathias was called and attended to answer for crimes committed by his guards. During this trial an anonymous individual ran into the tavern and stabbed Mathias, unfortunately the individual could not be identified nor caught and eludes us to this day. As for Mathias, the townsfolk were unable to find him a life spell in time and his corpse dissipated. Later we learned that he was resurrected in Capital City and has been a portion of the reason for the troops being sent against our town so far.

In response to this, Grand Inquisitor Holt foresaw the events that would transpire and made the decision to venture to the Capital City. He sought to attempt to defuse the situation between the good people of Haven and the Crimson Alliance in a way that would alleviate the heavy fist of this massive mercenary organization from smashing the city to pieces. Unfortunately, his attempts were met with failure as his actions were seen to be treasonous towards the Crimson Alliance as a whole. He as well as the small group of Inquisitors he had brought from Haven were seized and imprisoned in a keep ironically not too far from Haven itself.

This brings us into the middle of beginning of last year when the Crimson Alliance sent in members of the Iron Legion in an attempt to retake control of the city, though at the time the proud adventurers of our town were having none of this. Members of the town as well as members of the local Inquisition worked together in sabotage, and successfully managed to repel the Crimson Alliance’s repeated efforts to overtake our city. In lue of these changes and growths within our city, the Crimson Alliance and Iron Legion fell back and began to compose their plans once more. The townsfolk of Haven intercepted an encoded message from one such member of the Iron Legion who was attempting to stir trouble outside of town by picking off any easily fought individuals. After decoding the message the keep containing Holt was discovered and a rescue attempt was made, the invasion led by Inquisitors of Rumeria was a success clearing out the majority of forces in keep and rescuing Holt who was found to be alive, though somewhat hollowed from the experiences he underwent in his time imprisoned as a treasonist.

With such a large organization it has taken a fair amount of time to allocate resources and band together platoons to advance on Haven. But make no mistake, we have been kicking and slapping this hornets’ nest, and they are preparing for a full blown invasion and occupation of Haven. This does not even begin to go into how ravaged and torn up our land has become from the massive blight infestation our town suffered for multiple years and was only just recently halted and has been somewhat contained. Unfortunately this was not contained rapidly enough and we lost many loved ones and a majority of the town to its rapid growth and development. During the blight incursion, our interim Mayor who many had not even heard arrived appears to have fled our city in the chaos. Our population is all the way down to around 80 individuals now, while we are small in number, everyone here has shown that they care about our home and will take action to protect and secure it.

Now that we’ve gone over some of our history, all of us remaining here know that strife is inevitable. The Crimson Alliance has branded themselves anew as The Crimson Concordant, and have taken over the Capital City in its entirety. At this point they are not even attempting to conceal their actions and intentions to try to take over all of Voidsmarch under their rule.

The last few months, many of us have gathered here and begun working on repairs and fortifying our city. While some of our initial intentions were to try and find resources to build fortifications around the entirety of the town known as Haven, we have realized that this was likely to be an impossible task due to the nature of the remaining supplies we have and the sheer scale of the city. Alas, we have decided amongst the guild leaders in town that the wisest course of action would be to move the remaining townsfolk who are not fighters but those that enable us to survive here by things like farming, fishing, or any stroke of life that helps us to sustain ourselves. Our plan for this is to give an inner sanctum of sorts within the city so that our least protected townspeople have the safest of places to stay. When the hour does come and we are assaulted, this will also serve as a place for us to buy time and continue to strategize and work against our opponents.

Unfortunately due to the nature of the permanent greater circles that each of our guilds requires we were unable to relocate them to within this area, Please be assured that we will be doing what we can to source an additional Greater Earth circle to lend the opportunity for us to resurrect in a safe place should this area we occupy now become dangerous or occupied. We do have a strange safety net as well with the tavern here thanks to our new Healer’s Guild spectacularly modifying a ritual whilst it was being cast. Things should continue as normal for most of us out here, though there will now be a safer place to rest so long as you don’t mind the bit of extra distance on the walk, and continued efforts to fortify this as a safe haven within Haven for us.

With all of that said, each of the guild leaders within our town has come up with a plan or action that will help us to prepare and sustain ourselves into the future. We will each take turns giving each other a chance to speak, and laying out our goals and hopes to you for these missions. We hope to gain some backing and assistance from the adventurers within the town who wish to continue to do their part. However if you have other plans or callings that you feel take priority or will also help the town, please let us know so that we can take them into consideration as well or at least know where others of our home have gone. I know in our past we’ve had some small issues with infighting and dealings with each other, but understand that now more than ever we need to come together as one to repel the invading force. The people who stand next to you right now surely care for the safety of this town just as much as you do, otherwise they would have left long ago. This is something we all have within ourselves to accomplish and hold out, even if it tries our patience many times.

Because of the size of the present situation and our lack of any kind of town leader or mayor in place. We have come to the conclusion that we will be far more effective if we have regular town meetings such as this every few weeks in order to keep people updated as to the workings of the various groups, and the objectives we have completed or plan to work on. The various guild leaders in town will continue to work together forming a council of sorts in the coming months to hold out against the approaching threat. We also hope to continue to regularly attend small gatherings at the tavern to hear the thoughts of others and share our plans and hopes.

Godfrey stands before the crowd and takes a moment to breathe and calm down from the impassioned speech. After doing so he stands a bit more easily.

Now then, who wants to go blow some **** up? Godfrey says with a smile.

I have goals for two different groups for the next few weeks, and boy will I need some volunteers. The first plan is thanks to the collaboration of our friend Vincent here that pointed out the Crimson Keep nearby the town is still standing and potentially full of various traps and who knows what else the Crimson had set up within there. We hope to have some individuals from the town join forces to go clear out the remaining forces staying within the structure, then set up some demolition charges to hopefully bring down the remainder of the main keep/barracks. Our friend Vincent has offered to take over one of the smaller outbuildings to use as a workshop for his research. Because he isn’t directly associated with the town, any Crimson that come by are unlikely to bother him or take issue with his presence. While also serving as an early warning for us in the event that the Crimson return and attempt to take over the space once more as a base to be used against Haven.

The other group I would like to put together should be folks that are good at blending into groups. Particularly groups of soldiers on the march. We are hoping to spread misinformation amongst the ranks of some of the groups we have heard rumors of. If this group manages their objectives properly, they will hopefully help to slow the advance of the Crimson and perhaps even lead them in incorrect directions temporarily to avoid “traps” that they had scouted earlier. This will be in collaboration with the Hunter’s Guild to ensure some traps are run into. We still have a small handful of old Crimson uniforms from the barracks that were left behind to distribute to any members interested in assisting with this objective.

With that, I’m going to go ahead and stop talking to allow some of the other guild leaders to speak on their plans. Come by the barracks if either of these plans interests you.

Godfrey steps down from the bench and takes a seat on the bottom joining the others. Next stands Belisarius cautiously using his cane and standing up at the bottom of the bench.

Hello everyone, rather than beat around the bush too much I’m hoping to just jump into the plans. In recent months, our guild building had been completely ransacked by the blight and many of the samples and items within it were irreparably damaged. As most here know due to the massive portal opening not terribly long ago, as well as the massive explosion of our town hall killing the mayors of the nearby towns. There was a group who called themselves The Children of the Cinderlord. These individuals were fanatic followers that claimed to be working with some flame elemental of massive size and knowledge. My present working theory is that there were numerous portals opened that have shifted something in the elementals from the other planes and have started to create these strange and particularly aggressive elementals that continue to appear nearby our town.

Regardless of the theories and thoughts I have on the topic, there is the more immediate issue that these elementals continue to appear from the world around us at an increasing rate. I hope to gather some information and more samples, it has taken time, but I’ve created a couple of sample collecting boxes. The ones prepared right now are smaller versions of the lightning rods some of you may have remembered in the past. The goal is to syphon some of the latent energy from slain elementals before they are able to return to their home plane. With this collected energy I am hoping we can investigate some of the anomalies that we have been seeing with their sporadic behaviour. If this interests you, please come find me at the guild building when you have a chance and we can get started on the project once our group has collected.

Belisarius carefully sits back down on the bench settling in for a moment and giving a somewhat nervous looking Jeffrey an encouraging tap on the shoulder. Jeffrey bolts up quickly and steps onto the bench immediately launching into his plan.

Hello! I’m Jeffrey, While I may be a bit of a newer face to some of you, I assure you that I have been in the town for quite awhile now. During the blight’s push into town, I was one of the members who thankfully had a bit of knowhow thanks to a healthy helping of adventures when I was a bit younger. When the time came to organize and pull together our resources to make the Town Watch group I was the first in line to offer my help with keeping an eye out and giving healing to those in need. While the town seems to have poor luck with retaining a Healer’s Guild in the past, it is my hope that we can work together to create a more inclusive organization of others who want to help spread healing to those in need when or wherever you may find yourself to give such expertise. Many other guilds of similar talents before have focused solely on magical healing to resolve all issues. While this can work for quick fixes in some situations, it fails to cure some of the more common ailments that might affect health such as an infection or sickness that can linger. There are a few of us together from our time in the Town Watch still who have skills in various kinds of healing from magical to alchemical to things like poultices and other more natural methods of healing.

The guild building is in a bit of a sorry state right now, Thanks to the blight and various guild leaders before Godfrey there is just a lot of mess in the supplies we have presently. There are also some old warehouses around town that had supplies in before the blight overtook those areas. Our current goal for this gathering period is to go and see if we can’t find some of these supplies and see what managed to survive the blight, take stock and figure out what we need to go gather in the future. Additionally go around town and give some check-ins on some of the other townsfolk that stuck around but might still have wounds from the blight beasts that were bursting into town. There should be plenty to do and help with about town for those interested in trying to help build this guild up again and tend to those around us. If you are interested in assisting please come by the healer’s guild just across the field over there.

With that Jeffrey plops down back onto the bench and looks over towards Nathaniel who smoothly climbs out of his seat and stands on the bench next.

Hello all of you, my name is Nathaniel Knight. I have lived in Haven for quite some time as one of the hunters around town. While I do not particularly have any expertise in war of battles, I am extensively experienced in tracking and trapping. For those that are new to town or have not had the chance to meet me yet, I lead the Hunting Guild of our fair town. Truth be told it isn’t particularly much of a guild yet, but with time I think it is likely we can grow into a bit more of a collective that share in adventures to find some of the larger creatures nearby and hunt them for food as well as sport. The nature of the surrounding area used to draw some very peculiar creatures due to the size of the lake and varied landscape. There are plenty of odd and unique beasts to go and learn about to better master our surroundings and environment.

But I digress, unfortunately with the looming issue over our home spending time hunting is not a luxury we have at the moment. However this does not mean that the same skills cannot be used to help assist the other efforts. We have spent some time looking over maps and coming up with potential locations where we think the Crimson may come in and try to set up camps due to natural resources being desirable. The plan is to go and prepare these areas to the best of our ability for their arrivals with various surprises to hopefully disrupt their advance. There are unfortunately many potential locations where they may come to rest, and we have no way of narrowing them down, so we will not have as long to prepare each of them. With some luck we may either intercept more data, or perhaps some scouts will find details as to where they are presently planning so that we may be more effective in our trappings.

As some of you may have noticed, the roads into and out of town have been particularly empty as of late. This is because of how much smaller our town has become. It would seem that some of our neighboring villages still are holding a grudge for what happened in the townhall awhile back. We are going to have to become a bit more self sufficient it would seem. However the abandoned roads give us a great location to set up surprises and interfere with their approach. Any of those who are more trained in scouting and stealth would greatly help with this process, even though it will not be particularly glorious or quick on the turnaround, the patient approach can work best with even the most rabid of prey. While we don’t really have a gathering place or “guild” building, I have a hut over on the edge of the previously blighted forest, please come by if you are willing to lend assistance or are curious to learn more. We will likely be doing a great deal of travel, but I promise that we can make it back to town for blue bake and drinks a few times in the weeks to come.

With that he slides down into his seat once more with a small smirk at the thought of the mischief to come. With the conclusion of the last member standing Godfrey stands up once more.

Well everyone, the hour grows late and I believe we all have much to think about. Before I shall officially bring this meeting to a close, let it be known that we shall call a gathering set for next Saturday (5/16/20) at seven and a half bells (7:30PM). This shall be an open forum for all to come and share a cool drink while discussing the future of our city and its people. It is my hope that, should the gathering prove successful, we shall continue such meetings with some sort of regularity so that we may involve as many as possible in the discussions of what is to come. We all have fought and bleed for this city. Haven is our home and we must all come together if we are to prosper. Spread the word as you see fit, I hope to see as many new and returning faces at the next gathering as possible.

(((The BGA period for this plot period has a deadline of 5/24/20 by 11:59pm. Please make sure to get your BGAs in by then. The link to our IBGA form is: https://forms.gle/CLU5sMiUkv6EYWLd6 additionally if you wish to engage in the IC roleplay night or interactions on our discord, please review the post in the OOG area of our forums for a link and our specifications specifically for this online period. Thanks for your time!!)))
 
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