ajanders
Explorer
entry
Key Phrase: "There's one law for the rich, and another for the poor"
Ingredients: The last day of a religious festival, Son of a dung shoveler, "The reports of my death have been greatly exagerrated"
Association: The Squats (It's the seediest part of town... and it extends beyond the walls on the south side).
The Association ingredient is new for this round (and all future rounds). If you want to learn more about the squats, I suggest checking the Geography thread. Links to the various threads can be found on the first post of the Contest thread.
Little John, M Half-Orc Rogue2 Ranger2 CR 4; Size:M
Type Humanoid; HD (2d6)+(2d10)+8; hp 39; Init +2; Spd Walk 30';
AC 12 (flatfooted 10, touch 12), Dagger +5 0'/P (1d4+2 19-20/x2 Neither T ) or Dagger (Thrown) +5 10'/P (1d4+2 19-20/x2 Neither T ) or Club +5 0'/B (1d6+2 20/x2 Neither M ) or Club (Thrown) +5 10'/B (1d6+2 20/x2 Neither M ) or Handaxe +5 0'/S (1d6+2 20/x3 Neither S ) or Shortbow +5 60'/P (1d6 20/x3 Neither M );
SA: Orc Blood,Sneak Attack +1d6,Favored Enemy(Animal),Evasion; Vision: Darkvision (60'),Normal AL: TN; Sv: Fort
+5, Ref +5, Will +0; Str 14, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 11, Cha 8
Skills and Feats: Appraise +5, Balance +6, Climb +6, Craft (Bowmaking) +8, Craft (Carpentry) +5, Hide +5, Jump +6, Listen +2, Move Silently +5, Pick Pocket +6, Spot +2, Tumble +6, Use Rope +8, Wilderness Lore +6; Alertness,Ambidexterity,Armor Proficiency (Light) (1x),Armor Proficiency (Medium) (1x),Exotic Weapon Proficiency,Martial Weapon Proficiency,Run,Shield Proficiency,Simple Weapon Proficiency,Track,Two-Weapon Fighting
Possessions: 1 Leather; 1 Dagger; 1 Club; 1 Handaxe; 1 Shortbow; 1 Outfit (Explorer's); 2 Artisan's Tools; 1 Thieves' Tools; 1 Backpack; 1 Bedroll; 1 Bucket; 1 Flint and Steel;
History:
In every city it has always been said “There is one law for the rich and another law for the poor.”
Many people – particularly the poor ones – find this unfair, because the laws for the rich are much gentler and more supportive than the laws for the poor. Rich people generally find this perfectly appropriate.
Mor’s End has solved this problem with a simple elegance. To prevent fires, all buildings within the city walls must have their first floors be of brick. To encourage public morality, all residential buildings may only serve one family (though extended families are permitted as, of course, are servants and slaves).
This makes it at least twice as expensive to build inside the city walls as outside them, as well as ensuring only those in good standing with the brickmakers can build at all.
It’s not hard, in short, to be forced to live outside the walls of Mor’s End in the Squats, where you receive the law for the poor. That would be no law at all, in case you were curious. Laws are for the people within the walls.
That said, the people outside the walls have tried to get themselves organized: they don’t really have a choice. This organization usually starts with dung-shoveling. Frankly, there’re too many people making too much dung to let that problem continue for very long.
They started about ten years ago with some simple stuff. Who was going to shovel dung? How where they going to move it around? Who would be helping them? Where was it going to go?
From there, someone realized that the dung, although smelly and disgusting, was an excellent fertilizer: improving their kitchen garden. In fact, it improved one dung shoveling family’s kitchen garden so much they produced an excess of vegetables, which they were able to barter for a pair of chickens. The chickens began to lay eggs, some of which turned into other chickens. Things were looking up for this particular family, and that’s really where our story begins.
Big John was a half-orc. So was his wife. They weren’t very pretty, but they were very strong and very hardworking. They had eight children, all of whom were up and doing something as soon as they could toddle. They thought of themselves as simple hardworking people.
Somebody inside the city thought differently. To them, Big John was a potential leader, a troublemaker in the making…a threat. So one day two dozen guardsmen in back and breast rode out of the city gate, burned down his family’s cabin, rode over the garden, scattered the children, and took Big John away in chains.
One man shook his fist at them for what they did and they cut his hand off at the wrist. After that, everyone was quiet. Big John never came back. Most people said he was hung from the walls, on the inside, so people could throw eggs at the corpse.
Mrs. John was never quite right after that: she tried to take care of her family as best she could, but the kids got a little wild. The youngest one, named Little John after his daddy, got pretty wild.
He was strong, quick, and smart as a whip: he could have been as great a man as his daddy. He never tried to be like his daddy, possibly because he was smart as whip.
What nobody realized was that Little John remembered his daddy very well. He’d gone in for sneak thievery in grand style: laundry, scarves, and cloaks plucked out of windows, clotheslines, or even the backs of sufficiently drunken nobles. If being honest could get you hung, how much worse could being dishonest be? Certainly it paid better. There was money to keep the family fed and little extra for emergencies.
Days went by and Little John kept on with his thieving until the day he made his mistake. He took a paladin’s cloak. It worked out pretty well for him for about fifty feet: it’s no great trick to outrun a man in platemail. He recognized he’d made an error when the paladin put a crossbow bolt in his side. He dropped the cloak and ran, bleeding.
After a minute, he stopped running and just bled while he thought about things.
Mor’s End was no place for the likes of him. If he lived honest, he’d be killed. If he lived dishonest, he’d be killed.
It was clearly time to leave, so he left.
He didn’t leave all that far, but he went way out into the fringes of the Squats with some of the vaguely civilized hunters and trappers and got to liking the lifestyle. He was pretty much done with Mor’s End.
Then Big John walked out of the city gates one morning, old, tottery, and battered. Rumors of his death had been exaggerated, it seemed. As if anyone had ever been hung in Mor’s End!
And he’d had some ideas while he was in prison. He’d been preached at by clerics of every description while he was there, and he’d had enough of the whole lot of them.
As far as he was concerned, this was the last day he’d celebrate anything to do with the religions of the brickmakers and the silkfishers and the moneychangers and the lawmakers.
He was going to find a religion that would let a fellow get ahead, and if it wasn’t by fair means, it would be by foul.
Little John heard him out, and said he’d help his daddy. But he wasn’t very happy about it then, and he hasn’t gotten any more so.
Description: Little John is not so little: he stands about six feet tall and is not so lightly built. He moves gracefully, accustomed to making his hands, feet, and body do exactly what he wants them to.
Little John speaks rarely enough as it is, but when worried about his father, he’s borderline mute and exceptionally surly.
His clothes, weapons, and tools are simple and worn, but very functional.
Adventure Hooks
1. Big John has been embittered by his imprisonment and is now a Lawful Evil person in search of a god he can be the cleric of. Little John is not quite desperate enough to talk to a cleric about this yet, but he’s getting close. Sometimes a cleric gets steered to these sorts of thing by their god: after all, a stitch in time saves nine.
2. Sir Bertrand, a noble paladin, has an excellent memory for faces, particularly those attached to half-orcs who try to steal his +3 cloak of Charisma. Little John will go into Mor’s End if he has to, mostly to get tools. When they meet, they may engage in a lengthy discussion of the statute of limitations on theft. “You took my cloak!” “Your cloak!” “Well, I got it back…” Eventually this discussion will disintegrate into fighting, which a party might get involved in on either side.
3. The man who stood up for Big John and lost his hand for it had a name: he was Ambrose Relkins. He did nothing else remarkable after that because he died the next morning from his wounds. Ambrose was buried in a shallow grave in the pauper’s field. His wooden tombstone mysteriously does not decay, but remains as fresh and bright as the day it was planted. Some people think it’s a curse, and that Ambrose walks about at night searching for his hand. The truth of the matter is Little John replaces it every month or two to honor the one man who stood up for his father. Of course, he doesn’t mention this to anyone and goes to considerable trouble to keep it secret. Sadly, the fact that someone makes periodic secret visits to the pauper’s graveyard to disturb the corpses buried there is also the sort of thing people might feel obliged to investigate and stop.
Key Phrase: "There's one law for the rich, and another for the poor"
Ingredients: The last day of a religious festival, Son of a dung shoveler, "The reports of my death have been greatly exagerrated"
Association: The Squats (It's the seediest part of town... and it extends beyond the walls on the south side).
The Association ingredient is new for this round (and all future rounds). If you want to learn more about the squats, I suggest checking the Geography thread. Links to the various threads can be found on the first post of the Contest thread.
Little John, M Half-Orc Rogue2 Ranger2 CR 4; Size:M
Type Humanoid; HD (2d6)+(2d10)+8; hp 39; Init +2; Spd Walk 30';
AC 12 (flatfooted 10, touch 12), Dagger +5 0'/P (1d4+2 19-20/x2 Neither T ) or Dagger (Thrown) +5 10'/P (1d4+2 19-20/x2 Neither T ) or Club +5 0'/B (1d6+2 20/x2 Neither M ) or Club (Thrown) +5 10'/B (1d6+2 20/x2 Neither M ) or Handaxe +5 0'/S (1d6+2 20/x3 Neither S ) or Shortbow +5 60'/P (1d6 20/x3 Neither M );
SA: Orc Blood,Sneak Attack +1d6,Favored Enemy(Animal),Evasion; Vision: Darkvision (60'),Normal AL: TN; Sv: Fort
+5, Ref +5, Will +0; Str 14, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 11, Cha 8
Skills and Feats: Appraise +5, Balance +6, Climb +6, Craft (Bowmaking) +8, Craft (Carpentry) +5, Hide +5, Jump +6, Listen +2, Move Silently +5, Pick Pocket +6, Spot +2, Tumble +6, Use Rope +8, Wilderness Lore +6; Alertness,Ambidexterity,Armor Proficiency (Light) (1x),Armor Proficiency (Medium) (1x),Exotic Weapon Proficiency,Martial Weapon Proficiency,Run,Shield Proficiency,Simple Weapon Proficiency,Track,Two-Weapon Fighting
Possessions: 1 Leather; 1 Dagger; 1 Club; 1 Handaxe; 1 Shortbow; 1 Outfit (Explorer's); 2 Artisan's Tools; 1 Thieves' Tools; 1 Backpack; 1 Bedroll; 1 Bucket; 1 Flint and Steel;
History:
In every city it has always been said “There is one law for the rich and another law for the poor.”
Many people – particularly the poor ones – find this unfair, because the laws for the rich are much gentler and more supportive than the laws for the poor. Rich people generally find this perfectly appropriate.
Mor’s End has solved this problem with a simple elegance. To prevent fires, all buildings within the city walls must have their first floors be of brick. To encourage public morality, all residential buildings may only serve one family (though extended families are permitted as, of course, are servants and slaves).
This makes it at least twice as expensive to build inside the city walls as outside them, as well as ensuring only those in good standing with the brickmakers can build at all.
It’s not hard, in short, to be forced to live outside the walls of Mor’s End in the Squats, where you receive the law for the poor. That would be no law at all, in case you were curious. Laws are for the people within the walls.
That said, the people outside the walls have tried to get themselves organized: they don’t really have a choice. This organization usually starts with dung-shoveling. Frankly, there’re too many people making too much dung to let that problem continue for very long.
They started about ten years ago with some simple stuff. Who was going to shovel dung? How where they going to move it around? Who would be helping them? Where was it going to go?
From there, someone realized that the dung, although smelly and disgusting, was an excellent fertilizer: improving their kitchen garden. In fact, it improved one dung shoveling family’s kitchen garden so much they produced an excess of vegetables, which they were able to barter for a pair of chickens. The chickens began to lay eggs, some of which turned into other chickens. Things were looking up for this particular family, and that’s really where our story begins.
Big John was a half-orc. So was his wife. They weren’t very pretty, but they were very strong and very hardworking. They had eight children, all of whom were up and doing something as soon as they could toddle. They thought of themselves as simple hardworking people.
Somebody inside the city thought differently. To them, Big John was a potential leader, a troublemaker in the making…a threat. So one day two dozen guardsmen in back and breast rode out of the city gate, burned down his family’s cabin, rode over the garden, scattered the children, and took Big John away in chains.
One man shook his fist at them for what they did and they cut his hand off at the wrist. After that, everyone was quiet. Big John never came back. Most people said he was hung from the walls, on the inside, so people could throw eggs at the corpse.
Mrs. John was never quite right after that: she tried to take care of her family as best she could, but the kids got a little wild. The youngest one, named Little John after his daddy, got pretty wild.
He was strong, quick, and smart as a whip: he could have been as great a man as his daddy. He never tried to be like his daddy, possibly because he was smart as whip.
What nobody realized was that Little John remembered his daddy very well. He’d gone in for sneak thievery in grand style: laundry, scarves, and cloaks plucked out of windows, clotheslines, or even the backs of sufficiently drunken nobles. If being honest could get you hung, how much worse could being dishonest be? Certainly it paid better. There was money to keep the family fed and little extra for emergencies.
Days went by and Little John kept on with his thieving until the day he made his mistake. He took a paladin’s cloak. It worked out pretty well for him for about fifty feet: it’s no great trick to outrun a man in platemail. He recognized he’d made an error when the paladin put a crossbow bolt in his side. He dropped the cloak and ran, bleeding.
After a minute, he stopped running and just bled while he thought about things.
Mor’s End was no place for the likes of him. If he lived honest, he’d be killed. If he lived dishonest, he’d be killed.
It was clearly time to leave, so he left.
He didn’t leave all that far, but he went way out into the fringes of the Squats with some of the vaguely civilized hunters and trappers and got to liking the lifestyle. He was pretty much done with Mor’s End.
Then Big John walked out of the city gates one morning, old, tottery, and battered. Rumors of his death had been exaggerated, it seemed. As if anyone had ever been hung in Mor’s End!
And he’d had some ideas while he was in prison. He’d been preached at by clerics of every description while he was there, and he’d had enough of the whole lot of them.
As far as he was concerned, this was the last day he’d celebrate anything to do with the religions of the brickmakers and the silkfishers and the moneychangers and the lawmakers.
He was going to find a religion that would let a fellow get ahead, and if it wasn’t by fair means, it would be by foul.
Little John heard him out, and said he’d help his daddy. But he wasn’t very happy about it then, and he hasn’t gotten any more so.
Description: Little John is not so little: he stands about six feet tall and is not so lightly built. He moves gracefully, accustomed to making his hands, feet, and body do exactly what he wants them to.
Little John speaks rarely enough as it is, but when worried about his father, he’s borderline mute and exceptionally surly.
His clothes, weapons, and tools are simple and worn, but very functional.
Adventure Hooks
1. Big John has been embittered by his imprisonment and is now a Lawful Evil person in search of a god he can be the cleric of. Little John is not quite desperate enough to talk to a cleric about this yet, but he’s getting close. Sometimes a cleric gets steered to these sorts of thing by their god: after all, a stitch in time saves nine.
2. Sir Bertrand, a noble paladin, has an excellent memory for faces, particularly those attached to half-orcs who try to steal his +3 cloak of Charisma. Little John will go into Mor’s End if he has to, mostly to get tools. When they meet, they may engage in a lengthy discussion of the statute of limitations on theft. “You took my cloak!” “Your cloak!” “Well, I got it back…” Eventually this discussion will disintegrate into fighting, which a party might get involved in on either side.
3. The man who stood up for Big John and lost his hand for it had a name: he was Ambrose Relkins. He did nothing else remarkable after that because he died the next morning from his wounds. Ambrose was buried in a shallow grave in the pauper’s field. His wooden tombstone mysteriously does not decay, but remains as fresh and bright as the day it was planted. Some people think it’s a curse, and that Ambrose walks about at night searching for his hand. The truth of the matter is Little John replaces it every month or two to honor the one man who stood up for his father. Of course, he doesn’t mention this to anyone and goes to considerable trouble to keep it secret. Sadly, the fact that someone makes periodic secret visits to the pauper’s graveyard to disturb the corpses buried there is also the sort of thing people might feel obliged to investigate and stop.
