As I have no campaign running at the moment, let’s assume a small town at the start of Springtime…
The local temple is readying three of its priests to travel in three separate directions. Two will carry small parcels, while the third will transport a scroll case. The contents are known only to the priests and the master of the temple, the former having sworn by the altar of their deity to make the promised deliveries, on pain of their lives. Absent the three, a score of acolytes and the master are all that remain to conduct services and mind the temple vault where locals keep their savings. Healing services will be in short supply for a month at least.
The town’s smith is furious at the news of delayed coal shipments. His supply is renewed within a week of the roads opening at Winter’s end. Already the price of iron goods has gone up in town, from simple ironmongery to the pair of shining steel swords for sale at Alebar’s Curios.
As for Alebar (ALE-bar), she has no plans to offer more of her secret supply of metal goods for sale than normal. She views the local smith as skilled enough—for a human—and doesn’t wish for him to lose his business and be forced to leave town. Though not the only dwarf living in town, Alebar and the others have no interest in wielding a hammer or setting foot in a forge again. Each remembers their collective failures under the mountain and all the lives lost as a result. All of this won’t keep her from earning extra coins with each knickknack she manages to “find” in the sprawling—and private—cellars beneath her shop and sell to someone in need.
Of the two apprentices to the smith, one has come of age but has no plans to seek out her fortune by wielding a forge hammer into old age. Instead, she plans to acquaint herself with the adventurers (assuming they survive their latest quest) and offer to carry gear in exchange for a share of treasure and a chance to see the more interesting parts of the world. The other apprentice would gladly join her, but fears the wrath of his parents if the boy were to fail at adventuring and be forced to beg the smith for his place back at the forge.
The town’s lord has waited all winter to send word of the murder of his herald—one that remains unsolved. Lord Rothgar had planned to make use of an altar sworn priest of the temple to deliver his missive, but the town guildmasters—devious and selfish, the lot of them!—had already reserved the temple’s services before the first winter snow buried the town. And buried the sound of his herald dying a violent death at the gates to the lord’s castle, come to think of it. The king’s lord trusts his remaining servants, but knows none of them could hope to make the long journey to the King. Yet word must be sent. Whom to trust outside the walls of his castle?
If they know anything about the murder, the guildmasters are keeping that knowledge to themselves. Though each affects an outward air of disdain in public while in the presence of one or more of their fellow guildmasters, the six men and women that run the town’s guilds have long cooperated in private for their mutual benefit. The guildmasters have kept local merchants from buying properties and expanding to run new and varied businesses, convinced nobles to use their influence within King’s Court to ensure only the most amenable and easily manipulated individuals are sent to serve whomever fills the post of king’s lord of the town, and have occasionally resorted to murder as a last resort when court officials, townspeople, and adventurers have proved unwilling to accept how the guildmasters believe the town should be run.
That’s a good start.
