Raam: The City of Anarchy IC

[RandomWombat]

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Drifts of sand from the dunes beyond are carried into the Ghost City, building up against the northfacing walls of buildings. A steady southward wind that hasn't let up all day. Empty streets that seem forgotten make the slums suit their name. On any other day the outcastes would be scrounging for what food and water they can get, but today the smell of trouble comes on the wind.

The Unreliable Kank. An unimpressive name worn by an unimpressive bunkhouse. The sandstone building is a squat, rectangular lump growing out of the dusty ground. The door, made of thin, cheap wood sports a few ragged holes and scarcely boasts a lock. With a door a halfling could kick down, why bother?


Faldar and his retainers have come to this place, a bunkhouse loosely called an inn by some. Often the first stop of mercenaries and vagabonds passing into the city. Few such individuals find their way out. According to House Lufi's informants on the city's fringes, a new group of hopeful brigands has arrived and is looking for opportunity. Opportunity the noble houses could give. More importantly, House Lufi wishes to scoop them up before Vespos gets its claws into them. All the power and personnel in the hands of one part of an alliance seldom lends power to the voices of the rest.

With their wagon and its dutiful kank trundling along behind them, they arrive outside the withered wooden door.


The selfsame band of elven brigands finds themselves lounging around the sparsely furnished bunkhouse. The main room features a few sandstone benches, a single rocking chair, and two rows of four creaky cots with ratty blankets for mattresses. It is run by Kev, a human man with short, dark, curly hair. He's seated on one of the benches, leaning back against the wall and contemplating a broom with which he might sweep up some of the sand that's blown in under the door, if he could be so bothered.

Besides Zantos and his comrades, and of course good Kev, there are only two other people in the bunkhouse. Both are, like Kev, permanent residents of the squalid little piece of respite from the sun.

There's Denver, a human butcher, works out of the kitchen attached to the building. His meals are not complimentary, except perhaps to Kev in return for the space. He operates out of the back of the bunkhouse, where on a less windy day he would be peddling salted meat and dried jerkies.

Then there's Whilma, an old elf. A sad sight to behold, her legs misshapen and crippled by old wounds long since healed, but never healed well. Unable to run with the wind any longer, she sits in her rickety rocking chair carving things from wood that others bring her to work for them. Walking sticks, clubs, arrows, spears. Right now she whittles away at what may be the head of a wooden spear, or a smaller wooden shiv.


Not far from the bunkhouse, three mysterious figures lead their newest batch of converts back towards the city proper. A group of outcastes, those the city cast aside and refused to accept. The ideal candidates to submit to the promises of a new order, an order in which they can have the place they never did before. Three humans, unremarkable and carrying little in the way of protection, trail behind Lazaar and his subordinates. Two men and a woman.

All that remains is to escort the converts back to the territory of the faithful, in the northwestern part of Raam. It is not a distant destination from the Ghost City. Their route takes them past the local bunkhouse, where new gloryseekers pass through to meet their fate in the City of Anarchy.