The Shut Vale

Two generations ago the only pass into the vale was shut, and nobody outside has had a straight answer since about what the shutting was for. The people on the inside stayed. Twelve settlements' worth of them, farming and quarrying and burying their dead under their own law, sixty years running, while the outside turned the whole valley into a story told at market.

Now the pass is open. The Cartway Company is cutting a real road through it, the crews are hiring at Threap on the near side, and everything that waited out the closure is about to meet everything that walks in — merchants, guilds, the curious, the owed, and you.

You arrive the way everyone arrives: on foot, at the gate, with whatever you carry. The company factor, Ossian Rede, pays honest coin for honest work and is the most reliable employer in the valley, which is not the same thing as the safest. Work finds you fast. So does everything the work disturbs.

Who this one is for

This is a standing campaign — a whole region on independent clocks, not a single job with an ending. Five different kinds of trouble share the valley, none of them waits for you, and the road you help cut decides who reaches whom first. You can work a season for the company and never leave the roadhead, or follow any thread you disturb as deep as it goes. People remember what you do here, and the valley you leave behind is the one you made.

You start alone, but you won't stay that way long — the first hour of the road puts a companion beside you, and the valley is full of people who can be won over, hired, or given a reason to walk with you.

Before you start

You start at level 2, and the valley holds level 12 territory if you see it through — this one is measured in a couple of weeks of evenings, not one sitting. You bring your own character; the world does the rest.

Faces you'll know on sight