Just a loose idea that you can monkey with, modify or completely ignore, as you please.

A resident of the community of Three Moons, in Hwyrrd's Promise, recently renamed the 'Heteronomy of Virduk,' you grew up surrounded by a strange collection of halfling contradictions, those proud and those beaten, those growing warm to the new Calastian order and those sinking into bitter talk of the 'old days' when Halflings could chart their own destiny. So many willing to talk, so few willing to act.

Your older brother, Kitta, went on to become a woodsmen and tracker in the Hornsaw, braving its dangers and bringing back tales of the Elven folk said to be lost within, ever battling the tainted titanspawn within. His tales amused, but nothing more, until he returned with such an Elf in tow, a feral man, skittish and tattooed, who told the tale of how his people had sacrificed greatly to keep their woods free of the taint of the fallen titans. His words triggered a remembrance of a Ranger friend of Kitta's, who served the goddess Tanil, and expressed some consternation at Halfling complaints that they had no control over who owned their lands, what government determined their fates and administered their laws. She seemed to think that a person did not need to be tied to lands, and that any one ruler was therefore irrelevant, as a *free* person could simply walk away, and thus be beyond his reach. You cannot tax what you cannot catch, she said.

Meeting this strange tattooed Elf reminded you of her words, for here too was a person who had no idea who 'Virduk' was, or why a Halfling should walk with eyes downcast around his fierce half-orc soldiers. Kitta was able to put you in touch with a Half-Elven Priest of Tanil, an archer of the Liliandeli, an elite brotherhood of woodsland archers, named Fox (at least that was the name he used). You trained in the outskirts of the Hornsaw, and learned to recognize some of the many poisonous plants and animals therein, if only to avoid them, while growing such in your devotion to this new concept of 'freedom,' no longer embittered and powerless to do anything about it, that you soon found yourself able to channel the holy powers of Tanil, to influence the minds of the animals that serve her and to make your own luck, instead of standing around waiting for it to be chosen for you by some human overlord a thousand leagues away.

After a season, Fox declared your training complete, that you must be free to find your own path, that the world, that Tanil herself, was now your only teacher, the only one who could direct your training. He smiled when you said that you had to return to Three Moons, to your family, to share the heartening lightness you now felt. In retrospect, he wasn't smiling because he was happy, he was smiling because he was sad, for he no doubt knew that you no longer would 'fit' in Three Moons.

Your family no longer was your own, they seemed especially bitter, and what they saw as reliable, dependable, acceptable governance, orderly and safe, you described to them as iron chains around their feet, holding them to this land, manacles about their wrists, enslaving them to Calastian overlords, tight steel bands around their chests, keeping them sullen and bitter and defeated, ever grumbling and sour about their lot, while they were free to simply walk away. They humored you at first, but quickly it became less friendly as those you thought were friends told your family that they would not tolerate you 'causing trouble' with words of sedition, insurrection or even treason! They would not tolerate an official crackdown making their lives more difficult because the wrong person heard of your discontent, or some impressionable youth took your words as a rallying cry to action.

It was Kitta who informed you that you had better move along, for the good of the family, and you agreed that it would be better for them, and for you, to put your words into action.

So you walked away, exercising your freedom to disagree.

The Hornsaw forest, despite the presence of the Elves, was a very dangerous place, filled with slave-taking undead raiders from Glivid-Autel, and many foul and venomous beasts, many of them intelligent, titan-loving and even sorcerous. You had no desire to remain within it, at least not until you were much stronger in your faith, and also having grown accustomed to the delights of city life. The only city within walking distance that was not Calastian-run was the strange and forbidding 'City of Death,' Hollowfaust. So you began skirting the forest, heading for it. Now the adventure begins, the adventure of life, where every footstep takes you to new places that are stranger than anything your father could imagine, living in the house his grandparents built, running the farm his father ran before him.

And Hollowfaust is indeed stranger than he could imagine. At first you were horrified by the notion that even the dead in Hollowfaust are not free, required to toil ceaselessly in some unholy perversion of nature. But after inspecting some of the 'farmers' outside the city gates (and being pretty much ignored by the apprentice Necromancer who was supposed to be directing them, but was actually sleeping in the haywagon), you determined that these creatures were mindless animations of bone, little different than the animated stick servants that some of the Druids you met in the Hornsaw used to set up camp or clear out deadwood. The 'dead' did not seem present, only moving thoughtless bones toiled to feed and protect the living of Hollowfaust. It seemed less like sacriledge and more, well, tacky and gross and disrespectful. But you remember the words of Fox, who would drum into your head whenever you would stare askance at some painful and freakish-looking Elven scarification ceremony, that a most important aspect of freedom is respecting others enough to allow them the freedom to behave in ways that do not always make sense to you.

Watching the citizens of Hollowfaust go about their lives, at first seeming as oppressed and grim as your own people in the Heteronomy, you have learned to recognize that these people are indeed free to leave at any time, that they are not bound here, to these laws, to these death-mages, but instead have *chosen* to dwell here and abide by these rules in trade for the protection of the Necromancers. You do not agree with their choice, and when you are done seeing this place, you will again exercise your freedom, perhaps to visit decadent Shelzar, or far Darakeene and it's fabled war-colleges, or frozen Albadia and its barbarian witches, as you please. But for now, there are lessons to be learned here, about freedom, and about this black magic, that you think you may well have to fight someday, for you have heard during your training with Fox of another city of death-mages, a far less wholesome city, named Glivid-Autel, the Society of Immortals, a city founded on slavery and brutality, within the Hornsaw itself. Here in Hollowfaust, you might learn valuable secrets to oppose them, their undead and their necromancy, as it is said that the mages of Hollowfaust and those of Glivid-Autel are all-but at war with each other, disagreeing on some finer points of whatever foulness they craft.

The enemy of my enemy, if not a friend, is at least someone whose tactics should be inspected, particularly if they relate to that enemy...

You have only been in Hollowfaust for a few weeks, and often sleep in abandoned buildings, as you do not have an established 'home,' nor money to waste on such (learning quickly to never leave the cover of a building at night, as the dead patrol the city and cannot be fast-talked!). You find yourself sometimes making small coin for food and the like in the Plaza of Owls, selling healing services and consecrating water for visiting merchants, who are often somewhat superstitious about the walking dead and feel comforted clutching, or even drinking, such during their encounters with them.

You have noticed that healing magics seem inhibited in the rest of the city, as if the lingering aura of death is too strong to channel the forces of life, but in the Plaza of Owls, this aura is weaker, and healing magics work at full strength. Experimentation with a necromantic cantrip, Inflict Minor Wounds, has also shown you that the reverse is also true, save for the Plaza of Owls, necromantic magics seem enhanced in potency, which serves to explain the popularity of this city with the Necromantic Guildsmen.

You have also noticed that a Half-Orc you traveled with briefly on the road has also been hanging around the plaza, and while you never liked Half-Orcs back home, especially ones in Calastian uniforms, as this one was, he doesn't seem to be in Calastian colors any longer, and is clearly looking for someone here, a wizard friend if you remember right from his talk on the road. It seems that you are not the only one to free yourself from the life you led back in the Heteronomy by walking away...