3821, the last winter month of the year.
Governor Adeeb Wasirri
20 years old
Health and Physical Abilities
Fit
Healthy
Social Skills
Practiced in Court Manners
Rogueish Charm
Practical Skills
Competent Swordsman
Competent Tumbler
Mediocre Rider
Novice Sneak
Agents and Councillors
Aldagor (Barrister): Unoccupied
Balpher (Garrison Commander): Unoccupied
Desan (steward): Unoccupied:
Allies
-Vest (Friend, Duelist, former smuggler)
Vassals
Mayor Veera: Unknown relationship
Sir Madagor: Unknown relationship
Assets
-A well bred riding horse.
-An ageing riding horse.
-A Duelling Saber
-Several sets of fine gentleman's clothing.
-Twenty Wasirri Gaurdsmen
Wealth:
-A heavy bag of gold crowns.
-A chest of somewhat questionable silver crowns.
Bonewatch
Infrastructure
-Tiny Stone Keep on a hilltop.
-Empty stables
-Barracks with crowded quarters.
-Poorly stocked and kept armoury.
-Rickety wooden outer palisade.
-patchy overgrown "dirt" roads
-Mostly Unmanned rickety wooden watchtowers.
-a handful of wooden homes within the walls.
Supplies
-Six months worth of poor quality grain.
Population
-Undisciplined, poorly equipped, poorly trained garrison of ninety men.
-A half dozen personal servants.
-Various farmers and their families in the surrounding area.
You spend a few days settling in, and begin to attend to your affairs. You send Vest on a ride out to BleakHaven, to learn more about the temperament of your subjects, and gather information from less evasive sources. He readily agrees that this is a good idea, and leaves almost immediately.
With Aldagor you meet to discuss matters of local law and custom. He tells you little that you do not know, mostly the King's law is the only official code of conduct. Though the late governor apparently enacted several stern measures regarding things like trade and travel, with penalties for the sale of bad goods or for unauthorized exit from the province to be met with stiff penalties, including indentured servitude or public humiliation, at the governor's discretion. Shortly before his death he also stiffened the penalties for espionage upon agents of the crown, adding public execution by bloodletting to the list of potential punishments. In more civilised courts such penalties would be considered barbaric, but you suppose the frontier is a very different sort of place from what you are used to.
With Desan you discuss taxes and matters of supply. He explains that your direct lowborn subjects tend to pay taxes in the form of grain, beer, labor and military service. Your vassals however, tend to pay in coin and a share of the meager trade goods that they produce, mostly metal and refined lumber. Over the last decade however, the taxes paid to the governor have dwindled considerably, with farmers giving grain cut with wild seed and increasingly weak beer, and Sir Madagor failing to respond to the last request for tax-coin at all. The craftsmen in the local area are mostly unskilled, forcing anything of quality to be imported, either from the other provincial towns in the case of basic craftsmanship, or from the kingdom proper in the case of anything actually well made. Even decent food often has to be imported, as very little in the way of foodstuffs besides grain and a few tough vegetables are produced by the provincial towns, and the last round of disease left the peasantry reeling, causing food shortages that are only just being recovered from. Overall, the economy you have inherited is delicate and weak, capable of supporting very little of note.
Information gained from your councillors you begin to see to other matters yourself. Firstly you look over the garrison, the barracks and the armoury. The barracks is cramped, with too many beds too close together, and little space for day to day living beyond what's available in a very rudimentary kitchen. As you look over their living space the men complain loudly about the lack of variety in the food, which apparently consists almost entirely of bread and porridge. You also notice after careful observation that despite the cramped furnishings the barracks doesn't seem as overcrowded as you had first thought, with many of the beds seeming bare and entirely unused. The armoury is in rather bad shape, not only is it in rather poor stock, with nary a scrap of mail or a proper halberd in sight, but the equipment that is unclaimed is spotted with rust and left poorly organized or cared for, one dagger even lying discarded in the dirt. The fletching on what few arrows are being stored is poor even to your untrained eyes, and moths seem to have gotten into some of the linen padding. When you've made what inventory you can you fetch your gaurdsmen, determined to set a better example for the garrison than they've ever before gotten.
You spar with your personal guards for a large portion of the next few days, and off-duty soldiers form a habit of watching you do so. While they don't have the panache of professional swordsmen, your guards are worthy opponents, each having some degree of formal training of their own. They are very competent fighters, though their style has been made rough and inelegant by the rigours of a more military lifestyle than your own. The skill of yourself and your own personal guards does not seem entirely lost on the garrison, whose competence, from what you've seen, pales in comparison.
...
Settled in, and a little context gathered, you decide to speak with the prisoner, so that you may decide what to do with him. He's been kept in the dungeon underneath the keep, which is just as cramped and tiny as the rest of the structure, with only a few dark cells. Aldagor tells you that he's named Arin, a common man born and raised in BleakHaven, without a trade or respectable profession. The governor had been speaking privately with him when they began to argue loudly, and the man stabbed him to death with a sliver of steel he had hid on his person.
You are led to the door of his cell, Aldagor and a few of your gaurds in tow, one of which helpfully slides the slat covering a barred viewing portal set in the door. You spy a man leaning on the wall of the cell, rising onto his feet, his hand shielding his eyes from the light. His hair is long, matted and filthy, and he is thin from hunger, his knuckles skinned and raw. He scowls at you as his eyes adjust to the light. "
Here i was hoping that was dinner. Come to haul me to the swinging tree then?"