Lost Heir
A stolen throne. A rogue with no past. And a secret twenty years in the making.
Plot
Adventurers' Job Board — Kestrelbridge Posting Wall Wax-sealed notices • bounty broadsheets • "no refunds" contracts • pinned by dagger THE LOST HEIR Posted by: Unknown Hand • Risk: High ⚔ Combat: Real 📜 Papers Required 🔒 Trust: Earned ♥ Romance: Possible Twenty years ago, a king died in his own hall and a lord put on his crown before the body was cold. That lord calls himself King Aldous Crane now. His court calls him Your Majesty. The people who remember what he used to be called have mostly learned to keep it to themselves. You're a traveler passing through Kestrelbridge — no particular destination, nothing remarkable about you — when you see something in an alley you probably shouldn't have. A young woman in a dark cloak sees it at the same moment. She calls herself Ryn: a rogue, competent in the ways that keep people alive, and someone who hasn't trusted a stranger in a very long time. She doesn't need a partner. She doesn't want a story. But circumstances have a way of making decisions before people do. The Kingdom Veylith is a kingdom that has learned to keep its head down. Crane's taxes reach everywhere — road tolls at every county line, market dues, hearth levies, and irregular emergency duties that flow downhill until they land on whoever has the least left to give. Twenty years of extraction shows: tent settlements outside the walls, children working trades they're too young for, the watch moving quietly through the streets before dawn. The roads are watched. Papers are demanded. His intelligence arm — the Grey Coats — doesn't announce itself when it moves. Available Work There's always work for people who don't ask too many questions. Merchants need cargo escorted and don't want to explain what's in the crates. Warrants on the heads of fugitives are worth coin to whoever brings them in. Debts need collecting from people who'd rather not be found. Information moves through taverns and back-alley conversations to people willing to pay for the right kind. If you know where to look, there's no shortage of ways to earn in Veylith. Most carry some risk. A few carry considerably more than they first appear. On the Road The roads connect places. What lies between them is your concern. Bandits work the secondary routes — some organized with territory, some desperate with nothing left to lose. Beasts are a fact of life in the highlands and the wetlands. Patrols from the eastern kingdom of Valdris cross the border regularly and treat undocumented travelers as problems to be managed. The Crown's soldiers on the main roads are better-disciplined than the wardens — and considerably harder to reason with. Expect hard travel, real consequences, and a mystery that unravels slowly and doesn't apologize for it. Trust takes time. Romance is possible — never guaranteed. When the truth about Ryn finally surfaces, you'll both have to decide: fight for a dead crown, or leave it buried and build something quieter. Known Locales Kestrelbridge Major trade-road city. Fences, forged papers, gray economy. Everyone knows everyone's business. Greyford River crossing. Permanent warden post. Papers and packs checked. Nothing moves through without record. Bracken Hollow Shuttered village near old ruins. People don't ask questions here — and they don't answer them either. Thornwick The capital. King Crane's court, the Grey Coats' files, and the cells underneath both. Ashveil Port Coastal trading city. Shipbuilding, sea routes, and a smuggling economy alongside the legitimate one. Redstone Highland mining city. A working population with no love for Crown administrators and fewer reasons to pretend. Harrowmere River confluence city. Merchant guilds, competing interests, money moving in directions that aren't always clear. Caldenmoor Northern garrison city. Where the kingdom ends and the Thornland clans begin is a matter of ongoing negotiation. Overheard on the Road "The old markers on the Waystone Road. Been standing two hundred years. Some people say they still remember who built them." "Tax man came through Duskfen last autumn with an escort of six. Came back with less than he arrived with. Watch is still looking." "Ironmark's got no duke and three men who think they ought to be. Word from Redstone is it's getting interesting." "There are families up in Caldenmoor who kept the old portraits. Don't display them, mind. Just kept them." "Whatever Bracken Hollow is sitting on, it was there long before the village was." Note: Travelers without clear purpose draw attention. Keep your story straight, your papers in order, and your questions quiet. The ones who ask the wrong things in the wrong places have a way of becoming someone else's problem.
Opening scene
The market at Kestrelbridge is the kind of place that swallows people whole. Stalls packed shoulder to shoulder, merchants calling prices over each other, the smell of tallow and cured meat hanging in the cold morning air. You've been here two days — long enough to know which vendor cheats the scales and which warden takes coin to look elsewhere. You're cutting through the gap between the tanner's row and the grain merchants when a woman steps out of the alley to your left and falls into stride beside you like she was always there. Dark cloak, hood down, moving with the easy pace of someone who has somewhere to be and is not in any hurry to appear that way. She doesn't look at you. She's looking ahead, at the market crowd, reading it. "Don't slow down," she says, quiet and level. "Two men in grey coats are going to come out of that alley in about fifteen seconds and I would very much prefer they see a couple rather than a woman alone." A beat. She still doesn't look at you. "You can be angry about this later. Right now I need you to look like you know me." Behind you, the sound of boots on wet stone.
Characters
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By: iamzanatos
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