Skip to the town...

After a long, and mostly unpleasant trip, you finally arrived at your destination.

The border village of Char was slowly being filled with slaves, coming in to dig and work in the mine. They’re being kept on the outskirts, but their guards and handlers have filled up the one local inn, the Boar’s Head. As you ride into town, you passed the slaves penned up in a rented field. Already dozens of strong men have arrived and are spending their days sitting on their hands, waiting for you to clear the path for them. As your eyes wander over them, you smile, resources and bait are what you see. The two guards on the penned and chained slaves look you over nervously, seeing a well-armed man in leather armor, with the grace of a seasoned warrior and the horse of a desert bandit.

As your horse canters through the village, you watch the locals carefully. They’re scampering around, trying not to draw any attention, not with their town overrun by slavers. The locals have the pale skin and red hair that most Dedicarans shared, while the slavers had the darker hair of northerners. The slaves were mostly northerners as well, with a scattering of other races and species, as well as the occasional Dedicaran, condemned to slavery for some crime, or debt. There shouldn’t have been this much tension, the slavers were spending money and the mine would soon bring many services and soldiers to the region. The locals should have been happy. The fact that they weren’t meant that something was going very wrong.

Only locals filled the streets, it was far too early for slavers with nothing to do, except drink, to rise. You left your horse, Carnex, standing near the entrance to the inn. He’s a well trained horse, stolen from the desert nomads and would respond to any attempted theft with serious **** (as you could attest from personal experience).

The bar is mostly empty, as most of the slavers are sleeping off the night before, but you’re able to order some warm food and warm beer from the innkeeper. It’s brought to the table you’ve chosen (in the corner, facing the door), by his wife, a middle-aged woman with a matronly figure, who sits down opposite you as you start to dig into your food.

As you eat, she explains that the slavers thought it would be just a delivery, so they’d failed to bring along enough…entertainment slaves. At first they’d contented themselves with the local whores (all two of them), but now they were moving on to the daughters and wives of the locals. Several had already been **** and the local sheriff had been hung up by his feet and bled dry when he’d objected. You were the first armed man she’d seen who hadn’t been leading a line of slaves, so naturally, she wanted you to help.

Before you could answer, a younger woman, with the innkeeper’s wife’s impressive bustline, but without her impressive stomach, came bounding down the stairs, three steps ahead of a furious slaver with his whip in one hand, while the other held his pants up. “Get back here, you bitch,” he yelled, as the innkeeper lifted a large butcher’s knife and his wife grabbed a frying pan.

You rose, intending to…