Publisher's blurb:
A small Eastern village, nestled within a bamboo forest and fortified with a wall of sharpened timber. Dirt paths wind their way throughout the village and surrounding trees, while a wooden bridge crosses a small blue pond.
Lamps line the walkways, and many storage barrels and crates can be found within the village itself. Some of the roofs for the huts are tiled, while others have been thatched with straw from rice that’s seasonally grown in the pond nearby.
Adventure Seed
After a weary day of travel, you arrive in the small farming village of Tagami. Children frolic around the town battling each other with short bamboo swords, while elders converse with older peasants hauling rice grain via wheelbarrows. Kindly folk, they invite you in for the night and feed you soup with rice, vegetables and fish. Soon after, you head to bed for some much-needed sleep.
Sometime after midnight a loud noise outside wakes you up. Investigating, you find three well-armed men standing over an elder who has been pushed to the ground. The armed men are demanding rice and dried goods, but the old man apologizes and tells them that the villagers have already given all they can spare last time they came. That, if they were to give any more, they would surely starve.
The largest of the armed men gives the elder an ultimatum. Either the village collects the necessary food for them in the next week, or his group will make them regret it.
If you engage the men they’ll lie to your face; claiming the army has requisitioned the food. But in actuality these men are deserters turned bandits—and only a small amount of the greater gang. If you fight, the men will attempt to flee and return to the others, or die in combat. If this happens, all the bandits will return in three days. But, if you allow the bandits to leave without conflict, they will only return in seven days, as earlier promised.
Once the bandits have either left peacefully, fled, or been killed, the elder will beg you to teach his people to fight like you do or—at the very least—help protect the village when the bandits return.
If you choose to help teach the villagers to fight, you may teach them any skills you know at base level, as well as grant one villager per three days one level in whatever class you are.
When the bandits return, depending on your efforts to reinforce the town and what you’ve taught the villagers will determine your success in driving away the deserters.