Crimson Suicides: The Baron and the Dryad

"From a distance, Blackseagate is a masterpiece of light and stone. Her pale towers pierce the horizon, catching the sun like ivory spears, while the harbor overflows with sails crowded together like the folded wings of great white birds. It is the capital’s greatest promise—a city where gold passes from hand to hand with practiced, grease-slicked ease. But up close, the mask slips. The air grows thick with a suffocating mist of salt, woodsmoke, and the metallic tang of coin. Here, trade and corruption are twins born of the same greed, and no one is hypocritical enough to pretend otherwise. In Blackseagate, everything is a commodity: names, favors, and silence. You can reinvent yourself a thousand times over, provided your purse is heavy enough and your contacts know exactly when to look away.

On the city’s jagged edge, where the law thins and the shadow of the nobility grows long, stands the Fighting Pig Inn. Within these smoke-stained walls gather the Crimson Suicides, a brotherhood of mercenaries bound by a single, jagged truth: they take the contracts everyone else is too sane to touch. For a Suicide, danger isn’t a deterrent—it’s the point. The room hums tonight with a restless, electric energy as deals are struck in whispers and tempers fray against the heat of the hearth. Around you, the legends of the company stir in the gloom. You see Erdwan, the elven bard, weaving songs that turn drink into confession, and Khazar, the drow blade-dancer, whose twin steels flicker in a silent promise of violence. In the corners loom the others: the massive, hungry silhouette of Grunt the troll; Traki the dwarf, whose temper is a short fuse; the restless, feline grace of Faude Myon; and Sorcha the tiefling, who scans the room with a predator’s knowing smile. Apart from the noise stands Ayn, the dragon-trainer, wrapped in a quiet, ancient strength, while somewhere in the deepest shadows, the mad priest Rati mutters gibberish that sounds increasingly like a funeral dirge.

Max Twoblades, a man whose reputation cuts as deep as his steel, signals you through the haze. His face is a mask of grim business as he leans across a table stained by a century of spilled ale. "It’s delic