The Black Company: Book I

A low-to-mid magic dark-fantasy world where ordinary people (mercenaries, farmers, refugees, deserters) try to survive while ancient sorcery moves nations like chess pieces. The dominant vibe is mud, contracts, betrayals, hard pragmatism, and black humor—but with moments of strange wonder and terrifying beauty. Technology level: Late-medieval: steel weapons, bows/crossbows, siegeworks, horses, river barges, fortified cities, primitive medicine. No gunpowder. Literacy is uncommon; record-keeping is power. Unique elements (setting pillars): Mercenary truth: Wars aren’t “good vs evil,” they’re payroll, supply lines, morale, weather, rumor, and fear. Sorcery as statecraft: The great powers employ near-mythic sorcerers as generals and secret police—especially the Lady and her enslaved sorcerer-lords, the Taken. Wikipedia Myth that won’t die: The world remembers an earlier nightmare empire (“the Domination”), and its shadows still leak into the present. blackcompany.fandom.com Fog-of-war reality: Most “facts” are secondhand. Contradictory accounts are normal; the GM/LLM should treat many claims as uncertain until verified by events. Play loop for OldGregsTavern: The party are small actors near major campaigns—scouts, negotiators, raiders, medics, thieves, priests, deserters, camp followers—caught between empires and rebels. -Quick “World Bible” Play Prompts (for the LLM) Always ask: “Who pays, who starves, who lies, who benefits?”\ Truth model: Treat most information as CLAIMED until confirmed by action or trustworthy sources. Moral model: Avoid clean heroes/villains; show human reasons. War texture: marching, mud, logistics, fear, rumor, and dark jokes. Magic texture: rare, costly, political—and terrifying when it arrives.

Core region: The Northern Empire (The Lady’s rule) A cold-to-temperate swath of fortified cities, great forests, and windswept plains under an iron administrative system enforced by soldiers, taxes, and fear of sorcery. The Lady is the ruler of this empire. Wikipedia Major geographic features (anchor locations): The Great Forest: A vast northern woodland, old and half-mapped, full of outlaw bands, strange beasts, and “wrong” silence. Oar: A large walled city in the far north, near the Great Forest; a key logistical hub and provincial capital with its own local currency traditions. blackcompany.fandom.com Deal: A nearby fortress (and a choke point) supporting northern control and supply. blackcompany.fandom.com The Plain of Fear: A bleak open expanse with a reputation for slaughter, sorcery, and morale-breaking dread—an ideal theater for major battles, routs, and desperate escapes. blackcompany.fandom.com Thud: A rebel-held urban center (or cluster of suburbs/holds) that periodically becomes the focal point of campaigns and propaganda. blackcompany.fandom.com Charm & Juniper (warfront cities/strongholds): Symbolic “names that matter” along the campaign trail—places where sieges decide reputations and where sorcerers are seen on walls like living siege engines. blackcompany.fandom.com Borders & hinterlands: Rebel Marches: A patchwork of villages, baronial keeps, marsh crossings, and burned farmland. No single “nation,” just alliances held together by hate, hope, and desperation. The Old Roads: Remnants of older empires—stone causeways and crumbling watchtowers—still used because they’re the only reliable routes through bad country. Environmental texture: Winters bite. Spring is mud. Summer brings flies, fever, and marches. Autumn means harvest levies and hunger. *Starter Region Map Key (Node Map + Travel Times) Scale: travel by foot column (army pace) or mounted. Foot column: 18–22 miles/day (mud/winter can halve this) Mounted: 30–40 miles/day (needs fresh mounts or rest) Major Nodes OAR (Walled City / Northern Hub) Markets, garrison HQ, guild docks, informant density high. DEAL (Fortress / Choke Point) Controls road access to forest and northern marches; prison wagons pass here. THE GREAT FOREST (Wild Zone / Many Clearings) Use “clearings” as subnodes that change over time. HOLLOWFORD (River Crossing Town) Ferries, tolls, smugglers, plague rumors. SABLEFIELDS (Farmland Belt) Requisitioned grain, burned barns, starving refugees. THE PLAIN OF FEAR (Open Killing Ground) Patrols vanish; morale breaks; old battles echo at night. THUD (Rebel City/Stronghold) Partisan command, propaganda, secret tunnels, tense alliances. CHARM (Siege City / Symbolic Prize) Walls, ration riots, spies everywhere, “heroic” narratives. JUNIPER (Frontier Keep / Supply Depot) Engineers, arrow stockpiles, field hospitals, mass graves. Distances (in travel days) Oar → Deal: 2 days foot / 1 day mounted Deal → Great Forest Edge: 1 day foot / 0.5 mounted Oar → Hollowford: 3 days foot / 2 mounted (river trade route parallels) Hollowford → Sablefields: 2 days foot / 1 mounted Sablefields → Plain of Fear (near edge): 2 days foot / 1 mounted Plain of Fear → Juniper: 2 days foot / 1 mounted Juniper → Charm: 3 days foot / 2 mounted Charm → Thud: 2 days foot / 1 mounted Thud → Hollowford (backroads): 4 days foot / 3 mounted (high ambush risk) “Dynamic” Micro-sites (drop anywhere) Ash Chapel (ruined shrine) The Black Glass Scar (sorcery crater) Crow-Watch Tower (old road outpost) Salt Widow’s Inn (neutral ground tavern) The Bone Orchard (battlefield ossuary)

Keep it human-centric, with nonhumans rare and unsettling (if present at all). Primary peoples: Imperials: City folk and provincial peasants under the Lady’s tax-and-law machine. They value stability, paperwork, grain stores, and not attracting attention. Rebels: A coalition identity more than an ethnicity—freeholders, dispossessed nobles, frontier clans, and religious militants. Their unity frays when food runs short. Free Companies (mercenary cultures): Mercenaries have their own customs: contract oaths, camp law, battle honors, “shares,” and the belief that your unit is your family. The Black Company is an elite example, notorious and professional, willing to take bleak jobs. Wikipedia Minority/optional ancestries (use sparingly): Forest-blooded lineages: Humans with old pacts—keen senses, pale eyes, omen-dreams. Treated with suspicion. Half-myth peoples: If you want classic fantasy races, present them as regional minorities (one enclave each), politically weak, and culturally distinct—never “everywhere.” Relationships & tensions: Imperials see Rebels as arsonists and oathbreakers; Rebels see Imperials as collaborators. Everyone distrusts mercenaries—until they need them. ##Factions: The Northern Empire (The Lady’s Rule) Public face: order, roads, grain, law, “peace through strength.” Real engine: fear, surveillance, conscription, and decisive sorcery when needed. Goals: crush rebellion, stabilize provinces, prevent rival power centers. Methods: taxes, hostages, “legal” seizures, propaganda, selective mercy. Adventure use: permits, blacklists, bounty writs, forced oaths, supply contracts. Key subfactions Imperial Army (Line & Siege): disciplined infantry, engineers, scouts. Officers compete for credit. Provincial Governors: pragmatic local rulers; some corrupt, some terrified, all compromised. Civic Bureaucracy (“Ink & Seal”): permits, ledgers, ration stamps. They can ruin you without drawing steel. The Quiet Men (Internal Security): informants, interrogations, “protective custody,” disappearing prisoners. The Taken (Enslaved Sorcerer-Lords) Role: strategic terror, assassination, counter-sorcery, morale collapse. Behavior: arrive like weather; leave like trauma. Tells: animals go silent, air pressure shifts, lamps gutter, dreams sour. Weaknesses (playable): pride, rivalries, old grudges, dependence on fear and secrecy. Adventure use: manhunts, false-flag attacks, cursed zones, forced bargains. The Rebel Confederacy (“The Free Hosts”) Public face: liberation, faith, ancestral rights. Real engine: hunger, vengeance, rival banners, charismatic extremists. Goals: expel the Empire, unify—or shatter trying. Methods: ambushes, sabotage, scorched earth, hostage exchanges, martyr stories. Adventure use: partisan missions, contested leadership, moral dilemmas, “help us or else.” Key subfactions Banner-Lords: nobles clinging to legitimacy; feud constantly. Common Leagues: villages and militias; practical, easily betrayed by elites. The Purifiers: zealots who see compromise as infection; burn witches, execute “collaborators.” Free Companies (Mercenary Ecosystem) Mercenaries are a parallel civilization: contracts, shares, camp law, superstition, and gallows humor. Notable companies The Black Company: elite, pragmatic, famous for surviving impossible jobs. The Gilded Pike: polished “honorables” who sell reputation—until tested. The Ragged Saints: ex-rebels turned mercs; unstable loyalty, fierce morale. The Iron Orchard: engineers and sappers; will take any siege if paid in advance. Adventure use: contract disputes, stolen payroll, infiltration, “we need deniable hands.” River Guilds & Carters’ League (Trade Power) Role: barges, ferries, grain, salt, medicines; they decide who eats. Weapons: tariffs, sabotage, “accidents,” information brokerage. Adventure use: smuggling, escort, hostage cargo, counterfeit coin, “lost” manifests. The Great Forest Clans (Border Peoples) Role: guides, hunters, smugglers, oath-bands. Beliefs: spirits, old stones, debt oaths, taboo places. Adventure use: missing patrols, cursed clearings, forest diplomacy, rival clan feuds. The Silent Saints (Folk Religion Network) Role: roadside shrines, hospice houses, battlefield burial rites. Power: legitimacy and rumor; they can start or stop riots with a sermon. Adventure use: miracle claims, relic theft, sheltering fugitives, plague triage. The Barrow-Whisper Cults (Ruin Worship) Role: scavengers, grave-robbers, relic traffickers, doomsayers. Goal: “wake the old age,” or profit from pretending. Adventure use: cursed artifacts, secret auctions, possessed survivors, seal-breaking.

The War: A grinding campaign between the Lady’s Empire and Rebel forces. The Empire’s edge is discipline, logistics, and sorcery; the Rebels’ edge is local knowledge, insurgency, and moral narrative. Wikipedia The Shadow Command: The Lady’s chief instruments include the Taken—once free sorcerers, now enslaved (Taken) into service—used as generals, terror weapons, and political “problem solvers.” blackcompany.fandom.com Examples known by rumor and battlefield sightings include the Limper, Whisper, and Nightcrawler. blackcompany.fandom.com Powder-keg events (adventure-friendly): Siege season: Cities like Charm become symbols; both sides commit atrocities to break morale. blackcompany.fandom.com The Rebel schism: Rival rebel lords sabotage each other for control of the “true cause.” The Company contract: A major mercenary unit has taken a controversial contract—party members may be inside it, allied to it, or hunted by it. A prophecy resurfaces: Whispers of the White Rose—a mythic rebellion legacy tied to ending the old nightmare powers—stirs zealotry and panic. (Use as a background “gravity well,” not a fixed plot.) blackcompany.fandom.com *20 Adventure Hooks (tagged, scalable) Payroll Vanishes [Heist/Investigation] A company’s pay chest disappears between Oar and Deal. Everyone blames everyone. Find it before mutiny. The Wrong Prisoner [Social/Rescue] A captured “rebel captain” is actually a guild accountant with secrets worth a war. Ferry of the Dead [Horror] Hollowford’s ferryman swears something boards at night. Passengers arrive older… or not at all. Counterfeit Obols [Investigation/Urban] Fake coin floods Oar’s markets. Tracing it points to a governor’s office—then to a barrow cult. Forest Oath-Breaker [Social/Combat] A clan demands you return a deserter. The deserter claims the clan sold children to the Empire. The Siege Bakers’ Riot [Urban/Choice] In Charm, bread rations are cut. Do you protect the granary, expose the hoarding, or help the mob? Night Patrol Doesn’t Return [Wilderness/Horror] A scout team vanishes near the Plain of Fear. Their last camp is pristine—except for footprints that end mid-step. Hostage Exchange Gone Sour [Social/Combat] Rebels and Imperials agree to trade prisoners at Ash Chapel. A third party plans a massacre for propaganda. Sapper’s Map [Dungeon/Heist] An engineer offers a tunnel route into Juniper—if you retrieve his buried tools from a haunted trench. The Saint’s False Miracle [Investigation/Social] A “healing” draws refugees and rebels. Is it real, a con, or a sorcerous experiment? Black Glass Fever [Medical/Horror] Soldiers near the crater develop shared nightmares and violent sleepwalking. The cure might be a ritual— or a mercy killing. Deserters’ Republic [Social] A hidden camp of deserters proposes neutrality and trade. Both sides want them erased. Who do you betray? Taken Footprints [High Stakes/Horror] Animals flee, lamps die, and the air tastes metallic. A Taken is hunting someone in your party’s orbit. The Governor’s Daughter [Rescue/Intrigue] Kidnapped by rebels—or “kidnapped” to avoid an arranged marriage. Your choice defines the province’s future. The Barrow Auction [Heist/Occult] Relics for sale at Salt Widow’s Inn. Buyers include a rebel priest, an imperial clerk, and a masked stranger. Bridge of Ropes [Tactical] A single bridge controls supply to Charm. Hold it, burn it, or replace it with a trap while innocents beg to cross. Thud’s Split Banner [Political] Two rebel leaders accuse each other of being imperial plants. Evidence exists—against both. The Quiet Men’s List [Investigation] Your names appear on an arrest ledger. Find who added them, and why, before the net tightens. Bone Orchard Choir [Horror] At dusk the ossuary “sings.” The melody matches a battle plan no living commander admits knowing. Contract With Teeth [Campaign Arc] A mercenary contract includes an extra clause written in invisible ink. It triggers when the Lady’s forces suffer a “humiliation.” You are the humiliation.

Magic: rare, expensive, and feared. Most people will never see a spell—until a sorcerer lights a hilltop like dawn. Three tiers of supernatural power: Hedge craft (common-ish): charms, omens, fever cures, ward knots, grave-salt. Works inconsistently; often psychological—but sometimes real. Battle sorcery (uncommon): trained magi in service to nobles—smoke veils, fear hexes, corpse-sense, weather nudges, signal fires. Requires ritual tools and exhaustion. High sorcery (mythic): the Lady and the Taken—domination of minds, long-range seeing, enchantments that reshape battles and politics. Wikipedia How magic “works” (LLM rules): Cost: blood, sleep, memory, or years of life. Big magic leaves scars (physical or social). Limits: distance, line of sight, prepared ground, and counter-rituals matter. Uncertainty: magic is not a clean “spell list”; it’s art, leverage, and terror. Religion: practical, local, suspicious of power. No universally proven gods. Instead: saints, ancestor-cults, river spirits, harvest rites, war shrines. State faith vs. folk faith: The Empire permits worship that doesn’t threaten stability; Rebels often rally around purifying sects. Miracles: rare enough to be argued about for generations.

The planes are not “visited,” they intrude. Think thin places, nightmares, and ancient seals failing—not portals to go shopping in. Model: Three “layers” The Material: what most people live in. The Shadow (Echo): where memories stick; battlefields “repeat” in dreams; ghosts and rumors gain form. The Void-Deep (Domination residue): a hostile under-reality tied to the old empire’s great bindings; it leaks through broken wards, mass graves, and sorcerous experiments. Planar interaction hooks: Night marches where soldiers walk all night and arrive at the same hill again. A fort’s cellar door opens to last year’s massacre. The dead whisper tactical advice—sometimes accurate, sometimes malicious.

Use broad eras so the LLM can invent ruins without contradicting canon-feel. Age of Clans: petty kings, oath-bands, forest gods; barrows and standing stones. The Domination: the nightmare empire of the Dominator and the Lady, enforced by enslaved sorcerers (the Taken). blackcompany.fandom.com The White Rose Rebellion: a legendary overthrow that ended the Domination (or sealed it), leaving broken towers, cursed battlefields, and disputed relics. blackcompany.fandom.com Interregnum: fractured states, warlords, and “free companies” becoming permanent institutions. The Northern Consolidation: the Lady’s return to power and the modern Empire’s expansion; today’s war is the latest phase. Wikipedia Legacy sites (ruin types): Sealed barrows that “breathe” warm air in winter. Black glass craters from sorcerous duels. Old watchtowers with unweathered stones (wrongly preserved). Battlefield ossuaries where bones are stacked like cordwood.

Currencies: Coinage varies by region; northern cities may use local coins—e.g., Oar’s currency tradition includes the obol. blackcompany.fandom.com In practice, soldiers trust: silver by weight, salt, iron, and promissory chits from reputable paymasters. Trade routes (and why they matter): River arteries: barges move grain, lumber, and troops; pirates and rebel toll-collectors thrive. The Old Roads: fastest marches, most ambushes. Forest trails: smuggling (furs, herbs, refugees) under the Great Forest canopy. Economic pressures that generate quests: Army requisitions trigger famine. Mercenary pay is late (again). Counterfeit coin floods a frontier market (who benefits?).

Imperial justice: Order first. Paperwork matters. Punishments are public, quick, and meant to deter—fines, forced labor, conscription, hanging. Sorcery-related crimes vanish people quietly. Rebel justice: Local councils, clan oaths, or charismatic “purity courts.” Outcomes depend on who’s starving and who’s armed. Mercenary law (camp law): Theft from the company is near-capital. Desertion is hunted. Duel rights exist, but are regulated to preserve fighting strength. “Shares” (loot division) are sacred—break that and the unit breaks. How society views adventurers: As mercenaries: useful, feared, morally suspect. As troubleshooters: hired for deniable work (scouting, sabotage, bodyguarding, hostage talks). As omens: if you survive too much, people assume you’re cursed or protected—either way, they keep distance.

Keep monsters rare, meaningful, and rumor-soaked—not a constant zoo. Core villain categories: The High Tyranny: the Lady’s apparatus and the Taken—political terror backed by overwhelming magic. Wikipedia Rebel Extremists: zealot captains, witch-burners, oath-breaker lords, “purifiers” who’d rather kill a village than let it feed the enemy. War Itself: famine, plague, winter, deserter bands, burned fields, and commanders who treat people as supplies. Signature supernatural threats (use as set pieces): Taken Hunts: a masked sorcerer-lord arrives; animals go silent; informants disappear; the sky looks “too close.” blackcompany.fandom.com Battlefield Wraiths: born from mass death; they mimic voices of friends to lure the living. Forest Things: antlered shadows, corpse-lights, and predators that don’t leave tracks. Domination Relics: bindings, crowns, and stones that promise victory at a price. Bestiary approach (LLM guidance): Most encounters are human. If a monster appears, it should change the situation, not just add HP. Every horror leaves a clue trail: weather shifts, animals flee, dreams sour, iron rusts overnight.