Wanted Posters: The Big Five's Business in Gentrov

You're making your way through Hafjiir's Way, the wealthiest part of Taelsburg, after several exuberant nights of gambling, drinking, and trouble-making. Your vision is in an eternal haze as you wander about the streets alight with brilliant reds, greens, and yellows. The scent of pipe smoke and beer lingers in your nose, distracting you from the people you are with. Although it sounds as though they're underwater, you can tell that they're laughing at something. A harsh push on the shoulder and you see a strange inked rendition of your face with a large set of numbers underneath followed by: "DEAD OR ALIVE" written neatly below. The realization hits you, but not long before something blunt and metal hits your head.
Yellowed papers with remarkably realistic caricatures of the faces of the damned hang on all corners and walls of the cities, townships, and hamlets in Gentrov, but a vast majority hang on the walls of shops, light posts, and guard barracks in Taelsburg. For well over 100 years before the Bulwark fell and rose up again, mercenaries were heavily relied upon for mundane tasks. Anything from escorting to political assassinations, these tried and true companies did their jobs and were paid handsomely as such. When the Bulwark was once again granted power by King Berengar, one of the first things they worked towards was eliminating and arresting any mercenary company that worked for the former Queen or took up political assassinations. After forcing the disbanding over well over a score of mercenary groups, 5 mercenary groups stood their ground on the account that they've done nothing wrong and simply carried out the law in the Bulwark's absence. These companies are the Shadowhounds, a group that worked through loopholes of the law to achieve great wealth through private bounties on nobles; the Gokamfers, a group founded by devotees of the God-King that believe in justice even if it meant directly breaking the law; the Iron Band, a group now owned by a grizzled veteran by the name of Leodric Lion's-mane that worked within the confines of the law despite some questionable contracts; the Goodmen, a group of Bulwark veterans that acted as an extension of the guard that carried out the law where the Bulwark couldn't; and the 3-Finger Company with its questionable leader known only as Red Dirk that has origins going as far back as the Harushkan Wars.
Now known as the Big Five, these companies constantly strive for justice, peace, or profit. At one time, the mercenary companies of Gentrov were quite poor, for mercenary work never paid well despite the conditions and contracts. Now after the invention of the printing press, nobles, the guard, and the citizenry alike pay artists and printers alike for wanted posters to condemn those that may have wronged them. By order of the King, these wanted posters were made legal so as long as the printing companies were overseen by the Bulwark itself. Despite this, there are still many a person that are wrongly accused, but everyone has their price including the printers and the Bulwark's guardsmen.
I would like to thank Sir Burstoln for giving me to write in the Hafjiir Gazetteer this week, and I look forward to working with him and his lovely writers again soon. -Dr. Karlinn Schrifonz

Type

Text, Newspaper

Medium

Paper