Editing Road through the Ruins (section)

==More Background==

The small village of Betzem is a speck on the dusty landscape of Seyara Pronvince in Zamora. Zamora was wrecked by the wars in which Osric and his Asgardians came to power. Towered Seyara, small but splendid, became a backwater in those days. In the time of civil war that followed his death, the province has receded still further , no longer clearly distinguishable from the abandoned region of ruins to its immediate south. 

During the time of King Osric, life in Betzem was hard  enough, but  since his death and the subsequent civil war things have taken a turn for the worse. In towered Seyara , the cowardly local governor, fearing his own treacherous allies, squandered gold to purchase Argosean mercenaries,  barracking them throughout the province. Near your home of Betzem, in the hub-town of Jorica, a band of powerful but cruel  mercenaries has been billeted for a long year.  At their hands, your villages and others  have suffered plunder and harassment.  The unruly fighters do what they will, causing chaos in the town and raiding its surrounding settlements  for plunder and sport.  Worse , the district magistrate , Zog, tolerates the mercenaries’ lawlessness, relying on them to collect annual taxes and to enforce his own local law.  Raising taxes in remote villages to unpayable levels, the judge  is carrying out a scheme to enslave debtors and put them to work on his own estate.
In a few days the self-styled ‘Pythian Band ’ will arrive in the village of Betzem to collect the judge’s dues. Not the exorbitant taxes that they know the village cannot pay, but rather the penalty for non-payment; the best of the youths and maids to work the judge’s estate.

Your characters will be promising youngsters who secretly flee the village to arm, train and plot revenge on the corrupt local judge. Inspired by a message delivered by a local well goddess, your band will travel across the shunned northern wastes of Zamora by an ancient, little used route, crossing lands abandoned centuries earlier when its great aquifers ran dry.  There, the Lady of the Springs vouchsafes, you will encounter ruins, lost villages, hermits and monsters.  The cost will be great. She predicts a third of your group (of a dozen youngsters) will die, and a third abandon the journey. But those that remain and survive to receive training from the Guild of Slayers in the distant City of Thieves  will gain a chance to challenge the wicked judge and his thuggish protectors.

===The (Argosean) Band of Pythos===

[[File: Hoplite.jpg |right |150px]]

Their captain, a  heavily armoured hoplite expert with sword, shield and spear

A Hercules –like giant, with dual mattocks

A lithe javelin thrower and peltast

A (torc-headbanded)  priest of Atlantis , with reputed telekinetic powers

A heartless  female champion

A mocking  soldier philosopher