"Zenobia!  Zenobia!  The rider from Swiftpier has come!"  Janny bent over out of breath from running.  She was always the excitable little girl.

In recent weeks Swiftpier had been having trouble with human bandits.  They are asking Riverhill for help.  The bandits have grown more numerous and ferocious.  In recent days a new leader has risen among them, a tactician and skilled fighter.

Swiftpier lies on the east side of the river called Stormflow at a place where the river widens into a small lake for a few miles then turns into rapids before cascading over a beautiful twenty foot staggered falls into the plains.  The eastern edge of the city is just shy of the jungle and Anthros territory.

The town has a lot of small fishing/boating piers jutting out into the lake and their main fare is fish and freshwater crab, a species of giant crawfish, and sometimes clams.  Most of the three hundred villagers that live there are healthy, strong, fisherfolk, excellent swimmers but not so great fighters.  They have a standing militia of about twenty and, of course, no walls.

The bandits on the other hand have grown to around forty.  If Swiftpier does not receive reenforcements soon, the bandits could cause serious damage.  Likely though, they will only come to steal rather than destroy.  Destroying the town would end a renewable source of plunder for them and their leader is too smart for that.

It is not necessary for you to go, personally (although that might bolster spirits quite a bit), but you do need to decide out of your fifty available defenders how many you will send to help Swiftpier.  Riverhill is easily defended against human attack and anything more would overwhelm even those fifty.

Riverhill Defenders:

30 standard soldiers (fighter class)
5 horsemen
14 scouts (archers, rangers, rogues)
1 wizard in training

The wizard in training is Cal Stephir, an older man who has managed to befriend an Invar wizard who has deigned to train him in the arcane arts.  His spell list is not impressive but he's getting the hang of it and can contact his Invar friend over long distances via a large garnet at the end of his staff.  Cal can produce some minor visual and auditory illusions and has one attack spell that you know of.

The rider is trotting up the road now and is not a man you recognize personally but he is definitely from Swiftpier.