Law-Down
Law-Down was initially a joint penal colony from Pizol Springs and Tanquary Bay. Criminals beyond redemption would be hanged, petty thieves would be imprisoned on the short term, but those somewhere inbetween would be sent to Law-Down. There, they were either imprisoned for life in the stone quarries, or put through something of a rehabilitation program where they were shown the lot of the stone workers and their inevitable fate if they strayed again.
Over time it simply became cheaper for Tanquary Bay to hang more people. Rather than take on maintenance of the facility themselves, Pizol Springs cut the city loose and turned it over to a former Adventurers Guild member (and former inmate) about 150 years before Guildfall. The city folk quickly realised they needed something to export, but all they had were stone and reformed thieves. Oddly, this would prove to be more than enough.
Law-Down began training its population as mercenaries, scouts, spies or even career criminals. Law-Down Thieves Guild became the first and only respectable school to train in and pursue a lifestyle as a career criminal. The Quarry became a kind of last-chance school for ex-convicts or other dropouts from lawful society to train to become skilled guards (and hopefully not be hired as wall-fodder for some Braeland baron). They still export cut stone, their use of convict labour as opposed to slave labour barely passable in Pizol Spring's public opinion. Law-Down remains to this day Pizol Spring's dark underside, the dumping ground for uncomfortable questions (and people) the Pizol duchy would rather not acknowledge. Still, the city retained an odd sense of honor and pride - they will not rent their services to pirates or slavers, and if you hire a Law-Down citizen to do a job and are open and honest with your reasons for hiring them, you can depend on them to not betray your coin. Those who do so tend to die in truly horrific circumstances.
Today, if you want anything to do with security - or circumventing it - it can be found in Law-Down. Their mercenaries are cheap and plentiful and can be found in Tanquary Bay, Pizol, Braeland, or even the far east, although the quality of these soldiers varies widely. Their scouts and rangers patrol the mountains more than the Adventurers Guild do and are highly skilled. Their thieves are less common - there is little market for cheap, expendible thieves or spies, so the Thieves Guild training is brutal. Only the best survive to graduate, the rest either die in training or end up shackled to a chain and swinging a pick for the rest of their lives. It is rumoured that as a final test, a would-be graduate must steal an underwear garment from every Captain of the city guard on the same night, and anyone caught doing so is killed on sight.
Notable events:
- Guild report 3 - 0.0.20 (Miss Prism's colorful cult of Tax Evasion)
- Verdant Light's report - 0.6.15 agf - Elixir of False Hope
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