In the roughly six months since the Champions of Beggar's Hole defeated The Deep One, a lot has changed. The backwater town of less than half a dozen families has grown into a bustling city of tens of thousands, its growth fueled by refugees fleeing the Blood War, and by an influx of adventurers eager to join the guild created by our heroes. Though no professional military or police force has been established, the fact that so much of the city is populated by professional adventurers has largely kept things safe, if not a little rowdy.
Alongside these refugees, some of the hallmarks of more settled lands have begun to infiltrate Beggar's Hole. Organized churches have begun to take root, the most powerful being the church of Lathander, god of light and daybreak. Meanwhile, a small druid circle has begun to establish itself in the Grove of Chauntea established by Ethyl, who herself is venerated as "Saint Ethyl the Ancient". The many smaller churches each have their adherents, but these two are the most well established in the city.
Lathander's church has brought with it a small contingent of Aasimar soldiers, who defend their church and any pilgrims, but who are also creating tension with the large number of Aasimar adventurers that live in the city, and with parents of Aasimar children. These paladins seek to claim 11 year Aasimar as they do in the rest of Esoris, but so far have been unable to exercise that claim due to strong resistance from the adventurers, and the fact that the guild has not sanctioned their actions. They also treat adult Aasimar, mostly amongst the adventuring class, as traitors and deserters, further growing the rift between these powerful groups within the city.
As a counterbalance to the churches and their adherents, the influx of refugees has brought in many tieflings fleeing persecution, and (though less obvious) a number of infernal cultists. The melting pot of Beggar's Hole has proven to be more tolerant to tieflings than much of the rest of Esoris, but they still tend to group together in their own section of the city. Cultists, on the other hand, go unnoticed amongst the general population. Scarcely identified by the guildmembers, their most notable contribution to the evolving city has been an underground and low-intensity war fought between cultists, and representatives of the major churches. Though this has not yet become public knowledge or spilled over into large scale violence, the Blood War has found its way to Beggar's Hole in some small way.
Returning to the Adventurers Guild, six months has done much to bring a sense of structure and organization the the Guild. The home of the original adventurers has become the hub of the guild's operations in the region. Still home to the Champions (if they choose to go there), it also hosts important meetings, functions as a war-room in times of trouble, and is the seat from which Lilith manages much of the city-state's internal affairs. In the surrounding area, Salt's orphanage has grown to house three hundred orphans, a decent number of whom are showing promise in the short time that he's trained them as monks. The surrounding neighborhood has been bought up by the wealthiest adventurers, becoming the hub for the most affluent and powerful in Beggar's Hole. The Church of Lathander is also in the process of constructing a great cathedral nearby.
Finally, to address the adventurers who remain in the area. Laura, disfigured by her getting shocked so hard by demons, has spent most of the last six months in wildshape as a giant eagle, preying on loggers who attempted to survey or log in the forest she calls home. She is now a giant, shit-covered eagle, and unfortunately that shit remains caked on even when she becomes human.
Salt's orphanage has grown, and though he is doing well to train some of his charges, he's only seventeen years old. No longer as horny as he was as a sixteen year old, Salt still feels a need to find a more capable adult to take over running the orphanage.
Though Elvira has made great use of therapy in the last six months, she is starting to notice some disturbing patterns of thought, as well as a peculiar fast aging process. She's been thinking a lot about the marrow inside of people's bones, and how it would probably taste really good to snap them open and suck it out.
Finally (for real), Lucifer recently arrived in Beggar's Hole alongside her parents, two successful adventurers who want her to follow in their footsteps. To this end, they entered her name in a contest to win an internship with the Champions of Beggar's Hole, which Lucifer won. Sullen as any good teenager, Lucifer has been selected to spend time learning from the indisputably good influences that are the rest of our heroes.
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