My competition owned the public house across from mine, but I owned the only croft in town. I saw they had a pastry setup as well. Their public house was more upgraded than mine, thus they had all the townsfolk flooding their establishment. I noticed that they were saturating the market with their stock they were producing, driving down the prices of porridge/wheat beer/weak beer.

This led me to suffering great losses each turn due to me paying wages without making sales. But alas, I owned the only croft in town. I locked my doors, refused to sell them the precious wheat and beets needed to craft their mind numbing nectars. I watched as the remaining stock prices in the market for wheat/beets went through the roof. The Klippingens were paying top dollar for the last pidly remaining scraps of wheat they could get their hands on.

Four years passed without me once opening my stock to them. After they sold their remaining product for mere pennies, they had no choice but to close their doors and put their establishments up for sale. I was just a lowly pub owner myself though, barely supporting my wife, daughter, and employees. How was I to afford acquiring their business's?

After nearly being forced to sell my own home to feed my family, it dawned on me, "we have a guild house that gives out loans". I immediately ran over to the guild house, and borrowed whatever money they were willing to lend me. Sadly, although they knew me as an honest man, I hadn't yet proven myself as an intelligent business man. They only loaned me enough money to buy the other public house (sealing the fate of my competitor forever), with enough change left over to take my family out to dinner that evening.

This wouldn't work for me however. I had failed my family too many times, I refused to take them on "one night of fun" in exchange for a mediocre life. I instead bought that public house, and left my wife and daughter sleeping that night. I wandered the streets for hours, watching my shadow chase me from dark alley to dark alley, looming over me like a curtain of failure. It was on my walk home that I crossed paths with an out of work rogue from the next town over.

His name was Corwin Fielding, he was but 23 years of age. Agile, strong, confident - if somewhat arrogant. He offered me absolution that fateful night, he offered me the pride I had been searching for all these years. I didn't ask questions, I just gave him the remaining money left from the loan and the purchase of the Prancing Pony (public house).

When I woke in the morning it had all felt like a dream. As my wife prepared my porridge before I left for work there was screaming through the streets. I went outside and stopped a man carrying a bucket of water, I asked him what all the commotion was. He explained to me that the pastry shop at the edge of town had burned down last night. It happened so late that no one was around to put out the fire or seek help, he explained.

The owner all but abandoned the building and I was able to take title of the pastry shop. I ended up hiring Corwin on fulltime as my personal escort. It made me feel more important in town, and it felt like the right thing to do after all he had just done for me. My competitor lost all of his business's in one single day...I was victorious.

Things were quiet from then on. My wife raised our daughter well, my business's flourished. I was the life blood of the town, my farms provided the resources needed by my tavern and bakery to make the goods needed by the towns people. Life was good.

Sometime after my daughter finished her apprenticeship at my tavern, I offered her- her own way in life, my croft. She gladly stepped up and accepted the gift from me, she wanted to breed cattle as she heard the capital city was thriving with this new meal called "roast beef". I was proud of her ambitions and supported her venture.

My daughter was 20 years of age the night she decided to stay and work the corral after she sent her staff home. She wanted to put in a few more hours to get the last load ready for transport to my tavern. It was on this night that the Klippingen family decided they wanted their retribution. They sent a group of "thugs" to my daughters corral "The Flying Unicorn". After they beat her mercilessly, the father, Peter Klippingen stood over my daughter, drew his dagger, and cut her throat in that very corral she worked so hard in.

My wife fell ill four years later, and she passed on a cold winter night. They say it was the plague, but I believe it was her broken heart that finally did her in. She was always attached to our little Marie, from birth she did her best to raise her well, and be as loving as possible. Although she never spoke it aloud, I feel she never forgave me for what happened to our Marie.

Life has to continue, for our family, for our dynasty. I had to go back to work, hire someone to take Marie's place on the farm, keep things ... normal. I eventually remarried, to a learned woman, a scholar of all things. She too had suffered loss in her life, it almost seemed meant to be. We eventually bore a son, she let me name him Junior. Our dynasty was yet again flourishing.

My new wife never made me hide my past from Junior, he was raised with a firm understanding of the transgressions we suffered early in this town. Junior decided to attend an apprenticeship at a different guild, the guild of rogues. His reasoning was that he wanted to run tolls to help keep bandit activity away from our town. I reluctantly agreed.

In my wifes later years, with Junior out of the house, she decided to enter politics, something she seemed born to do. She excelled in the local town meetings, moving up from one position to the next. I was happy for her, as I knew it was something she was very passionate and gifted at. My business's were booming at the time, so I had no quarrels with funding her political aspirations. Before we knew it, she had been elected Village Reeve, a position right below that of Mayor itself.

Around this time Junior had completed his apprenticeship and returned to us a man. He requested that I relieve Corwin of his escort duties, explaining he deserved better than that. Corwin seemed eager to join Junior, so I didn't hesitate, an old brute like that didn't deserve to be following me around all these years later.

My wife approached me one night and asked for my support in her running for Mayor. This was a sensitive subject because it was Peter Klippingen whom was our current Mayor. She promised me it would be okay, that she would be safe. She explained to me how she had made some good friends in town, and things were more sophisticated than when I first arrived and had my falling out with the Klippingen family. Everything was political now, she said reassuringly.

The night before the elections we all gathered at my house for a massive feast, I spared no expense. That night, after all the guests had left, Junior came in and asked me about his sister. We sat up till well after 11pm talking about my baby Marie, he was intrigued to learn about her, and obviously saddened by her passing. Him and Corwin left to run errands that night, as they sometimes did.

I'll never forget the morning of the elections, on the doorstep to the Assembly House lay Peter Klippingen. His throat slit ear to ear, blood as thick as the porridge I serve at the Inn. The townsfolk almost seemed relieved by this sight. People running up and down the streets...as if they were celebrating. It was voted, and agreed that the elections would still be held, life had to continue after all.

My wife won the election for Mayor, due to the recent passing of Peter, and she was the only eligible candidate. Our town soon became a city under her watch, things again were going great.

No one knows for sure what happened to Peter, but reports indicate he was seen accepting money from a man the night before the elections. He allegedly followed this man outside of town after accepting the strangers money, where he was beaten for hours, each time he regained consciousness, he was beaten again. The beatings finally ended in the morning before sunrise, when a cloaked man approached his body which had made it to the Assembly House mere steps away from the Klippingen Patrician Home. The man stood over him, mumbled something, and slit his throat.

A year, maybe two passed before Peter's wife hired her own brutes to do an investigation of their own. They traced the money found on Peter's body back to Junior's Guild markings. She hired people to watch our every move. It was at this time that my wife, being the Mayor, exercised her right to banish Peter's wife from our city. She banished all of the Klippingens one by one. The members that decided to stay, they all turned up dead through various acts of violence. All of their business's burned to the ground, not even to be taken over or bought, simply burnt to ashes.

Our dynasty lives on, life goes on, this is The Guild