Just Horsing Around

The Jaroths (A Founding Family)

Every other week we’ve been working on adding to the small town of Nestletop as an exercise in world building. The first three installments have been the tavern, the smithy, and the trading post. Each of these have also had a some discussion about the research I had done on the topic at hand. In some of the past entries I have mentioned five founding families, and these week I’m going to start by outlining one of those five.

Before we get into the five families I think we first need a little bit of history on this town. This whole thing started as a basic idea that I was going to use as the starting point for an adventure. I worked with my players to make their character and those characters added to the town as a whole. One player was an elven shaman, which is why I added the elven community living side by side with the humans.  Another player was a dwarf barbarian trying to find his heritage as a berserker, and so I added the one dwarven family to represent his disconnect from his ancestral heritage.

The idea of the small town in the middle of nowhere was the perfect opportunity to have characters who didn’t know much about the outside world. This way the players could explore the world through the eyes of their characters. Everything that was a first for their characters would also be a first for them.

Although the players influenced the town I still had some ideas of my own and one of those was that Nestletop was settled by five families who had money and some status but would never be power players where they were. So instead of being small fish in a big pond they set out to make their own pond where they would be the big fish. Of course others went with them looking for a new beginning, but we’ll get to those as we move forward. Right now we will learn about Nestletop and how each founder affects the town, one family at a time. And we will start with the family mentioned in the blacksmith’s write-up, the Jaroths.

The Jaroths

Of the five families that travelled to the farthest reaches of the wilds, the Jaroths were by far the richest and most powerful. Whereas the other families were still making their money through industry the Jaroths watched their wealth grow through investment. For the most part the family spent their time indulging in their other hobbies, chiefly the breeding and rearing of horses.

The Jaroth family are the ones who put forth the idea of leaving the greater civilization and heading out into the wider world. The then-head of the family, a man by the name of Kendrick, was known for his silver tongue. He managed to convince the other families that it would be in their best interest to sign on for his little excursion. And so the Jaroths led the other families to settle in what would become Nestletop.

When they stopped on the other side of the pass through the Earthspine mountains and decided to settle just there, the Jaroths, who had funded the largest part of the relocation, choose their plot of land first. They had brought with them a number of different breeding pairs of horses and need enough land for their equines to run. They originally lived in makeshift housing, much to the chagrin of younger family members used to the comforts of the city, but it was also the Jaroth’s manor which was built first.

The Llewellyns, who had made their money in lumber, had brought with them the tools and personnel to construct a lumber mill swiftly upon arriving. It was when they went to cut down their first tree that they encountered the elves of the region. The shamanic forestfolk had inhabited the area for many generations and although they weren’t openly hostile they took umbrage to the attempt at deforestation. Again it was eloquent Kendrick who stepped forward to negotiate, and a deal was struck.

The town settled and as they did the Joraths retained the unspoken title of the leaders of Nestletop. There was a council and part of the deal with the elves included a seat so that they could be a part of any decision making process that might affect them. But even on the council the voice of the Jaroths carried weight beyond anyone else’s.

The fourth generation of Jaroth leaders is now on the council. Kendrick Jaroth – named after his great-grandfather – is the head of the family. They live a comfortable life on their estate with the pastures for their horses. A number of the local farmers share their hay directly to the Jaroths, keeping the community thriving. Some of the youngsters of the local families looking to get away from the farming life are employed by this founding family as hostlers.

In recent times the family has had a bit of a contentious relationship with the Merrick mining family. When the new Redrun smithy opened the Jaroths starting using Abelton, not only for their smithing needs but also to sell their horses when the trading caravans came through. There are no outright hostilities but the Merricks have been voting against the interests of the Jaroths in council meetings.

And there you have it, adding a little bit of history to our growing town. We’ll add more as the weeks go on but for now I pose to you a few questions. Who founded the town you players characters are from? Why was the town founded in the first place? How do the leaders of your city interact with each other? And who doesn’t love horses?

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