From publisher blurb: In a distant, sleepy, and neglected corner of the Empire, a one-time burgeoning farming town has shrunk with time into a quiet Thorpe, leaving many ancient fields to be reclaimed by nature and farmsteads and villages to crumble with the ages. This neglect has led to a number of problems, from bandit-infested roads, beasts stalking the forests, and, most recently, something of a trollkin problem. Trollkin communities, Communes as they call themselves, are inhabited by ambitious and runaway trollkin who have all fled the harshness of nomadic banditry, war machinations, thralldom, or various other sorts of unpleasant and unwilling labor on behalf of more powerful and often rather evil forces. The trollkin have done their best to do no harm and simply get by, but living freely as squatters and without established farms or industry or the skills to quickly establish them has proven difficult, and desperate times have led to desperate acts. While originally neither band had official leadership, making decisions via something….close to a crude democracy, strongarm leaders able to provide have emerged. At first it was mere thievery and holding up vagrants, but the strongarm leaders grew bolder and went too far, attempting a caravan robbery that got out of hand and left folks on both sides dead. Then, in panicked effort to ward off retaliation, they went about collecting hostages- though no one remembered to leave a note about the intention behind kidnapping people....