[Part of the Cursed story line]
Answering the call for "heroes", Siegfried Baranor finds himself attending a meeting at Jamandi Aldori's mansion who asks that the assembled group reclaim a section on the map called "the Stolen Lands" from the problematic bandits within and in addition to any loot, the victor would also be granted ruling rights over said land (which I'm not sure is a good thing but anyway). To improve odds (and to separate people via alignments) she splits the heroes into two groups with Siegfried being assigned with the happy halfling songstress Linzi (who doubles as a trap disarmer), the bloodthirsty barbarianess Amiri, and the gorgeous guardslady Valerie.
Meanwhile on the "evil" team...
Their entry point to the zone would be a small trading post where Siegfried recruits Sonya, another barbarianess, and his old boss the wizard Shelumu who was now on the run from a foreign power he challenged. Lawman Kesten Garess stops by shortly after and indicates Aldori's second squad of "heroes" (of the evil alignment variety) isn't hunting the bandits at all but going on some sort of treasure hunt making things worse in the region so the team decide to go after them first, finding them in an underground kobold burrow where they quickly come to blows.
Their gnome wizard manages to incinerate Sonya to a crisp before Amiri beheads him. His surviving allies Harrim the constantly depressed cleric and Jaethal the amnesiac undead elf are quick to surrender and join the winning side upon seeing this, but report they had already found whatever relic their leader was looking for, and the gnome threw it into a magic portal before Siegfried's team arrived.
Figuring that relic would be of little consequence anyway, the team returns to the trading post to rest up and resupply before starting their actual job here: rooting out the bandits led by the self titled Stag Lord.
