Faction Friday: The Weretiger Merchants

RPG Faction

Weretiger by Jennette BrownWeretiger by Jennette Brown

Normally solitary creatures, weretigers do occasionally mate and form families, though they normally scatter once the litter grows to maturity.

Jax and Thessia Ironsky are different. Very much in love with each other, unusually fertile, and free from the territoriality so common in their race, they built a large family of over a dozen weretigers (some of them now grandchildren). Needing some stability to raise her litters, they established themselves as spice merchants.

This has not gone without trouble. Several of their children chafe under the burden of running the business, since most of them hunt in the wilderness for rare roots and tree bark. Several have threatened to take a large chunk of the Ironsky’s considerable savings and run off to start their own lives. None have yet followed through, perhaps recognizing Jax and Thessia’s shrewd business acumen.

Meanwhile, although the Ironsky family has managed to keep their true nature secret from the rest of the world, which believes they are simply an extended family of human spice merchants, their true natures occasionally slip. The younger members of the family prefer to hunt in animal and even hybrid form, and rumors of lycanthropes running through the wilderness spread daily.

As a friendly faction, Jax and Thessia are simply trying to make their way in the world and keep their family together. Either Jax or Thessia approach the PCs about the rumors spreading, and ask the PCs to scare Ari, one of the younger Ironskies who often hunts in his hybrid form. They want the PCs to attack him and beat him to unconsciousness, then tie him up and bring him back to the family manor house. Consider adding a complication in the form of a city patrol who are extremely suspicious of a group of adventurers carrying an unconscious, tied-up member of a well-known merchant family into the city.

As a foe faction, the Ironskies are vicious predators who use their merchant prowess as a convenient cover for murder. Twice a year they capture a humanoid, release it deep into the woods, and hunt it for sport. The city watch task the PCs with investigating these vanished humanoids, who trace it to the family. The PCs must confront the family in their home, and Ironsky Manor turns into a death trap. Worse, the PCs will never catch the entire family home at once, so at least some members will escape to become recurring villains.

Grab maps of Ironsky Manor here.

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