Seneca Farm

Kain Asheld put a marker to the three people closest to him on a quiet ridge overlooking the valley where they'd always promised to meet. His brother Mark never wanted the mercenary life. He wanted to farm. He never got the chance. Kain bought the land with his share of a final bounty and a desperate need for silence. The locals call it Madder's Place. Ten acres of rotting floorboards, a collapsed roof, and fields the wild took back a decade ago. They'd been talking about burning it down.

The farm made it through winter and Kain his first full year. The debt didn't go anywhere. Kain owes fifty silver on a horse and has four new plots that won't plant themselves. The east side of the property sits on a clay hardpan that nobody mentioned when he bought the place. Breaking through it is weeks of pickaxe work he didn't plan for.

Time keeps moving for Kain. The new season should mean planting, repairs, and honest work that leaves a man too tired to worry. The fields need turning. The fences need mending. Then the outsiders arrive. Adventurers pour into Tillamore chasing rumors of a new dungeon north of the valley, beyond the places Kain’s wolf refuses to enter. Kain wants nothing to do with dungeons. He has seed to put down and neighbors who need his help, even when pride keeps them quiet. The people of Tillamore gave Kain a home when he needed one.