Hog Penny

By Adam Gauntlett

The Sisterhood of Swineherds is a Guild taken seriously. Hogs are not allowed everywhere: the Government Committees have passed numerous ordinances about the keeping and management of pigs, so that the streets don’t swarm with swine. Swords of the Serpentine

Where there’s muck, there’s brass. Traditional wisdom.

A Swords of the Serpentine scenario in which our heroes get involved with the behinds of swines on behalf of the Sisterhood.

The Hook

There is competition within the Sisterhood for the Hog Penny, the fabled mark of rank within the Guild. The most recent holder of the Penny has decided to retire – against her will, as it happens, though few know it – and the Penny is up for grabs. The question is, who will take it?

Legend has it that the Penny isn’t given, it’s earned. You have to find it. In pig muck. This, so the story goes, is how it was found the first time, and this is how it should always be.

Naturally, this is a fib; everyone knows that the Penny is really placed there by the previous holder and the ‘finder’ is well aware of when and how that was done. The finding is less a search, more a carefully choreographed event.

Not this time. The Penny is well and truly missing. Every Sister’s searching through pig muck for it. Nobody’s found it yet.

In the meantime, this internal dissent causes swinish lament. Since the Guild isn’t paying attention to its usual duties pigs are running amok. The common folk are in an uproar and, while the aristos, the church and the law usually don’t pay that much attention to the common folk, this is becoming a public order crisis. The Sisterhood is adamant: by ancient law they must put aside their usual concerns until this issue is settled.

Enter our heroes.

Surely this will solve everything.

Pigs

Pigs come in all shapes and sizes.

Some are small, about the size of a house pet. Some pampered porkers are, in fact, pets. There was a craze a while back where every aristo who wanted to be taken seriously, socially, had a little piglet on a silver chain, and there are still some of those about. Even these fall under the authority of the Sisterhood.

Some are much larger. Some could even be mistaken for fighting beasts, and occasionally they are. Many’s the gladiatorial combat that starts with a warm-up bout against a nigh-prehistoric porker with bloodstained tusks and slavering jaws. These fall under the authority of the Sisterhood.

However, the vast majority are the ambulatory garbage disposals and future sausages that most think of when they think of pigs. They can be found anywhere and eat anything. They are in every neighborhood, every district. They’re far too clever for their own good and can escape from almost any confinement, so it’s not unusual to see pigs roaming about seemingly unsupervised. These definitely fall under the authority of the Sisterhood.

Some pigs, it’s said, are magical. Or Corrupted. There’s any number of tales about evil spirits who find their way into pigs, or small gods who take the form of pigs, or ghost pigs who take unholy revenge on evildoers. These too fall under the authority of the Sisterhood.

The Sisterhood

Members of the Guild can be found in every district.

Their official dress is always the same: dark-colored rags, with a red bandanna tied about their head. Sometimes these are the only clothes they own, but many of the Sisterhood are modestly well-off and can afford dresses, housing, and other middle-class luxuries. Some are quite remarkably wealthy and can live in luxury.

Pigs are big business.

The Sisterhood has the official role of herding and keeping swine, whether in their own right or working on behalf of others. That’s what they do. That’s what their Charter says they must do. Denari herself sanctions this. The Sisterhood gets several entries in the Book of Truths and Tax Codes.

This is because without pigs, Eversink would starve. Or drown under a tide of garbage. Pigs aren’t just a source of protein; they are vital parts of the socioeconomic order.

However, herding isn’t the Sisterhood’s only line of work. They also deal with any legal dispute involving pigs.

This is because pigs and their doings are contentious. If it were left up to the law courts to deal with pig problems, every lawyer would be up to their armpits in muck and the legal system would come to a grinding halt.

By convenience, minor matters involving pigs were left to the Sisterhood to adjudicate. Then more serious problems. Now it is de facto the case that any dispute whatsoever involving a pig, even tangentially, is the Sisterhood’s province.

A pig murders a man? The Sisterhood. A herd destroys a house? The Sisterhood. An aristo’s divorce action where possession of the pet porker is one of the many, many issues to be dealt with? The Sisterhood.

This is the real source of the Sisterhood’s fortune. It’s why possession of the Hog Penny is so prized. The possessor can take their pick of legal actions to adjudicate, which effectively means they can name their own bribes for their favors.

There are times when the Advocate’s Guild regrets leaving all that money on the table. When they consider taking pig law back into their own pen. However, five seconds’ contemplation of all the nuisance suits involving porkers brings the Advocates back to sanity. Nobody wants a monsoon of swine muck in the law courts.

The Previous Penny Possessor

This is Alba Galli, a.k.a. Mother Gold. Treat as Sleazy Politician for stat purposes.

Galli has a daughter, Lucia (Sorcerous Apprentice). Galli’s daughter has been a little too free with her time and favours, and this has put Lucia in hock with an important Thieves’ Guild, the Bent Crown.

The leader of the Crown came to Galli with a proposition: retire. Name someone of our choosing as the next Guild Leader, and Lucia keeps her head.

Galli did as they asked, but ‘lost’ the Penny. It was supposed to be found weeks ago, at a specially picked event. Now nobody knows where it is, not Mother Gold, not the Bent Crown. Lucia is in hiding in case the Bent Crown blame her for this.

Mother Gold hid the Penny to spite the Bent Crown, intending to delay discovery until she could secure a bigger payout. If the Bent Crown were willing to go this far to name a Guild Leader, she reasons, then they can afford to pay a little cash for the privilege.

That was the plan. Except the Penny’s gone missing. Mother Gold has no idea where it is. She’s still Guild Leader until the Penny is found, or until Denari steps in. It was Denari, legends say, that directed the original Guild Leader’s hand to the Penny in the first place. Those same legends say that Denari can disband the Sisterhood, and if the Penny isn’t found again within a month, then some may argue that Denari’s made her wishes plain.

What Really Happened?

As is tradition, lawyers are the real villains.

It was the Advocates’ Guild that brought this about. Senior officials within the Advocates brought their influence to bear on the Bent Crown, and the Bent Crown persuaded Mother Gold to give up the Penny.

The idea being that the Bent Crown would ensure that someone willing to hand over important concessions to the Advocates – a 25% commission on all legal cases, say – would be appointed Guild Leader.

A suitable candidate was picked. Fiametta ‘Honey Bee’ de Canal was the Bent Crown’s choice; she had the undeniable advantage of a beautiful face (not a small consideration to Bent Crown boss Baldissere) and a willingness to do anything for money. Mother Gold was supposed to hand over the Hog Penny to Honey Bee on a suitably dramatic feast day, when everyone would be in the mood for a party.

Nobody counted on Lucia.

Lucia didn’t like the idea of her inheritance – that’s how she sees the Sisterhood – being given to some nobody with a pretty face. Anyway, Lucia would argue her face is far prettier, but that’s a minor consideration.

She used her wits and her sorcerous abilities to whisk the Hog Penny away at the appropriate moment. She approached a Small God of her acquaintance, Killakee, with a proposition: possess this pig, behave in suitably divine fashion, lots of drama, haloes and so forth, then produce the Penny on demand. All in front of an audience, of course. That way should anyone question Lucia’s actions she can point to divine favour as the reason why she got the Penny.

It would have worked too, were it not for that meddling God.

Killakee isn’t producing the Penny on demand. Killakee wants more. Much more. Lucia keeps wheedling, pampering, praying for the possessed pig’s favours. Won’t they give up the Penny, with suitable divine fol-de-rol to make it look convincing? Pretty please?

“No! No poo for you!” Followed by more prayers and treats. Killakee’s getting remarkably fat. There must be a small ocean of muck in there, waiting for its moment in the sun.

Time’s a-wasting. If Killakee doesn’t give up the goods, the Sisterhood may collapse altogether. Honey Bee is beginning to suspect that Lucia knows more than she’s telling, and has got the Bent Crown to spy on the wayward sorcerous Swineherd.

Our Heroes’ Employer

The heroes can be brought in by:

• Honey Bee.

• Bent Crown guildmaster Baldissere.

• The City Watch, who don’t like how things are getting out of hand, but who can’t be seen to take sides in a Guild contest.

• The Church of Denari, who hope the heroes can solve this problem before divine interference is called for.

• The Commoners, who just want all this nonsense dealt with so they can get on with their lives.

The Penny

This is in Killakee’s belly awaiting delivery.

Treat as a Reputation Charm, except that so long as it’s in the possession of one of the Sisterhood, it shall not disappear on use. This item can only be used by a member of the Sisterhood once a month. It was a special gift to the Sisterhood, whether from Denari or some other divine source, is not known by any living sage.

If it is used by someone who is not of the Sisterhood then it behaves like any other Reputation Charm and vanishes on use, to appear again later in the traditional manner, courtesy of a pig’s doings.

Oink!

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Swords of the Serpentine is a sword & sorcery game of daring heroism, sly politics, and bloody savagery, set in a fantasy city rife with skullduggery and death. The rules adapt the GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying system to create a fantasy RPG with a focus on high-action roleplaying and investigation inspired by the stories of Fritz Leiber, Terry Pratchett, Robert E. Howard, and others.
Purchase Swords of the Serpentine in print and PDF at the Pelgrane Shop.